The Sixth Wedding

by Elin Hilderbrand

  “Is everything okay here?” Shamin asks, eyeing the untouched pakoras. “We are busy preparing your entrées.”

  “Delicious!” Bess says, too eagerly, and she takes a perfunctory bite of pakora.

  “Very good,” Shamin says, smiling, and thankfully, she leaves them.

  Bess turns back to Link. “I’m not pretending to know what your mother’s life was like. You would know that far better than me. But my dad claims she had her job, her cottage, friends, a community…and you.”

  Link looks at her incredulously and she can’t help but agree with him. She’s ridiculous! She’s trying to justify what happened between their parents when it was, quite clearly, unfair to Mallory. But then, Link does an amazing thing. He reaches across the table for her hand. Bess tries to act natural but she instantly flushes from the neck up. She likes Link so much—okay, she realizes she doesn’t really know him, but she’s been drawn to him since she first set eyes on him, stepping out of the cottage on Nantucket. He’d looked so forlorn, a boy on the verge of losing his mother. He’d been trying to escape the adults inside and, like Bess, he was probably wondering what the hell Jake McCloud was doing there. But he was kind and funny with Bess, and she thought she’d seen a spark in his eyes, like maybe he thought Bess was pretty, and then he offered to show her the beach. She’d wanted him to ask for her number before she left but her dad had been standing there and it wasn’t clear if she and Link would ever see each other again, so what would be the point?

  “Don’t you think everyone deserves to find love?” Link asks. “Isn’t that what we’re all programmed to search for? Someone we can connect with—a lover, a friend—someone to build a life with?”

  Bess nods but is afraid to speak. She isn’t sure if Link is trying to tell her she might be that person for him (could she be so lucky?) or if he’s blaming Jake for keeping Mallory from finding such a person.

  They found love, she wants to say. Maybe it didn’t look like other people’s love—a split-level house with a two-car garage, family road trips in the summer, date night on Saturday—but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t romantic or real. That doesn’t mean they weren’t devoted.

  Something about the way her father described his time with Mallory made it sound very real and very romantic. And if twenty-eight consecutive summers “no matter what” wasn’t devotion, then what was?

  But before Bess can articulate any of this, two things happen. The first is that a server arrives with their entrées and the second is that Link’s phone plays Toto’s “Africa”—Bess loves that song too—and the screen lights up with the name Stacey.

  Link stands up as his plate of palau lands. “I have to take this.”

  Bess blinks. “Okay?”

  “Outside,” he says. “I’ll be right back.”

  Who is Stacey? she wonders. An old girlfriend? A current girlfriend? She tries not to worry. It might be his boss or a coworker or a friend. She feels relieved that they are finished with the Jake and Mallory story. Maybe when Link gets back they can eat and talk about their own lives like two normal people on a date.

  Bess watches Link on the sidewalk on his phone, his head bent, his ear plugged. She considers the food. It would be rude for her to start without him, but she’s hungry, so she helps herself to one of the pakoras, which have finally cooled enough to eat. She devours one and is reaching for another when a guy takes Link’s seat.

  “Uh…?” Bess says, her mouth full. She swallows. “Wrong table?”

  “You’re Bess, right? Bess McCloud?” The guy looks like a Hollister model, or like the lead actor in a sexy HBO series about the Ivy League’s secret societies. And then, of course, it dawns on Bess: It’s the lobbyist.

  “Aidan?” she says.

  “You ditched me,” he says. “I finally made it to Roofers Union and you were gone.”

  Bess stares at Aidan Hydeck’s perfectly coiffed dark hair, his sleepy brown eyes, and his square shoulders and realizes that, in the excitement of leaving Roofers Union with Link, she forgot to cancel this date. And not only that, she continued to share her location with Aidan.

  “I’m so sorry,” she says.

  He tilts his head and gives her a slow smile. “It’s okay, I was the one who was late.”

  “Yeah, but that wasn’t your fault. You got stuck on the Metro.”

  “That I did.” He looks at the food on the table. “I don’t mean to be a poor sport but I don’t like Indian food.”

  “It’s Afghan.”

  “Even worse,” he says. “I was really looking forward to wings at the Roof.” Only then does he seem to notice Link’s empty beer glass and the share plate with the now-cold pakora. “Oh snap, are you here with somebody?”

  Bess is at an utter loss. She checks out the window. Link is still on the phone, standing just off the curb in the street between two parked cars.

  Aidan follows her eyes and taps the glass. “That guy?”

  “He’s…an old friend. He showed up at Roofers Union and…oh God, Aidan, I’m so sorry. I meant to let you know I was leaving. I’m not like this, I swear.”

  Aidan gets to his feet. “It’s fine,” he says. “I would suggest that we reschedule when you’re not quite so busy but now that I’ve seen you in person, I don’t think I want to bother.”

  Bess recoils. Did he just say that? She knows he’s angry but that was dirty.

  He leans down by her ear and says, “The only reason I asked for this date is because I know who your mother is.”

  Link approaches the table. “Hey?”

  Aidan turns around and smirks at him. “She’s all yours, bruh.”

  Bess is so angry she wants to dump her palau all over Aidan’s gorgeous lobbyist head. Instead, she stares at the table and waits for Aidan to leave the restaurant; she can’t make a scene, not here. She wants to ask Shamin to wrap everything to go so that Bess can eat it alone in her apartment. Link was on the phone with Stacey for so long that all Bess can imagine is he’s about to offer an excuse to cut dinner short so he can meet her.

  How can she live in a city filled with men and still not be able to meet anyone suitable?

  When she raises her head, Link has retaken his seat. He’s leaning forward, staring at her. “Friend of yours?”

  “That was Aidan,” Bess says. “The lobbyist.” Aidan was the last man on earth she should have chosen off Bumble. Now that I’ve seen you in person, I don’t think I want to bother. The only reason I asked for this date is because I know who your mother is.

  “He seemed like a real peach and I’m sorry you missed out on spending the evening with him, but I’ll try to make it up to you.” Link reaches for Bess’s hand again.

  Link doesn’t seem like he’s in a particular hurry to rush out, but Bess is wary. “Everything okay with your phone call?”

  Link shakes his head. “It was my uncle’s girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend? Almost fiancée? The woman who turned down his marriage proposal, which was what made him want to organize the Nantucket weekend? Yeah, that was her. She’s had time to process, she’s decided she wants to marry him after all, so she showed up at the house but he wasn’t there so she called him and it went straight to voicemail and she’s convinced he blocked her, which he probably did, because what else would you do to the woman who turned down your proposal? And she wanted to know if I knew where he was.”

  Bess is overcome with relief. Stacey isn’t Link’s girlfriend. Stacey is his uncle’s girlfriend! “Did you tell her?”

  Link shrugs. “I said I wasn’t sure but I thought he’d made plans out of town with a friend.”

  “Aaaaahhhh!” Bess says. “Did she think you meant a female friend?”

  Link squeezes Bess’s hand, then lets go so he can dig into the palau. “I don’t want to worry about Coop’s romantic life,” he says. “I’d like to focus on my own.”

  After dinner, Link asks if he can walk Bess home and she says yes, and they stroll the streets of Washington, holding hands. When they
reach the Sedgewick, Link escorts her to the door and Bess says, “Thank you for saving me from the lobbyist.”

  Link lays a gentle hand on the side of her face and then he leans in and kisses her. It’s the best kiss Bess has ever received—sweet, warm, just enough to leave her aching for more.

  “Oh,” she whispers.

  Link kisses her again. He pulls her to him and soon they are making out while moths beat around the light over their heads.

  Bess pulls away. “Would you like to come up?”

  Link takes a breath, and Bess wonders: Does he not want to come up? Was something wrong with her kissing?

  Link says, “I feel like I should let you know something.”

  “Okay?” Bess says.

  “Seeing you once a year isn’t going to be enough for me,” he says. “So if we’re following in our parents’ footsteps or fulfilling their thwarted destiny or whatever, that part has to change.”

  Bess pulls out her key. She can’t hide her smile. “Deal,” she says.

  Cooper

  On Saturday, Cooper wakes up at noon. Noon! When is the last time he’s done that? College? High school? He’s an up-at-the-crack-of-dawn, seize-the-day kind of guy. A morning person. But when he finally unsticks his eyelids, he can’t deny he lacks any motivation to get up off the wide, comfortable sofa.

  Except that he’s the host here.

  Ever so gently he lifts his head from the cushion and gazes around the room. Nobody is in the cottage, though he hears voices on the beach. Coop swings his feet to the floor and stands up. He overdid it—drank too much, stayed out too late. Deep inside him, like a coin dropped in a well, rests a small sense of accomplishment: He closed the Chicken Box!

  The person he would like to tell this to is Stacey.

  He pours himself a giant glass of ice water and heads out to the beach where Jake, Leland, and Fray are enjoying the sun. Jake is in his trunks sitting in a chair with a book open on his chest; his hair is wet. Fray and Leland are lying side by side on a blanket. Leland is in a black tank suit and a straw hat and Fray is beside her. Something is funny about that. Cooper squints, it’s bright outside, and he goes inside for his sunglasses. When he comes back out, he sees that Fray and Leland’s legs are intertwined in a way that looks more than friendly.

  “Hello, all,” Coop says, collapsing in an empty chair.

  “How you feeling, old man?” Fray asks. Coop can see that Fray is also stroking Leland’s shoulder. Ohhhhkay.

  Jake says, “Want me to make you an omelet? You must be starving.”

  Coop feels queasy. “I think I’ll go for a swim first, then see if I can handle food.”

  “So listen,” Fray says. “I booked a sunset sail on the Endeavor for Leland and me tonight and then I got the two of us a highly sought-after reservation at the Boarding House. I’ve heard their lobster spaghetti absolutely slaps. So I hope that’s cool with you…”

  Sunset sail? Lobster spaghetti? What does that mean, it “slaps”? The “for Leland and me” part he understands; Fray and Leland want to go to dinner alone. Coop made a nine thirty reservation for the four of them at Nautilus, but who is he kidding? He’s not up for sitting down to dinner at nine thirty; he’ll fall asleep in his bao buns. He’ll cancel Nautilus. He and Jake can get a pizza and watch college football. He feels a bit bummed that they aren’t doing something all together, but he can’t ignore his relief. He has been set free of expectations.

  Coop spends the afternoon waiting for the fog in his head to clear. The swim helps a little and the pillowy omelet that Jake serves him with two pieces of toasted Something Natural herb bread soaks up the beer and the shot of tequila he did the night before. (The tequila had been handed to him by a member of a bachelor party who called him “Pops.”)

  He sits on the beach for a while but the sun makes his headache worse. Jake suggests hair of the dog—he’s drinking a Dark and Stormy—but Coop can’t think about alcohol.

  Fray and Leland disappear inside and Coop says to Jake, “Did something happen between them?”

  “They have a thing,” Jake deadpans. “A thing that refuses to die.”

  “Since the mid-eighties,” Coop says. He lowers his voice. “I thought Leland liked women?”

  Jake shrugs.

  Jake dozes off in his chair and Coop heads inside to grab a Coke, thinking some caffeine might help. He sees Fray and Leland pop out of Mallory’s bedroom all dressed up. “Dressed up” for Fray is jeans and a white button-down shirt that looks like it could have been pulled off the rack at Sears but probably is by an Italian designer and costs eleven hundred dollars. Leland is wearing a fitted black dress; after only one afternoon in the sun, she’s tan.

  “Have fun, kids,” Coop says. He is looking at Frazier Dooley and Leland Gladstone in 2023, but he’s also having a flashback to Fray and Leland standing up against the cinderblock wall outside the Calvert Hall boys’ locker room after one of Fray’s lacrosse games. Rumor around the school was that Leland gave him special “favors” if he scored a goal.

  “Hey, you can sleep in Link’s room tonight,” Fray says. “I’ve been upgraded.”

  Leland kisses Fray’s cheek. “Damn straight.”

  Coop laughs and shakes his head. He loves them both. If they’re happy, he’s happy.

  After they leave, Coop thinks maybe he will go into Link’s room and lie down—but he stops in front of the bookshelves, which hold not only Mallory’s impressive library but also a bunch of framed photographs. Many of them are of Link growing up and of Mallory and Link together, though there are also some wonderful photos of Mallory and Cooper as children, which Mallory must have taken when they cleared out the house on Deepdene Road after Senior and Kitty were killed.

  There’s a shot of Cooper, Mallory, Senior, and Kitty taken during brunch in the Green Room at the Hotel DuPont in Wilmington, Delaware. The Blessings would always go the Saturday after Thanksgiving, because that was the first day the hotel was decorated for Christmas. Kitty used to go to the Green Room with her own parents, so the brunch tradition was very important to her. Coop recalls suffering through it his junior and senior years in high school following the epic Friday-after-Thanksgiving parties he used to attend. That’s definitely the case in this picture—Cooper’s eyes are bloodshot, his hair is uncombed and his tie crooked—but what makes him laugh out loud is Mallory in her kelly-green monogrammed sweater and kilt (a kilt!) and knee socks. She must be fourteen and she’s wearing knee socks.

  Tears burn his eyes as he laughs. She was such a nerd! Before she had braces, she used to have buck teeth and Cooper would tease her relentlessly. He also teased her about her adoration of Rick Springfield, her addiction to General Hospital, and the stubborn cowlick in her hair that she would spend the moments before leaving for school fruitlessly trying to tame.

  Coop knows that Mallory resented him growing up. Things came easily to him—good grades, sports, charming all the adults in his life so that he got pretty much whatever he wanted. Mallory was shyer, a bit socially awkward; she preferred to stay in her room, lounging on her fuzzy purple beanbag chair, reading. Oh, and she ate saltines with butter. Coop closes his eyes. He hasn’t thought of her saltine and butter addiction in decades.

  He picks up another picture where Coop is maybe ten and Mallory eight. It’s Easter. Coop is in a navy blazer, Mallory in a pink dress and headband (buck teeth protruding from her smile). They’re standing in front of the fireplace at their grandparents’ house, holding baskets filled with candy. Coop can practically smell his grandfather’s pipe smoke. The next picture he picks up moves him even further back in time. Coop is maybe seven, Mallory five, and they’re wearing the lederhosen that their grandparents brought back from a trip to Munich. This picture is…serious blackmail material. They look ridiculous! Coop laughs until he cries and then he’s bawling like a baby because Mallory was his kid sister and he misses her. He sets the lederhosen picture next to a picture of his Aunt Greta and Uncle Bo, who were the original o
wners of this cottage. Cooper remembers when Mallory was “sent to Nantucket” for the summer as a kid; he thought she was being punished. Little did he know.

  There are no pictures of Mallory with Jake, obviously, since their relationship was like a state secret, and no pictures of Mallory with any other men. Coop wonders then, as he often has, if there was something wrong with him and his sister. Mallory had a child but never married; Coop has been married five times but none of the unions lasted and he never had children. Was it random luck that things ended up that way or had they been defective somehow? Kitty and Senior, although they each had their faults, set a wonderful example. They were devoted and attentive and respectful of each other. Cooper Senior could be impenetrable emotionally but he had a soft spot for his wife. There had always been romance in the house—long-stemmed roses “just because” and evenings spent on the couch in front of the fire, Kitty lying with her head in Senior’s lap. Maybe they set an example that was too hard to live up to.

  Cooper thinks of Dr. Robb’s point that he has suffered a lot of loss. It was all weighing on his shoulders now. He missed his family. He would give everything he owned to be back in the Green Room at the Hotel DuPont.

  He’s overtired and growing very emotional. He needs a nap. Coop slinks into Link’s room and crashes facedown on the bed.

  When Cooper wakes up, the sun is setting in a blaze of pink on the horizon. Link’s room, which has a window onto the beach, is suffused with rose-gold light.

  Coop finds Jake in the living room drinking a beer in front of the Clemson–Ole Miss game.

  “Hey,” Coop says. “Should we order a pizza?”

  “There’s something I forgot to tell you earlier,” Jake says. “Do you remember that woman Brooke from last night?”

  “Yeah?” Coop says. “The teacher who was friends with Apple?” He’s having a hard time coming up with Brooke’s face, though he recalls thinking she was pretty.