Chapter 29 Hailey
Hailey
In the mirror at The Wedding Shoppe in her satin ivory ball gown, Hailey looked . . . tired. Nothing like a Pinterest bride.
She tried to smooth her hair. She shouldn’t have stayed up so late writing, but she’d gotten caught up in her own world—
“It’s lovely, honey!” said her mom. “I don’t think you need any more alterations. I think it’s perfect.”
Hailey turned to assess the side view. She did love the smooth satin cummerbund, the deep V plunges of the bodice, and the
ten tiny cloth-covered buttons that ran along her spine at the low back. The dark-suited attendant, a tall brunette named
Tenley, stepped onto the stand beside Hailey smelling of floral perfume. Tenley pinched at the gown’s waist, then tried to
slide a finger down behind the cummerbund in back. Unable to, she pronounced her enthusiastic approval, too. “Would you like
to take it home with you today?” she asked.
Hailey’s head pulsed with fresh pain.
“That would be wonderful!” Lindy said.
“Here, let’s try the headpiece and veil, too.” Tenley stepped down to grab them from where they rested on a nearby chair, then quickly stepped back up, setting the tiara with its attached shoulder-length veil atop Hailey’s head, reaching into her pocket for bobby pins and poking one in.
“Ow!” Hailey said.
Tenley giggled. “Sorry. Here.” She poked another pin in on the other side, this time without doing damage.
Lindy, gazing at Hailey, clutched her hands together beneath her chin. “Oh, honey. You look so beautiful.”
Hailey’s headache was making her nauseous. She was shivering and sweating at once. “Please, I don’t feel good,” she blurted
to Tenley. “I need to get out of this thing.”
“Say no more!” Tenley said, whipping out the bobby pins and handing the headpiece to Lindy. “I got you,” she said, fingers
flying, releasing buttons. In seconds, she’d slipped the gown off Hailey’s shoulders and down past her hips. Hailey stepped
out of it. Now in just her backless champagne Spanx bodysuit, she was assailed by freezing air from the vents, and goose bumps
popped out on her clammy skin. She dashed for the bathroom, hearing Tenley say knowingly to Lindy, “Don’t worry. Happens all
the time. Nerves.”
“I just wish you would’ve, like, waited for me before you plunked down your credit card,” Hailey said, with a glance over
her shoulder at the voluminous white garment bag laid over the Volvo’s back seat like some kind of sea monster. For the happiest day of your life . . . read the cursive across the front of it. “I wasn’t ready to take it home today.”
Her mom accelerated, weaving through traffic on I-295 heading north out of Portland. Hailey had decided not to bother calling
or texting Noah. She didn’t feel like stopping by the apartment, either, though she needed to grab the things for the wedding.
He’d be asleep, then he’d be at the gym, then he’d be getting ready to go to work, then he’d be gone. And he hadn’t called
the bakery or the caterer, the two tiny things she’d asked him to do. The happiest time of my life, right.
“But, sweetie,” Lindy said, “it’s one less thing to have to worry about later! I thought you liked the way it fit—”
“I just . . . I wasn’t ready.” Hailey bit her lip, cutting herself off before she could say what was on her mind: That it was now too late to get any money back on the gown if she changed her mind about getting married.
She couldn’t say that. She shouldn’t even be thinking it.
Lindy switched lanes to pass a Honda and reached to turn on the radio. “Come on, honey, we need a little levity. Sing with
me!” She turned up Fergie’s “Big Girls Don’t Cry” and started to sing along.
“Ugh, Mom,” Hailey said, out of old teenager habit, but after a moment she joined in on, Fairy tales don’t always have a happy ending, do they?
A glance over at her mom then showed Lindy was crying, and the sight stabbed Hailey. Seriously, how could Dad have gone camping
right now? And not even bothered to say when he’d be back? What a jerk move!
Hailey decided. For her mom, for everything her mom had put into this wedding, and for everything her mom was going through
right now, Hailey needed to one hundred percent get over her hesitations. She was simply too far down this road. There was
no way she could cancel the wedding now. She was just having regular run-of-the-mill cold feet. Serious-feeling, but not,
in the end, worth changing course over.
It happened to everybody, according to Tenley.
Back at Innisfree, Hailey wrestled the garment bag out of the Volvo, hoping despite herself that Jack wouldn’t happen by and
see her. The air was fresh and pleasant after the heat of the city and the manufactured, droning chill of the air-conditioning
in the car. Quickly, she followed her mom through the fragrant garden and into the cottage, as Lindy sang out, “We have the
dreh-ess!”
Hailey had to turn sideways to get through the door. “I don’t know where I’m going to put it,” she grumbled. She should not be thinking about Jack right now.
Greta was just coming down the stairs, smoothing out her red capris. “You can put it up in the attic for now, dear. The boys left and said they won’t be back until Saturday. Emma, too. I can’t believe I fell asleep upstairs. It’s lucky I woke up. I have a quiche in the oven—”
“What?” Lindy said, not about the nap or the quiche. “Where did they go?”
Greta headed for the kitchen. “Back to Rhode Island. Cody said he has to work,” she said, as she grabbed the kettle to fill
with water, put it on the stove, and switched on the burner. “Emma and Eli just said they had things to do.”
Hailey’s mom looked pale. “Things to do?”
“Ridiculous,” Hailey grumbled. She could not believe her siblings would do this to their mother when Lindy was basically still
reeling from their dad being gone. True, Cody had originally planned to be here only for the weekend events, so it made sense
he’d go back to his lifeguard job now that their dad wasn’t technically “missing.” But the twins? Neither of them had any
reason to go to Rhode Island! And neither of them owned a car—neither of them even really drove—so, as long as Cody was down there, they’d be stuck down there, too. Why would they give up their time at The Cove?
Just then, Hailey glanced toward the front of the cottage. Through the sliding glass doors, she spotted the two green Adirondack
chairs on the deck angled toward each other. Her grandpa was sitting in one, and in the other was a tall man who looked unfamiliar
at first, until he turned his head, and she saw it was . . . Noah?
“Oh my God,” Hailey said. Noah had taken time off work? And come to The Cove? “Will miracles never cease,” she muttered. It
was something her dad would have said.
Her mom spotted him, too. “Oh, Noah’s here!”
“Oh!” said Greta, with a worried look.
Hailey hadn’t seen Noah’s Audi; he must’ve parked around the corner up the road. The driveway, occupied by her Protegé and
her grandparents’ Camry, would’ve seemed full to anyone who wasn’t used to the fact that they usually parked four cars in
it.
Lindy set her purse on the counter and came to take the garment bag from Hailey. “I’ll take this upstairs, honey. We can’t
let him see it.”
“I’d better check if they need anything!
” Greta said, but just then the timer for the quiche dinged and the tea kettle started to whistle.
Hailey headed for the deck, finding she was not exactly thrilled to see the guy who’d been so unsupportive about her dad, who’d failed even to make those two little crucial phone calls about the wedding.
As she stepped outside and slid the door shut behind her, she heard her grandpa saying, “It wasn’t until you wrote that pathbreaking
article on race in antebellum Louisiana that I truly understood how lucky I was to get to advise you, Howard.”
What? thought Hailey, as a gull cried out in the distance and Noah cooly said, “Dr. Sanderson, it was my privilege to get to work
with you.”
Hailey gave him a what-the-hell look, even as her grandpa gazed at him with fatherly affection. “You’re kind to say so, Howard. You get to the end of a career
and you wonder sometimes if your work—if you—made any difference to anyone.”
“Grandpa, no,” Hailey broke in. “This is Noah, my fiancé—”
Noah gave her a quick, slight shake of his head, as her grandpa’s eyes widened in confusion.
“Dr. Sanderson,” Noah said calmly, “let me assure you that you did, and please go on.” With that, Hailey’s grandpa looked
relieved, and she stood there another full minute, leaning on the rail in disbelief, turning away to watch a wall of fog creeping
toward her from far out on the water, while her grandpa talked in detail about Howard’s dissertation on postbellum New Orleans
and where it fit in the scholarship that had come before and after.
Grandma poked her head outside, looking worried. “Everything okay out here? You fellows need some lemonade?”
“Doing just fine, Mrs. Sanderson,” Noah said with a smile.
Hailey turned to face him, folding her arms against the chill that had come into the air.
He was wearing clothes that Hailey recognized—a fitted black T-shirt designed to show off his muscles, fitted chinos—but he really seemed to have become a different person.
Even his posture was straighter, like a top-shelf graduate student of the past’s would be.
He sat with his feet planted firmly on the deck, his hands loosely fisted on the arms of the chair, an earnest, innocent look on his face.
Hailey had never seen him sit this way in real life or wear this expression.
He should be slouched back in the chair, his right ankle on his left knee, his chin leaned in his hand, grinning his sly little grin.
“Tom?” said Grandma. “Any chance you’d leave these young people to themselves?”
Grandpa looked at Hailey then, almost as if he hadn’t noticed her before. “Oh, Howard,” he said. “This must be your lovely
wife I’ve heard so much about.”