Mary sat across from Susan, her thin young hands pressed against her bony knees beneath the frilly peach satin dress. “Don’t do it, Lou,” she said. “It’s not too late.”
Susan peered up the front steps of the church, pushing her veil back. “You think they’re going to give me any chance to escape? I don’t think so.”
“You’re the kind of woman who makes her own chances,” Mary said. “And don’t worry about me. I’m a survivor, like you. I don’t care if we lose our money, our house, I don’t care if Father goes to jail. He probably deserves it ten times over. Take your chance and run for it if you can, and don’t look back.”
“What if I can’t come back? What if I never see you again?”
“Then I’ll know I have the strongest, bravest sister in the world, someone who knew what was important, someone who went after what she wanted, went after the man she loved, and didn’t take the safe, easy way out If I ever have a daughter I’d want her to be just like you.”
I am your daughter, Susan wanted to say, but clearly Mary chose to forget her temporary aberration. “Who says I’m in love?” she countered instead.
Ridley was advancing on tire limousine, a determined expression on his faintly petulant face. Susan turned to the other side of the car, but there was no door there to provide her a last-minute escape.
“Don’t lie to me, Lou, and don’t lie to yourself,” Mary said, with precocious sternness. “You don’t have any more time to waste.”
Ridley reached into the car, took her arm and hauled her out with surprising strength for such a small man. “No more delays, my girl. All our friends are in there, waiting for you.”
“I need to speak to Neddie,” she said desperately, trying to pull free from his iron grip. Mary had scrambled out of the car behind her and was already racing up the wide stone steps of St Anne’s.
“You’ll have a lifetime to speak to Neddie. There’s nothing that can’t wait.”
She fought harder, fighting for her very life. “I can’t?—”
He slapped her fill across the face, the force of the blow shocking her into stunned silence.
“No more, Tallulah!” He was pale and sweating with stress and fury. “You’ll do your duty, and I don’t want to hear another word about it.” He began dragging her up the front steps of the church.
Her face burned with the imprint of his hand. She stumbled after him, numb, vaguely aware that there were no witnesses, only Mary standing by the entrance, watching with a stricken expression.
Ridley paused at the entrance of the church. The organ music drifted on toward “Oh Promise Me,” and Susan jerked her head upward in delayed fury. Tallulah’s father reached up and twitched the veil over her face.
“If anyone notices the mark on your face you can tell people you slipped,” he hissed.
“If anyone notices, they’ll just think Neddie did it,” Susan said bitterly.
“Come along,” Ridley snapped, shoving an immense, exotic bouquet in her numb, gloved hands. There were huge lilies, their scent overpowering, and she was reminded of death and funerals. He began to pull her into the shadowy church.
On cue the music switched to “Here Comes the Bride,” and the entire congregation rose. Ridley began pulling the reluctant bride down the aisle.
Her feet seemed to have a mind of their own, instinctively moving in measured cadence to the sound of the wedding march. Neddie waited at the end of the aisle, a smug, portentous look on his ruddy face as he murmured something to his best man, and in front of her Mary stalled and dawdled as she dumped clumps of rose petals on the pale strip of carpet, Ridley’s grip on her arm was painful, and the beaming approval of the packed church passed her in a blur.
She knew the drill, she’d suffered through the rehearsal the previous night, and she’d been to enough weddings. With Father Thomas looking like a benevolent elf, she would be handed from Ridley’s manaclelike grip to Neddie’s iron fist, and short of some dramatic declaration like “I don’t!” she was well and truly trapped.
“Dearly beloved,” Father Thomas intoned.
In the end it was simple. At the “who gives this woman?” part, Ridley followed his sexist cue and handed her over like a sack of flour, and Susan looked up into Neddie’s florid face and simply, gracefully, collapsed in a spurious faint.
The shocked buzz of the congregation made it clear in this pretelevision generation that they hadn’t seen brides and grooms collapse on “America’s Funniest Home Videos.”
“Give her some air,” Neddie thundered, making no effort to touch her. She kept her eyes closed, hoping the heavy veiling would obscure the fact that she’d never felt healthier or more energetic in her life.
Mary knelt down beside her, plucking the bouquet from her limps hands and tossing it to one side. She leaned over to lift the veil, her face white with panic, and Susan muttered beneath her breath, “Leave it.”
A moment later she was jerked to her feet, but she had the presence of mind to go limp against her fiancé, drooping affectingly. “She’ll be fine in a moment,” he announced in a loud voice that barely concealed his fury. “We’ll just get her some fresh air and then continue with the wedding.”
Mary was at her other side, helping her, and Susan gave her hand a reassuring squeeze as they made their slow way back down the aisle, tramping over the scattered rose petals. She had the sudden absurd thought that they ought to be playing the wedding inarch backward as they retraced their steps, and she had to stifle a semihysterical giggle as they came out into the bright, clear sunshine.
Neddie made the dire mistake of releasing her, shoving her away from him in petulant fury, but Mary still held on. A moment later Susan felt something hard and metallic pressed into her hand, and instinctively she knew what it was. Car keys. Car keys with a rabbit’s foot key ring, the kind that Todd Abbott had. And Todd’s convertible was parked across the street, waiting.
