Brooke stood at the end of their wide drive watching the limo’s taillights make a graceful arc around the broad cul-de-sac rimmed by stately three-story houses with their yard lights just starting to switch on in the fading dusk. She watched the pair of red lights end their arc and hit the short straightaway leading out to the main road. Those lights paused for what seemed a long time at the main road. Brooke wondered if they’d forgotten something, were maybe preparing to turn around and come back. She unconsciously took two steps in their direction—to meet them halfway, have Penni lower the window and say with an embarrassed apology “I just realized I forgot my sunglasses, Mom” and Brooke would run into the house and retrieve those sunglasses from her room. But then she saw the twin red lights turn left onto the main road and disappear into the swirl of traffic racing past.
It had all gone off as planned and on schedule. Following the champagne toast and the cake cutting and the garter toss and the bouquet toss, the bridal couple had run (or strode, hand in hand) the gauntlet of cheering, popcorn tossing guests arrayed on each side of the burgundy carpet running from the reception hall’s entry portico to the drop-off circle where they stepped up into a canopied horse-drawn carriage assisted by the carriage’s top-hat and tails attired coachman. After more shouts and cheers and a few off-color comments about the big night to come, the carriage slowly pulled away from the crowd, trailing some rattling tin cans that seemed to rile the horse no more than the trailing exclamations and whistles and a couple of firecrackers lit by high school boys from Randall’s side of the guest list—that is to say, troubling the handsome well-groomed gelding not at all. He was used to it.
As soon as the carriage was out of sight around a bend in the long drive of the sprawling restaurant complex (it had three wedding and two anniversary receptions that day in addition to a full book of dinner reservations), the carriage had veered right into a small service entrance where their hired limo and its more contemporarily attired driver (black suit and shoes and tie, white shirt, driver’s cap sitting on the middle of the front seat) waited. This time the coachman remained on his seat and let Randall jump to the ground and help his bride down. Randall pulled a fifty from his pocket and handed it up to the coachman. “It’s covered,” he’d said. “For the horse,” Randall insisted. The coachman laughed and took the bill then directed the horse and carriage to the loading dock’s overhang to await their next call. Randall slid into the car’s spacious backseat where Penni was already waiting, and the driver closed the door and took the wheel for the short trip to Penni’s parents’ house.
After hooting with the crowd at the carriage’s picturesque exit (Wasn’t it so romantic?), Brooke had hurried back into the reception hall, pausing only as long as necessary to be polite in accepting the thanks and congratulations of a number of guests who intercepted her along the way. She found Dave out back on the balcony with Whitfield and several other middle-aged men she didn’t know—maybe from Randall’s side, maybe party crashers: what did she care?
Dave had laughed at her impatience. “You spend two years planning this, and now you can’t wait to rush home?”
“We need to help Penni load the car!” she said with more volume and insistence than she intended. Why couldn’t he just do as she asked?
“Penni’s got Randall now,” Whitfield said. “What do you think husbands are for?”
Brooke turned a hot stare on her brother-in-law but swallowed her retort unspoken, for Leah’s sake. For some reason she felt closer to her sister than in years. She wondered if this was another symptom of menopause. She looked back at Dave and said in the calmest voice she could muster, “I told Penni I’d be there to help her. Could you drive me home, please?” The last word had more edge to it than the rest of the request, but at least she’d tried. Hopefully Whitfield would remember that when he repeated the incident to Leah.
Dave looked to Whitfield and shook his head. “Duty calls.” He knocked back what remained of the dark brown liquid in the tumbler in his hand. “Have a drink on me,” he said to the group, waving toward the bar behind the balcony’s doors. “In fact, have as many as you want on me.” By the time he finished shaking their hands, Brooke was already through those doors and on her way back to the main entrance.
The driver had just finished loading the luggage into the trunk when Dave swerved the high-performance European sports car around the limo and raced into their garage before the overhead door was finished rising. He loved it when he beat the door from the end of their road.
Brooke jumped out and ran on her high heels through the garage and the mudroom and the kitchen to the entry foyer where Penni was double checking her list. “Hey, Mom. What are you running for?”
“You’ve changed!” Brooke cried.
Penni looked down over her linen blouse, thigh-length skirt, and open-toed sandals to confirm the fact. “Yep.”
“How?”
Penni laughed. “I unzipped the gown and took it off.”
“But how?” Brooke repeated.
“Randall helped me. I hung it on the wide hanger and hooked the hanger over the curtain rod so it wouldn’t drag on the floor.”
Brooke frowned.
Penni leaned over and hugged her with one arm, like a mother reassuring a petulant child. “It’s O.K., Mom. I was careful with the dress. I told you that you didn’t need to rush back. We have it all under control.”
As if to affirm that statement, Randall descended the central staircase, also changed—into casual khakis, a crewneck shirt, and an open linen sport coat. “All set?” he asked when he reached the bottom of the stairs. The driver would take them to the airport hotel where they would spend the night before rising early for the flight to their honeymoon in Hawaii.
Dave came out of the kitchen and intercepted Randall and pulled him into the dining room.
Brooke followed their disappearance with flashing eyes. “I told him to hurry up,” she muttered. “But he had to stop and talk to every person we passed between the restaurant and the parking lot.”
“Don’t be angry, Mom. It was a big day for Dad too.”
Dave and his new son-in-law reappeared and joined the women in the foyer.
Penni said to her parents, standing a few feet apart with arms at their sides like boxers being introduced to the crowd, “Thank you both, not only for today but for the twenty-five years of days leading up to this one.” She leaned forward and hugged her father, lingering with her face plastered to his chest for several seconds. Then she stepped back, took a couple steps to one side, and hugged her mother.
Randall followed his bride with a firm handshake for Dave and a warm but chaste hug for his mother-in-law.
Then they were gone—out the ornate front door, across the covered entry patio, down the brick walk, into the waiting car, out the drive, around the cul-de-sac, down the straightaway, left at the highway: gone.
Dave had watched from the open front door till they were in the car, then waved once into the dusk before retreating inside in search of a glass of water and a couple aspirin.
Brooke had followed to the end of the drive, discovered herself suddenly alone there, shivered at what she would’ve assumed was a chill in the new dark, if she’d thought about it at all.