Unbreakable

by Ruth Buchanan

  Not that she expected Ian to object. She didn’t know him very well yet, but she didn’t think he’d have a problem with it. He just didn’t seem the type. He seemed more likely to help her pick a frame. And Lynn and Ann and Sharon would understand. She was sure of it.

  What had she done to deserve such wonderful people in her life? Ann, Lynn, Lee, and now Sharon and Ian—all of them far beyond anything she could have hoped for.

  Not that true friendship is earned or deserved. Genuine friendship came as freely as grace.

  As she stood behind Lee, ready to take her place at the front of the hall and watch him take his vows, Rachel sent up a silent prayer of thankfulness.

  It wasn’t until Sharon entered the back of the hall on her father’s arm that Rachel finally spotted Ian. His was the only head that didn’t turn to gaze at the bride as she flowed down the aisle. Instead, he faced forward and caught Rachel’s eye. When she shot him a little smile, he tipped her a slow, deliberate wink.

  Rachel’s face caught fire.

  Then Sharon and Lee were standing together hand in hand, turning to face Lee’s pastor to make their vows. The midday sun poured through the tall windows of the hall just as Lee had predicted it would, bathing the couple in a sheen of white-gold.

  Fortunately for Rachel’s sake, the antihistamine she’d popped just prior to the ceremony seemed to be holding, although she couldn’t be sure the soft-focused haze had nothing to do with that. At least she hadn’t tripped in her heels yet.

  Catching a motion out of the corner of her eye, Rachel suddenly snapped into focus. She couldn’t be seeing what she thought she was seeing. Surely her allergy-fogged eyes deceived her.

  Twitching in and out of sight behind the screen of ficuses sneaked the birdlike form of Mavis Martin. How and when she’d entered the hall, Rachel didn’t know. All she knew was that Lee’s mother now worked her way toward the front, only partially-concealed by the row of potted trees. Her movements were quick and jerky, her hair standing on end and her eyes wild.

  What terrified Rachel, however, was not her spasmodic movements or her crazy eyes. It was not the fact that Lee’s mother was about to burst from behind a row of potted ficuses and ruin yet another special moment in his life.

  What terrified Rachel were the flashes of light reflecting from two knives clutched in Mavis Martin’s knotted little fists.

  23

  Don’t panic.

  Although if there was a time to panic, this might be it.

  If Rachel couldn’t panic when she saw her former-student-turned-colleague-turned-friend’s mother

  sneaking up behind him at his wedding while swinging two knives, then when could she?

  The pastor recited the vows. “To have and to hold from this day forward…”

  Keeping her eyes trained on Mavis’s progress, Rachel pinched Lee’s suit jacket between her fingers. She gave two tiny tugs. “Pssst.”

  Lee twitched his shoulder as if brushing away a mosquito. “To have and to hold from this day forward,” he repeated.

  “For better or for worse,” intoned the pastor.

  Rachel poked Lee in the back. “Psst!”

  “For better or for worse,” repeated Lee, his back stiffening and his voice rising.

  “For richer or for poorer—”

  “For richer or for poorer—”

  Rachel tugged on the tails of his tux. “Lee.”

  “In sickness and in health—”

  “In sickness and in health—and would you please cut it out!” Lee rounded on Rachel, swinging his head around to hiss at her while shooting her a ferocious glare from underneath his bristling brows.

  She stepped back involuntarily, and her weak ankle turned. She took two tiny hops sideways to steady herself before jabbing a finger toward the row of ficuses. “Look!”

  Lee’s gaze found his mother just as she emerged from between the trees, muttering to herself and slashing the knives at the air as if batting at an invisible monster.

  “Mother!” Lee’s voice was half groan, half roar.

  Somewhere along the line, the pastor had stopped talking. Now he joined everyone else in the room as their heads swiveled in unison toward the row of ficuses from which Mavis had just emerged, clutching the small knives. She sliced them through the air wildly, point-downward, her eyes focusing on the middle distance as she advanced.

  Is this a dagger which I see before me? Rachel resisted the urge to laugh hysterically as her brain took up Macbeth’s lines in a panicky refrain. She shook her head and willed her eyes to focus. This was clearly no time for Shakespeare—although if there were ever a good time to channel Lady Macbeth, this might be it.

  Sharon shrank against Lee. He slid an arm around her and drew her to his side, partially blocking her from the approaching apparition. He reached a hand backward to steady Rachel.

  She craned her neck to peer over his broad shoulder. Mavis advanced more slowly now, her eyes unfocused and vague. Although her arms still slashed, she seemed to have no sense of where she was.

  Rachel turned her head to lock eyes with Ian. He’d half-risen and now hovered over his seat, gaze flicking back and forth between Mavis and the wedding party. One hand clutched the seatback ahead of him, while the other hung suspended near his hip. Was he reaching for a gun or a cell phone? When he caught Rachel’s eye, he lifted a hand to make a calming motion. Easy, his eyes told her.

  Unimpressed, Rachel bugged her eyes at him and gestured toward Mavis and the swirl of advancing blades. How could he be so calm about this?

  Ian relaxed his stance and eased down into his seat, waving for those sitting around him to stay seated as well. She could see him saying something, but his voice came as if from a great distance—muffled and indistinct through the combined haze of panic and antihistamine.

  Meanwhile, Mavis’s eyes, still skating uncertainly, had found her son. With a sudden burst of speed, she advanced, swinging the knives more wildly.

  For Rachel, time dilated strangely, slowing nearly to a stop. Part of her mind acknowledged that Lee had unceremoniously shoved Sharon into the front row and the pastor had stepped back quickly, tripped over his own heels, and gone crashing down amid the flower arrangements and candle stands fanning behind him. Another part of her mind accepted the fact that neither Ian nor anyone else planned to intervene in the disaster about to unfold.

  Nobody but her.

  With a shriek, Mavis advanced, knives thrusting in a downward arc toward Lee’s cummerbund.

  Lee stepped forward, one arm outstretched to ward off his mother.

  Forgetting her dress and spiked heels, Rachel dropped her left leg back and brought up her arms. With the sort of timing rarely seen outside the choreographed fights of Hollywood blockbusters, Rachel launched forward, hands grasping Lee’s outstretched arm. Throwing her full weight into it, she drew her left leg toward her chest while her right pistoled out and connected solidly against Mavis Martin’s birdlike torso.

  Even as Mavis shrieked and fell back, the knives descended, scoring Rachel’s exposed calves.

  She’d done it. She’d saved Lee. The part of her mind still functioning noted that she couldn’t wait to tell Coach Donovan that she’d landed a flying kick. The other part registered that she’d failed to plan beyond this moment.

  Rachel landed on both feet, wobbling in the red heels. Her legs burned. Thrown off balance by Rachel’s wild leap, Lee tottered, arms pinwheeling for balance. Still attached to one of those arms, Rachel involuntarily pivoted sideways on her spiked heels, her formerly-broken ankle popping as she went down. She stumbled forward as she fell, barreling into Mavis Martin and dragging Lee down on top of her.

  Even before she hit the ground, she knew.

  This moment? This was it.

  This was the most ridiculous thing that had ever happened.

  With a rush, time resumed, full sound returning with a burst. Shrieks and cries of dismay echoed through the hall. Chairs overturned as wedding guests leapt
to the rescue—or, in some cases, leapt to gain better camera angles for the videos they were shooting on their cell phones. The cacophony only partially concealed Lee’s groans and the obscenities Mavis Martin screeched into Rachel’s shoulder blades.

  Breathless from her recent gymnastics, not to mention having two-hundred-odd pounds of Lee slamming down on her and knocking the air from her lungs, Rachel could do little more than lift her hands to the back of her head to cup the throbbing section that had smacked against the tiled floor. For a moment, the pain overwhelmed her, and she barely registered Mavis Martin’s arms continuing their frantic stabbing motions, seemingly independently from her now-prone body. Bypassing Rachel, she stabbed upward repeatedly into Lee’s sides—his groans keeping time to the beat of her savage repetitions.

  Mavis Martin was stabbing Lee.

  With a primal shriek, Rachel threw her hands to Lee’s ribcage, blocking the next series of stabs. She screamed as the knives gouged in, a searing burn radiating upward from the backs of her hands. She barely had time to process a snapping sound as she shot both elbows back and downward, connecting solidly with Mavis’s thin frame.

  Mavis gave a strangled cry and released the knives even as they splintered and spun in pieces across the tile, dribbling blood.

  Wait—they splintered?

  Knives didn’t splinter to pieces.

  Rachel gaped at the broken pieces of the two silver plastic knives Mavis had taken from the reception tables at the back of the hall.

  24

  “Butter knives,” she gasped as Lee rolled sideways, releasing the pressure on her lungs. Beneath her, Mavis bucked and squirmed.

  Mavis had been stabbing them with plastic butter knives.

  Ian leaned down, cell phone jammed between his ear and chin. “I tried to tell you.”

  Rachel covered her eyes with both hands. A warm trickle ran backwards toward her hairline. Tears or blood? Mavis gave another mighty buck. Rachel felt Ian’s hands grasp her upper arms, steadying her.

  “Signal thirty-six in progress,” Ian said into his phone. His hands were gentle as they rolled Rachel to the side. He then reached for Mavis, neatly flipping her over and drawing her hands behind her. He placed a knee in the small of her back. “Lee,” he grunted, “a little help?”

  Lee hadn’t heard. He’d crawled to Sharon’s side and lifted her to her feet, cradling her head against his chest. “It’s fine. It’s OK. I’m fine. You’re fine. Rachel’s fine. We’re all fine. They were just plastic butter knives.”

  They were just plastic butter knives.

  The edges of Rachel’s vision went dark, the blackness moving steadily inward. Swallowing a wave of nausea, she pushed herself upright and scooted to Ian’s side.

  “I have cuffs on my waistband,” he told her without looking up. “Under my jacket.”

  Of course he did.

  Any other day, Rachel would have balked at the task before her. Beyond embarrassment now, Rachel angled behind him, ignoring the crowd of wedding guests looking on. She lifted the tails of his jacket and found the cuffs, unhooking them and extending them toward him with shaky, bloody hands.

  Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him? That’s what Lady Macbeth would have asked. Only Mavis wasn’t an old man, and this wasn’t her blood on Rachel’s hands. It was her own. She watched, mesmerized, as a drip seeped from the shallow cut and hit the white tiles with a soft pat. “Yet here’s a spot,” Rachel whispered.

  “Rachel?” Ian’s voice was gentle. “I need you to focus. I can’t let go.” He wrestled to keep a squirming Mavis from breaking free. “She’s too strong. I need you to cuff her.”

  Silencing Lady Macbeth, Rachel met his gaze and his face blurred as tears brimmed over. “I don’t know what to do. I’ve never cuffed anyone before.”

  Incredibly, she saw the corners of his eyes crinkle. “There’s a first time for everything.”

  Rachel slid the cuffs over Mavis’s wrists and cinched them. Ian didn’t shift his position but kept her pinned to the floor as she gibbered and screamed.

  Rachel couldn’t seem to stop crying. She met Lee’s gaze over the top of Sharon’s head. Unaccountably ashamed, she stared at the slash marks across the backs of her hands. How long she sat that way she did not know.

  Eventually, a pair of hands slid around hers, at first turning them this way and that to check her injuries. Then they tightened in a comforting clasp. Rachel tipped her head forward and rested it in the pocket between Ian’s shoulder and neck. His right hand released hers and moved to her back. He pulled her in, patting reassuringly. It’s OK, the pats said.

  In the background were the sounds of Lee talking to the first responders who had arrived on the scene. Eventually one of them would need to speak with her. Again. At the thought, she pushed her face further into Ian’s neck. As far as she was concerned, she was never coming out. It was dark and warm and safe, and it smelled like soap.

  He shifted and she leaned harder against his shoulder. He slid an arm around her back, tucking her against his chest. Her breath came in loose shudders. She couldn’t imagine opening her eyes and facing everyone.

  She felt the warm rumble of Ian’s voice as he murmured something to one of the officers. He slid an arm beneath her knees. Then he rose, lifted her, and carried her up the aisle toward the rear of the hall.

  In her fantasies, being carried like this had always seemed romantic. Now, with her eyes and nose streaming and her hair spilling down and her calves burning and the backs of her hands oozing blood, she felt nothing short of humiliated.

  She’d been wrong before. This was the most ridiculous thing that had ever happened.

  ~*~

  Rachel sat on the floor, back against the wall, sandwiched between Lynn and Ann. Lynn held her hand, and Ann pressed a shoulder into hers, propping her up. An ice pack braced between the back of Rachel’s head and the wall.

  The wedding, while not canceled, was on a two-hour delay while emergency services finished up and the hall was put back in order. “It’s like a rain delay in baseball,” Rachel said listlessly, “except instead of rain, it’s blood because someone’s mother stabbed you with butter knives.”

  Then she burst into a fresh bout of laugh-crying. Tears dribbled to her chin before dripping down onto her neck.

  Ann nudged her. “You need to get it together.”

  “I’m together.” Since she hadn’t seriously injured herself, at least she could boast that she was still in one piece. The ice pack at the back of her head and the adhesive bandages on her hands and the gauze on her shins didn’t count. Those were just flesh wounds.

  Ann snorted. “You look it.”

  She hadn’t considered this. “It can’t be that bad,” she said, mostly trying to convince herself.

  Ann gave a little fake cough. “Lynn, will you do the honors?”

  “I really don’t think that’s a good idea,” Lynn squeezed Rachel’s fingers.

  “She’ll have to see eventually,” Ann pointed out. “You don’t want her going back out there like this, do you?”

  Rachel pushed her feet against the floor to scoot up higher against the wall. “I want to see.” She’d given her report to the officers looking like this. Wedding guests with cell phones had recorded videos of her looking like this—videos that were most likely already online. She’d snuggled her face into Ian’s neck while looking like this. She had to know.

  Reluctantly, Lynn lifted her cell phone and switched the camera to selfie mode so the three of them could use it as a mirror.

  Rachel’s horrified expression upon beholding herself did little to improve the situation. Her hair pins had come loose; her deep side part was long gone. Beneath this frizzy travesty, her pale face only highlighted the streaks of blood crusting back toward her hairline. Meanwhile, her eye makeup had departed for points south. “You guys!” she shrilled. “Why didn’t you tell me?” She twisted her hands through her hair, desperately hoping to ac
hieve some semblance of order. Halfway back to her scalp, her hands got stuck. She jerked them out and swiped at the dried blood at her temples to little effect.

  Ann pushed to her feet. “I’ll see if I can track down some wipes.” At the door, she paused and looked back at Rachel, now drooping against Lynn’s shoulder. A smile dawned. “I can’t wait to tell Donovan that you took someone down with a flying teep kick. In a dress and heels, no less.”

  Rachel groaned and covered her face again. “Don’t start.”

  “I’m not kidding!” Ann’s voice was light and firm. “Although if the video clips go viral, I might not have to tell him—”

  “Stop!”

  Lynn squeezed Rachel’s hand. “You might have been a little misguided, but let me tell you something—you looked awesome.”

  “Your form was off,” Ann told her.

  Lynn shot Ann a look. “But your heart was in the right place.”

  After Ann left, Rachel stared into space, silently reliving the afternoon’s events, second-guessing every move she’d made and wondering when, if ever, she would get things right. It wasn’t until she heard the door open that she lifted her gaze, expecting to see Ann returning.

  But it wasn’t Ann who entered carrying a small blue box of baby wipes.

  It was Ian.

  25

  Ann peered around Ian’s shoulder, shrugging in a “what-could-I-do?” gesture. As Ian stepped into the room, Ann retreated into the hall and motioned for Lynn to join her.

  Lynn prepared to rise, but Rachel squeezed her hand and tugged downward. “No—” she hissed, “Lynn, wait—”

  With a last comforting pat, Lynn pried Rachel’s hands loose and stood. Nodding to Ian on her way around him, she joined Ann in the hall and turned to quietly pull the door closed behind her.

  Tucking her skirts under her legs, Rachel raised her knees to her chest and pushed her face into the black fabric.

  “Don’t look at me,” she said into the cloth. “I’m hideous.”

  Rachel felt Ian slide down the wall next to her. He let the moments pass, seemingly content to sit in silence, pressed warmly against her side.