She stood in the yard, watching as he drove away. Odd, he didn’t look like a Bill. She racked her brain for any of the Williams her mother might have mentioned over the years, but the tall, older man didn’t fit any of them. She’d seen him before, she knew she had, but she couldn’t place him no matter how hard she tried.
She headed back into the house. It was mid-afternoon, and if she was going to accomplish any of Edward’s list of tasks she needed to get moving.
But she knew perfectly well she wasn’t going to do anything of the kind. She was going to have a very tall glass of iced tea, stuff some carbohydrates in her mouth and take a long, long nap. At least it was a relatively quiet night in this wedding week—she and her mother were supposed to go out for drinks, but it would be simple enough to cry off.
She was in the kitchen, mixing her iced tea and humming under her breath, a tuneless little hum. She didn’t particularly feel like singing, but she couldn’t get the song out of her mind.
She dropped several ice cubes in the tall glass of tea and brought it to her lips as the song danced through her mind. It was an old show tune, one that used to make her mother cry. Something about an ordinary guy....
The glass shattered at her feet, drenching her legs with iced tea, but she was frozen in place. The song was “Bill,” from Showboat, and it had been her parents’ special song for the short time when they’d been happy together. So special that Mary Abbott had called her husband Bill instead of Alex.
She cleaned up the mess in a daze, her brain simply shutting down. She wasn’t going to think about the familiar/unfamiliar man who’d come by; she wasn’t going to think about Jake Wyczynski’s mouth; she wasn’t going to think about all the things that Edward wanted her to do. She was going to her bedroom, and if everyone was extremely lucky she’d get up by her wedding day. But she was making no guarantees.
She closed and locked the door behind her, pulled the shades, stripping off the tea-stained clothes and dumping them in a pile. Her doomed aunt’s wedding dress hung over the closet door, a reminder of all that lay ahead of her. Right now she was feeling just as doomed as poor Tallulah had been. Maybe she was crazy to wear that dress.
On impulse she pulled it off the padded hanger and slipped it over her head. It slid down her body in a shimmer of satin, settling around her like a caress.
She stared at her reflection in the mirror. The short-cropped, honey-blond hair, the high cheekbones, the green eyes stared back at her, familiar as always. And then the image shifted and melted, and for a moment she was looking at a different reflection, wavery, as if through candlelight The woman in the mirror had a cloud of Chestnut curls tumbling to her shoulders, huge brown eyes and a full, red-painted mouth. Her body was softer, less muscular, more rounded. She blinked, and the image vanished, and it was Susan again, biting her pale lips, staring at her reflection.
“You’re out of your freaking mind, Abbott,” she said out loud. “You kiss a stranger you barely know, much less like, you start imagining your long-lost father showing up at your doorstep, and now you’re having hallucinations. Get a grip, woman!”
She glared at her reflection, daring it to shift again, but it stayed the way it was, a tall, frustrated bride in a beautiful dress who didn’t know what in the world she really wanted.
The reflection shimmered again, suddenly, like a funhouse mirror, and the other woman was back, with her mane of dark hair, her saucy dark eyes, and her lipsticked mouth curving in a naughty smile. She looked like a movie star from the forties—a cross between Rita Hayworth and Ava Gardner. Susan reached out a tentative hand toward the strange reflection, and the woman in the mirror reached for her. But it wasn’t Susan’s hand. This hand had nail polish, and the biggest diamond she’d ever seen in her life, glittering through the wavering glass, sparkling.
A shaft of light speared through the room, sending rainbows of light dancing around the room as if shot from a crazed prism.
Everything went black. Still and dark and black.
And Susan was gone.
Part Two—Tallulah
Six
The bed was soft, cradling her body. In fact, it was too soft, which surprised Susan. Her mother had replaced the guest room bed before the wedding, and she’d bought one of those new orthopedic mattresses that were supposed to be so good for you but actually felt like you were sleeping on bricks.
It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she was sleeping, for the first time in what seemed like weeks. She knew she was asleep, knew it wouldn’t take much to wake up, but she made the conscious decision to nestle into the bed and sink deeper and deeper into the gloriously welcome comfort of sleep.
She could feel the heavy satin of the wedding dress wrapped around her body, and she knew she should at least stagger out of bed and strip it off before it got hopelessly crushed. Mary would have a hissy fit if she saw Susan taking a nap in her aunt Tallulah’s wedding dress.
But if she got up there and took off the dress there was no guarantee she’d get back to sleep in the next few hours, or even in this lifetime. No, she’d take the sleep when she could get it and deal with creased satin later.
It was quiet in the bedroom. A soft breeze was blowing across her body, which was another surprise. She’d left the central air-conditioning on, and the windows in her bedroom were locked.
It didn’t matter, she reminded herself. Sleep. She mentally crooned the order like a hypnotist in a bad movie, and her body melted into the too-soft mattress.
And then her nose wrinkled in sudden dismay. The sheets beneath her smelled of cigarette smoke. So did the warm, fresh air around her. It smelled as if she were lying in a giant ashtray.
Sleep was gone, effectively banished, and she opened her eyes. It was dark in the room, the only light coming from the two double-hung windows that stood open, against the twilight sky. She must have slept for hours—it was no wonder she felt dizzy, disoriented.
She sat up, blinking slightly, and rubbed a hand across her face. Her skin felt strange, hot and damp, and her mouth was covered in lipstick. Odd—she seldom wore lipstick, and she certainly hadn’t put any on today. And if she had, Jake Wyczynski would have kissed it off her.
She didn’t want to think about that. She didn’t want to think about anything at all. She needed to see what she had to do to salvage the wedding dress.
She could hear the sound of voices in the distance, which surprised her. Her mother must have returned and brought someone with her. She could only hope and pray it wasn’t Jake—she didn’t think she could face him right now.
Whoever it was, they needed to leave. She had to ask her mother about the mysterious man who’d shown up at the front door calling himself “Bill.”
