Four Steps to the Altar

by Jean Stone

  “Because of your old boyfriend?”

  Jo couldn’t help but smile. Andrew must have told Cassie the truth, or at least part of the truth. “Yes. He wasn’t a very nice man, Cassie. He stole money from me and he’s going to jail.”

  Her young eyebrows lifted. “Lily said he was a thug. But she never said he stole money from you.”

  So it had been Lily, not Andrew, who divulged part of the shady side of Jo’s experience. Lily had never understood how Jo could have been swindled by a man. In Lily’s world, men were supposed to do for women, not the other way around.

  Jo nodded. “He pretended he was using the money for his business. But he turned everything into cash, then he took off.”

  “He took off?” Her echo told Jo that she was now captivated.

  “We were in a restaurant. He got up to go to the men’s room and never came back. I never knew if he’d run away or if he’d been kidnapped.”

  Cassie’s turquoise eyes were saucers now. “Wow. This is like a soap opera.”

  Jo tried to smile. “Do you know where that term comes from? A soap opera?”

  Cassie looked at her blankly.

  “When daytime television dramas first came into vogue, they were sponsored by the people who make Ivory soap. In fact, I think they invented the original soap opera.”

  “No kidding,” Cassie said. “How do you know that?”

  It was Jo’s turn to shrug. “Too many years in public relations,” she said.

  “Was he in public relations too? Your boyfriend?”

  She wanted to ask Cassie to please stop referring to Brian as her boyfriend, but she feared Cassie would take it as criticism and shut her out again.

  “No. He said he was an investment counselor, but he really wasn’t. He was a con man.”

  Cassie frowned. “Like Paul Newman and Robert Redford in The Sting? My dad is nuts about that movie.”

  Jo hadn’t known that bit of information about the man she loved. “Sort of,” she answered with a grin.

  She steered the car onto Route 183 and headed south toward Tanglewood.

  “So,” Cassie said, “are you and Dad going to get married once your boyfriend is in jail?”

  “I hope so,” Jo said. “If it’s okay with you.”

  “Well, yeah. Especially if it gets him away from that woman, John Benson’s assistant.”

  Jo must have heard Cassie wrong. “Antonia Beckwith isn’t connected with John Benson, honey. I doubt she even knows John or Irene.”

  “Not that older lady,” Cassie said. “I’m talking about Frannie. The one who was John’s assistant at the magazine. Dad and Frannie and that older lady are working on something together. I’m scared it’s going to mean that we’ll move back to New York.”

  Lily didn’t know where the hell Antonia was. After a half-sleepless night, tossing and turning with the help of Billy Sears and Frank and Sondra, she had jumped into her car and driven to Wheatleigh, only to be told by the young concierge that Antonia was not in her room. Neither was Pauline or the driver, Jonathan.

  “It’s nine o’clock in the freaking morning,” Lily said. “Where can they possibly be?”

  Their belongings were still in their rooms and they had not checked out, but the big Mercedes was gone. Somehow Lily couldn’t picture Antonia having breakfast at Dunkin’ Donuts, with the servants no less.

  She put her hands on her hips and stared at the young man as if that would help them materialize.

  “I can give her a message when she returns,” he said, with a Parisian accent that was nice but had begun to grate on her. They were in the Berkshires, after all, where the only accent tolerated should be Boston.

  “You can’t do better than that?” she demanded.

  “I’m sorry, madam. I don’t know what else.”

  She thought for a moment. Then she said, “Andrew. Have you seen him? The man who’s been to visit her. He drives an old Volvo…”

  “I’m sorry, madam,” the concierge said again, “I cannot help you.”

  Cannot. Would not. It didn’t matter whether he was protecting the privacy of his guests or whether he didn’t really know. She gave the young man a last, pleading look that was met with stone. She muttered “Merci, anyway,” then left the hotel, supposing she’d have to go straight to Andrew to find out what the heck was going on.

  They sat in the breakfast room at the Hilltop Bed and Breakfast: Andrew, Antonia, Frannie.

  Andrew watched as Antonia made notes in a spiral notebook that Jonathan had bought for her last night.

  Studying her a moment when he thought she might not be looking, Andrew was pleased that he’d read the woman right, that she really was a good old girl who deserved a second chance. Even her demeanor had changed somewhat. Today she wore a practical brown suit that was devoid of feathers or fluff and looked very businesslike, with just her triple strand of pearls. Her cap of snow-white hair and bright red lipstick even seemed a shade less theatrical that what he’d seen before.

  On the other hand, Frannie, who must be thirty, maybe forty years younger, looked almost like a kid, devouring a sweet roll with one hand and tapping away at her laptop with the other. She was the vision of a Generation X’er, forehead already marked with frown lines, eyeglasses balanced halfway down her nose, a spandex workout suit clinging to her bony frame.

  It was amusing, the contrast between Antonia with pen in hand and Frannie making data entries as the two discussed the business plan, profit and loss projections, marketing strategies, as if there were no technology or generation gap between them.

  Antonia glanced at her watch. “When Pauline and Jonathan get back from Staples, let’s move over to Wheatleigh.” She’d sent them out again this morning, for “necessities” to get this business going. “We can set up the whiteboard in the suite and combine our thoughts,” she said. “The sooner we present this to the bank, the better.”

  It was interesting, too, that Antonia’s assistant and her driver had seemed eager to get in on the new venture. Maybe they were glad to see their employer doing something productive and worthwhile, if this early stage could be considered that. Andrew stirred more cream into his coffee and wondered if the banks were going to agree.

  “Once Andrew’s blog is up and running, we can use it to help direct the editorial for the magazine,” Frannie said. “We can make this a collaborative—instead of us simply telling brides what to do, it will be sort of a combination of how-to’s in the real world.”

  “A reality magazine,” Andrew interjected, because that was a TV spin and he understood that approach.

  “Well,” Antonia said, as she flipped the pages of notes she’d already accumulated, “one thing is for certain. Between the magazine and the Web site and the blog and the business…we will be responsible for transforming second weddings from a mere event into an industry.” She looked up and smiled through her red lips. “Sort of like the Beckwith typewriters and adding machines.”

  Then Grace Koehler came into the breakfast room to tell them Jonathan and Pauline were back. The three new moguls stood up and thanked her for her hospitality and said they’d see her later.

  As they left the Hilltop Bed and Breakfast and formed a small caravan toward Wheatleigh, Andrew figured it would be best if he didn’t wonder if the others—especially Lily—were going to approve.

  Andrew wasn’t home either.

  Damn, Lily thought, this isn’t fair! Not after she’d made the decision to tell Antonia to forget it, that she didn’t need Reginald’s money even if she didn’t have Frank, because for once in her life, Lily Beckwith was going to stand on her own two, stiletto-shoed feet.

  But where the heck was everyone, now that she’d grown up?

  34

  Andrew called Cassie on her cell phone at quarter past three. She’d be getting home from school; he should let her know where he was.

  “We had the day off, Dad,” Cassie said.

  “Oh,” he said, with a pang of bad-Daddy gui
lt. “Did you spend it with Marilla?”

  “No. Marilla is grounded, remember?”

  Part of Andrew was relieved. Part of him felt inadequate—again—because he’d not followed through with punishment for Cassie.

  “Where are you, anyway?” Cassie asked.

  He looked around the guest room of Antonia’s ancient apartment, at the dark-wood furniture and deep-maroon oriental rugs and the heavily gilded picture frames showcasing sour faces that might have been the Beckwith ancestors of office-products fame. “Actually,” he said, “I’m in New York.”

  The silence told him Cassie wasn’t pleased. “What am I supposed to do for dinner?”

  He put one hand in his back pocket and moved from the bed to the window that overlooked a small terrace. It could have been at Wheatleigh in the Berkshires, except it was ensconced by a high stone wall and not a bank of lush, green cedars and a view. “I was hoping you could have dinner with Mrs. Connor and plan to stay there while I’m gone. I called her earlier and she said that was fine.”

  Pause. Sigh. Pause.

  “Whatever, Dad. When are you coming home?”

  The pang again. “A few days,” he said. “Will you be okay with that?” He hoped she’d read between the lines and know he trusted her to do as he asked, not to spend a night or two lurking in the wilderness, scoping out some poor boy’s house. At least it seemed as if Cassie had learned something from that experience, whether she’d been grounded or not.

  “What are you doing?” Cassie asked. “You’re not with the Bensons, are you?”

  She sounded more like an irritated mother than a pre-teenage daughter. “It’s business, honey. I’ll explain everything when I come home.”

  “Did you call anyone at work? At Second Chances?”

  “No. But I can do that now. Unless you want to do it for me.”

  “No. I think they need to hear from you. I spent the day with Jo, learning the wedding-planning business. Among other things, I learned that right now Lily’s wishing she hadn’t agreed to have the wedding with all the little kids.”

  He was too startled to ask Cassie any questions. She’d spent the day with Jo? How the heck had that happened? He ran his fingers through his hair, not wanting to think about Jo now. Not wanting to have to deal with more than what he had at hand.

  “Do you have your cell phone?” Cassie asked.

  He blinked and turned away from the stone wall and the terrace. “Yes. You’d be very proud of me. I’m not only talking to you on it right now, but I remembered to bring my charger.”

  “There’s hope for you yet, Dad.”

  “Very funny. I’ll leave the phone on. Day or night, call me if you need anything.”

  “Sure, Dad. And you know how to get me.”

  He was glad he’d given her the cell phone for her birthday. He was glad she was more responsible than he was when it came to stuff like being available at any minute, emergency or not.

  Andrew said he loved her, then clicked off the phone and straightened the collar of his shirt as if he already wore the tie he’d wear tomorrow morning at Antonia’s bank. The Beckwith money enabled them to be granted a meeting with the bankers on a Saturday; the Beckwith money was therefore deserving of a tie.

  Cassie hung up the phone, turned to Jo, and said, “He’s up to something, all right. And I think it’s going to stink.”

  Jo called Mrs. Connor and said thank you, but that Cassie would stay with her.

  Then they went to Andrew’s cottage and Cassie packed more than enough clothes for “a few days.” Then they went to Jo’s house, where Jo led the way to the room upstairs that would become Cassie’s “sitting room” if Jo and Andrew ever married, if Jo ever let the builders finish the addition to the house so the three of them could live there, like a normal family. Whatever normal was.

  “There’s a bed under there somewhere,” Jo said, pointing at the neat stacks of curtains and clothes and shoes from years—no, from decades—gone past. “I guess we should just pack everything up and give it to the women’s shelter.”

  But Cassie had spotted something. She pulled out a dress and held it up. It was bright purple silky polyester with a large rhinestone buckle at the waist and enormous shoulder pads. “Was this yours, Jo?” she squealed. “Did you really wear this?”

  Yes, Jo replied, she’d worn that to the annual meeting of one of her clients. It had been in the eighties and the meeting was at the Ritz. She laughed and asked if Cassie wanted to try it on.

  Without a moment’s modesty, Cassie slipped out of her jeans and shirt and pulled the dress over her head.

  “Add these,” Jo said, as she pulled a pair of sparkling, pointed-toe high heels from a shoe box that was labeled silver.

  Cassie stepped into the shoes and wobbled toward the full-length mirror. She caught her hair in her hands and swept it to the top of her head. “You are such a wonderful client,” she mused into the mirror. “Imagine that you paid me enough money to buy such a glamorous outfit.”

  Jo laughed and Cassie laughed and almost fell off the shoes.

  “Here,” Jo said, “try this one too.” She held out a gold lamé drapey top with matching slinky pants.

  “Oh, no!” Cassie said. “You put that one on. I want the lime-green thing.”

  The lime-green thing was a glittery “at home” caftan with slits from the ankle to mid-thigh.

  They dressed and laughed and changed into other, more ridiculous eighties’ outfits, then laughed until they were immersed in heaps of polyester and rhinestones puddled around them on the floor.

  By six o’clock they’d ransacked all the piles. While Cassie bagged the outfits for the shelter (hopefully the women would be able to update the clothes before wearing them), Jo put clean sheets on the bed.

  When all was finished, she said, “I vote that we make girlie salads for dinner instead of going out.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Cassie said. “I think I worked up a stupid appetite.”

  Jo laughed again. She suggested that Cassie go downstairs, graze through the refrigerator, and take out anything she could find that might taste good when tossed with lettuce and Italian dressing.

  When Cassie left, Jo leaned against the wall and folded her arms. It had been a good day, a fun day with Cassie. Perhaps Jo might be a decent stepmother after all, if only this trial would come and go, if only she and Andrew could find a way to laugh again the way she and Cassie laughed today.

  The call from Antonia had come earlier that day, but Lily didn’t get the message until after she crawled upstairs to her apartment and wondered why, now that she’d resolved to change her life, nothing of importance seemed to be falling into place.

  By that time, Lily didn’t care that the woman had gone back to the city.

  She didn’t care that Antonia said she’d call her in a day or two.

  She didn’t really care if she ever heard from her again.

  Antonia had come to represent all that Lily now felt ashamed of: the pursuit of money and the need for material things, which meant nothing when compared to love.

  It was such an uninspired conclusion that Lily felt as if her life had become one big, fat cliché.

  After having spent a frenetic hour or two looking first for Antonia, then for Andrew, and finding neither, Lily had decided she would do the only thing that she had left: She would work. It was the way she’d watched Jo survive one crisis after another. Maybe it would work for Lily too.

  She began by accepting responsibility for the kindergarten teacher’s wedding. She would stop thinking of it as a noisy, confusion-wrought ordeal and turn it into the most memorable wedding that Tanglewood or all of the Berkshires had ever seen, something Tiffany Lupek and the others would remember for years to come. Lily was going to stay focused on the present, not the past or future. In the process, she would try not to obsess about Frank, who was out at Sondra’s cabin at the lake doing who-knew-what in the daytime and God-knew-what at night.

  She w
orked (she worked?) all weekend(!). Saturday and Sunday, without batting a false-eyelashed eye, Lily organized the dresses and tuxedoes for Monday’s fittings for the eighteen little ones, met with Dennis and his flower people to ensure the very best, harassed the musicians (they did know the theme from Barney, didn’t they?), ran back and forth from Seranak House selecting proper backdrops for the photographer and trying to rearrange the lovely antiques inside the home (though the director kept insisting they were fine the way they were), and took the bride shopping for the attendants’ gifts (silver lockets for the girls, silver cuff links for the boys—who cared if it was overkill, Lily was paying for it, wasn’t she?).

  All through the weekend, Second Chances buzzed.

  Elaine worked with Tanglewood’s caterers on the presentation of the pizza bites and chocolate pudding and grown-up appetizers for the adults.

  Sarah located several dozen giant “fun” balls for hopping, bouncing, and rolling after the ceremony. They were lavender and pink, of course, and would also serve as a colorful backdrop at the altar.

  Jo arranged the seating and ordered chairs and tables, though how she managed with Brian’s trial set to start on Monday was anybody’s guess. Cassie’s presence might have helped distract her. Cassie made centerpieces shaped like the fun balls—and even came up with the great idea to have lots of bubbles and bubble wands of all shapes and sizes for the little kids (and the adults!) to wave around and add shimmering magic to the air.

  Late on Sunday, Lily strolled the grounds of Seranak House. With the details of the wedding finally complete and every aspect now well under control (except, of course, for knowing how the five-year-olds would act and react to the formalities), Lily suddenly stopped in the middle of the sidewalk that curved down the gentle-sloping hill.