Epilogue #2
“Thanks. I think he’s pretty great too.” He catches my eye just then and I offer him a little wink.
He raises his glass of champagne in our direction.
To my credit, I don’t dismiss Robin to go find a corner where I can lock lips with him like some lovesick teenager.
I want to. Badly. But I am an adult and this is, after all, my sister’s wedding.
Robin finally turns and looks at me properly. “Promise me you won’t push him away unless he gives you good reason to?”
I blink furiously. That she added any sort of caveat is progress.
“I plan on keeping this one around.” I discreetly gesture to the ring finger on my left hand.
I’d kept it bare until today, but when Nikolai and I leaked the news to Chloe, she insisted I wear my engagement ring on her wedding day.
Dad had always said that love was the best sort of good luck, and she wanted as much of it surrounding her on her special day as we could all muster.
So I wore the princess-cut diamond in an antique setting with the little amber side stones that I admired while we were wandering the streets of Copenhagen.
I’d just moved back to our little flat in Nyhavn after my apprenticeship in Paris ended a couple of weeks ago, and he couldn’t wait to pop the question after I spotted the ring.
He secreted his way back to the shop later that day, bought it, and surprised me with it later that night over one of the top-ten meals I’d eaten in my career, and not just because it came from Nikolai’s kitchen.
Nikolai and his father opened La Mer Gris two months ago to great fanfare, and I know they’ll find themselves the recipient of Michelin stars in no time, without my influence or interference. They won’t need it.
It is amazing that eagle-eyed Robin hasn’t noticed my ring. I tend to be oblivious to this sort of thing, but Robin can usually spot a newly sported engagement ring from a hundred paces. She was one of the main reasons I’d hesitated about wearing it before I got Chloe’s blessing.
Robin glances down at the ring and raises one brow. “Does it signify what a ring on that finger usually does, or is it some new feminist fad of yours?”
I don’t take the bait and smile sweetly. “I hate to turn traditional on you, but Nikolai and I are indeed getting married. We’re thinking next fall to let the dust settle from this shindig.” And to give ourselves plenty of time to adjust to our busy careers.
She clears her throat and speaks in a low tone. “Well, be sure to send me an invitation. I’ll do my best to come if I’m welcome.” The expression on her face isn’t passive-aggressive. She’s genuinely not sure she’s included.
I want to say, “Of course you are, especially if you behave,” and it’s about what she deserves.
But I summon something from the well of grace deep within that I have often neglected where Robin is concerned.
“Nikolai and I want to have the wedding in Copenhagen, in the church where his parents were married.”
Her face falls slightly, but it’s more traditional than she ever thought she’d get from me, so she tries harder to control her face. “How nice.”
“I was also thinking of having a reception in Solvang for the people who can’t travel to Denmark. Since I’ll be overseas, I was hoping you might be able to help.”
She lights up, legitimately. “Really? I sort of expected you to be the eloping kind.”
The truth is, I might have been, if only to avoid Robin’s drama. But I think part of me would regret not having a wedding, much the same as Robin regrets not having one. “Would you be able to save a date at the Laerke Inn for Christmastime? We could do a whole Danish Christmas theme.”
“Of course.” She clears her throat, and l can tell she’s winning the battle to keep tears at bay, but it’s costing her. “And I promise not to be too opinionated. I was wrong about Chloe and the food.”
I finally summon the courage to wrap my arm around her again.
“For that, I’m inviting you to come wedding dress shopping with me.
” I hope I don’t come to rue this moment, but not giving her the chance would be worse.
“We can go to Whitby’s.” It’s a bridal salon in the area she’s gone to for formal dresses for ages that she considers the last word in fashion.
In a flash she’s all business. “No, that won’t do at all.”
And the lump of dread is back, and it feels worse than the time I overdid it on fondue at the Restaurant H?tel de Ville in Geneva.
I take a deep breath and force my voice to remain even.
“I thought you’d prefer it.” And my armor shoots up.
She’s going to make a comment about my height and general build.
Whitby’s isn’t exactly known for being size inclusive.
She’s crossed her arms and is tapping her foot as she does when she’s deep in planning mode. “For a reception dress perhaps, but coming all the way out here for fittings would be murder for your gown.”
I blink. She’s absolutely right. And for once she’s thinking of what might be best for me. “That makes sense. Good thinking.”
She beams, actually beams, at my affirmation.
Her eyes are glazed over in thought, but she returns her focus back to me.
“I have a better idea. Let’s meet in the middle at Kleinfeld’s.
I know it’s still across an ocean, but no place will have a better selection, and you have to go to New York often enough for work.
And they can have the dress shipped to Copenhagen directly. No one could manage it better.”
For a moment my mouth gapes open and closed like a fish gasping for air. Mom and I had watched the earliest seasons of Say Yes to the Dress when I was home from college. It was one of my fonder memories of a time that was overshadowed by the loss of my dad. I hadn’t thought she remembered.
She squeezes my hand. “I know Kleinfeld’s isn’t cheap. The dress will be my wedding gift, if you’ll let me.”
I squeeze her hand back. “On one condition. You let me take you to dinner and a show when you come to the city.”
Tears sparkle in her eyes. “You have a deal.”
As a pledge of good faith, I pull my phone out then and there and snag a dress appointment on the Kleinfeld’s website for next week.
Nikolai has to go back tomorrow, but my flight isn’t until next week.
And conveniently, I have a layover in New York, so delaying the second leg of the trip back to Copenhagen by a couple of days won’t be hard.
Mom promises that when she gets back to her computer, she’ll make a reservation for The Plaza using her credit card points that have been accumulating for years.
I’ll work my magic with dinner reservations when I get back to my room.
I am, not for the first time, grateful for my behind-the-scenes connections there.
I do one more quick search on my phone and find that Melisse, Jean-Rémy’s daughter, is starring in Swan Lake at the Lincoln Center when we’ll be in town.
I snag the best available tickets, snap a few photos of the party to cover my rudeness a bit, and stow my phone.
The rest can wait. But going to see Melisse would have made my Jean-Rémy happy, and I love knowing that.
His absence at my wedding will be felt. Dad’s will be excruciating.
But those are the sorts of regrets we can’t do anything about.
Either we can let the pain take us under, or we can learn to carry it with whatever measure of grace we can conjure from within.
I see my brother sitting at the bar, his eyes fixed on Annabelle, who is recording a video fifteen feet away, completely oblivious to her husband or anyone else.
She’s fully glammed out and is easily the second prettiest woman in the room after Chloe.
Any prettier and she’d be in poor taste for trying to outshine the bride.
Brian is holding a bottle of beer and looks mopier than I’ve ever seen.
Probably because Annabelle is five seconds away from chastising him for drinking something as lowbrow as cheap American beer.
I decide to risk his ire and cross the room to where he’s rooted and brooding. He holds one hand up in my direction, keeping the other firmly fixed on his bottle. “I’m not getting into it with you. Not here. Not tonight. Maybe not ever.”
We haven’t spoken since Chloe’s engagement party the year before. Not in any meaningful way. Not because I’ve gone “no contact” with him or he with me, but because we’ve grown so far apart there isn’t much to talk about.
I put one hand on my hip. “I wasn’t planning on fighting with you, dipwad.”
He fights a smile at the insult I favored when we were kids, and which Robin loathed. I order a sidecar from the bartender before turning back to him. “I did come to see how you’re doing.”
A shrug.
“You’re not happy.” It’s not a question; it’s an observation.
Another shrug. “Who is?”
I don’t let him deflect. “No one is all of the time. But you deserve to be happy some of the time. What gives?”
His shoulders sag and he takes another swig of his beer. “Annabelle is so focused on having an Insta-perfect life, she forgets I’m not Insta-perfect.”
“Instagram is all a veneer. It’s the highlight reels of a life when the rest of us are living the bloopers.
” My job precludes much of a social media presence, and I’m not sorry about it.
I content myself with passive lurking and the occasional comment on friends’ content.
The only place I post much is in a few select book groups, and never about food or work.
The Anonymous Epicure went out with a whimper, out of necessity.
I can’t blog and work for Michelin, and announcing my retirement from Substack might have caused busy-bodies like Edward to start digging into my identity and whereabouts. Ghosting seemed the smartest option.