I should have been spending my break whooping it up with my high school friends back home (not that I had any, having gone to a boarding school for the past four years). But no, I was here at this wedding listening to my half-brother drop a bombshell.
“Are you serious?” I asked. Joey nodded. “Isheserious?”
Joey nodded again. “He’s putting outfeelers.” He did the air quotes thing around “feelers” and added, “He’s invited a bunch of the party’s influential people to the wedding.”
I didn’t say anything. Things made sense now. Why I was here, a bridesmaid.Step right up, folks, see the elusive, happy political-scandal family. They only appear every millennium. Or every election cycle.
“What an ego to think the public has forgotten what he did,” Joey said.
I saw more flashes out of the corner of my eye and realized the song had—finally, thankfully—ended, and Betsy and my father were making their way to us.
“Forget what he did? Not likely with me standing here.”
Joey let out a soft snort. “I know, right?” He seemed to realize that statement could hurt my feelings and added, “No offense.”
Really? After all I’d heard in my lifetime, something like that one just rolled off my back. “None taken.”
“And now the entire wedding party,” the bandleader announced. Betsy had a very prominent band playinganda DJ for any intervals. That must have cost a ton.
“That’s why the humongo wedding. And the press being here,” I said, though I didn’t really need to.
“Yep,” Joey confirmed. “All for show.”
“Well, what wedding isn’t, really?” I didn’t know why I said that—it almost sounded like I was defending Betsy. Or my father.
Ryan Something-or-other came to take me to the dance floor. “I’ll dance with Jane,” Joey told him. “You dance with Chrissy.”
Ryan couldn’t hide the delight from his face—Chrissy was the bridesmaid he’d been hot for. But he shot Joey a look. “I don’t know. I don’t want the wrath of Bridezilla coming down on me.”
“I’ll deal with fallout from Betsy,” Joey said as he took my hand and led me out onto the dance floor. I saw Betsy do a double take at Joey and me being paired up, but when she saw that Ryan had found Chrissy—that there were no loose ends—she relaxed into the arms of her new husband.
She was probably used to Joey changing things up on her. He went through a bit of a wild phase in his teens. Drinking, expelled from a couple of different prep schools. Acting out, the press called it. I think it pissed my father off—which was probably the point. But I also think it really hurt Caroline, which was probably why Joey eventually straightened up, got an Ivy League degree and a good job, and became a model citizen.
But come on. A year in Africa on a relief mission? Uh…no. Not for me. Unless maybe to accompany Brad and Angelina.
“So yeah, the wedding is for show. Betsy actually wanted something small. Just family. Up at the cape.” Caroline had a huge place at Cape Cod that had been in her family for generations. I had—for obvious reasons—never been there. That was where Betsy and Joey spent all their summer vacations growing up.
It made sense—Betsy wanting something small. Whereas Joey rebelled, and then accepted the cards he was dealt, and I lived with them my whole life and played them to my advantage, Betsy had gone a different route.
She hated the press, avoided them at every turn. She was a very shy person. She’d had a small, very close circle of friends since her early teens—Jason being amongst them. They had all gone to the same prep school and then Brown.
Of course the size of this wedding would be something she would abhor.
“Why didn’t she? Get married at the cape?”
“Dad said he’d pay for everything if she did it up bigger. Including buying her and Jason an apartment in Manhattan.”
“Wow,” I said, mentally calculating the cost of this wedding and an apartment in New York.
“She and Jason really want to leave their jobs and work in public service, but couldn’t do that and live where they wanted to on what they’d probably make…so, she took Dad up on his offer.”
“Well…yeah,” I said as if it was a no-brainer. The look Joey gave me said it wasn’t something he would do. “It’s not selling out if you wind up doing what you wanted all along anyway,” I said.
Joey did a sweeping motion, encompassing the photographers—most of whom had their cameras trained on Joey and me. “Thisis not what Betsy wanted.”
I nodded toward Betsy, who was looking adoringly, happily, at Jason. “Maybe. But she looks pretty happy right now. And they’ll beveryhappy in their new apartment.”
“It’s not that simple, Jane. There’s a slippery slope of selling out. You need to hang on to your principles right from the start.”
