Becuille is such a terror, it takes me over fifteen minutes to realize that she’s not only indicating bizarre changes she wants me to make, but correcting problems too. Specifically, she’s noticing things I did that have been… undone.
Like the fact that all the knives somehow ended up in a punch bowl. And that the napkins, which we laid out facing right, are now facing left, out of alignment with the sun. It sounds like a small thing, but it’s annoyingly time-consuming to fix, especially when I discover the placards with the seating assignments have been shuffled and placed randomly on the tables. Mandy and I didn’t make this mistake; we checked.
This isn’t us. It isn’t Becuille, either.
Is it Dexter?
Maybe, but I don’t have time to figure out how he could be managing this. Supervising Momzilla requires my total focus. While Bulan mostly spends the next hour hiding, and Robert takes an absurdly,maybe intentionally long time ferrying the canoes back across the pond, Mandy sticks bravely to my side.
During one particularly stressful rant, a glance at my phone informs me I’ve missed the scheduled arrival of Fi and her wedding party. Or, more accurately,theymissed it.
Are they running behind schedule? And if so, how badly? I don’t see Fi anywhere, in spite of the lavender tint creeping into the sky.
There is, however, a suspicious splashing coming from the water.
Fi crawls onto Dexter’s bank wearing a white, satiny bridal dress with a sweetheart neckline, a lily pad stuck to her shoulder, and a completely blank expression. Presumably she knows her mother will have enough expression for them both.
“How could you let yourself fall in?” demands Becuille, dragging her wet daughter to her feet.
“The canoe had holes in it.”
Hold up. Our canoe was leaky, but even with a ton of pallets, it didn’t seem like it was going to imminently sink. I send Mandy a covert gesture she doesn’t comprehend. Okay, fine: it’s on me to go investigate, then. Because I can’t let this go. It’s myjobnot to let this go.
“Holes are nothing!” Becuille fumes at Fi, while I sneak over to the upside-down canoe that Robert is just dragging ashore. “You didn’t beseech the water for safe crossing, did you?”
Fi answers sullenly. “No, Mom, I didn’t. Let go of me.”
“At least it removed that awful potion from your face.”
“It’s called makeup. And it wasn’t awful.”
Up close, I have no trouble making out the holes pockmarking the salvaged canoe. Some of them are easily one inch wide. Most seem clumped together. I would’ve noticed them for sure when we did our last crossing.
Meaning this is new. It’s happened behind my back—like the pillow fort and the missing cutlery.
This issabotage.
“Robert,” I hiss quietly. “Something nefarious is afoot.”
“Oh no! Do you think so?”
“I do,” I say. At once, Robert throws his hairy arms onto his head in a stage-worthy display of fear. “It’s almost like we’re being targeted for—”
“ONCE AGAIN,” snarls the Hell-Mother, scaring away a flock of shorebirds and causing Dexter to quake beneath us. “I disagree to disagree. What are you wearing? This isn’t the dress we agreed upon!”
“Unfortunately, I fed that one to a bear,” says Fi.
I look at Fi, absorbing everything about her situation in a way I haven’t done before: the unfriendly presence of her Hell-Mother, the sabotage, the soaking-wet wedding dress and messy hair. An unstoppable wave of sympathy courses through me. I’m no wedding expert, but I’m pretty sure this isn’t a great start to your wedding day. Fi deserves the day she’s dreamed of, not the unhinged one being unexpectedly sprung on her.
In the shadow of Stonehenge Fake.0, I round up Bulan and Mandy.
“Any idea how we can help Fi?” I ask them. “Mandy, you first.”
“We can set her mom on fire!” Lit by the floodlight, Mandy’s shadow is actually, momentarily, more terrifying than Becuille’s.
“No. Next,” I say, filing that Grandma-like tendency away.
“Look, Sabby!” Bulan says, bouncing prodigiously. “The guests!”
