The Night Before the Wedding #2
As Kate walked toward Aphrodite, she spotted Conor near the dock at the far end of the Bay Street’s curving bulkhead.
He was sitting beside a woman on a bench by the seawall.
Kate saw the way they were leaning into each other with intimate familiarity.
Their shoulders were touching, their heads bent together, as they looked at something on a cell phone.
Kate felt taken aback by the emotional intensity between them.
“Hello,” Kate said when they got closer.
“Kate!” Conor said, sounding startled. The woman smiled and stood.
She had straight blond hair with long bangs that framed her oval face.
Freckles dusted her nose, and lines creased her forehead and bracketed her cheeks.
Her white sundress fluttered in the breeze.
Kate guessed that she was about the same age as Conor or a little older.
“Hello, Kate,” the woman said. “I’ve heard so much about you.”
“This is Belinda, Garrett’s girlfriend,” Conor said.
“Nice to meet you,” Kate said. She introduced Hadley.
“Belinda and I grew up next door to each other,” Conor said.
“That’s amazing!” Kate said. “Wow, how cool to reconnect.”
“That’s what we were just saying,” Belinda said.
“And now it’s memory lane. Good old New London.
Every so often, I drive down our old street.
His house looks the same as it always did—I was just showing him pictures.
” She scrolled through her phone and started to hand it to Kate.
Kate noticed that she wore glittery turquoise nail polish and had a thin silver ring on her pinkie finger.
Kate reached for the phone, but then it buzzed with a text, and Belinda drew it back.
“Oh, it’s Garrett,” Belinda said. “Wondering where I am. I’d better go meet him. The Ocean House is so beautiful! Thank you for having us!”
“We’re glad you could come,” Kate said.
“See you at dinner!” Belinda said. “Kate, we can talk more later. I have so many childhood stories about Conor and Tom.”
“I’d love to hear them,” Kate said.
Belinda gave her and Conor quick hugs, then turned and headed up the hill toward the Ocean House.
“I’m going to get CeCe and head back to the hotel,” Hadley said, glancing in the opposite direction at the merry-go-round. “I think she has gone around enough times. I’ll get her and Sam, and we’ll meet you at dinner. Are you excited?”
“Just a little,” Kate said.
Kate looked at Conor when Hadley left, waiting for him to say something. She tried to read his expression, but he was gazing past her, at all the boats in the harbor. Was he deep in thought or just avoiding her eyes?
“What was that about?” Kate asked.
He didn’t reply, and she saw that he was staring past Aphrodite. Sunlight danced on the water’s surface, glancing off the vessel’s polished black hull and bronze fittings. A gray inflatable dinghy was heading toward shore from out in the mooring field.
“Here comes Tom,” Conor said, gesturing. “He can’t stay off the water, even when he’s off duty.”
“What was Belinda saying?” Kate asked. “It looked intense.”
“She’s nostalgic about the old days,” Conor said. “I was completely surprised to see her.”
“Why didn’t you mention that Garrett was bringing her to the wedding?”
Conor put his arm around Kate. “Because I didn’t put it together.”
“What about her last name?” Kate asked, feeling unsettled. She tried to remember what Garrett had told them for the calligraphed place cards. Then she had it. “Tyler. Belinda Tyler?”
“She was Belinda Quinn back when we were kids,” he said. “She married a guy named Tyler.”
“They must have gotten divorced,” Kate said. “Since now she’s dating Garrett.”
“She told me she’s a widow. Her husband died years ago.”
“Oh no,” Kate said. Maybe that explained the feeling she had gotten, seeing Conor and Belinda deep in conversation. “That’s so sad. How did he die?”
But before Conor could answer, they saw Tom draw even with the dinghy dock. He threw the line around a cleat and walked up the weathered wooden ramp toward them.
“Nice,” Conor said. “Half an hour to our rehearsal dinner, and you’re covered with salt spray.”
“I’ll take the quickest shower in history,” Tom said. “I’m used to it, from being at sea.”
“Coastie,” Conor said.
“Cop,” Tom said.
Kate loved the way the brothers teased each other.
They were both in different arms of law enforcement, but they often shared cases.
They could be merciless about whose work was more important.
Tom was one year older. They both had brown hair and bright-blue eyes.
Conor’s wavy hair was longer than Tom’s military cut, a fact Tom gave him grief about.
The three of them started up the hill. A navy-blue pickup sped past them, and Conor put out his arm to keep Kate from being hit.
“Whoa,” he said, staring as the truck turned into a driveway across the street from the hotel.
“Someone’s in a hurry,” Tom said.
Kate saw Conor watching to see who the driver was, but she tugged on his arm, and they kept walking.
When they got to the hotel, the valets greeted them, and so did the entire lobby staff.
Kate and Conor had become regulars here, often visiting Hadley and CeCe, who had moved permanently into the Sea Garden Suite.
Everyone was excited about the wedding. Kate knew how much the Ocean House staff loved CeCe.
She had become one of their own after her mother’s murder, and many of them had told Kate how much it meant to them, how touched they were that Kate had asked CeCe to be her flower girl.
Tom took the elevator up to his room, to shower before he and his wife, Jackie, joined them.
Conor and Kate walked down the lobby staircase to the Bemelmans Gallery, a serene spot where they could have a minute alone.
The gallery walls were painted Buxton blue, to echo the ocean, and they were covered with the largest private collection of works by Ludwig Bemelmans in the world.
The owners displayed them so everyone could enjoy the charming and playful art.
Kate gazed at the illustrations of Madeline—the heroine of a favorite childhood book—and at the Farewell to the Ritz series of drawings, made from the artist’s experience at the Ritz in New York.
They brought back memories of dates she had had at Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle, with a series of mostly forgettable boyfriends.
No one had really mattered to her until Conor.
“Okay,” she said, looking into Conor’s blue eyes. She knew him so well, and she could tell he was shaken about something. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“Nothing. It was just strange to see Belinda after all this time.”
“What was she showing you? You looked very serious.”
“You sound jealous,” he said as if it were a joke, but he wasn’t smiling.
“Should I be?” Kate asked.
“Of course not,” he said. “We were neighbors. She was the girl next door, and she moved away when we were just kids.”
“You looked awfully close, there on the bench.”
Conor put his arms around her and held her very tight. Then he gave her that devilish Irish grin that always turned her inside out. “That wasn’t close,” he said. “This is close.” He kissed her, softly at first, then as if he wanted to take her upstairs to their suite.
“Excuse me,” a voice said.
Kate and Conor broke apart, and she saw a young woman standing there.
She looked about Sam’s age—twenty-one or so—and she had dark-blond hair, a golden tan, and startling blue eyes.
She wore a maxi dress with white and indigo flowers that complemented her eyes.
Kate noticed that her fingernail polish was turquoise, the same color as Belinda’s.
“I’m Suzanne,” she said.
“Hi,” Kate said. Then, with a slight question in her voice, “The calligrapher?”
“Yes. I’m so sorry to interrupt,” Suzanne said, sounding anxious. Her eyes lingered on Conor, then looked away. “All your guests have arrived. Maeve asked me to find you.”
“Thanks,” Kate said. Suzanne nodded and ran upstairs ahead of them.
Kate’s chest tightened; something about the girl—not just her nail polish—had unsettled her, and the feelings that had swept over when she’d seen Conor with Belinda rushed back. She grabbed Conor’s hand.
In that moment, she had a powerful urge to skip the party, to be alone with him. She had a bizarre premonition that if they went to the dinner, everything would change.
“Conor,” she said. “Do you . . .”
He waited for her to finish the question, but she couldn’t, because the confusion she’d felt down at the harbor was still with her; she didn’t know exactly what she wanted to ask. She looked into his eyes and steadied herself.
“Never mind. Everything’s fine,” she said.
“Better than fine,” he said.
She and Conor walked upstairs. Faith, the harpist who played in the lobby, was strumming “Love Story” by Taylor Swift.
It made Kate feel better as she and Conor approached the Harbour Room.
And as soon as she and Conor walked through the door, and she saw the beaming faces of so many people she loved, she forgot all about the weirdness she felt, and she smiled back—at the crowd and then at Conor.
And she and Conor took their seats, and tomorrow they would be married, and everything was fine, better than fine.