by Sara Rosett
He pushed open the door and waved me inside. Beatrice must have had some walls knocked down because the whole downstairs was one open room. On the left was a kitchen with a two-burner cooktop, a microwave, and mini-fridge. A round wooden table and two chairs were positioned in front of a large window at the back of the room overlooking a view of a meadow. Dry-stone walls crisscrossed the green hills rolling away into the distance. On the right side of the room, a large sofa covered in cheerful stripes sat in front of a fireplace. Shelf-lined walls on either side of the fireplace were bursting with books. Thick wooden beams ran overhead. In the back corner of the room, a circular iron staircase twisted upward.
I turned to Alex. “Who needs room service?”
Three days until the wedding
“…and I must get a hat.” My mom hitched her carry-on bag higher on her shoulder. “You’ll have to take me shopping. I couldn’t find anything in California. Nothing appropriate at all. Only straw beachy things. Well, that’s not quite true. I did see a horrible creation dripping with feathers and beads in black. Can you believe it? Black! I told the salesgirl—they’re all so young now and know absolutely nothing about looking elegant—I told her it was not at all what I need for a wedding at an English country manor.”
Mom paused for a breath, and I said, “Your hair. You stopped coloring it.” We were standing in the airport terminal and those were the first words I’d managed to say since she came through the doors from baggage claim. I was surprised to see the streak of white that ran from the center of my mom’s forehead and down the left side of her chin-length bob. I couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t dyed the white section to match the rest of her chestnut brown hair. The shock of white hair is a hereditary condition, and my mom used to check my hair when I was little to see if I would have it as well. She was relieved when my hair remained a solid mahogany brown. As a little kid, I had picked up on her dislike of her own streak of white and thought it was a bad thing. When I hit my teenage years, though, I thought a white streak in my hair would have been cool.
“I decided it was time to show it off.” She shook her hair off her face in an imitation of a shampoo commercial. Then she leaned close, her bravado dropping away. “What do you think? Good choice?”
“Great choice.” I was glad to see her embracing something that she’d always felt self-conscious about. “It looks good on you. Come on, the car is this way. I had to park a long way from the terminal—” I broke off as my mom retreated a few steps and retrieved a luggage cart. “Is that all yours?”
“Of course. Why would I push around someone else’s luggage?”
I picked up the umbrella that rested on top of the suitcases. It was about three feet long and had a curved wooden handle on one end and a sharp silver tip on the other. “This looks dangerous. I’m surprised they let you through security with it.”
“Kate, it’s England. Everyone needs an umbrella at all times. Look, it opens automatically.”
She took it from me, touched a button, and the black canopy bloomed into fullness, cutting off my view of most of the terminal. I put my finger on the silver tip and pushed the thing out of my face. “Impressive, but it’s not raining today.”
“It will be,” Mom said confidently. “It always rains in England. All the guidebooks say so.” She hit the button again and the canopy retracted as quickly as it had expanded.
“That is cool,” I said, impressed. I’d lived in England for a year and didn’t have an auto-retracting umbrella.
“Wait until you see my money belt.” She patted the bulge at her waist. “It’s got layers to protect from electronic pickpocketing—can you imagine? I can get everything in it—my credit cards, passport, and phone and it’s so slender it’s practically invisible. Next to an umbrella, a money belt is the most important thing to have when you travel.”
It sounded like she was quoting from a guidebook so I said, “Sounds great. You wait here, and I’ll bring the car around.” I eyed the load of suitcases nearly toppling off the cart. “I might have to make two trips to Nether Woodsmoor.”
“Whatever for?”
“One with your luggage, then one with you. I brought Alex’s car. You said you packed light so I thought…” I should have known better than to take my mother at her word.
“Oh, don’t be silly, Kate. I’m sure it will fit. It all went in the airport shuttle fine.”
“But I don’t drive a van,” I said. “Oh, and you don’t have to wear a hat to the wedding,” I added as I maneuvered the cart through clusters of travelers.
“Not have a hat?” Several people looked toward us as Mom’s voice bounced across the hard surfaces of the airport. “Of course I’ll wear a hat. It’s an English wedding.”
“You sound like Malcolm,” I muttered and wedged the cart through the exit door. Louder, I said, “I asked my friend Louise—she lives here, you know, and she’s been to several weddings. She said hats are optional.”
“Optional.” Mom gave a little laugh that conveyed how out of the loop I was. “It’s mandatory, dear. I looked it up on the Internet.”
I decided to abandon the argument. Some discussions with my mother were like that—discretion being the better part of valor. “You wait here with your luggage. I’ll get as close as I can with the car.”
Two hours later, I pulled into the airport for the second time that day. I’d been lucky to get her large suitcases in Alex’s MG without my mom. I thought I could squeeze in the last two smaller bags for the return trip to Nether Woodsmoor—as long as my mom held one on her lap. I parked, hiked to the terminal, and headed for the little coffee shop located outside the security checkpoint where my mom said she’d wait for me.
The bright white streak in her hair made her easy to find. She was perched at a minuscule table, an empty cup and a plate of crumbs in front of her. She was turned partially away from me as she said something to a slight young man seated at the next table. He had a beard and one of those haircuts that are shaved on the sides and long on top. He leaned forward and touched his table as he emphasized his points. The long swath of hair fell forward over one eye. He brushed it back and continued talking and pressing the table. My mom seemed to disagree because she shook her head.
She glanced my way. As soon as she saw me, she shoved back her chair, threw the strap of her carry-on bag on her shoulder, and grabbed the handle of her rolling suitcase. She seized the umbrella from the back of her chair then motored over to meet me outside the area where the tables were grouped. “There you are! I’m practically asleep on my feet.”
“It looked like you were in an intense discussion.” I transferred her carry-on tote to my shoulder and reached for her rolling suitcase.
“What? A discussion? No, I wasn’t talking to anyone.”
“You weren’t talking to him? That young guy over there waving to you?”
“What?” She narrowed her eyes as she looked over her shoulder then jerked back toward me. She grabbed the handle of the rolling suitcase out of my hand. “Oh…I think he was…on the same flight. He wanted to know…where to exchange his dollars for pounds.”
“There’s a currency exchange right around the corner—ouch! That’s my foot.”
“Oops. Sorry, dear.” Mom angled the suitcase away from my toes but didn’t stop moving in the direction of the exit. “I told him I had no idea where it was. I’m sure he can read the signs for himself,” she said over her shoulder.
I wiggled my toes, glad I had worn loafers, and glanced at the man. He was lounging back in the chair, one foot propped up on a beat-up suitcase, his attention now focused on the screen of his phone.
I knew that breezy artificial tone that Mom had used. I’d heard it when I was a kid when she stuffed her purchases from her secret shopping sprees in the back of the closet. I could hear her voice as she closed the closet door. “Just doing a bit of tidying up. No, no need to help me. I’ll finish up later.” And I couldn’t count the times she’d used that tone whe
n she asked me to her condo for “a bite of dinner” that turned out to be an ambush blind date with some guy that she thought would be perfect for me. It hadn’t taken me long to learn to vet all her dinner invitations.
I watched the guy for a moment. Mom wasn’t still matchmaking, was she? No, that would be crazy, especially if she thought that skinny guy with his hipster hair could even compare with Alex. I turned and hurried after her, catching up to her outside the main doors. She stood on the edge of the sidewalk, scanning the parking lot. “Mom, what is going on?”
She raised her eyebrows, her expression as innocent as a saint in a medieval painting. “What are you talking about?”
“Never mind. The car’s this way.” I knew from long experience that when she opened her eyes wide and put on that guileless expression, I wouldn’t get anything else out of her. The subject was closed as far as she was concerned, but something was up. She was either scheming or covering up something.
“Here we are.” I unlocked the doors of the MG the old-fashioned way, by inserting the key into the lock and twisting. The MG was an antique and didn’t have power anything.
My mom stood immobile a few feet behind me. “But that’s not a car. That’s a…toy.” She took a few steps to the side and examined it from another angle. “Was this some sort of clown car? Why are you laughing? You have to admit it does look like something out of a circus.”
“It’s a real car—a classic. You act like you’ve never seen a small car before.”
“We have lots of small cars in California, but not like this. I bet it’s barely bigger than your Uncle Ed’s golf cart.”
Once we were on the way back to Nether Woodsmoor I said, “I don’t know what was going on back there at the coffee shop, but if you think that guy you were talking to is any match for Alex, you’re crazy. If you think I can do better, and you’re set on making trouble for Alex and me, you should reconsider. Alex is kind and thoughtful. He’s funny and smart. We laugh at the same things. He loves me—which I still find amazing because he knows me really well now—and I love him. We’re getting married next week.”
“Inside voice, Kate, please. No need to shout, especially in such a small space.” Mom shifted the carry-on bag in her lap a little, and I felt her steady gaze on me. “I think Alex is wonderful. I’m happy for you.”
“Are you? You have no secret plans to…I don’t know…change things?” I couldn’t bring myself to say the word sabotage.
“No! I’d never do something like that. I’m thrilled for you—for both of you. You have no idea what a relief it is to me to know you’ll be settled in a good marriage. You’ve no idea how much I worried about you. But now that you’ve got Alex, I can do other things—move on.”
The urban landscape of the city had fallen away, and we entered the wide stretch of countryside with its patchwork green hills splashed here and there with swaths of gold, bronze, and deep red. I kept my eyes on the road. My marital status had been a sort of hobby for my mom. She’d always been focused on finding me a husband and getting me settled. I’d worried that after I was actually married she might find the transition difficult. But as I glanced at her now I decided I couldn’t have been more wrong. She looked happy and content and, yes, excited for me. “You mean the genealogy project?” I asked.
“It’s so fascinating. I can’t wait to tell you about our English ancestors. Did you know we’re related to a woman who helped the police solve a murder in the twenties? They called her the high society detective. While I’m here I want to run up to London and see the house she lived in. It’s a museum now. And then there’s that singer, Tom Davis. He might be a cousin! A distant one and by marriage of course, but still. It’s so exciting to think of it. If his wife had a brother named Lucas whose mother was married to Ronald Westings, then he is related.”
“And Ronald Westings is…?”
“Grandfather Gavin’s uncle,” she said in a tone that indicated everyone knew that. “I will say this for your father—he may not have been good for much, but he does have some excellent relatives. Imagine being related to Tom Davis!” My face must have looked blank because she added, “That eighties group—oh, what was their name? I loved their music. Something about zeros on their side…”
“The Edge of Zero? That group? They’re one of those one-hit wonders, right?”
“No, they had plenty of hits…well, several from the same album.”
“So, they were a one-hit-album wonder.”
“Do you know any of their songs?”
“Before my time, Mom.” I’d heard of the group and remembered running across one of those pop culture biography shows about them once when I was searching for something to watch. If I was pressed into a trivia game at the pub, I might be able to come up with a few of their song titles, but my mom was clearly more enchanted with the idea of being related to these people than I was.
“I can tell you’re not interested,” she said, “but I think it’s thrilling that we’re related to these people who have done unique things. There’s a good chance we’re related to that explorer who went to the north pole, too. That would be through your Aunt Millie. I’m still tracking that one down.”
“That’s great.” I was glad she had an interest besides marrying me off.
“I’ve also taken up bridge.”
“Bridge?”
“I know. Can you believe it? Me! I always thought I was such a dunce, but I’m actually good at it. Shocking, I know, but there it is.”
“That’s great,” I said again, then added, “But if you’re not still recruiting suitors for me, then what was going on with the man at the coffee shop?”
She became interested in the stitching on the bag in her lap. “He was on my flight, and he was chatting about some things. Rather pushy. I can’t stand people like that. I just wanted to get away, that’s all. Oh, look—sheep.”
CHAPTER 3
ONE DAY BEFORE THE WEDDING
M elissa said something, but since she was speaking around several straight pins held between her teeth, I couldn’t understand her. I assumed she wanted me to turn. I rotated a quarter turn, which must have been the correct thing to do because she nodded in satisfaction as she studied the hem of my wedding dress. She made the same noise again. I moved another quarter turn. I stood on a chair that we had placed in the center of my cottage’s small front room. My head nearly brushed the heavy beams that lined the ceiling, but Melissa had insisted she needed to see the hem at eye level to make sure it was exactly right.
Melissa was a friend from the documentary crew. She’d worked in Costume and had helped me find my wedding gown. When she’d offered to go shopping with me, I’d been thrilled. Having a professional give me advice seemed like a great idea, but then I’d had second thoughts. Melissa’s personal style was eclectic and wide-ranging. She loved to wear different looks and experiment with unusual styles, so I wasn’t sure what she’d recommend. But she’d spotted the perfect gown for me. She’d pulled a vintage gown off the rack at a second-hand shop and said, “Classic and elegant. You’d better try this one on. It’s very you.”
Melissa mumbled, and I turned again. I ran my hand over the fitted bodice that flared to a gentle swell of fabric that floated around my feet. The ivory dress had a lace overlay that created an off-the-shoulder neckline, which ran straight across my shoulders to form cap sleeves. “It’s hard to believe that I’m getting married tomorrow.” All the planning and coordination, all the build-up—everything would come together tomorrow. At least, I hoped it would. I’d been through my mental checklists many times, and I felt like I’d been on the phone with Malcolm more than I had with Alex during the last few days. My cottage had been furnished when I moved in, so I only had my clothes and personal things to move to Alex’s cottage. Everything was packed and ready for the movers, except my suitcase, which was going with me to Parkview tonight. Parkview was now closed for weekday tours, but it remained open to the public on weekends. This week and next,
the stately home’s guest rooms were completely filled with our wedding guests.
Melissa gave the hem a final tweak. “You say that like there was any doubt. I knew from the first time I saw you and Alex together that you’d walk down the aisle. Took you a bit longer to get to this point than I thought it would, though.”
“You’re one to talk. I’m getting to the altar faster than you and Paul.”
She focused on putting away all the pins. “Yeah. Well, we’ll see.”
She leaned back on her heels, and her cowboy boots creaked with the movement. She wore fitted jeans and a shirt of her own design that blended the fringe of a western look with a flowing poet-style shirt. It sounded like something that wouldn’t look good together, but Melissa made it interesting and fun. Tomorrow she’d be in a demure gown of pale pink as my maid of honor. She’d picked it out and assured me that it was perfect for the wedding and that she’d love wearing it. “I’ll channel my inner Duchess Kate,” she’d said. “It’s your wedding, and you’re all about classic styles.”
She surveyed me from head to toe. “I think you’re ready.”
“I doubt that.”
“Okay, sartorially prepared. How about that?”
“That, I agree with. You’ve been a huge help.”
“All in a day’s work.”
As she packed away her scissors then checked the floor for stray pins, a knock sounded on the back door, then a voice called out, “Kate, it’s me, Grace.”
“Come in.” I stepped down from the chair and heard the jingle of a dog collar, which meant that Grace had brought Alex’s greyhound, Slink, along with her. Grace had arrived from school yesterday. She had already been fitted in her blush-colored junior bridesmaid dress, which was now hanging on her door in Ivy Cottage.
Slink trotted into the room and went straight for Melissa, who was still on the floor. I sidestepped Slink’s tail, which was whipping back and forth in excitement as she planted a lick on Melissa’s face. “Gross.” Melissa wiped her cheek, but she petted Slink’s narrow head as she said to her, “You know I’m a cat person, right?”
