Chapter Twenty-Seven Violet #2
“Violet, I need you!” Missy shouted from the bathroom. “Grandma Helen has the shits.”
Grandma Helen was Missy’s mother, and she was far too sweet to have given birth to Satan’s spawn. I’d spent several holidays with her, and she was always kind to me.
“Get lined up and ready to go,” I said, directing Velveteen and her bridesmaids to the door as I hurried to the bathroom.
Sweet Grandma Helen was sitting on the shitter smiling, like she was enjoying this, which only made me laugh.
“Is this comical to you?” Missy hissed at me.
“I mean. Everything seems okay, aside from you appearing unhinged,” I said before turning my attention to the elderly woman on the toilet. “Are you all done?”
“I think it was that mac and cheese I had for lunch. Everybody poops. My daughter is such an overreactor,” Grandma Helen said as she struggled to stand.
“I’m sorry, Mother,” Missy said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “They need you to be seated now, and I do not have time to deal with this. You should have used the restroom hours ago. Not right when it was time to go.”
“I didn’t have to go hours ago,” she said, shaking her head. I reached for her arm to help her up.
“Move. She needs to be lifted this way.” Missy shoved me out of the way and bent down, like she was going to grab her mother’s ankles.
That’s when I heard the tear.
Followed by a glass-shattering shriek.
Missy’s dress split across her ass, the expensive satin fabric making a perfect line.
Grandma Helen pushed to stand on her own and held on to the counter. I grabbed her walker and tried to scoot Missy out of the way as she turned to look in the mirror at the damage.
“My dress is ruined. It’s ruined!” she screamed.
“Well, you shouldn’t have gotten down on the ground. What was the plan? Were you going to hoist me over your shoulder?” Grandma Helen asked.
“Get her out of here!” Missy yelled, and I pulled the bathroom door open and used my headset to ask Blakely to come pick up Grandma Helen, Velveteen, and the bridesmaids.
I spent the next ten minutes sewing Missy’s dress back together with the needle and thread I kept in my belt bag while she complained about her mother. I didn’t respond. I just got the job done.
“This will have to do. You have your wrap, and you can just keep that around you tonight. You’d have to look close to see it.”
“I can see it when I look in the mirror.” She frowned as she glanced over her shoulder at her ass.
But can you see what a raging bitch you are?
I ignored her and listened as Montana said that it was time for the MOB, or mother of the bride, to be escorted down the aisle.
“They’re asking for you, Missy.” I led her out the door, and she quickly hurried toward the ushers who would walk her down the aisle with Peggy Parker, Ralph’s mother.
“I need you to walk with me and stay behind me, Violet,” Missy said, her voice softer now. “Just in case anyone can see the rip.”
I nodded. My job was to make this as smooth as possible.
Montana had the bridesmaids, Velveteen, and my father in a room around the corner.
I let her know I’d be there soon.
I followed behind Missy and Peggy, who barely acknowledged one another.
We made our way outside, where the rain clouds were so dark that it appeared much later than it actually was.
I said a silent prayer to the nature gods to hold the rain for forty more minutes.
My gaze moved toward the crowd and found Charlie and Harper, sitting in the back. He wore a navy suit, and I swear my breath hitched in my throat.
My gaze locked with his.
And that’s when all hell broke loose.
“Let go of my arm,” Missy grumped under her breath to the woman beside her, who was suddenly clinging to Missy to keep from falling.
“I’ve been stung.”
I’ve. Been. Stung.
A motherfucking bee had just beaten the rain and stung the MOG under the clouds of doom and gloom.
I watched as she clutched her throat and started to fall.
I grabbed her arms as I braced her fall, and I moved to the ground with her.
“She’s allergic to bees!” Ralph shouted.
Of course she’s allergic to bees.
And what kind of bee hangs out when there is no sunlight whatsoever?
“Does she carry an EpiPen?” I called out, trying to hide the panic from my voice as the woman struggled for air.
“Yes.” Robby ran over, hysterical, and was soon on the ground beside his mother.
She was coughing and grabbing her throat.
“She keeps it in her undercarriage if she doesn’t have a purse,” Robby said.
Did he seriously just say “undercarriage”?
It didn’t matter. The woman was not okay. I had to think quickly.
I shouted for someone to call 911, and I slipped my hand up her dress, and sure enough, she’d tucked an EpiPen in her pantyhose.
This wasn’t my first rodeo, or my first allergic reaction.
I knew the drill.
I stabbed her in the leg with the pen, and we all hovered around her.
Waiting.
Her hand dropped from her neck, and she blinked up at me, her voice hoarse. “Thank you.”
“Of course.”
The wedding might be a shit show, but I’d basically just saved a woman’s life.
Montana was on one side of me, while Charlie moved behind me.
“I’m on the phone with 911. They’re pulling up now,” he said.
Velveteen came running out to check on Peggy Parker, who was now sitting up, but her dress was still bunched around her thighs.
“Ralph just saw you in your dress before the wedding song played,” Missy shouted. “The marriage is doomed now.”
I sighed and was reassuring my sister that everything was fine when the paramedics came running toward us.
And that’s the moment when the nature gods decided to flash us all the middle finger, and the clouds released the rainstorm from hell.
I wasn’t sure if the marriage was doomed, but the wedding had certainly hit rock bottom.