The Most Wanted by Jacquelyn Mitchard

Author:Jacquelyn Mitchard
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: L*B*
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 1999-06-01T04:00:00+00:00

“Love is a season

for the migrant

heart to rest in.

“Love is the wild

wind the heart

rides home on.”

Annie just sat there for a long time when I was done. She finally said, “That is really beautiful. Does your mother know you can do that?” I didn’t say anything. And then she asked me about my wedding day. I’d never told anybody about it. Elena knew, of course. She would have been my maid of honor, after all, if Mrs. G. had let her come—not that I blame Mrs. G. at all for that. I wouldn’t let Desiree go to a prison, even for somebody’s wedding.

The truth is that my mama didn’t want me to go that day, either. I could tell, even though she didn’t say so. When I put the permission paper in front of her, she didn’t even put on her reading glasses to sign. She just put her name down on it in one swoop, Rita B. Mowbray.

I told Annie that I’d asked her, Mama, what’s the B for? My middle name, she said. I asked her what it was. She looked at me like she was looking at food caked on a plate. “It’s Belle,” she said. “It’s Belle.”

“That’s pretty,” I told her, slowly folding up the form and putting it in my pocket, with my birth certificate.

“It’s shit,” she told me. “It sounds like the name of a damned cow. Rita Belle.”

“Whyn’t you change it?” I asked her. I didn’t think she would answer, this already being nearly the longest talk we ever had.

“You can’t really change nothing,” she said to me.

And then she got up and went into the bathroom, and I heard the shower go on. I started to cry. It was foolish. It wasn’t like I thought she would come with me, or even tell me good wishes, but you always think people will change at the last minute, don’t you? You always want to hope the best, even though you know that what you have already seen of people, day in and day out, night and morning, is the best they have to offer.

When Connie came, she had to honk about six times for me, and I still couldn’t stop crying. Connie thought I was changing my mind, and it took a while to tell her no, that wasn’t it at all, it was my mama. Then Connie started to cry too. She was driving Kate LeGrande’s car. Here was the person who was supposed to be my mother-in-law by the end of the day, and I had never even met her. It was Connie called and asked to borrow the car, because Mr. and Mrs. G. wouldn’t let Connie use theirs for such a purpose. I was a little hurt Kate wasn’t coming to the wedding, either. I didn’t even ask Connie why, whether Dillon’s mother disapproved (I later found out she did; she thought I would be the ruin of Dillon, which, considering where he was already, seems kind of feeble) or whether she had one of her back spells (I later found out she had).

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