Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Mo
Anna insisted on having the bridal shower at her acreage. They could have rented out a local church basement or the family restaurant in Walnut, but Maureen was grateful Anna wanted to host. It was an excuse to let Mo see the dogs, and while Mo loved her sister, she adored her sister’s dogs.
By an hour before the shower, her dad and Kyle had cleared the premises.
At the few showers Maureen had attended in the Bronx or Manhattan, it was a whole-couple affair.
In Anna’s case, their mom and aunts had circled the wagons and kept it female.
Hogs and dogs excluded, anything with a penis within ten miles was gone for the afternoon.
Which, on the plus side for Mo, meant more time with her sister without Kyle. And, again, more time with the puppies.
The shower was raucous—six of Mo’s aunts, twelve cousins, every friend of her sister’s that still lived in the state, plus lots of Kyle’s family (the ones with boobs) came.
There were over sixty women, and Mo was grateful for Anna’s renovated barn space, the same space in which she was planning to hold the wedding ceremony.
The wedding service would be out on the lawn under several large tents.
It was hard to picture right now with the land mines of doggy poop, but Mo didn’t doubt that her sister’s vision of a candlelit, flower-strewn, outdoor June wedding would come to pass. Anna made magic like that.
Due primarily to her sister’s good planning, the shower went fine.
Their mom had made butter mints, which melted on Mo’s tongue as she made a list of the gifts.
Towels, plates, forks—Mo couldn’t help but think of Ulla as she took notes, wondering which of these items had her stamp of approval.
After Anna had kissed the cheek of the last great-aunt and their mother had folded the last gift bag to save for another shower down the line, Mo swept out the barn and her sister folded the chairs back into a closed-off area behind the stables, one of the hidey-holes she’d kept around during renovation.
As their mother and Anna chatted about final fittings and centerpieces, Mo wondered what it would be like to bring a guy home to Iowa.
During her past visits home, she’d noticed Kyle and her dad laughing together like they were born to be family.
Was Anna somehow the matchmaker in this situation, putting together the perfect father-son pair?
But someone like—really, any guy Mo might have brought home—wouldn’t click with her father in the same easy way.
Mo didn’t know how her parents would react, since she’d never really tried.
No, Mo didn’t miss Aaron. And she also tried hard not to miss …
well, anyone in the city, especially anyone who kept secrets from her.
This weekend she needed to focus on her family.
Later, Anna and Mo would drive to Des Moines for the bachelorette party.
After staying in a hotel room tonight, Mo would shovel herself back on the plane back to New York in the early afternoon Sunday.
But first, the family dinner—Kyle included.
Mo’s mom had made cherry pie with cherries frozen from last summer’s crop.
She had a dozen cherry trees in the front yard that, when they didn’t get attacked by birds, produced the world’s best sour cherries.
Mo wasn’t biased; this was an unarguable fact.
Their dad made pork ribs—of course—all day on his smoker, with cherrywood from one of the same trees that had gone into the wood chipper after getting felled by a big storm last year.
The green beans were the only thing not farm fresh, but the way her dad prepared them with butter and lemon was just like Grandma used to, and the whole meal felt like home had taken up residence in her stomach.
She felt lucky. She was lucky. A hundred years ago, her mom’s side had been working in factories in Chicago, living in a one-room tenement.
Fifty years ago, her dad’s side had lost half their land during the farm crisis.
Now they had enough. More than enough, but they still remembered how hard things could be, and that was where Mo’s passion came from.
Over dinner, her mom discussed the political candidates on their ninety-nine-county tour of the state.
Dad talked about gutters. The normalcy washed over her.
This chance to see her family reset her—plus, again, the pie was so good.
After her mom and dad shared about the work they had been doing lately, her father turned to Mo. “Okay, city girl. What’s the good word? Doing anything interesting out there that you couldn’t tell us over the phone?”
The word doing sent her brain to completely inappropriate places. “No, just—you know, writing and working.”
“Are you still with Andrew?”
“Oh, his name is Aaron. Was Aaron,” Mo corrected.
Her mother put down her fork with a concerned look.
“No, no—he’s not dead. He’s just not with me anymore.”
Her mom’s concerned look deepened. “And that was …”
“My choice.” Mo took an overly large bite of ribs, sure of the alcohol later to come in the evening.
She hadn’t told them about the breakup for the same reason she hadn’t told them about the finished book project: They’d overreacted about both in the past. In both cases, they’d told everyone and their brother before anything was certain, and once it was clear there was nothing to be serious about, they’d had to go and take it all back.
That active “oh, actually” cleanup made Mo’s achievements, like finishing a whole-ass book and getting agented to begin with, feel paltry. Unimportant.
Everyone has trust issues. Loris’s voice rang in her head.
For a guy she’d met one time, he’d certainly become a little too forceful in her thoughts.
Maybe she hadn’t trusted her family enough with who she was, or who she liked.
To Mo, the act of finishing her book wasn’t unimportant, and neither were those relationships.
Just because the books hadn’t been published and those relationships had ended didn’t mean she hadn’t learned from them.
But this relationship had ended, so she needed to finally rip off the Band-Aid and tell them about it.
The book? That could wait. “The truth is, Aaron proposed, and I said no.”
Her dad choked a little and then put down his rib. “He proposed . He had never even come home with you?”
Mo was grateful for his reaction. “Exactly. Not that I want someone to ask your permission—”
“Not mine to give,” her dad said, waving a hand. “Not that Kyle didn’t come in and try something like that.”
And of course, the conversation turned to Kyle. He smiled next to Anna, barbecue sauce lining his lips. “I would have been more sure of the answer if I’d asked you,” Kyle said, grinning.
Gag. And now they were talking about Kyle and Anna again, which they did for the next twenty minutes until dinner ended.
Mo hadn’t spent much time with Kyle, and nothing she had learned about him in their time together had made her want to.
It wasn’t like Mo wanted to harp on how her romance had gone to shit, and it wasn’t that she was thinking You can be amazed by boring-basic-ass Kyle literally anytime , but she was feeling left out.
On the drive to Des Moines, Mo and Anna passed billboards that hadn’t changed in at least five years.
The city skyline was a welcoming hand, waving her back in.
She’d loved seeing it from the air yesterday, but she had arrived in the daytime.
Now, lit up by lights like rows of white teeth, the whole city smiled at her.
It only had one real skyscraper—Principal Tower, renamed 801 Grand—but the low height of the buildings let other landmarks shine.
She could point out the botanical gardens on the road into the city, the capitol—it was a sensible city.
She’d gone to Iowa State University for undergrad, and many college friends found Des Moines big enough, vibrant enough.
It had some great indie bookstores and concert venues.
Her mom constantly reminded her that Des Moines hosted the magazine publisher Meredith, so there were jobs for people with Mo’s kinds of skills.
Mo rebutted that having never owned a home or garden, she had never written the kinds of articles that Better Homes & Gardens might want to put out.
It hadn’t been far enough for Mo, or her imagination.
At least it hadn’t been right after college.
She had to admit to looking at Des Moines Zillow and ogling how much house she could get for even her share of the rent every month.
The party plan was karaoke, and Mo had delegated choosing a spot to the other bridesmaids, current locals who knew Anna’s recent taste better than Mo did.
Ask her what her sister would have wanted to do on a Saturday night when they lived together a few years ago?
She’d have had no problem answering that: Watch Labyrinth for the eightieth time and order pizza.
But even loving her sister as much as she did, she didn’t know what Anna’s definition of fun was anymore.
The bridesmaids, Lainey and Tiff, had chosen a karaoke bar called AJs.
The bar was off Court Ave and walking distance from the hotel.
“Is your Venmo ready?” Mo asked as they stepped inside the bar.
Her one contribution to the party was a huge paper sign that read Buy the Bride a Drink to scan with a QR code.
As they entered, even the ID checker at the door smiled and scanned the code.
Mo was grateful the other bridesmaids hadn’t opted for games or necklaces with pendants that looked like dildos, but they did try to convince the college-aged boy belting out “Girls, Girls, Girls” by M o tley Cr ü e to come over and give Anna a lap dance, which he did for ten dollars.