“There is always a chance of rain,” Valerie said. “You can’t plan your wedding around a rainy day eleven months from now. You have to leap.”
All afternoon and into the evening, Lily and Valerie planned Lily and Liam’s wedding. Lily was surprised at how seamless everything was, from the catering company to the weddingcake bakery to the musicians they decided to hire. Valerie had connections everywhere and promised to call in favors if things didn’t go exactly as they wanted.
When Rebecca, Aunt Bethany, Shelby, and Grandma Esme appeared to celebrate their arduous few hours of wedding planning, Lily and Valerie dutifully cleared the counters of wedding magazines, opened bottles of wine, and updated them on what they’d done.
Rebecca squeezed Lily’s shoulder. “It’s happening! You must be overjoyed.”
Lily felt a tab of fright. “I’m so happy. Yeah. And Liam will be, too, when I show him all we figured out today.”
“He’s going to look fine in his wedding tux,” Shelby said, sipping her soda and sitting cross-legged on the stool next to Lily. “What are you thinking for your bridesmaids?”
Lily explained her color palette of black and white to uphold the Old Hollywood feel. Shelby was to be Lily’s maid of honor, a right that couldn’t go to anyone else, especially now that Lily had lost touch with so many of her dearest best friends back at Columbia and in Maine. But Shelby was her little sister, her longtime friend, and the only candidate who could know how heartbreaking it would be to get married without their father present. Lily needed her up at the head of the church, directly beside her as she said her vows.
“I just read online that Bex Shepherd is singing your praises, by the way,” Shelby said.
Lily’s eyes widened with surprise. “What are you talking about?”
Shelby pulled out her phone and showed off an article in which Bex Shepherd announced, “Matchmaking should be the new dating norm! My co-star’s fiancée, Lily Vance, talked to me on the phone for less than an hour and paired me up with mydream man. We aren’t as complicated as people think we are. We want love. And other people can see us for who we are.”
Lily couldn’t believe it. She wondered if Bex had come forward with this because she felt bad about the rumors flying around about Bex and Liam’s so-called affair. She hadn’t looked at her own phone in a while, and when she did, she had twenty-two emails from potential new clients, all of whom wanted to be paired with their soulmates, wherever they were.
“Money is about to be rolling in!” Shelby cried.
At this, Grandma Esme, Rebecca, Aunt Valerie, and Aunt Bethany turned to look at them. “What’s going on?” Grandma Esme asked.
Shelby showed them the article and explained that Lily was now the most sought-after matchmaker in the United States.
“She’s good!” Rebecca said, raising her glass to her eldest. But if Lily wasn’t mistaken, she was pretty sure her mother’s eyes flickered with unease. Lily wondered if her mother thought she could pair everyone else up, but she ended up with a terrible partner.
But why would her mother think that? All Rebecca wanted was for Lily to be happy, surely. Lily searched her heart for happiness and found only “successes.” Was that the same thing?
The next morning, Lily woke up at Aunt Valerie’s place with multiple missed calls and texts from Liam. Apparently, he’d forgotten that she planned to spend the night at her aunt’s place, babysit for August in the morning, and return to Yoko and Liam’s in the late afternoon. They’d discussed it at least three times. Lily reminded Liam that she had family responsibilitiesand a wedding to plan, and Liam reminded Lily, essentially, that he was bored with nothing to do outside of Los Angeles.
LIAM: Baby, why didn’t you come home last night? Is something wrong?
But then his texts got more aggressive, demanding to know where she was and whether she was ignoring him on purpose. He suggested that she wanted him to be miserable on Nantucket, that she’d demanded he come home early to take care of things and then abandoned him.
Lily’s blood pressure spiked. Still rubbing sleep from her eyes, she called her fiancé back. When he answered, he sounded irate.
“I told you,” Lily explained. “I’m at my aunt’s. I’m babysitting, and I have things to do, and…”
Liam sputtered his apologies. “Right. Of course. Yeah.” He sighed. “It’s just that my mother’s been acting really strange. I’m worried about her. I need you here, Lily. I think she’s more relaxed when you’re around. She won’t speak any English anymore, not when I’m here. She’s staring into space and hardly eating.”
Lily winced. “I think we need to consider putting her in touch with a psychiatrist or something. I mean, she’s brokenhearted. She needs help. Maybe she needs medication.”
Liam agreed that something had to be done. “We’ll talk about it when you’re back,” he said. But when Lily pictured returning to Liam’s family home, she imagined a prison and shuddered.
After a beautiful morning of babysitting for August, Lily drove downtown to meet a brand-new matchmaking client, a woman in her early thirties who wanted children in the next five years. She’d committed herself fully to her career since age twenty-two. “Now that I’ve gotten everything I set out toachieve, my house is still empty. I still eat dinner by myself,” she explained. Lily watched as the woman sipped her cappuccino, her long eyelashes shining. She was beautiful, kind, and eager to build a life with someone. More than that, she seemed to know herself more than most, probably because she’d spent the past decade striving and thinking and trying to figure herself out.
For a moment, Lily went off script. “Why do you think you’re ready to pair up with someone? Your life is perfect. It’s exactly what you planned for. Won’t a new person come in and destroy that?”
The woman didn’t seem taken aback by the question. Lily figured she likely handled difficult business questions all the time.
“Life is constantly in flux,” the woman said. “What I thought was perfect for me last week is no longer perfect for me. I think, when you pair up with someone, you have to let a few things that you wanted for yourself go. You have to morph your life. But as you grow and change alongside someone else, I think you find new ways of looking at the world. Especially when your mate is a genuinely good-hearted person. I want someone whose heart can teach my heart to grow. I want someone who says yes to happiness and change.”
Lily’s eyes filled with tears that she quickly blinked away. “Thank you,” she said. It was a wonderful answer. It also prompted Lily to ask herself additional questions.Does Liam make my heart grow? Does he make me want to be a good person? Do our lives, together, have the capacity for growth?
After her coffee date with her new client, Lily went over her list of potential Nantucket-based matches and considered which would suit her best. As she scanned, she read Mick Hamilton’s name and considered reaching out to him. But he’d made himself clear—no more matchmaking. Although Lily knew that Mick’s heart was exactly the sort of heart her new client wishedfor, she had to respect Mick’s wishes. She decided to send him a quick text anyway to check in.
