Page 36 of My Ex-Best Friend's Wedding

“Can we take some photos in the living room? The light’s better out there.” My mother is smiling again. And I’m wearing the most beautiful dress in the world. It’s crazy to look for trouble.

“Sure.” I walk in bridal steps because, after all, I’m wearing a wedding dress and because it would feel sacrilegious to do anything remotely undignified. We sip another glass of champagne each and then Bree arranges my mom and me in a number of different poses. When my mother tells her to come join us for a selfie, I’m okay with it. In fact, since I possess the longest arms I snap the photos, careful to smile elegantly in the first three or four. I can’t vouch for or be held responsible for the last few because I’m giddy from the dress, the champagne, and my mother’s happiness at having Bree and me in the same room, talking and laughing together. I mean, neither of us are about to call the other abitchfor fear that the other won’t remember it was an endearment, and I think we’re both afraid this is only a temporary truce fueled by champagne and THE DRESS, but this feels like a legitimately happy moment.

Tires sound on the drive and we look at one another like little girls about to get caught playing dress-up. “Is Spencer allowed to see me in this? Isn’t that supposed to be bad luck?”

I’m trying to turn to race back to the bedroom but there’s a lot of train and dress that has to go with me. Bree goes to the front window and looks out as a car door slams. “Oh, it’s okay,” she says. “It’s not the guys.”

I’m still trying to get myself moving when footsteps sound on the deck. There’s a knock on the front door.

“I’ll get it,” Bree says while my mother attempts to straighten me and the dress out.

I’m half turned when the door opens. A male voice says, “Oh.”

“Oh,” Bree says in surprise. “Hi.”

My mother freezes. Not helping as I struggle to turn and face the door.

The man is tall and has dark hair peppered with gray. He looks familiar, like maybe I’ve met him before or seen him in a photo or on television or something. He stares at me without speaking for the longest time as if I’m some sort of apparition. I flush and take a step backward and my toe gets caught in the hem of the dress. I turn to ask my mother for help, but she’s looking at the man and shaking her head and holding her hands to her mouth as if she’s too stunned to speak.

The stranger steps closer. “You look even more beautiful in that dress than your mother did. And that’s saying a lot.”

Bree looks back and forth between the man and me.

“You were at my parents’ wedding?” I can barely get the words out.

“Yes, I was.” He looks directly at my mother even though I can practically feel her trying to hide behind me.

“I take it she didn’t say anything to you about me.” I hear hurt and disappointment along with a note of anger—none of which you expect from a total stranger. He’s still looking at me in that too-intense way. Like I’m the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, but that I’m breaking his heart, too. Which makes no sense.

“Were you a friend of my father’s?” I ask, still waiting for my mother to speak or explain.

She clasps my arm more tightly. When she speaks she’s speaking to him, not me. “No, not now. Not yet. You weren’t supposed to be back until tomorrow. You shouldn’t have come without calling.”

“I’m sorry,” he says almost gently. But it doesn’t really sound as if he is. “I did send you a text earlier, but frankly we’ve already lost forty years.” He looks at my mother in a way I’ve never seen anyone look at her before. Like he knows her betterthan I do. Like he can see right through her. He’s not violent or threatening, but it’s clear he has no intention of leaving until he does whatever he came here to do. He’s made my mother cry and I don’t even know why.

Bree bristles as he comes closer. All three of us crick our necks to look up at him.

“Who are you?” I ask, forcing myself to meet his eyes. “What are you doing here? And how do you know my mother and father?”

He sighs. My mother’s eyes flutter shut. I feel her sway beside me.

“Are you a relative of his? My mother said he was an only child.”

“He was. In fact, he still is.” His eyes look so familiar.

“I’m not related to your father,” he says so quietly I think I might be imagining the whole thing. “Iamyour father.”

Eighteen

For a nanosecond I am Luke Skywalker hearing Darth Vader’s claim to fatherhood. Like Luke, I assume that it’s a lie. Only my mother doesn’t deny it.

My arm falls from my mother’s shoulder. I drop back a step then two. Numb with shock and disbelief I tremble where I stand as she and this man, whose name is Jake Warner, deliver their versions of the past. A past that bears no resemblance to the one I’ve lived.

I try to absorb the details of the story that unfolds, but it’s hard to think when you can’t catch your breath and your head is spinning. Revisions are one thing. The complete rewriting of your life, your world, and the people in it? That’s something else entirely.

I stared at a picture of a younger version of this man all these years. I grieved his loss and the fact that I never had the chance to know him, when in fact I could have. The hair at his temples has grayed and lines radiate from the corners of his eyes and bracket his mouth, but it’s him. The father I longed for and could never have. The father I learned to live without for no reason other than what? My mother’s fear of revealing the mistakes she’d made? Her determination to prove she could go it alone? I don’t even care what her reasons were though they’re flowing out of her mouth now, urgent and unchecked, like a river flooding its banks.

“I was afraid my father would force me to put you up foradoption. That’s what he wanted me to do, that was his plan.” And then, “I didn’t find out I was pregnant until months after I ran from the church although I was already pregnant then and didn’t know it. Maybe there were just too many pregnancy hormones swirling around inside me to think clearly that day.”

---