“You’re still in bed? Do you have any idea what day it is?”
I opened my eyes and saw the outline of a person. I blinked and pushed my tangled hair out of my face. Frances was standing at the foot of my bed holding a cardboard box. Confused, I tried to force my brain to work.
“What are you doing?”
“I told you I was going to visit friends in the Eastern Townships this weekend. They’re taking some stuff off my hands.”
That was true. She’d told me several times that week, but my selective hearing had filtered out and suppressed any information related to her departure. I sat up in bed, still groggy. The reds and pink of dawn were gone. Now the bright, white light of day was pouring through the window.
“What time is it?”
“Noon.”
Noon?
“Oh my God, oh my God. Hayley’s going to kill me. I promised I’d get there early.”
I jumped out of bed, showered, and threw on some clothes. I didn’t bother putting on lotion or drying my hair. I drank a nastycold coffee and hugged Frances goodbye. I tried my best to get into the taxi without wrinkling my maid-of-honor dress, which was on a hanger in a protective plastic covering.
The taxi driver, a gaunt man with a weary face, smiled at me in the rearview mirror. I gave him the address, and he drove through the city without saying a word.
I rested my head against the window and observed the bright, cloudless sky as it appeared between the buildings. As we left the city behind us, the calm, the traffic whirring by on the highway, and the car’s soft movements made me close my eyes for a few minutes.
Our family home was in Léry, thirty or so kilometers outside of Montreal’s center, on the other side of the St. Lawrence River. We crossed the Mercier bridge to the South Shore, passing Kahnawake, the Mohawk reservation on the coast, and through Châteauguay. Not long after that, we were on the avenue that led to the Weston property.
Once through the checkpoint, we drove up to the house. There were a few soft clouds in the sky. It was the perfect day for a wedding in the garden.
In the parking area were countless vehicles belonging to the wedding planners, the caterers, the florists, the band…
“Well, this is really something! Is there a party here?” the taxi driver asked.
I smiled and nodded. “My sister’s getting married this afternoon.”
“Congratulations! I wish her the best of luck.”
I thanked him and got out, feeling flushed and trying to remain relaxed as I walked slowly, mechanically, concentrated on pushing everything else from my mind.
I stood a moment at the front door, stretching out the time before I had to walk into that house that seemed ready to pounce on me. It was an elegant, classical stone structure on the tip of the peninsula,with views of Lake Saint-Louis. Built in the early twentieth century, it had been renovated several times and was now a modern mansion: sophisticated, beautiful, and cold.
Only I knew how alone I had felt, how invisible, within those walls.
I walked in with a self-assured stride. The vestibule was like a subway station at rush hour, full of people I’d never seen, all of them in the same uniform: black pants, white shirt. They were walking back and forth under the orders of a woman with a headset and iPad who pointed where they should go. She looked me up and down before noticing my bag with the dress.
“Are you from the dry cleaner’s?” she asked.
I almost said yes, dropped the dress, and ran out. But instead I forced a smile.
“No. I’m Harper, Harper Weston. Hayley’s sister.”
“Oh! Of course! I apologize for the confusion.” Her stiletto heels echoed off the wooden floor as she approached to give me her hand. She squeezed so hard that I had to shake out my fingers afterward to make sure they still worked. “I’m Minerva Compton, event planner. It’s a pleasure to meet you. Weddings are my specialty. Hayley told us to send you to her room. We’ll take care of your hair and makeup there, and Howard, my assistant, will give you the rundown on how the ceremony’s going to go and where you’ll need to be at any given time. Sound good?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Since you weren’t able to attend the rehearsal, it’s very important that you pay attention so we don’t have any mix-ups. You can organize everything perfectly, everything can flow right along, but if there’s one simple mistake, the press will jump all over it, and it’ll be the only thing you read about in the society pages.”
Listening to her, I thought: one thing this woman isn’t good at is making others feel calm.
“I’ll pay attention. No one wants my sister’s wedding to be perfect more than I do.”
