Page 26 of My Ex-Best Friend's Wedding

“Thank you.” I turn to Lauren. “He had the good sense to ask you to marry himandhe’s flattering his future mother-in-law.” I tap a finger to my forehead. “Smart man.”

“That he is.” My daughter stares at me then turns and presses the key so that the trunk pops open.

“What can I carry?” I ask as Lauren slings an overnight bag over one shoulder.

“Nothing, thanks.” Spencer pulls out two midsize bags, closes the trunk, then follows us upstairs and across the porch.

I see him take in the living room, but there’s nothing but pleasant interest on his face.

“You can put those in here,” I say, showing him to Lauren’s room. “Now that you’re engaged I guess it’s okay if you sleep together.”

Lauren shoots me a look and I know she’s wondering where all this nervous chatter is coming from. But the truth is no matter how many times I tell myself I don’t have to address the Jake issue immediately, I’m unable to push it far enough away torelax. Sometime before Sunday I’m going to have to explain the unexplainable. I feel a little like a condemned man contemplating his last meal. How on earth could he possibly enjoy it given what’s going to happen after dessert?

In the kitchen I pour cold drinks, set out a plate of snickerdoodles, and wonder, as we settle around the table, if there’s some way to ease into the subject that might somehow soften the blow. But even as they munch on the cookies and chat comfortably with me and with each other, I know that no matter how I frame the news, or when I introduce it, there’s going to be an explosion. I just hope there’ll be survivors.

I refill glasses and pass the plate of cookies around again. Soon we’re down to crumbs. “Would you like to take a walk on the beach and then maybe go somewhere sunset-worthy for dinner?” I ask, deciding it’s okay to just enjoy tonight and figure out the best way to bring up the topic tomorrow.

“Yes and yes!” Lauren answers for both of them. “Come on.” She reaches for Spencer’s hand. “I want to grab a pair of flip-flops. Be right back, Mom.”

I busy myself putting the cookie tin away. Then I wipe the counters and the kitchen table. As I do, I imagine some unseen hand tossing a grenade in through the open window. I hear it roll across the floor and finally come to a stop near my feet. But I will not bend over and pick it up. And I’m most definitely not going to pull the pin.

Fourteen

Lauren

I don’t believe shoes should be allowed on the beach so I walk barefoot—flip-flops dangling from my fingers “just in case”—letting my toes curl in the soft, cool sand. If feet could talk I’m pretty sure they’d be sighing with pleasure.

My mother doesn’t bother with flip-flops, either. Spencer is wearing his sneakers but I have no doubt he’ll see the light once enough of the beach finds its way inside them.

“My folks have a place in the Hamptons but these dunes are a little different than I’m used to.” Spencer nods to the rounded mounds of sand that edge the beach, formed by wind and waves and time.

My mother smiles.

“You ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” I brag. “Wait till I show you Jockey’s Ridge, which just happens to be the tallest active sand dune system in the eastern United States, and the Wright Brothers National Memorial. The monument sits on top of a ninety-foot hill that began life as a sand dune.”

Spencer laughs but also manages to look suitably impressed.

Although the signs of heavy rain are still apparent, Mother Nature is gifting us with blue skies, pulled taffy clouds, and calm seas. The ocean washes in and out with a friendly, nonthreatening whoosh that nonetheless whittles away at the ground we walk on. Over time it reshapes these islands and spits of land.It makes some larger and others smaller. Sometimes it swallows them completely along with whatever was built on top of them. As any Banker will tell you, it’s best not to forget that even the gentlest nibbling can become a gobble. That the breeze can become a gale that sends the ocean pounding in like an agitated sumo wrestler. More than a thousand ships have gone down along this shoreline. There’s a reason lifesaving stations were so important here, even before they came under the rule of the Coast Guard.

We walk at a leisurely pace that I’m pretty sure is illegal in Manhattan. For a while I just soak in the sun and enjoy the breeze tossing my hair. I listen with half an ear to my mother and Spencer go about the business of getting acquainted. It’s clear they don’t need me to interpret or facilitate.

Always interested in people’s stories, Spencer asks her how we settled on the Outer Banks, and I hear my mother’s account of how shortly after I was born she just got on the road and drove east until she reached the ocean and couldn’t go any farther, an impulsive decision she blames on postpregnancy hormones and lack of sleep. There’s no mention of her grief at becoming a widow so young while she was pregnant with me. Or the horror of losing her parents to a car accident not long after, which is why there are no pictures of them with me. She has always presented her arrival here as the beginning of a great, if unplanned, adventure. (Which is odd given how planned out and organized she’s been since I’ve been aware enough to notice.) But I think, not for the first time, how very alone we were and how frightened she must have been.

I left for New York at the same age she came here and in much more dire straits than I would have faced if Bree hadn’t wussed out on me, but I always knew I could come home if I had to. Plus I had a mother who was my biggest cheerleader just a phone call away.

I tune back in as she explains how her aunt Velda in Charlotte became a mother and grandmother to us. She looks offacross the ocean and I admire her all over again for all she lost and all she survived. “She was the keeper of THE DRESS. When she died it came to me.” My mother’s voice breaks and I take Spencer’s hand and give it a warning squeeze. I learned as a child not to ask too many questions about the series of events that brought us here.

“Ahh,” Spencer says. “THE DRESS. Lauren showed me a picture of you in it. It’s beautiful, and I love that it’s been in your family for so long.”

My mother nods but her smile is a careful one.

“From what I’ve seen, Jameson women are not only beautiful and talented but fearless. You picked up and went somewhere completely new with a newborn. Lauren climbed on that bus to New York by herself. I’m not sure I would have had the nerve to do either of those things at twenty-one. I could barely make myself try a different deli or bagel place at that age.”

“Well, New Yorkers are loyal to their favorite restaurants and sports teams to the bitter end and against all logic,” I point out, grateful that he’s introduced a lighter tone. I’ve never told my mother or Spencer how traumatic that first year in New York was and I’m not planning to unburden myself now.

“Too true,” he concedes. “But you both demonstrated a lot of chutzpah. I admire that.”

My mother looks around and draws what looks like a steadying breath. “I still love it here more than any place I’ve ever been, but I wish you could have seen it the way it was when I first arrived. There was a fraction of a fraction of the houses that are here now. And when you became a full-time resident it was like you’d become a member of a club—only it had no rules or membership dues. There was no mold you had to ‘fit into’ unless it was the lack of a mold.” She smiles and something in her loosens. “Things could get a little wild and crazy. But at the same time you could live alone in a house with no neighbors for milesand miles and feel completely safe. The electricity went out at the drop of a hat or the approach of an incoming storm. The roads that were here would get buried in sand or end up underwater. You had to have a pioneer spirit and a willingness to live without a lot of the comforts of ‘civilization.’ It helped you bond with the people around you—and we were there for each other. Kind of like settlers circling the wagons.”

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