15. Chapter 15
Chapter 15
Marcy
Despite the absurdity of planning a wedding that would never happen, I agreed to quit fighting the inevitable. Being engaged and all, it made sense to at least pretend to plan a wedding.
So I let the Russo matriarchs do their thing. They were given strict instructions not to sign anything. All contracts needed to be reviewed by Patrick and me personally. With Patrick being a lawyer, that suggestion seemed to make sense to them. We could stall or come up with excuses why the venue or the contract wouldn’t work to buy us time, or sign something with a cancellation date far enough in the future.
With the Supreme Meddlers out of my hair, I focused on my business plans. With Patrick working on finding out who owned the space I’d already considered as mine, I needed to be ready. I gathered information on leasing versus buying and brushed up on my knowledge on business insurance and equipment costs.
I contacted three local grocery stores to check who supplied their bread. A few smaller specialty shops. I plotted all the local and commercial bakeries on a map. I made lists. I checked them twice.
I vaguely heard a door closing. In my peripheral, I spied Hudson .
“Please tell me you’ve moved since I left.” She carried sacks of groceries past my spot on the couch.
“Oh. Thanks for getting food.” Other than baking this week, I hadn’t contributed to cooking anything. Takeout or scrounging for whatever we had worked while I masterminded my business.
She rustled around in the kitchen and emerged ten minutes later. “Your grandmother texted me. I had no idea she had my number. Want to explain?”
She faced her phone at me. An image of a woman wearing a gauzy peach-colored gown brightened the screen. The text below read: Forever Memories Bridalwear .
I shook my head. “No.”
“No, you don’t want to explain? Or no to the gown?”
“All the above. Besides, that color looks like something out of the Golden Girls ’ kitchen.”
She looked at the screen again. “I think your grandmother just invited me to be in your bridal party.”
I closed my eyes and let the frustration pulse, waiting for it to pass. “Please ignore anything she sends you related to the wedding.”
Hudson flopped into the chair across from me. Silence passed as I continued bookmarking items on an industrial kitchen wholesaler site.
“Marcy. Your family is planning a wedding. A real one.”
My fingers hit the keys harder. “We had to throw them a bone, or we’d waste all our time fighting them.”
I could practically hear Hudson’s thought waves crafting a response. I looked up to cut her off at the chase. “Look, I know it’s not ideal. We told them any contract needs to go through Patrick. Even if we do sign one, we’ll make sure there’s a cancellation option. Once the campaign is over, he gets what he needs and we’ll make sure I get my money, and this will all be a really funny story we can tell around the campfire. ”
“You’re going to sign a contract for a wedding venue?”
“In theory.”
“How do you theoretically sign a contract?”
I huffed. “You know what I mean.”
I scrolled past more kitchen gear while images of Patrick invaded my thoughts. Of his arms around me. Of him helping me off the horse. Swept up into his arms. Of kissing him.
Which hadn’t happened. The kissing part, at least. Which I couldn’t let happen. Momentary, fleeting desires aside…well, okay. They weren’t aside. They were very inside . Of my head.
And maybe now my heart.
“What about the dress?” Hudson jolted me to the present. “Your grandmother is asking for my measurements. She’s saying something about a sample gown.”
I smacked my laptop closed. “It’s fine. Let her have her fun. It’s on her if she runs up her credit card and can’t return her peaches and cream nightmare. Nobody in my fictional bridal party is wearing that color or that fabric. It looks like a nightgown from a daytime soap opera.”
I usually didn’t get worked up over clothes, but the nerve to assume I wouldn’t want to pick out my own bridesmaids gowns? And to choose my bridesmaids! But her meddling was a distraction from what truly mattered—making my bakery dream a reality. Proving to my family I didn’t need matrimonial goals to be a happy and successful adult.
Hudson gasped. “Marcy. There are shoes .”
I grabbed her phone. No. Just…no. A screenshot in her text thread showed an ad for satin shoes that could be dyed to match the color of the dress.
Nonna Russo: Need shoe size too
“No!” I clenched the phone and growled, then quickly handed back the device. “Sorry. Let’s go bake something. ”
“It’s eight-thirty at night and we both work tomorrow. Marcy, I think we should talk about this plan of yours—”
I fled to the kitchen. “I need to bake. That’s the only way I’m getting through this.”
Patrick
I walked into my parents’ house after a long and frustratingly unproductive afternoon at court. Their dining room had turned into an unofficial campaign headquarters. I’d offered to rent a space in a strip mall, but my parents insisted on opening their home several nights a week and do the rest virtually.
Actual staff sat in the dining room sorting mailings, working on event planning, and my social media. That might count as a fake Insta since I definitely wasn’t running the campaign account.
I mean, I’d tried to run my own campaign account. I assumed I’d made a decent video that would grip the hearts of small-town America, but the stupid app must have suppressed my views. All that video editing for twenty-six views and not counting.
I hated to admit it, but once Bea’s protégé took over posting, the video content gained hundreds of views, and then a few thousand. All they wanted from me were occasional recorded statements which they overlayed with music and graphics. I was up one hundred and fifty some followers from last week.
Yeah, I’d been out of my depth before I’d asked for help. Now, maybe I had a shot at winning this thing after all.
My father walked into the front hall to meet me. His pale blue polo shirt with a designer logo and crisp, dark wash jeans was as casual as he got. Like father like son, though without the designer labels on my end .
“Hey…Dad.” Calling him Dad shouldn’t have felt uncomfortable in my mouth, but it did sometimes. The older I grew, the more distant those days became where I’d not only thought of him as Dad, but Daddy.
“Hey, son.” He grinned and pointed a thumb back to the dining room. “Anton was just telling me about his family’s vacation home in Washington state. Beautiful up there. We should go sometime. Do some skiing? We haven’t gone on a ski trip in ages.”
I couldn’t imagine a family vacation with my parents at this point in life, but I nodded like this was a good idea. “Anton,” I called through the open doorway. “Thanks for getting those Instagram posts up. They look great.”
“No problem.” He looked up briefly before picking up his buzzing phone with an incoming message.
Anton was the twenty-two-year-old son of one of their long-time country club friends. We knew each other, but we’d never been close enough in age to have much in common. I was grateful for the help, but it bothered me that I hadn’t had much involvement in picking my volunteers.
When I’d first started, I’d assumed I’d run my own campaign with a couple of staff recruited from a volunteer program with the court system. I knew plenty of people. But I guess I didn’t know the right people, as none of them made Bea Clark’s cut.
“Follow me,” my father said, nodding toward the kitchen. “You look like you need a drink.”
“Actually, I’m starving. I could use some food.” Anything that didn’t come from a courthouse vending machine.
“I think we can manage that.”
I followed him to the kitchen, where he pulled containers from the refrigerator onto the wide quartz kitchen island. I assembled my own meal of leftovers, all of which came from local take-outs, as he continued with small talk about his company’s recent shareholder meeting, the weather, and something about a distant cousin’s acceptance into Yale.
I sat at the kitchen island, letting my gaze drift through the windows into the landscaped backyard. The high-end playset now long gone, the yard looked empty, though the grass a pristine green.
“We haven’t talked much lately, but I wanted to say how proud I am of you.”
I did a double take. “Oh. Thanks.”
He laughed. “Okay, I know you’re probably thinking, what string comes attached to that? I know I’m hard on you sometimes. We have our disagreements. But seeing what you’re working on here, it’s really great.”
I nodded through a bite of pork fried rice. “Thanks.” It wasn’t as if he’d never said he was proud of me. He just tended to be proud of the things he’d set up for me or steered me toward. And it’d been a good long while since I’d followed his advice on anything.
“I mean it,” he said, now in a softer tone. “You’re stepping up for a cause you believe in. I couldn’t be more proud.”
Okay, now he sounded a little choked up. I cleared my throat. “Uh, thanks. This campaign means something to me. It was…hard to ask for help.” Harder than he could ever know.
He studied the countertop for a beat before answering. “I’m sorry for that. It shouldn’t be hard to ask. We’re always here for you.”
He looked younger somehow, like the Dad I played catch with in the backyard. We had some good memories. I wasn’t sure exactly when I’d stopped sharing the things I cared about with him, but there had definitely been a transition.
“So, running for small-town mayor isn’t too lowly a status?” I couldn’t resist the light jab.
His shoulders slumped. “I deserved that. I know I haven’t always been the most supportive of the direction you’ve taken.”
To put it lightly.
“I’m sorry for ever discouraging you.”
The apology stopped me from taking another bite. “Oh?”
He laughed again, this time softer. “I feel like I pushed you away.”
It felt good to hear. Really good. Though it didn’t escape me how this still seemed more about him than me. Then again, this was the most he’d ever taken any sort of responsibility for his constant attempt to mold me into what he’d envisioned. A mini-him. I looked the part, literally like a younger version of him who dressed pretty much the same. Minus a few band T-shirts. But we were very different people.
“You certainly pushed,” I said finally. “Some of that pushing helped me decide what I didn’t want. That has to be worth something.”
He nodded in consideration. “Maybe you ended up where you needed to be.”
I thought back to the final catalyst for my law school decision. On a summer night, in the Russos’ backyard. All the guys were there, hanging out, catching up. And Marcy. Of course Marcy.
She and I were lamenting our potential grad school options while the others, none of them even slightly interested, went inside to play video games. Marcy insisted on making one of those folding paper fortune things, a cootie catcher, which still cracked me up that anyone called them that. She tore paper from the notebook she had in her backpack—always with her back then—and wrote different school names on the inner flaps, with a few rogue occupations inside, like YouTuber and car mechanic.
Funny thing, none of the fortunes fit. None of the prestigious schools my parents wanted for me felt right. I was terrible at making videos, so no YouTube in my future. Not great with cars.
It had been like flipping a coin, only neither heads nor tails was the answer .
“I don’t think I want my CPA,” Marcy had told me after flipping through the fortune game. “I’d like to get a job and work for a while. Get my own apartment. Figure things out.”
“I’m going to law school and I’m going to pay for it,” I’d declared.
And I’d done just that. Marcy had been there for so many of my pivotal moments.
“What’s this?” My mother joined us in the kitchen, kissing my dad on the cheek. “Both of my boys together for dinner? It’s been too long.”
She wasn’t wrong on that. It felt oddly nice to be here as our small family of three, like a long distant memory I couldn’t put a date stamp on.
Without asking, my mother refilled my water glass. “How is Marcy? Did the boutique clothes work out?”
“She said they did, yeah.” From texts, but definitely not the case with whatever had happened at the fairground. I still didn’t know the full details.
Dad stretched his arms in front of him. “Marcy Russo. Who ever knew she’d still be around?” He chuckled. “You’re not still hung up on her, are you?”
My mother tsk ed at him before I managed my own defense. “She’s a nice girl. She’s doing a big favor for us.”
“For me.” I pushed my plate aside. My mother went to take it, but I got up myself to put it in the dishwasher. “She’s doing a favor for me .”
My parents exchanged looks. Whatever nostalgic family moment we were having was clearly over.