Page 3 of The Secret to a Southern Wedding

What kind of response was that? Her mom wouldn’t answer her call, but she’d text back telling her to come home. She’d just talked to her mom a few days ago. She hadn’t mentioned anything about getting married or even given a hint of there being a special person in her life. A few months ago, her mom mentioned Imani’s cousin Halle said something about getting on a dating app for seniors, but Imani had immediately shot that down. No way was her mom about to be played by some random guy online after all she’d been through. Now she was talking about marriage after she’d vowed to never trust another man again? Something wasn’t right.

She was preparing to dial her mom’s number when she walked through the door of her office.

“Oh, thank goodness, Imani, you’re here!” Karen, the receptionist behind the desk, exclaimed.

Imani looked up from her phone to Karen. The receptionist had a bright smile on her face as she pointed to a man holding a camera next to the desk. The white guy wore a blue polo shirt with the logo from a local news station on the breast pocket and khaki’s. His dark hair was stylishly cut, and he grinned a hundred-watt smile at her.

“Dr. Imani Kemp, it’s great to meet you. I’m here for your interview at one,” the man said.

Imani looked from him to Karen behind the desk. “I have a patient at one.”

The door behind the reception desk opened and Dr. Andrea Jaillet came out. Tall, red hair with bright blue eyes and a supersweet personality that wasn’t manufactured, Andrea was someone who was nearly impossible to dislike.

Andrea beamed. “Imani, you’re here, great. We’ve moved your patients around to other doctors so you can do this interview. Isn’t it wonderful? The news wants to feature our doctor of the year.”

Imani’s phone buzzed again. She glanced down.

Dinner Friday afternoon. You’ll meet your stepfather then.

Friday! It was Tuesday. She looked from the text to Andrea’s smiling face, to the reporter and his camera. The chorus of “How Bizarre” played on loop in her head. All she’d wanted was a corn dog. What in the world had happened to her perfectly normal day?

two

Cyril Dash stared at the digital wedding invitation on his phone and scratched his chin. The rough hairs of his beard were longer than usual. He’d need to get it trimmed soon, but the brief thought of a future trim immediately faded as he read the words again.

“Are you for real?” He looked up from the invitation to his father sitting on a stool across from him at the bar.

It was just before ten in the morning and Cyril’s bar, A Couple of Beers, wouldn’t open until noon. His dad usually came over on his days off from the hardware store where he worked part-time. Typically, Cyril enjoyed listening to his dad give an update on the latest happenings at the hardware store or his plans to go fishing with some of the other retirees in the area over the weekend. His dad hadn’t had much opportunity to enjoy life in the past decade and any sign of him relaxing and being happy made Cyril happy. He just wasn’t prepared for his dad to jump headfirst into marriage after dating for only a month.

Preston Dash grinned from ear to ear. His brown eyes sparkled with a joy Cyril hadn’t seen in years. The lines in his golden brown skin deepened and he rubbed his hands together as if anticipating the upcoming conversation. Dressed in a blue linen shorts set with the gold chain he always wore glinting around his neck, his dad looked like the confident, laid-back version of himself Cyril worried he’d never see again.

“I’m for real,” Preston said in his deep, scratchy voice. “Linda Kemp and I are getting married in November.”

Cyril tapped the thick paper invitation on the bar. “You two just started dating. How are you already getting married?”

“When you know, you know,” Preston said with a shrug.

“Okay, I get that, but isn’t this kind of sudden?” His dad and Ms. Kemp had only been dating for a few weeks.

His dad waved a hand. The lights over the bar glinted off the gold signet ring with the letter P engraved on the surface he wore on his right ring finger. He’d stopped wearing a wedding ring after Cyril’s mom died. “You and I know more than anyone else that life is short. I’m not taking anything for granted, including believing I’ve got a lot of time on my hands.”

Cyril grabbed the clean towel draped over his shoulder and went back to wiping down the bar. “But still...” Cyril tried to balance the shock of his dad’s announcement with the worry easing into his chest. Marriage? Seriously?

“But still what? When we moved here, we agreed we weren’t looking back and would start over.” His dad slapped his chest. “This is me starting over. You did the same thing when you opened this bar.”

Cyril stopped wiping the bar and cocked a brow. “Come on now, we both know opening a bar isn’t the same thing as getting married.”

“Why not? They’re both a big commitment. You had to put a lot of time and money into this place and look at what you’ve accomplished. You’ve turned it into a success.”

“I just had my first year out of the red, and that was barely out of the red and you know it.”

Yes, he’d worked hard to open a bar. A dream he’d had but never pursued before they’d left Baltimore three years ago to move to Peachtree Cove, Georgia. Back in Baltimore the idea of running his own business, much less opening a bar, had seemed as likely as hopping a taxi to Mars. Something that would be cool, but never going to happen. The struggles of getting his dad’s name cleared and finding out the truth about what happened to his mother made dreams seem wasteful.

Yet, here they were. His dad was free. They’d started over in a small but vibrant town. Cyril had not only opened a bar, but he’d survived his first two years. Still.

“Have you told her about Mom?” He tried to keep his words light despite the heavy burden they held.

The smile on his dad’s face dimmed and his gaze slid away from Cyril’s. “I told her enough.”

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