Her Meddling Mother-in-Law in Wedding White

Chapter 1

Chapter One

The night before her wedding, Sophie sat at the kitchen table writing two more place cards. Jesse’s mother had invited more people… again.

One was a woman Sophie had met briefly at a grocery store and the other was that woman’s husband, whose name Lorraine had spelled three different ways over the phone.

Sophie had settled on Dennis. There were now two people called Dennis at table nine, which would either be convenient or cause a problem she had no intention of solving at ten forty on a Friday night.

Jesse came in carrying her shoes. He had found them under the passenger seat, where she had kicked them after the rehearsal dinner, and set them by the back door with their straps tucked inside.

“Done?” he asked, kissing the top of her head as he reached for the cards.

“Wet ink.” She caught his wrist before he smeared the names. “Give them a minute.”

He opened the refrigerator and stood looking into it.

His shirt had come untucked on one side, and there was a small patch of sunburn on the back of his neck from a job he had promised to finish before taking the weekend off.

Sophie had rubbed lotion into it that morning while he tried to put his socks on.

“How can you possibly be hungry?” He had eaten his own dinner and most of the chicken she had been too wound up to finish.

“Didn’t say I was hungry.” He took out the cold potato salad from three days ago. “I’m looking.”

She watched him eat a bite. Six years together, and the sight of him in their kitchen still occasionally caught her by surprise: this man, these unremarkable evenings, his shoes among hers by the door.

When they had bought the house in March, she had spent the first night awake beside him listening to unfamiliar radiator pipes and thinking about where they would put the Christmas tree.

“That’s from Tuesday,” she said. He considered the container, then took another forkful.

They had met when Haley dragged her to a fundraiser after a Saturday shift at the museum.

There had been grills smoking behind the community center and paper plates blowing across the lawn.

Sophie had been hot, annoyed, and carrying a bag with a broken handle; Jesse had offered her the chair he was sitting in and then, when she said she preferred to stand, stayed seated.

She remembered liking that. So many men would have insisted until she sat down to end the conversation.

He had asked about her work, and she had given him the short answer she gave people who wanted to hear about paintings worth millions.

He kept asking questions. By the time Haley came to find her, Sophie was describing the school groups and the messy sinks in the room where they did art activities, and Jesse was drawing a possible arrangement on a paper plate with somebody’s eyeliner.

Their first date had lasted through dinner and a walk and a second restaurant where they ordered dessert because neither wanted to go home. On their fourth, he had called to ask whether she minded changing the time. His mother needed help moving a cabinet.

Sophie had said of course. At twenty-eight she had liked a man who answered when his mother called, and she still liked that about him in principle.

She had not expected to become so familiar with the different sounds he made when Lorraine asked for something though: the quick agreement, the tired agreement, the long exhale that meant agreement would follow once he had complained a little.

For their fifth anniversary she had booked a restaurant with a waiting list and put a new dress on the bed.

Lorraine’s dishwasher flooded at four, and at eight Jesse sent a photograph of the kitchen floor with a message asking whether they could do dinner another night.

Sophie canceled the table before the restaurant could charge them, then found out on Sunday that Hank had shut the water off before Jesse arrived.

They’d spent the evening replacing a cabinet door that had been swollen for months.

She had eaten toast in the dress. When Jesse got home, she let him persuade her that the restaurant had always looked overpriced anyway, and he cooked her breakfast the next morning with flowers in a beer glass beside the stove.

This wedding was supposed to be the one occasion they kept for themselves. She had paid every deposit on time, arranged cover at work, and checked Jesse’s calendar so often that he had started calling her his foreman.

He tipped the last potato into his mouth and came to stand behind her chair. “You misspelled that,” he said, pointing at Dennis.

Her stomach dropped. “I swear to God, Jesse, if it’s spelled with a y—” She stopped when she heard him laugh.

She slapped his hand, and he caught hers and kissed the ink on her middle finger. Then he pulled her out of the chair, put an arm around her waist, and tried to dance with her between the table and the refrigerator. She stepped on his sock and accused him of leading with the wrong foot.

“You could let me lead,” he said. He moved the chair out of their way with his heel.

“I would if we were going anywhere.” She slid her arms around his neck and rested her cheek against the open collar of his shirt.

For a minute they swayed without music. She could feel his heartbeat and the warm place where his neck had burned, and she let herself stop counting people, meals, hours.

Tomorrow she would marry him. She had wanted that before he asked, long enough to have become embarrassed by how hard she worked at not mentioning it.

His phone vibrated on the table. Jesse looked past her shoulder, and Sophie held on a moment longer before letting her arms fall.

“Hey, Mom,” he said, picking it up. “Yeah, we’re home.”

Lorraine’s number appeared above the place cards. Sophie had saved it years ago under a little flower because Lorraine always brought something from her garden when she visited. After the engagement she’d begun bringing photographs of things Sophie ought to have chosen instead.

“Which one?” Jesse asked into the phone. Sophie recognized the patient voice he used when his mother couldn’t find the camera button, and put down the card she had been about to show him.

Sophie had given up a Saturday in June to take Lorraine to the florist after she heard how hurt Lorraine was to have missed the first appointment.

She had already taken her mother, Marianne, and there had been no reason to go twice.

Lorraine studied the samples and said the arrangement Sophie loved was very pretty if she liked things loose and wild, then asked whether Jesse had seen it.

On that second visit, Lorraine had brought a photograph of white roses packed tightly into a silver bowl. Sophie’s loose garden flowers cost less, although she hadn’t mentioned that until Lorraine asked whether the budget was the problem.

Lorraine paid for lunch afterward. She remembered which sandwich Sophie liked and argued with the cashier until the overcharge on their drinks was corrected, then drove Sophie back to the museum with the seat heater on because she’d noticed her shivering.

Sophie put the flower photograph in her bag instead of leaving it in the car.

Sophie kept the flowers. She accepted Lorraine’s suggestion about the candles and told Jesse they’d had a nice time, leaving out the part about the florist waiting while she defended the bouquet she’d already paid for.

“We sent the list to the DJ,” Jesse said. He looked at Sophie. “Mom wants to check the mother-son song.”

“It’s there,” Sophie said. “I checked yesterday.”

He listened, then held the phone away from his mouth. “She’s got a different version. The full version, apparently.”

“How long is it?” She already knew from the way he avoided her eyes that it was longer than the one they had agreed on.

“I don’t know. Four minutes?” He put the phone back to his ear. “How long, Mom?”

It was five minutes and forty-two seconds. Sophie had watched the DJ shorten their own first dance to just over three because Jesse said he would feel stupid swaying in front of everybody for a whole song.

“We’ve got the shorter one,” she said. “It’s the same song.”

Jesse repeated that into the phone with a little laugh. Sophie capped her pen too hard, bending the nib against the inside, and a smear of ink spread across her thumb.

“She says the verse about growing up gets cut,” Jesse told her. “It’s the part she likes.”

“Then use that verse.” Sophie kept her voice low. “You said you didn’t want long dances.”

“For ours.” He frowned at her. “This is different.”

She waited for him to hear what he had said. Instead he put the call on speaker and set the phone between the place cards.

“Sophie, sweetheart, please don’t worry about it,” Lorraine said. “Jesse shouldn’t have bothered you. It’s only a song.”

“The DJ has a schedule,” Sophie said. “That’s all.”

“Oh, of course. I don’t know how any of this works anymore.” Lorraine gave a little laugh. “When we got married, we just put a record on and danced. I suppose we were terribly unsophisticated.”

Sophie pressed her thumb into a paper napkin. On her laptop the DJ’s final schedule was still open, approved by all three of them on Wednesday. Jesse raised his eyebrows at her across the table.

“Send me the link,” she said. “I’ll ask him.”

“Only if it’s no trouble,” Lorraine said. “I certainly don’t want you up late on my account.”

Jesse took the phone off speaker. His shoulders relaxed as he thanked his mother for dinner, promised to eat breakfast, and said he knew where his cuff links were.