Chapter One
Everything glitters tonight. The ornate crystal chandeliers with their shimmering teardrops. The fairy lights strung in the trees outside. Even me.
I’m surrounded by my most cherished friends and family members, seated like a queen among her subjects, in the elegant dining room of a historic country manor.
The table before me is laid with French linens, golden cutlery, and dozens of votive candles, each ringed in a glowing halo.
I watch their flickering reflection in the brass urns that brim with peonies.
My eyelids are gilded, my honey-blond hair is freshly highlighted, and my dress is made from champagne silk as light as meringue. On my left hand is a colossal pale yellow diamond I haven’t had time to get used to. I’m as polished as an opal, but I feel like I can’t breathe.
I never thought I’d get married, yet here I am, two days before my second wedding.
Not that the first one counted.
A pianist in a tuxedo and bow tie is playing something gentle on the Steinway, but for a moment, all of it falls away. Time slips, and I’m at that first wedding under the apple tree.
We recited our vows beneath its branches, a confetti of fallen fruit at our feet.
My gown: fashioned from an old curtain as if I were a von Trapp child.
My bouquet: a posy of violets plucked from the garden, stems tied with kitchen twine.
There was a thumbprint-sized stain on his sweater from my mother’s apple-berry crisp—he was always eating and always making a mess of himself.
I remember studying that tiny purple splotch before he started speaking.
Frankie, I promise…
A cool hand settles on my wrist.
“Frankie?”
I blink back to the present. I feel the scaffolding of bobby pins digging into my skull as they hold my lion’s mane in a polite French twist. Taste the sticky cotton candy flavor of my lip gloss. Feel the slide of silk over my thighs. Sense my bridesmaid’s concerned gaze.
“Frankie?” Aurora says again, her espresso eyes narrowed on me. “Are you all right?” Her fingers are like five tiny icicles against my skin. I swear she’s half lizard—she’s always cold.
Her braids are swept off her face on one side, a waterfall of black morphing to purple and then pastel pink.
Her lips are painted in a blush similar to her one-shouldered dress.
Aside from the tattoos that cover one arm, she looks like woodland creatures and a fairy godmother helped her dress this evening.
“I’m fine,” I say. My gaze shifts to the empty chair, and the knots in my stomach tighten. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
I don’t wait for her response before I duck out to the hallway. I find a dark nook under the mahogany staircase and call him. It goes straight to voicemail. I lean my forehead on the brocade wallpaper and leave another message.
“It’s me. Again. The front desk says you still haven’t checked in. Please tell me you’ll be here. I need you, George. I don’t think I can do this without you.”
I shut my eyes and take a deep inhale, pushing down my dread.
I return to my seat—Aurora and her girlfriend, Betty, on one side and my fiancé on the other. I lean into Nate, squeezing his hand as he kisses my cheek.
Tonight’s six-course welcome dinner is the beginning of our wedding festivities, and I want to enjoy myself.
Not enjoy myself to the degree I would have at the height of my unbridled twenties, but enjoy myself in a manner befitting a responsible thirty-year-old woman about to wed a prizewinning mathematics professor.
Nate’s sixteen years older than me, but his head of thick ginger hair makes him look far younger than forty-six.
He has swirling hazel eyes, and although he’s clean-shaven for the wedding, he’s often sporting a few days of stubble.
His smile comes effortlessly and often. Tonight, he’s dressed in a navy suit, but it’s easier to picture him in a kilt, trekking across the Scottish Highlands, than teaching probability theory in a lecture hall.
I look around the room, avoiding the empty chair beside George’s grandmother, Mimi.
I never dreamed of being a bride, but if I had, I wouldn’t have envisioned a wedding this elaborate.
Darlington Manor and its estate sprawl over one hundred acres of forest and meadows an hour east of Toronto.
For the next few days, its antiques-appointed guest rooms, immaculately landscaped gardens, Michelin-starred restaurant, and scenic hiking trails are at our disposal.
Nate was a broke grad student when he got married the first time—he and his ex had a city hall ceremony and met their friends at a pub afterward.
The bride wore jeans. That sounded pretty great to me, but Nate wanted to go big.
Celebrate. Feast. He’d said that last word with a fair brow cocked, knowing exactly how to capture my interest.
I’ve thrown myself into planning the menus with the chef, discussing each dish, tasting every morsel.
Tomorrow, as more guests arrive, there will be a number of experiences to choose from, with good food at the center of each.
They can hunt for morels, wild leeks, and fiddleheads with an expert forager or take a horseback ride into the woods for a picnic lunch cooked over an open fire.
There’s a wine-tasting session in the estate’s stunning one-hundred-year-old cellar, accompanied by artisanal cheeses and preserves.
In the evening, a smaller group will gather for the wedding rehearsal, followed by a dinner for all of our friends.
The crescendo is, of course, Saturday’s ceremony and reception.
Our guest list is one hundred and twenty people deep.
My dress was the price of a small car. For the processional, a string quartet has learned “Orchard House,” the theme from 1994’s Little Women—the greatest film of all time.
(I will hear no arguments to the contrary.)
I’ve always related to Jo March. I’m stubborn, hotheaded, and independent.
I never wanted a partner, until I did. I’m not particularly vain, except when it comes to my hair.
I used to hate the part in the movie when Jo turned down Laurie’s proposal—I thought Professor Bhaer was too old and boring. Then I grew up, and I met Nate.
He caught me checking him out in line at the coffee shop.
I’d recently quit my job as a sous chef in a blaze of fury and burnout, and I was two weeks into a career change and a more balanced routine when I saw him.
Nate smiled, and the rest of his face followed.
The corners of his eyes. The lines around his mouth.
It was like watching a time-lapse video of a flower blooming.
He struck up a conversation, asked for my number, and sent a text an hour later.
Have dinner with me Saturday.
The period at the end of the sentence enthralled me. I was impressed by how direct he was and how easily he stated what he wanted. There were no games. No pretense. No bad pickup lines. Nate was a man. And I wanted to grow up.
Aurora thinks all the times I’ve read and watched Little Women were something of a manifestation. I was finally ready for a serious relationship, and the universe sent me a professor, just like Jo.
“He’s probably the one,” Aurora said before our first date. She’s a die-hard romantic, but she was right. Six months later, Nate asked me to marry him and I moved into his Seaton Village town house.
A server in a black vest sets a gold-rimmed plate in front of me.
On it are three crab-stuffed ravioli. I push them around with my fork, listening absently to the overlapping conversations.
Nate is talking about his next triathlon, Aurora and Betty are laughing at something Mimi said, and my mother is chatting with my future mother-in-law about our honeymoon.
Nate and I are staying at the manor for a few nights following the wedding, but the real getaway is in July. We’ve booked a week at a resort in Tofino, a remote rainforest beach paradise on the periphery of Vancouver Island. We have a villa right on the ocean.
My mom catches me staring, and a look of concern flashes across her face.
My smile has fallen. I put it back on, hoping she’ll mistake the sheen of sweat on my skin for a prenuptial glow.
Aurora talks to her mom about everything, but I don’t confide in mine the same way.
Mom has no idea that my lifelong best friend might not show up.
She loves George, and the feeling is mutual.
My relationship with her is more complicated.
She left our family for a year and a half when I was eight. My brothers were able to forgive and forget, but I’ve always struggled to reconcile the woman who left with the one who came back. I’d changed during her absence, but she’d changed even more.
“You’re being strange,” Aurora says as I send George another text beneath the table.
You said you’d do this. You promised to be my best man.
I tuck my phone under my thigh. “Am I?”
“You’ve barely eaten.” She looks pointedly at my untouched plate.
I’m no longer a chef, but I still love food. In every way. I love talking about food. Shopping for it. Preparing it. And I love eating best of all.
But I’m too nervous to have more than a taste of the ravioli. What if George changed his mind?
He’s been drifting away from me the last few years. I haven’t seen him since we yelled at each other in the field behind my parents’ house at Christmas, but I never thought he’d shut me out completely.
“You keep sneaking glances at your phone,” Aurora says.
“No, I don’t.”
In response, she gives me the look. Unlike me, Aurora doesn’t have an argumentative bone in her body, but she does have the look. Eyebrows raised. Lips set in a flat line. It’s her way of calling me out without calling me out.
I force myself to take a bite. “Better?” I ask with my mouth full.
She smiles. “Very bridal.”
I stick my tongue out at the same time Nate’s mother peers at us through slitted eyes. She doesn’t like me, and I can’t blame her for being wary since Nate and I have known each other for only a year. But I will win her over.
“You’re doing it again,” Aurora says as I move the food around my plate.
“Doing what?”
“Not eating.”
She glances around the room. “He’s not running late, is he?”
That’s what I’ve told everyone—that George hit traffic on his way from the airport. I asked Mimi, but she hasn’t heard from him today, either.
I shake my head, my gut churning.
“It wouldn’t be the end of the world, would it, if he didn’t come?” Aurora asks.
I try to laugh at the false optimism in her voice, but it gets lodged in my throat like an over-chewed wad of gum. For twenty-two years, George has always been there when it’s mattered most. Aurora squeezes my hand, and even though her fingers are glacial, I hold on tight.
“You’re about to start a whole new chapter of your life. If he decides he doesn’t want to be part of it, that’s his loss.”
The backs of my eyes sting, and I look at the chandeliers to stop the tears. George is my best friend. I want him in every chapter.
When my phone vibrates, I’m so sure it’ll be him that the sight of my brother’s name on the screen feels like an anvil on my chest.
Moby: You look like you’re about to puke. It’s not too late to call this thing off.
I hide my screen so Nate doesn’t catch the message and glare at Moby across the table. He and Darwin have already tried to talk me out of the wedding. They staged a bumbling intervention over breakfast the morning after my bachelorette party.
You haven’t even had a serious boyfriend before. What’s the emergency?
But Moby is right about one thing—I might throw up.
“I need the bathroom,” I tell Aurora.
And then I see him.