The Wedding Thief

by Mary Simses

  “Papier-mâché? Yeah, sure. Plain newsprint, liquid starch—I think that works better than white glue and water.” He examined the hand closely, the palm, the wrist, the bent fingers, all the while muttering to himself. “You’re going to need some wire mesh, wire cutters, masking tape…”

  We followed him down several aisles, Carl pulling things off shelves and tossing them into a shopping cart. When we were finished, he placed everything on the checkout counter. “I’ve also got a book on papier-mâché you might want to buy. Has detailed pictures and all.”

  “We’d better take that,” David said.

  “And then for the paint…” Carl ran his hand along the surface of the pinkie. “Looks like acrylic.”

  He led us to the paint aisle, stopped at the acrylic section, examined the colors, then began pulling down tubes—Prussian blue, ultramarine blue, yellow ocher, cadmium yellow light. “You’ll need to mix the blues and the yellows to make the greens.”

  I moved a couple of steps down to the green tubes. Chromium oxide green, emerald green, permanent green light, phthalocyanine green. I couldn’t even pronounce that last one. “Couldn’t we just use these? I mean, they’re already mixed.”

  “Not for this,” Carl said. “That hand’s been painted with a lot of different shades of green. They’ve all been carefully blended.”

  So I’d heard.

  We went back to the counter, but just as Carl was about to ring everything up, David turned to me and said, “This is never going to work. It’s way too complicated. The whole idea is crazy. I can’t go messing around with this.”

  As much as I hated to agree, I was beginning to think he was right. Repairing the damage did seem complicated for two people who weren’t artists. If I was being honest, I’d have to admit that even my Christmas ornaments hadn’t been that great. Although I’d always loved art classes in school, loving something and being good at it didn’t necessarily go hand in hand. My art teachers were nice to me, but I’m sure it was because of my enthusiasm, not because I had any real talent. And now my enthusiasm had taken me down the wrong path.

  “Oh God, David. I’m sorry. I was just trying to help. I thought this would be easier than it is.” He didn’t say a word as we went through the aisles and put everything back on the shelves. I felt like I was at a funeral.

  We loaded up the hand and got back in the van. “Look, there has to be another way out of this,” I said. I wasn’t ready to give up.

  “There isn’t any other way out of it. I’m going to call Ana and tell her what happened. And then I’ll call Alex and tell him so Ana won’t have to. He can’t fire her for this. It wasn’t her fault. It was mine.”

  Except it wasn’t his fault either.

  Back in the lobby of the Duncan Arms, I grabbed a business card from my wallet. “At least let me know what happens. Please?” I handed him the card. “Text me or call me or send me an e-mail. Something. And if there’s anything else I can—” I stopped myself before uttering the last word, realizing too late it was the wrong thing to say.

  “I think you’ve done enough,” he said.

  I could tell he didn’t mean it in a good way.

  Chapter 4

  Mom in Her Element

  I opened the door and entered the darkened auditorium of the Hampstead Country Playhouse. It was a little after four. I’d long ago abandoned my plan to check out the resort upstate, and now I was meeting up with Mom. I hadn’t completely forgiven her for luring me to Connecticut with her fabricated story, but the sideshow with Alex Lingon’s hand had distracted me enough for my anger to lose most of its edge, and I didn’t want to leave town without saying goodbye.

  The acting class for adults Mom was teaching had ended, but the stage was still bathed in light. The auditorium reminded me of a little theater Carter had taken me to soon after we began dating. We’d gone to see the daughter of one of his clients perform in Big River, and I remembered thinking life couldn’t get much better than the moment he put his arm around me, pulled me close, and told me how glad he was that I was there with him. He said it as though he couldn’t possibly have gone with anyone else.

  Mom was on the stage now with a few stragglers, students who were still hanging around, talking. I headed down one of the aisles, wondering how far into the ten-week session they were. She taught the class only every couple of years, but the structure was always the same, each session culminating in the performance of a one-act play. I’d seen several of them, and some hadn’t been too bad. There were usually a couple of people who could act fairly well.

  Mom never would have agreed to hold the workshops if Dad hadn’t talked her into it. She didn’t think she’d be a good teacher, but he had a knack for seeing beyond what people saw in themselves. By the time he got her to accept the suggestion, she was convinced it had been her idea all along, a strategy he often used in his work.

  “Oh, I agree with you,” Mom said as she smiled and tilted her head at a man in a chambray shirt. “He’s a brilliant playwright. Just brilliant, although he’s gotten very dark lately. He wasn’t that way when I first knew him.” She rested her hand lightly on the man’s forearm. “I could tell you stories…”

  “I’ll bet,” he said.

  I stopped a few rows before the stage. “Hi, Mom.”

  She waved to me. “Hi, honey. We’re just finishing up.” She turned back to the students. “All right, great work, everyone. Same time next week.”

  The group disbanded, and Mom walked down the stairs and came over to me. “So glad you called.” She gave me a hug. “I was afraid you’d already left.”

  “My flight’s at seven.”

  “How about grabbing a cup of coffee? Or a snack?”

  “I don’t think I have enough time.”

  She glanced at her watch. “Oh, I guess you’re right. Well, we can just sit here for a few minutes and chat if you want.” She moved into one of the rows of red velvet chairs. “I’m always happy to be in a theater.”

  We sat down and I thought about how my father would have said the same thing. He loved the theater. Loved rolling up his sleeves and getting into the details. Let’s use candles here, but let’s not have them all come up at once. It should be gradual, a progression. Sometimes it drove the directors crazy, how much he got into the nitty-gritty, but he knew what he wanted—mood and tone, visual effects, sounds. And in the end, he was right every time. The awards in his office—five Tonys and four Drama Desks—proved it.

  “How did your class go?” I asked, steering away from the elephant in the room, knowing if we talked about Mariel, we’d only lock horns again.

  “The class? Oh, it’s great. Nine people. An easy group. And a couple of them are quite good. One actually did some summer stock in college.”

  “And who was the guy?” I suspected Mom would feign ignorance.

  “What guy?” she asked with perfect nonchalance.

  “The one you were flirting with.”

  She smirked. “Owen? Oh, don’t be silly, Sara. I wasn’t flirting with him.”

  “He’s got to be ten years younger than you.”

  There was a beat of silence. “Really?” She looked surprised. “That’s all?” She looked relieved.

  “Mom!”

  She shook her head and sighed. “All right, maybe I was flirting a little. What harm does it do? Nothing will ever come of it. And besides, you know your father was my one and only love.” She gazed across the rows of empty seats. “I sang that song to him, you know. At his thirtieth birthday party. Did I ever tell you about that?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “It was at Twenty-One. In New York. You girls weren’t around yet. We had a wonderful band playing, and some people started in on me to sing. Of course, I didn’t want to.”

  “Ha,” I said. Mom had never met a microphone she didn’t like.

  She gave a little shrug. “But they finally persuaded me. And I sang ‘My One and Only Love.’” She looked down, fiddling with
the strap on her handbag. “It was one of your dad’s favorite songs. Of course, he loved Sinatra’s version, but that night he told me my version was the best.”

  The story made me smile. I imagined my parents in their younger years, before my sister and I came along. “I’m sure it was beautiful.”

  “Well, my point is, I’ll never find that again. And that’s okay. Je comprends. One true love is more than many people ever get.” She sounded wistful. “But having a nice-looking fellow on your arm when you go to a charity dinner isn’t all bad,” she added, glancing at me as though she thought she needed my permission.

  “I never said it was.” In fact, I’d told her plenty of times she should date if she met someone she liked. Mom was a pretty woman with a warm smile that made people gravitate to her. And she still had a nice figure. I’d seen men look at her. And I knew how hard it was to be alone. Not to share your life with someone you loved. The years since Dad’s death had been difficult for her, as they would be for anyone whose spouse was also her best friend. She’d told me once she felt she had to get her bearings and, in a way, start her life all over again after he died. I wasn’t sure she’d actually gotten her bearings yet.

  “I haven’t met anyone my own age,” she said. “They’re either twenty years my senior or ten years my junior. It gets harder and harder the older you are. The pickings are few and far between. What am I supposed to do at sixty-five? Start hanging around Teaborne’s?”

  Teaborne’s was a bar a mile outside of town where the twenty-something crowd gathered. Famous for its pickup scene, it was full of bare-midriffed girls in micro-miniskirts, guys shooting pool, and people dancing on the bar after midnight.

  “I just want some male companionship. I get lonely.”

  I almost said Me too, but I was afraid I’d go into a rant about Carter and Mariel, and I wanted to mend fences with Mom, not tear more holes in them.

  She took a compact from her purse and reapplied her lipstick. Then she pulled out her phone. “Excuse me a second, honey. Siri, please remind me to call Barbara Knox at eight o’clock tonight.”

  Siri’s voice came back: Okay, I’ll remind you.

  “Thank you, Siri.” Mom turned to me. “I’m sponsoring Barbara’s daughter and son-in-law at the club.”

  “Why do you always do that?”

  “Do what? Sponsor people?”

  “No, say thank you to Siri. And to that Google thing in the kitchen. They’re computers.”

  Mom looked at me as though I’d asked her to go out in public with no makeup. “Sara, we should always be polite.” She lowered her voice. “And besides, someday it’ll probably be them running the planet, not us. We might as well start building up goodwill now.”

  Who knew? Maybe she was right.

  Mom’s phone lit up, vibrating in her hand. She glanced at the screen. “Sorry, let me just take this. Hello?”

  She listened, nodded, and said, “Sure, that’s fine. I can do it then.” She hung up and turned to me. “They want to do tomorrow’s photo shoot at two o’clock instead of one now.”

  “What photo shoot?”

  “The civic association is giving me an award for fund-raising, and Connecticut magazine wants to do a little article and photo.”

  “Oh, that’s nice.”

  “Mariel’s going with me in case my hair or makeup needs a touch-up. And she wants to watch them take the photos.” Mom pushed a lock of hair behind her ear. Then she looked around the auditorium and sighed. “I wish you’d stayed at the house last night.”

  “I couldn’t, Mom. Not with her there.”

  And I’d thought we’d be able to have just one conversation that didn’t involve Mariel. The two of us sat there, not speaking, and I knew we were both thinking about her. “I’m sorry about yesterday,” Mom said, finally breaking the silence. “I shouldn’t have done that to you. Or to your sister.”

  I wished she hadn’t added Mariel to the equation. She’d barely been inconvenienced. She would have been coming to Connecticut soon anyway to get ready for the wedding, while I hadn’t been planning to come at all. I’d had to leave work; Mariel didn’t have any work to leave. The last job she’d had was as a receptionist at a place where people took yoga classes while they charged their electric cars, but she’d quit when she got engaged to Carter. I could have pointed all that out to Mom, but I didn’t.

  “I accept your apology,” I said. More fence-mending. “But please don’t ever do that again. Don’t tell me you’re terminally ill. I mean, unless you are. You had me so worried.”

  “I won’t,” she said, giving me a two-finger salute. “Scout’s honor. But I wish you’d change your mind and stay for the wedding. Your sister could really use your help. She’s in way over her head. She planned it all herself. I helped a little, but she’s done the lion’s share. She didn’t want to use a wedding planner.”

  Probably because that would be giving my profession too much credit.

  “She didn’t think she needed one,” Mom went on. “And now things are going off the rails. Something about the flowers. And a problem with the transportation people. I can’t handle it. I wish she’d stuck to picking out the dresses and the tuxes. She’s got a good eye for that. But she didn’t, and she’s driving me crazy. Can’t you do something, Sara? You’re the one with the level head. You always know how to deal with things. And this is your area—you’re the expert. Please stay and help us.”

  Us? Now it was us? Why did she have to make this a personal favor for her? “Mom, I’m not going to be her wedding planner and pick up the pieces at the last minute. She made her bed. Now she can lie in it.”

  “Just talk to her, then,” Mom said. “Before you leave.”

  “And say what, exactly? I have nothing to say to her.”

  “Sara, with all the quarreling you and your sister have done over the years, you should know things are never one-sided.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  She gave me an exasperated look, as though she were dealing with a recalcitrant child. “It means I remember that it wasn’t perfect between you and Carter, especially toward the end. Sometimes we want to imagine what happens to us is someone else’s fault or responsibility when it’s not.”

  Ah, there it was. She was sticking up for Mariel again, suggesting this wasn’t her fault. I got up. “Why do you act this way? You tell me you’re sorry and then you go right back to siding with her.”

  “I’m not siding with her.” Mom stood up too. “I’m just asking you to be honest with yourself and think about the good and the…well, not so good.”

  “I have thought about it. I’ve thought about it for the past eighteen months. And I wish you could see it from my side for once. She should get the acting awards in the family. She plays the victim so well.” I stepped into the aisle.

  “Honey, wait.” My mother grabbed my arm, but I wrenched it away and dashed toward the doors.

  “I’m sorry,” she called out. “I love you. And if it makes you feel any better, Mariel thinks I’m always sticking up for you.”

  Chapter 5

  Just One

  The text message came through the second I left the playhouse: Delta telling me my seven o’clock flight had been canceled and to contact them to rebook. But that flight was the airport’s last departure to Chicago for the day. That meant one more night in Hampstead. One more night at the Duncan Arms.

  The man at the reception counter booked me into another room on the second floor. This one didn’t have a fireplace, but there was a tiger maple four-poster bed, cheery blue-and-white wallpaper, and a nook with two windows and an L-shaped banquette.

  I freshened up, changed into a pair of jeans and another top, and took out my planners—the rose-colored one I kept my personal appointments in and the blue business planner—so I could do a little work, but the distant thrum of a headache told me I needed food. Five thirty was way too early for dinner on a normal day, but this day had been anything but normal an
d it felt like ages since I’d eaten that orange-cranberry bread.

  The Tree House was the inn’s more upscale restaurant, and although I thought about going there, I decided against it. For one thing, I was underdressed. For another, I wasn’t in the mood to eat alone in a place with candlelight, flowers, white linens, and couples. The Pub Room, with its dark paneling and checkered tablecloths, seemed a better choice.

  “I’d like to get some dinner, please,” I told the girl at the hostess stand. There were about a dozen people in the restaurant.

  “Just one?” she asked.

  As if she needed to remind me. “Yes. Just one.”

  If Carter had been here, he would have committed the name on her tag—Onyx—to memory. Like my dad, he never forgot a name or a face. He’d meet people once and remember them the next time he saw them—guys who pumped his gas, receptionists at other law firms, his clients’ assistants, and the assistants’ assistants.

  And he knew the owner and manager of every one of his favorite restaurants and even his not-so-favorite ones. He’d always reserve the best table for us, order something delicious ahead of time, and have a wonderful bottle of wine waiting. He knew how to take care of things.

  Looking around at the couples, I felt more alone than ever. I didn’t want to sit by myself at a table. A few women were having drinks at the bar. “I think I’ll eat over there,” I told the hostess. I took a seat at one end and set my planners on the mahogany surface.

  “What can I get you?” a bartender asked.

  The name tag on his fitted white shirt said JEROME. He had a little sparkling dot of an earring, like a diamond stud, in each ear. He might have been younger than me, but not by much. I told him I wanted to order dinner and asked if he would bring the dessert menu as well. Nothing wrong with planning ahead.

  “Something to drink?” he asked.

  “Sure. A glass of wine.” I glanced at the bottles behind the bar, amber light bouncing off their surfaces. “How about a glass of Riesling?”