“Hi, Mom. I’m a little busy.”
“Close your eyes,” the makeup artist told me and I did as she asked.
“It’s the wedding day, right?” my mother asked. “I want you to take some pictures of the bride and send them to me.”
“Why?”
“So I can live vicariously and pretend like you’re the one getting married.”
It was too bad my eyes were closed because they could have used a good roll to the back of my head. “Mother, I’m not sending you a picture of Sadie. I have to go. Goodbye.” That woman. It was a good thing I loved her.
“Okay, go ahead and open,” the artist said and in the mirror I noticed Sadie standing near my shoulder.
“Was that your mom?” she asked.
“Yes. And she wants me to send a picture of you in your wedding gown so that she can pretend it’s me.”
Sadie looked sadly at our reflections. “At least your mom wants you to get married.”
Oh crap. Had Brandy been making more rude remarks while I was gone? No, Krista would have put a stop to it. “Your mother wants you to get married, too.”
“I don’t think she does. And I’m not really sure why.”
Ignoring the makeup artist’s request that I close my lips, I turned toward Sadie. “Well, I want you to get married. And Dan definitely wants you to get married.”
That made her laugh and it lightened my soul a little bit, too. I wished I could do more. I wished I could give her a different mom, one who would be happy and excited for her.
And as long as we were returning our mothers for new ones, maybe I could put in a request for a mom who wasn’t obsessed with the state of my uterus.
“Thanks for being here,” Sadie said. “I know this all started out a little . . . unusual, but I don’t know how I would have done this without you.”
Regardless of how it had all begun, the fees paid, the contracts signed, the lies we’d told, I was genuinely glad to be here with her, and felt lucky to have the chance to stand up with her when she married the love of her life. “Same,” I told her.
She’d leaned over to hug me when there was a loud sound, like a cannon exploding. It made the villa shake.
“What the—” I said, standing up.
There was a flash of blinding light outside the windows.
Everyone in the room stopped what they were doing and collectively we held our breath.
The next sound was that of the constant, incessant drumming on the roof. The rain was pouring down, streaking the glass and making it impossible to see outside.
This was every wedding planner / bride’s worst nightmare when it came to an outdoor wedding—unexpected rain.
“Oh no,” Sadie said.
“We’re on an island,” I reminded her. “This happens, these little flash tropical storms. I’m sure it’ll be gone in a minute or two. It will let up.” I tried not to think about her flowers getting pelted by this heavy rain, or how it would make the sand wet, or the way it would drench the gauzy fabric being used on the chairs and the arch that they were planning on getting married under.
We waited. And waited.
The rain didn’t stop.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Sadie went into her room and sat on the foot of her bed. I followed and plopped down next to her.
“Of course it’s raining,” she said, her voice catching, and I could see how she was struggling not to cry. “My shoe is gone, Mary-Ellen almost died, I looked like I was going to audition for the Blue Man Group, and now there’s torrential rain.”
Some irrational part of my brain wondered if Lilith had somehow caused this. Like she’d summoned the storm, or something. “I know it’s probably hard to see right now, but according to legend, this is a good thing.”
She gave me an incredulous look. “How in the world is this a good thing?”
“In lots of cultures rain is lucky on a wedding day. It symbolizes washing the slate clean and how strong your union will be. You’ve heard of the phrase ‘tying the knot’？ There’s some debate over where it comes from, but one of them is from the Celtic tradition of handfasting. The husband and wife would literally have knots of cloth tied between their hands and if it rained . . . do you know how impossible it is to undo a soaking-wet knot? It means your marriage will be solid and no one can unravel it.”
s
“It’s not. And given all this experience and knowledge that I possess, I can tell you that I understand this is not what you were hoping for, but it’s going to be okay. The only thing that matters today is that you and Dan get married. The rest of it is all fluff.” Like cotton candy. That would melt in seconds in this weather.