Epilogue
Six Months Later
Jess
“And then we’ll have a sit-down dinner with three or four hundred of our closest friends and family,” Lillian St. James said.
Oh. My. God. This was a nightmare. I cast a quick glance at Byron. He was taking it in stride, as if he’d been to a million weddings as big as the one Lillian wanted us to have. I shared a look with my mom.
Her eyes were so wide, she looked like an owl. Her glasses only magnified them, making the effect even more noticeable. And she was blinking a lot.
“What do you think?” Lillian asked my mother. “Do seven courses seem like too many? Should we cut it to five?”
Mom’s mouth dropped open.
“You’re right,” Lillian said pensively. “Just five would be tacky. We’ll do seven plus the cake. We’ll have palate cleansers between courses, obviously. Have you interviewed any caterers?”
Mom looked around as if she was hoping Lillian was talking to someone else. “Me?”
“Oh, you’re right again,” Lillian nodded. “It should absolutely be someone in my area. I’ll handle the booking.” She smiled. “Now Jess, we need to have four entrée choices. Have you put thought into what you’d like?”
Byron had answered a call, or I would’ve kicked him under the table.
His mother was very nice. She really was.
But she’d been born into an extremely wealthy family and had never lived any other way.
Even when she’d married Marcus and he’d been working to start his security firm from scratch, she’d used some her massive trust fund to help out.
She did not understand where we’d come from at all.
It would’ve been like a foreign land to her.
I couldn’t tell her that people in Shitty Wilkins got married three ways: down at the courthouse, at a church with a small reception in the fellowship hall, or, if you were fancy, at either the Elks Lodge or the VFW clubhouse.
The idea of a seven-course meal with four different entrée options felt as foreign to me as Mars. “Um… well, I guess chicken could be one…”
“Hmm. Chicken is so… déclassé, don’t you think?”
Mom blinked a bunch of times. “Doesn’t everyone like chicken?”
Lillian let out a bright, tinkling laugh. “You’re so funny.”
And the thing was… she wasn’t being mean. She really thought Mom was joking.
“What do you think about Guinea fowl?”
I had literally no opinion whatsoever about Guinea fowl. “Sounds nice,” I finally said.
Lillian beamed. “Fantastic! Okay, now for seafood. We can’t do lobster if we’re serving lobster bisque as the soup course… hmm. What about Chilean sea bass?”
Mom and I nodded our heads.
“And even though I think it might be done too often, Wagyu beef is always extremely popular.” We nodded as if we knew what she was talking about. I thought I’d seen a Wagyu beef competition on Master Chef once, but I wasn’t sure.
“And then for the vegetarian entrée, I don’t think we could go wrong with either stuffed delicata or butternut squash and sage ravioli. Which do you prefer?”
I didn’t know what delicata was, so I said I preferred the ravioli.
“Excellent choice,” Lillian said. Her watch chimed.
“Oh, that will be Jacqui from Bridal Belles. She’s bringing choices from Vera, Monique, Oscar, Vivienne, Ines—all the greats—for you to try on.
Of course, if you’d rather schedule fittings with the actual designers, that’s fine, too.
” She glanced back down at her watch. “Oh, and then in two hours, we’ll be meeting with ten of the best bakeries around the area—they’re coming to us with samples, of course, and then… ”
“Mom.”
My mom and I both jumped. We hadn’t realized Byron was off the phone and listening in.
“Yes, dear?” Lillian turned to him.
“This is not going to work for us.” He waved his hands over her color coded and tabbed notebook full of elaborate seating plans, menus, catering options, wedding planners, event venues, and more.
I was pretty sure she intended for us to go over all of those things during the weekend we were here in Virginia with her.
The thought made my head spin. Plus, I didn’t think we could fit all of that into our trip.
While we were in the area, Mom was doing a book signing at a couple of bookstores. She’d decided to self-publish her cozy mystery series, and it was doing really well. She was beyond excited about the whole thing, and I was thrilled for her. And so proud!
“Whatever do you mean?” Lillian asked her son.
Byron gave her a look. “You didn’t ask what kind of wedding we wanted.”
She gaped at him. “Well… no. But I just assumed you’d want a regular wedding.”
“There’s nothing regular about the way your side of the family does weddings,” he said. He took the sting out of the words by giving her a hug. “How about this… you plan a really nice party to celebrate our marriage after Jess and I get back from our destination wedding and honeymoon.”
Marcus walked through on his way out the back of the house to go check on Marschall at the course. “I told you, Lillian,” he said under his breath as he passed through the room.
“Oh, hush.” She put her hands on her hips. “But he did. He said you wouldn’t want all of this. I should’ve listened.” Her face colored slightly, “Or at least asked you what you wanted.” She cringed. “I hope I haven’t gotten us off on the wrong foot, Jess. I do want us to be good friends.”
“I want that, too. Very much.”
“What do you say, Jess? Can we let Mom go crazy for the marriage celebration party when we get back?”
“Yes, absolutely. You plan it exactly as you’d like it, Mrs. St. James.”
She clapped her hands in delight. “Perfect! How fun. And please call me Lillian.”
With that, she turned to my mom. “Would you like to see my herb garden?”
“I’d love to,” Mom said, and I could tell she meant it. Soon I could see the two of them outside talking as if they’d been friends forever.
Byron came up behind me and put his arms around my waist. He perched his chin on my shoulder and looked out at them, too. “Your mom is doing remarkably well.”
I couldn’t help my big smile. “She really is. The treatment center, the therapy, the medicine, the success of her book series—it’s all helped her so much.
It wasn’t just one thing that broke her, you know?
She’s a strong woman. She just went through a lot growing up, and things just festered under the surface until she could no longer deal with them anymore. ”
“I know she’s strong. She raised you on her own and did a fantastic job. Now—where do you want to go for a destination wedding?”
“Hmm. I’m not sure.”
***
It turned out that Byron and I couldn’t decide on one place for our wedding.
So, we got married in front of close friends and family on the beach in Bora Bora, spent some time in Australia and New Zealand, then did a European and Mediterranean tour with stops in Dublin, Edinburgh, London, Paris, Athens, Venice, and Madrid.
It was the best time I’d ever had in my life.
I hadn’t really wanted to ever come home.
I knew once we did, life was going to get very busy.
Byron was about to fully open the new headquarters of St. James Security in West Bay.
He’d also be traveling to field offices in several cities around the country from time to time.
I could go with him on some of these trips, but not all of them.
And that was because I’d enrolled at West Bay University in their psychology program.
I hadn’t fully decided, but I was strongly leaning towards being a therapist instead of a psychiatrist. Medical school took a long time, and I was getting a late start.
I also knew that it was rare for psychiatrists to do much therapy, and that was where my true interest laid.
We’d traveled to Virginia for the post-wedding celebration Byron’s mom had planned.
It had been incredibly elegant, refined, and surprisingly fun.
All our friends were there, and many of Byron’s super rich cousins weren’t stuffy at all.
They were funny, had good personalities, and seemed only slightly elitist. Which given their background wasn’t bad at all.
And we’d gotten more gifts than I’d had any clue what to do with.
Byron told me not to worry and then bought a huge house in the exclusive Estates at South neighborhood in West Bay.
It was the same neighborhood Nadine and Reynolds lived in; we were only a couple of streets over from them.
And it was just a couple of miles to West Bay University.
I could walk to and from school if I could get my overprotective security agent of a husband to back off a little.
Though I didn’t really mind the mornings he dropped me off; it just gave me more time with him.
And now we were walking hand in hand down the sidewalk in our new neighborhood.
It was a beautiful evening. The breeze was blowing the Spanish moss gently in the big old water oaks that lined the sidewalks.
The replica gas streetlamps were just starting to blink on in the dimming light.
I could hear the sounds of tree frogs and crickets all around us, and the smell of gardenias and freshly cut grass filled the air.
I looked up at my tall, built, handsome husband and felt like the luckiest woman in the world.
He squeezed my hand. “I love you, Jess.”
“I love you, too.”
And we walked the rest of the way home together.