Down the Aisle with Murder

by Auralee Wallace

  I lowered myself into the seat beside him. “Well, it’s really sweet the way you keep trying to cheer Candace up.”

  He shook his head. “I know it’s not going to change anything. I just want her to know that…” He sighed. “I don’t know what I’m trying to say.”

  “No, I get it. You can’t make it better, but you want her to know that you want to make it better.”

  He nodded.

  “You could probably just tell her that instead of…” I looked down at his hand, and instantly regretted it.

  “I can’t really get her to talk about much of anything right now.”

  I searched his face for what he meant by that, but he didn’t meet my eye.

  “She’s just so sweet about everything.” He shook his head. “I mean, I know my sister’s being a—” He cut himself off. “I love my sister to death, but she’s being awful. If I try to talk to Candace about it, she just acts like Toni’s a complete angel.”

  “Candace does try to see the best in everyone.”

  “Yeah, but she can be honest with me,” he said, bringing his good hand to his chest. “I think she might be worried that I’ll take my sister’s side.”

  “Or maybe she just doesn’t want to deepen any divide between the two of you. She loves you so much, Joey.” I remembered what she had told me about Joey being her home. “She probably doesn’t want to put you in a bad position.”

  He nodded. “I just hated seeing her bend over backward to make Toni happy when Toni’s not going to be happy.”

  “Why does Toni—” I cut myself off. I was going to say hate, but that seemed like a bomb of a word. “Why does Toni feel the way she does about Candace?”

  Joey leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling. “Ever since I got out of prison, my sister’s been treating me like I’m made of glass.”

  I nodded. In fairness, he had fallen off a roof and put a nail through his hand in the space of just a couple of days, so I could see how she might feel this way, but it didn’t seem like the right time to point that out. “Is it because of the way you went to prison?”

  “She won’t say it, but I know she feels guilty. It’s not her fault though. I made my own choices. And now she’s somehow got it into her head that I need a woman who can take care of me. And she thinks Candace is this … weak person, who can’t take care of herself.”

  “And I’m guessing you can’t convince her otherwise?”

  “Nope. Not at all,” Joey said. “I love my sister so much. I can’t imagine her not being at my wedding, but she’s making this impossible.” He sighed. “Maybe Candace and I should just get married at the courthouse.”

  “Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. That is not going to happen.” I was thinking that Joey maybe didn’t appreciate the amount of hours that had already gone into this shindig … and the friendships that had been lost. “Let’s not get crazy. And what about Nonna? She wants to see her grandson married in a traditional ceremony, right?”

  He nodded his head. Man, he was looking so glum.

  “Listen. Maybe I could talk to Antonia.”

  Joey frowned and shot me a sideways look. “Are you sure you want to do that? Toni can be a little … well, she’s tough.”

  “Sure, but I’m—” I was about to say good with people but then my mind flashed back to Tommy and the golf balls. So many golf balls. “I can always just give it a try.” And it’s not like my to-do list was that … well, best not to think about that either.

  “You can try,” Joey said. “Thanks, Erica.”

  I nodded and patted his arm.

  Just then Dr. Robertson walked out from the back. “So who’s next, Flo?” She pointed at Joey. Joey waved … with his bad hand.

  Dr. Robertson smiled. “You did the right thing coming to me first.”

  Joey turned to me with very wide eyes and just a hint of a smile. “If anything should happen to me in there…”

  I patted his arm. “I’ll tell Candace you love her.”

  * * *

  “Mom?” I closed the front door of the lodge behind me.

  By the time I had got back to the retreat, it was getting pretty late in the day. I was hoping I might be able to catch my mom just before dinner.

  I walked to the kitchen that was bustling with caterers. “Has anyone seen my mother?”

  “She was here a minute ago,” one person, with avocado smeared down the front of her apron, said.

  I nodded my thanks and headed to the hallway just as I heard a noise come from the back.

  Oh, she had to be in her bedroom.

  “Mom,” I called out again, walking down the hall. “I know you are probably really upset with me and you have every right to be.” I turned the doorknob to her bedroom. “I just wanted to say that—”

  I swung the door open and …

  It hit the wall.

  I couldn’t stop it … what with …

  “Mom? Zaki!”

  My mother and Zaki sat huddled in her bed looking as horrified as I felt … with the sheets clutched to their naked, naked chests.

  “What are you doing?!”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Don’t answer that!” I shouted. “Please don’t answer that.”

  I lunged for the door handle.

  “Erica? Darling?” my mom called out as I slammed it shut. “Don’t go. We should talk about this.”

  “Don’t have to!” I shouted. “I’m good. It’s fine. I’m just going to … go.” I almost patted the wood face of the door, but my hand didn’t seem to want to touch anything. “Oh! And, uh, sorry about the other night.” I spun away.

  Well, that was one thing off my to-do list.

  And it had only cost me the soul of my inner child.

  I hurried down the hall and back out the front door of the lodge.

  It was all fine though.

  My mother was an adult. I was adult.

  This was fine.

  I just needed a bit of fresh air. I sat in one of the Adirondack chairs and pinned my hands between my knees.

  And … and … besides, I had liked Zaki when I had met him that one brief, brief time. So, you know, maybe this was a good thing. And it was probably a really good thing I hadn’t shouted Get off my mother! like I had wanted to. That might have made future encounters even more awkward.

  I rocked a little in the chair.

  This must have been what the twins were talking about earlier when they said my mother should really tell me something. And hadn’t one of them said, Erica’s not an idiot. She’s going to figure it out? Well, ha. Joke was on them. I hadn’t.

  I mean, of course I hadn’t. My mother didn’t date! If that’s what we were calling it. She was married to her work and to … well, me.

  But this was cool too.

  Rhonda said relationships changed … evolved. Well, this one was evolving with a bang.

  “Erica?” my mother said, sweeping out of the lodge. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. So fine. Everything’s great. You can go away now,” I said, shooing with my hand without looking directly at her. I was worried the sight of her might cause flashbacks. And I didn’t really think this was something we needed to talk about.

  “I brought you a carob muffin and lemonade.”

  Dammit. My mother made a really good carob muffin. She passed me a plate and a glass then sat in the chair beside me. I guess we were talking after all. I broke off a corner of the muffin and shoved it in my mouth.

  An awkward moment of silence passed while I chewed.

  My mom and I often had trouble jumping right into conversations. So I guess it wasn’t surprising that this occasion was no exception given that I had walked in on her afternoon deligh— Oh God, and now I needed to bleach my brain.

  “So…” my mother began.

  “So,” I said.

  “Sorry I was so busy yesterday,” she said. “I could tell you wanted to talk but—”

  “It’s fine. I just wanted to say s
orry for the…” What was I sorry for? I seemed to be suffering from short-term memory loss.

  “I understand. Well, maybe not understand. I’m sorry you and Freddie are going through something,” she said. “But don’t worry. The retreat’s going well.”

  “Good,” I said. “Good. I’m glad.”

  “You…” she began, seemingly like she was now going for the elephant on the porch, “haven’t noticed any of the canoes missing lately, have you?” And she bailed.

  “No. No. I don’t think so.” Not that I would have noticed something like that.

  “I thought one was missing yesterday. I hope the ladies aren’t taking them without letting me know. There’s so many women. It’s hard to keep track of everybody.”

  I nodded.

  Another moment passed.

  Okay, this was ridiculous. “You know…” I began. “You could have just told me.”

  “I know, darling. I’m so sorry,” she said quickly. “I was just waiting for the perfect time and—”

  “Well, that back there,” I said, jerking a thumb in the direction of her bedroom, “was not it.”

  Her eyes went very wide and she shook her head in a shudder. “You’re telling me.”

  We looked at each other and burst out laughing.

  It was that hysterical kind of laughter. Like the kind that makes tears stream down your face. And it went on for a really long time. I guess we both had a lot of nervous energy to kill.

  Once we had calmed down enough to talk, I wiped my eyes and said, “So how long has this been going on?”

  “About six months.”

  “Six months!”

  “I met him at that yoga meditation retreat I attended in Tuscon.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

  “Well, I wasn’t sure where it was going at first, and all the experts say don’t bring a new partner in to meet your child if you’re not sure it’s going to last.”

  “Mom, I’m not a child.”

  She smiled sweetly. “You’ll always be my baby.”

  I frowned at her. “So, it’s serious then?”

  She shrugged, but it was one of those happy, totally infatuated shrugs.

  “He treats you well?”

  “So well.”

  “Wow.” This was … strange. As bizarre as it sounds, I never pictured my mother being in a long-term relationship.

  “So, what do you think of him?” she asked.

  “Well, I only met him one time really—oh God, and then at the campfire! He thinks I’m insane, doesn’t he?”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “No.”

  The second no somehow really cast doubt on the first one.

  I dropped my head into my hands. “That was why you didn’t want me at the retreat. You were afraid I was going to embarrass you, weren’t you?”

  “Of course not. I just wanted you two to meet in a less formal setting, and…”

  “And what?”

  She shook her head and suddenly looked kind of sad. “I was afraid of you attending this particular retreat because…”

  “Because?”

  “It’s me, isn’t it?” she said with a nod. “I’m the reason you’re still single.”

  “You are?” I mean, I may have laid some blame at her feet once or twice for my inability to sustain a lasting relationship. I hadn’t exactly had a traditional childhood not knowing who my father was, and she had always bucked the idea of traditional forms of—

  “I put too much pressure on you.”

  Wait a minute …

  “To carry the mantle of Earth, Moon, and Stars. You feel the pull, but you’re worried you can’t answer the call and have a relationship—”

  “Mom, believe me. That’s not it,” I said, leaning my head back against the chair to look up at the sky. My eyes were drawn back down though to the sight of Caesar ambling his way down the porch. He must have heard the siren song of my mother.

  “Well, if I’m not the reason you’re still single—”

  We certainly glossed over that rather quickly.

  “Then there’s only one other explanation.”

  I gave her another suspicious side-eye. “There is?”

  My mother stooped over to lift Caesar to her lap. I grimaced in pain for her. She was going to pop a disk lifting that kind of weight. “It’s Freddie.”

  I stared at her. “Now Freddie is the reason I am still single?”

  “And you are the reason he is still single.”

  “What?”

  “Well, maybe not the entire reason,” she said, nuzzling faces with my fur brother.

  Gross. She’d be single again soon if Zaki saw her doing that … and my mother wasn’t single. That still felt weird in my head.

  “Actually,” she went on. “It’s more like you insulate and protect each other so that neither one of you has to dig any deeper to figure out what your issues really are.”

  “What?” I asked again in a super high-pitched voice.

  “You both really want a significant other, right?”

  “Right.”

  “But you both are each other’s significant other. There is no room for anyone else.”

  “That is so not…” I shook my head. My knee-jerk reaction to most of her observation was that she was crazy … but … Freddie was the person I spent the most time with … and I had been miserable when I felt like he was freezing me out. “Say … say, you’re not totally wrong, then—”

  “Why, thank you, darling. That’s high praise coming from you.”

  I frowned.

  She shrugged.

  “What I was going to say is that current fight aside, Freddie is really important to me. I don’t want us to not be friends.”

  “Of course not,” she said. “That’s not what I’m suggesting at all.”

  “Okay…”

  “You two have to stop being codependent. And you have to help each other make room for other people.”

  “Freddie and I are not codependent,” I said. “He eats way more pizza than I do and—”

  “You stop each other from facing uncomfortable truths.”

  Suddenly I was squinting and looking around. Probably looking a bit like Robert De Niro. Maybe not my best look. “What truth am I protecting Freddie from exactly?”

  “Probably from answering the question.”

  I sighed and flopped back in my chair. “And we’re back to the question.” I’d only known about my mother’s relationship for like two minutes, and her new boyfriend was already starting to annoy me.

  “Well,” my mother said, tilting her head side to side, “you two did put on quite a show that ensured neither one of you would have to answer the question.”

  “No, we didn—”

  She shot me a look that seemed to say for the first time ever she was truly concerned she might have given birth to an idiot.

  “We may have done that a little bit,” I said, swatting at a black fly. I hated those little suckers.

  “Did you ever ask Freddie if he was nervous about bringing Sean to town for the wedding? That maybe that was the reason he didn’t invite him?”

  I frowned at her. How did she know all of this? Who was she talking to? Everybody … she was probably talking to everybody. Otter Lake was like that. “No. Why would I do that? It’s a nonissue, everybody knows Freddie is gay.”

  A chipmunk suddenly popped up onto the porch. My mom’s arms tightened around Caesar. The twins like to feed the little critters peanuts, so they were pretty bold these days.

  “I know that everybody knows that Freddie is gay,” she said with a grunt as Caesar squirmed. “But he has never brought anyone around before, and everyone is going to be there.”

  “But nobody would have said anything.”

  “I don’t think so either, but you never know.” Caesar was pushing himself up on his hind legs on my mother’s lap to break her grip as she tried to talk around his head. “Mrs. Jones used to throw holy water
on me when she thought I wasn’t looking. She meant well. It took me a long time to figure out why I was always damp.”

  “I know but—”

  “Or maybe it’s not that,” she said, spitting fur from her mouth. “Maybe he’s nervous about how to act with a boyfriend in front of everyone he’s ever known. He’s never done it before.”

  I frowned. “I guess it’s possible.”

  The chipmunk was creeping closer toward us on the porch.

  “Seriously?” my mother said, beads of sweat popping up on her forehead. Caesar wriggled harder in her arms.

  I stuck out my foot, and the chipmunk scurried away with a squeak.

  “Thank you,” my mother said with a sigh, and Caesar settled back down. He shot a look at me that spoke of plots for my death though.

  “Yeah, right back at you,” I grumbled.

  “The deeper question here for the both of you,” my mother said, meeting my eye with a scolding look, “is why haven’t you talked about it? You are best friends.”

  “I … don’t know.” I frowned and sank back in my chair. “Where is all this coming from?”

  “Zaki and I … have spoken on the topic. He helped give me an outside perspective.”

  I shot her a side-eye. “So that’s going be how it is from now on, huh? Now there’ll be two of you psychoanalyzing me?”

  If I was not mistaken, she looked to be blushing. Or maybe her color was just from wrestling a sumo-sized cat. We sat in silence a good long while. Finally she said, “I may not have invited you to the retreat, but I did invite Grady.”

  “You did what?” Okay, that was overstepping. That was a big ol’ boundary cross. That was—

  Just then my phone rang. I looked down at the screen. “It’s Candace.”

  My mother nodded.

  “Hey, how are you doing?”

  “Erica, did I catch you at a bad time?” Something about her voice didn’t sound quite right. Granted, she’d been through a lot, but she sounded almost scared. “Not at all, what’s up?”

  “Well, this may sound crazy, but I need to ask you something.”

  “Go for it.”

  “You haven’t been in the shed behind my place, have you? Or Freddie?”

  “What? The shed behind your place? Why?”

  She sighed, but her breath sounded shaky. “I guess that’s a no.”