Ginny’s wedding day is here.
I jump up and pull open the blinds.
A beautiful sunny day, just as I’d hoped, just as the weatherman predicted, but you never know. I breathe a sigh of relief, and then I remember Logan. God, please let me survive this day with him. I haven’t seen him since the jail cell incident, and that’s on purpose. He lives next door to The Cowherd, and we only don’t see each other for days like this if we’re in a fight. So I guess we’re in some sort of a fight. A sexually-charged, awkward-as-fuck, fight.
I spent the last four days helping Ginny stay calm, doing last-minute wedding errands for Mrs. Rattles, and writing Ghost Love. I’ve made it all the way to the final chapter, and I’m stuck. I don’t know how to find the heroine’s happy ending with her true love. Maybe their time has passed, or maybe it never was to begin with. It was so long ago, and now they’re in a completely different world. A ghost world.
I get to the Bridal Salon at seven o’clock sharp and am horrified to see my mother standing there with Eloise and Mrs. Rattles.
Mama’s got on her pale pink dress, the one she told me she’d be wearing to Ginny and Dave’s wedding.
Ginny, her sisters Meagan and Lily, and her two cousins, Erma and Sue from Houston, are already in their gowns.
“Y’all look so beautiful!” I kiss Ginny’s cheek. “Your dress looks just perfect! And I love your hair swept up like that. Am I super late?”
“Not at all. Mama freaked out that my belly looked even bigger this morning, so she made us all get here an hour early in case Eloise would have to let out my waistline again.” Ginny spins around. “But she didn’t! My little munchkin is helping his or her mama out and staying small for one more night!”
I pat Ginny’s belly and then turn on Mama.
“What are you doing here? Please, please don’t tell me you and Daddy are having another wedding.”
Mama laughs heartily. “Of course not, baby. I think three weddings are enough for one couple, don’t you? Remember our last ceremony?”
“Hard to forget, Mama.”
I had graduated high school when Mama and Daddy finally remarried after far too many years of “living in sin.” The rumor somehow started again that this wedding could be “the one” to free our favorite author, but Mama swore it wasn’t her doing this time. I believed her. I think it was the head librarian, Esther Coyne, who knows how much Mama loves Jane Austen’s novels, and she’s seen with her own eyes the hours Mama spent poring over the microfiche in the archives section, looking for any and every extra little clue about the legend. And Esther just wanted Mama to cash in on her passion. I think she thought it would be fitting if my mother, with all her flaws and bad luck in love, would prove out to be the queen in the story after all.
Logan came to the wedding alone. So did I. And when Mama and Daddy danced to their song, Logan and I kissed on the dance floor. Ginny and Dave saw us and started cheering, so Logan pulled me outside, and we made out under the oak tree on the pavilion. My back got sore from leaning up against the bark of the tree trunk, but I didn’t notice till the next day.
I didn’t ever want to let go of that evening. My parents together in wedding outfits and Mama so beautiful in her white gown. She’d been working out all winter to be in shape for the day, and you could tell. She looked ten years younger than she is, and I told her so. She told me to hush up and not say such lies, but then I overheard her telling everyone what I’d said.
“Oh, Macey’s such a card. Telling her old mother she looks twenty-seven. Can you imagine?”
“That was a beautiful day.” Mama smiles and looks off into space.
I continue to stand with my hand on my hip until she refocuses on the present. “Helena invited me. She thought it would be fun for all of us to get dressed together.”
“Girls,” Eloise says. “Come up to the front of the shop where the three-way mirrors are so I can look at you and make you even more beautiful. And Macey, head to the back, and I’ll be down to help you get dressed.”
Mama claps her hands. “Oh, this is so much fun!”
I shoot her a look. “This ain’t my wedding, Mama.”
“Isn’t,” she corrects me. “Isn’t.”
Ten minutes later, I’m standing next to Ginny at the very front of the store, up on the platform with my back against the wall-length windows that face the street. Meagan is blasting “Sweet Home Alabama” out of her iPod while she and Lily dance around the store and thoroughly piss off Eloise. But Meagan could always do pretty much whatever she wanted in her family, and Mrs. Rattles just smiles and even joins in for a moment.
“Dance, Gin.” Meagan claps her hands. “Come on, this is your wedding! Happiest day of your life!”
Ginny’s sour face can’t be masked, so I grab her by the hand and spin myself around.
“See, Macey’s in the spirit!” Meagan says. “You look beautiful, Gin—you’re hardly showing at all. Although, I don’t agree with the idea of fireworks before the wedding. Dave will see you in your dress!”
Mrs. Rattles isn’t pleased with Meagan’s comment.
“The fireworks were my idea,” she says to her daughter. “I thought it was lovely and original.”
I give an enthusiastic nod. “I think it will be fine. Dave and Ginny are having a baby together—a lot of things don’t go in the order of tradition, but that doesn’t make them wrong.”
