Page 21 of My Ex-Best Friend's Wedding

“Thanks.” I feel a swell of love and gratitude. In those months after my grandmother died I spent almost every weekend at the Sandcastle. The day Lauren admitted to Kendra that I had been left on my own was the day they came to pack me up and take me home with them—no longer just a best friend but a member of their family.

Where would I be without her?

Back at my desk I gobble down a piece of bacon, a couple bites of scrambled egg, and most of a muffin. While I look at the notes I’ve scrawled all over the manuscript in my race toward the finish line, I sip my coffee and go back through all of Whitney’s scenes one last time.

It’s only now, with food in my stomach and the comforting soundtrack of Kendra puttering in the kitchen downstairs, that I’m ready to finally accept the truth about the characters I’ve come to love and thought I knew so well.

Somehow, and I’m really not sure how, Whitney has grown and evolved in ways I never planned or noticed. In fact, I wish I were half as fleshed out as she is. That my dreams and goals seemed as clear and obtainable as hers.

Of course, there’s still tweaking to be done, but Whitney is surprisingly strong and resilient. Frankly, if Heath doesn’t get his shit together he’s going to be left behind.

I shake my head in wonder. Then I smile and finish off the muffin, considering. I’ve only ever wanted a traditional happily ever after for this woman I created. But now when I see what she’s become I can’t help wondering if she’d be happier going it alone.

Kendra’s handled being single with aplomb. And from what I’ve heard and observed, Lauren has never needed a man to make her happy or “take care of her.” I have to admit I’m curious to see what kind of man it took to win her.

Neither Kendra nor Lauren feared being alone like I did, like I still do. But then they’ve always had each other.

I eat another piece of bacon. As I lick the grease from my fingers, my eyes are drawn to the paragraphs I wrote late last night. I sense Whitney’s presence and hear her begin to speak. After all these years her voice is as familiar as my own. I cock my head and listen, surprised again at what she has to say. And then I’m typing rapidly, trying to catch every word, as if I’m simply taking dictation.

Her decisions, which she lays out quite clearly, shock me. She’s made the kind of hard choices I’ve been afraid to even consider.

Eleven

Kendra

The Sandcastle

The sky is a steel gray. The heavy clouds that hang low over the ocean are a shade darker. Surf pounds onto shore. The wind howls, pelting the walls and windows with sand. It’s been raining for three days. Which means the freezer is now stuffed with enough home-baked chocolate macadamia nut cookies, salty caramel brownies, and snickerdoodles to last a lifetime. The refrigerator contains all of Lauren’s favorite foods. As if the perfect meal might somehow soften her outrage when I tell her that her father is not dead, but alive. Or consuming enough chocolate could stimulate forgiveness.

Between the weather and my nerves, I’ve worn a groove in the wood floors from pacing. My hands are cramped from wringing. At the moment my knees are shrieking in protest as I duckwalk the living room cleaning the baseboards, something I haven’t done in years and don’t need to do now since it’s doubtful that Lauren will notice or that my future son-in-law has packed a pair of white gloves with which to test the baseboards.

I know my way around cleaning products. I cleaned houses and motel rooms in the first years after we arrived because we needed the money and because I could bring a baby with me while I did it. But even while I was acquiring the skills I’d neverlearned growing up in a home with full-time help, I wasn’t particularly interested in achieving household perfection or stamping out every last dust mite—that was always more my mother’s goal than mine. It went hand in hand with her need to please and appease my father.

As always the thought of my parents is a one-two punch to the gut. First comes the burst of anger that still burns far too brightly—that my father expected obedience in all things and that his love was completely conditional on compliance. That my mother was too weak to stand up to him, too timid and too dependent to insist on a relationship with me and Lauren after I disobeyed his edicts and refused to give up my child. Too fragile to be the woman I always wanted her to be.

The anger is followed by the quieter sting of remorse that my mother and Lauren never knew each other and that I never found a way to mend the breach before my parents died.

I like to think that my mother would have loved this box of a house as much as I do even though it’s small and utilitarian without a single grand element or statement piece. An aging woman who is not embarrassed by her wrinkles.

Everything here is designed to stand up to salt, sea air, and sand. The cedar shake exterior has darkened over time and the wooden steps and railings that lead to front and back porches are weathered. The interior is splashed with color and consists of sturdy rattan with brightly patterned cushions that hide the spills and stains that have accumulated over the years. The run of east-and-west-facing windows lets the sunshine in and turns the space bright and airy, which is what I care about most. Give me plenty of natural light and I’m happy. Darkness has never been my friend. On days like this the windows frame the wild and turbulent beauty that first drew me and that I’ve never grown tired of.

Still antsy, I scrub every inch of the bathroom starting with the claw-foot tub and finishing, once again on my hands andknees, with the original black-and-white tile floor. I take pleasure in prevailing over the grout and breathe a little easier when everything begins to sparkle, but that lasts only until I let myself remember that I’m not just preparing for a meet-the-fiancé weekend, but a revelation that will change history as Lauren has known it. My pool of dread keeps deepening.

In Lauren’s bedroom the twin beds that she and Bree slept in sag slightly in the middle. Even now I can’t understand how Bree’s parents could abandon her like they did. Only one of them made it back for her wedding, and I don’t think they’ve visited more than a handful of times between them since then. Lauren was the center of my universe for so long, my reason for being and especially for being here. Why have children if you don’t intend to make time for them?

I vacuum the turquoise rug that Lauren chose when she was nine and dust the dresser and nightstand. It’s on this nightstand that Lauren kept the photo of me and Jake standing at the altar just moments before I turned and ran. The photo that I let her believe was of her parents getting married. I even made her a small photo album of Jake and me during our dating years.

My eyes water and I sniff to hold back tears. In my attempt to protect Lauren and Jake, I saw no way to make her known to his parents and so I let them “die” in the fictitious accident that claimed my parents.

What was that Hemingway quote? “The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one”? Ha! I’ve been fearing this for so long that by all rights I should be relieved to have the truth come out. But I know how shocked Lauren is going to be, how confused and upset she’ll feel. In a matter of days she’ll realize how many mistakes I’ve made. How many lies I’ve told.

I lift the nightstand out of the way. When I push the beds together their sagging centers look even less appealing. Unless I figure out a way to anchor them together, whoever ends up in the middle is going to be sleeping on the crack or possibly the floor.

At the moment that seems like such a small thing in comparison with what lies ahead. I can only hope that when Lauren meets her father she’ll... what? Not be angry that she’s finding out only because I’ve been forced to tell her? Tell me she doesn’t begrudge the last forty years?

No matter how many times I remind myself that I altered the truth for the best of reasons, even I haven’t found a way to forgive me.

Lauren

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