Page 4 of Take Me to the Wedding

He shook his head and sighed heavily. Crossed his arms.

She dropped her voice. “This is ridiculous. You’re both in my wedding. And I’m thebride. Get it together, both of you.”

He had the decency to look chagrined. “Okay, fine,” he said finally. His words came out heavy and flat, as if it nearly killed him to say them. I was a little shocked at the reversal. I don’t know if it was Ani pulling the bride card that convinced him, or something else, but I didn’t care. I was just relieved.

He narrowed his eyes at me. “This is a complicated case, and I don’t want any distractions.”

“You have my word, Dr. D’Angelo.” I shot a grateful look at Ani, took the clipboard, and left.

For now, this was about our patient. I could wage the war with Caleb later. And make no mistake, there would be war.

ChapterTwo

Samantha

One Week Later

It was nine p.m., and Caleb still wasn’t back. I squinted through the peephole and peered into the second-floor hall of the hundred twenty-five-year-old Queen Anne Victorian that we both called home, but the door across the hall from my apartment remained closed and silent. I listened for the crunch of his tires on the gravel drive—nothing.

It had been a week since our little—um—confrontation, and we’d both managed to carefully avoid each other.

But I had a problem. That farm-bonding weekend was coming right up, and my car was still bone dead, waiting on a part that still wasn’t in. I’d have to borrow a friend’s or rent one, plain and simple. The third option, asking a favor from a person I considered despicable? Ugh. My pride hurt to ask the first and third favors, and I couldn’t really afford option two after barely squeaking by—between loans and my savings—to meet my sister’s tuition payment for a class she had to retake this summer.

Yes, retake. Take again. As in paying twice.Ouch.

I wrung my hands as I paced my apartment, talking to my little sister, Wynn. “Did you say you got a job in theperfumedepartment?” I’d just learned that she’d definitely not been planning on spending the summer doing research in a lab like we’d planned. Working in the perfume department of a department store was not going to be a good cred to get her into medical school. Unless she was doing chemistry experiments there.

In between glances through the peephole, I paced the solid oak floor. It creaked in a few places, which ordinarily I barely noticed, but in my present state, every sound was like chalk on a blackboard.

“My job at Winterfield’s starts next week,” Wynn said. “So I’ll have the restaurant job and this new one. Isn’t that great?”

She’d mastered an enthusiastic tone, but it sounded fake to me. Which made me worry, worry, worry. Wynn was emotional, excitable, and young—the opposite of me, who was steady, even-keeled, and cautiously thrilled about only a few things. Plus she was just nineteen, a far cry from my own age of thirty-two. I didn’t want her to have a truckload of worries, especially financial ones.

But it felt like I was going on fifty-two, because the trouble was that I found myself constantly straddling the gap between sister and parent, something that you’d think I should’ve mastered by now. While I wanted her to enjoy her time away at college, something I’d never truly been able to do, I wanted—make thatneeded—her to have a secure future. Basically, I needed her off the payroll ASAP. And that meant her passing her classes with flying colors, focusing, and declaring a major in the appropriate time frame to graduate in four years. Easier said than done.

The parent part of me couldn’t let her off the hook. “I thought you were coming home to take calculus here in Milwaukee this summer.” Summer housing was yet another expense I hadn’t counted on. But the real truth was, I wanted her here. I yearned for our relationship to be what it used to be, before our grandmother died a year and a half ago.

“Home?” she asked in a deadpan tone that sent a chill through me.

Last year, after Oma died, I’d sold her house, and Wynn hadn’t forgiven me for getting rid of the only home we’d ever had even if that money was now helping to fund her college. And even though Oma’s neighborhood was becoming crime-ridden and scary—not the home-sweet-home fantasy anyone would dream about.

We were homeless, so to speak. A bit unmoored, but I’d vowed to be the glue. We’d always stuck together—except now there was a chasm between us. And I didn’t know how to bridge it.

“Yes, home. Home with me.” Not that this tiny apartment was so great, but I’d made the big bay window a sleeping alcove. I’d bought a cute futon with bright pillows and hung flowery curtains for privacy all around it. With the naturally quirky nature of this old house, that arrangement would work out great. Except that Wynn was throwing me a plot twist.

“To retake calculus,” I added.

That was the elephant in the room: She’d failed calculus last fall. Not because, like a lot of us, her brain simply didn’tgetcalculus, but because she’d met a boy first semester and had fallen madly in love with him—and had stopped going to class.

Ugh. A boy named Miles, whom I hadn’t even met yet.

I was completely out of my wheelhouse here. The only reason I’d made it to college in the first place was my smarts, and without total focus, I wouldn’t have survived. My future would have had as great a chance of being as chaotic as our mother’s, who’d gone from bad job to bad job and worse man to worse man. Until one day she’d left us behind too, in Oma’s care. Which was probably for the best for everyone.

“I want toworkthis summer.” Wynn’s tone was insistent. “That’s more important.”

More important than retaking calculus? “I admire that you want to work.” So did my bank account. “But med school admissions committees aren’t going to be excited about the perfume job.”

I’d sent her the names of some doctors who were taking students to work in hospital labs for the summer and therefore take part in research—the typical med school application credential. If she could get into a prestigious lab and get her name on a cutting-edge scientific paper, it would be a great thing to put on her CV. I’d helped her fill out the applications—but she hadn’t said anything about hearing back.

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