Chapter Four #2
But now she was in to-do-list mode. She stood behind me and tilted my head forward to start working on the zipper. “First, we’ll get you changed. Next, you’ll need to have a talk with Pearce. Then I’ll take you home and come back here to deal with … everything else.”
“Thank you, Mom,” I said, head tilted forward while she worked, holding still like I used to when she did my braids.
“Everybody needs a little help sometimes, sweetheart,” she said.
I was nodding in agreement when the bridal room door opened and Mrs. Richmond, Mr. Richmond, Pearce Richmond, and Grandmother and Grandfather Richmond all walked in with total country club squad energy. Looking equal parts regal and outraged.
“Did you fake that faint?” Mrs. Richmond demanded. “Are you calling off the wedding?”
I stood up a little straighter. “That’s something maybe Pearce and I should discuss in private.”
But Mrs. Richmond wasn’t interested in my suggestions. Ever, but especially now. “I heard from Mrs. Allen that a hobo told you to faint at the altar.”
At that, Cooper raised his hand. “Hobo present,” he said.
“He’s not a hobo,” I said, giving Cooper a look. “He’s just in a fashion crisis.”
Mrs. Richmond looked back and forth between us. “What is going on, Josephine?”
A fair question.
I turned to Pearce. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m calling off the wedding.”
“You can’t call off the wedding!” Mrs. Richmond said, like I’d been speaking to her.
“Mom,” Pearce said. “It’s fine.” Then he looked straight at me and said, “She can’t even play tennis.”
Next, the phone in his pocket buzzed. And he took it out to check it—with a significant air of We’re done here.
But no way was Mrs. Richmond letting me off that easy. This was her only son. She’d spent months of her life planning this thing. She’d invited her entire mah-jongg group.
This was personal.
And if I was going to humiliate her, she was going to humiliate me right back.
She started talking so fast, it took us all a minute to catch up.
“I never liked you,” she said. “When Pearce told me you’d strong-armed him into marrying you, I told him right then it was a mistake. I said, ‘What self-respecting man wants to marry a lady mathematician?’ He told me you work figures on a chalkboard—for fun. You have a favorite brand of chalk.”
“All math people have a favorite brand of chalk,” I said.
She was undeterred. “You don’t know anything about fashion.
I had to hog-wrestle you into that pair of heels.
You showed up at that charity luncheon with wet hair!
Wet hair! My friends shunned me for weeks.
I begged and pleaded with Pearce. I said, ‘You can’t marry a woman who drives a Honda.
’ I warned him that his children would be”—she dropped her voice—“nerds.” Then she steeled her shoulders.
“But he felt so sorry for you—you’d been chasing him so long.
He’d missed the chance to break up with you, and now he felt obligated.
He proposed out of pity, and this is how you thank him? ”
I wondered if I was supposed to answer that question.
Just as she concluded with, “You’re not calling off the wedding—we’re calling off the wedding!”
Ah. Guess not.
Mrs. Richmond turned to my mother. “And we won’t be paying for anything related to this clown show.” Then she turned back to me. “And I want my dress back.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s stuck.”
“Take it off. Right now.”
“The zipper’s broken,” I tried to explain. “I literally can’t.”
I was about to offer to have it dry-cleaned and repaired and brought to her later—but I guess she was really spoiling for a fight, because the next thing she said was:
“You are not walking out of here in my wedding dress, you flat-footed bluestocking.”
To my left, Cooper started laughing.
I frowned at him, like Shut up.
He clamped down into a serious face—but then he broke.
Next, before I could scold him, in what must have been a total psychotic break for a society lady, Mrs. Richmond took things to a whole different level … and charged me.
You know, like a bull.
Like she was about to wrestle me out of all that polyester lace—or die trying.
And I suddenly had a flash of fear that Mrs. Richmond might beat me to death. In a church. While Pearce stood placidly by, texting his fantasy baseball group chat.
But that’s when I felt a tug on my arm—and it was Cooper turning me toward him.
And then he was bending at the waist, and moving toward me, and the next thing I knew, he’d hooked me over his shoulder and risen up to his full height, leaving me draped backward over that damned rucksack.
Then Cooper shifted into motion, stepping sideways and averting Mrs. Richmond’s trajectory—just as she stampeded past the spot where I’d been standing and crashed into the sofa.
AND THAT’S HOW we escaped.
Cooper launched right into a jog after that.
He put all those new muscles to use—that rucksack and I couldn’t have been light—and jogged all the way down the church hall, out the vestibule doors he’d burst in through, and straight to an open-top Jeep that was parked half up on a curb, like he’d screeched to the church’s side entrance and just left it there.
He flipped me over, deposited me in the front seat, and tossed the rucksack into the back.
“This is your car?” I asked as he reached over to buckle me.
“This is my rental car.”
“You rented an open-top Jeep?”
“It was all they had left.”
“Is this why you showed up with a rucksack?”
“My laptop’s in there.”
“But why doesn’t this thing have a top?”
“This seems like an odd thing to fixate on.”
I gestured around. “The vibes don’t suit you at all.”
“Somebody took the top off at some point, okay? And I didn’t have time to wait for the one guy at the rental counter to snap it all back on.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” Cooper said, pausing to look me in the eyes like we should all already know this, “my flight from Heathrow was delayed. And customs was slow. And I was running late to show up here and stop your wedding.”