Page 41 of My Ex-Best Friend's Wedding

I see the concern on Bree’s face and I think of all the times we were there for each other. Then I think of all the times we weren’t. This morning when we woke we were barely speaking to each other and while we may have mended a few fences, there are plenty of unresolved issues piled up between us.

I don’t know whether I can handle staying at Bree’s. I’m not sure I can handle anything at the moment, including the tears that are seeping out of the corners of my eyes.

Spencer steps over and puts an arm around my shoulders. “Thanks for checking around for us, Dee. And for calling Brianna.” He turns his gaze on my ex–best friend. “I know I speak for both of us when I say how much we appreciate your invitation. We’d love to stay with you.”

Twenty

Bree

With Lauren in the house it sheds twenty years. And in some ways so do I. I try to hold myself apart, or at least at arm’s length, just to be on the safe side, but it’s almost impossible not to think about all the hours Lauren and I spent together here playing and making up stories under my grandmother’s watchful eye, the holiday meals we shared with Lauren and Kendra, and binge-watchingPretty Woman(before binge-watching was a thing) in the terrible months after my grandmother died.

When Clay and I got married we considered moving in to one of the rental houses his family owned up in Kill Devil Hills or Southern Shores, but this house my grandmother left me was the last bit of her I had. I couldn’t bring myself to let go of it or rent it out to strangers.

“Where do you want me to put these?” Spencer holds up their suitcases and I lead him toward the stairs.

“It’s the second room on your left. If you hit the one with the unmade bed that looks like a tornado swept through, you’ve stopped too soon.”

?Back in the kitchen Lauren is studying the space with genuine interest that seems to have elbowed her misery aside. “Thislooks like something off ofExtreme Makeover. It’s really beautiful, but still homey, too.”

“Thanks. We tried to keep as much of the original Victorian farmhouse as we could. I didn’t want to scare my grandmother and grandfather out of their graves.” I gesture toward the cemetery across the street. “We started upstairs and worked our way down so it’s been an ongoing project. I don’t plan to live through construction ever again, but I’m really glad we did it.”

“It’s great. Your grandmother’s table looks perfect at the center of the banquette and I always loved this sideboard. Especially when it was groaning under a holiday ham or turkey.” Her voice breaks and she trails a shaky finger over the oak top of the cabinet that some long-ago ancestor brought over from England, then looks up at the arrangement of black-and-white photos on the wall above it. I see her zero in on the shot of her and Clay and me standing near the bleachers after a Friday-night football game. Clay’s in his team jersey with Lauren and me bookended on either side of him. There’s a more recent shot of Rafe wearing a Manteo High jersey with the same number 22 his father wore. Nearby is a current shot of Lily in her cheerleading uniform mid-cheer with pompoms raised.

As a child I hid inside books, wrapped in loneliness and self-doubt, wondering why my parents didn’t love me enough to keep me. My greatest achievement is that my daughter is the opposite, and that she’s secure enough to get snippy or show her anger; things I never felt secure enough to do with my parents. For a brief moment I wonder if Lauren regrets not having children.

Lauren turns and looks at me, really looks, for the first time. “You’ve changed.”

“Over the last twenty years?” I snort. “Of course I have. We all change. If we’re lucky we grow and get better. You just weren’t around to notice.”

Her eyes tear up and I feel like a jerk for chiding her, giveneverything that’s just happened. I have no idea how she isn’t sobbing hysterically. “Come sit down.”

I wait while she slides onto the banquette that we built in beneath the bay window. Then I pull three wineglasses from the cupboard and retrieve a bottle of Chenin Blanc from the wine refrigerator.

Spencer comes back and sits beside her and I pour us each a glass then set the bottle and a bowl of mixed nuts in the center of the table. For a few moments we sip wine and look at one another. Spencer doesn’t attempt to hide his concern over Lauren’s emotional state and I’m impressed with his ability not to rush in and attempt to “fix” what’s gone so horribly wrong.

I’m not doing so well with this, because while I still can’t reconcile Kendra’s behavior with the generous, caring woman I’ve always known, and I am beyond curious about Jake Warner and what he’ll do next, I want more than anything to fix the damage that’s been done. Or at least try to patch it. Because while I have managed to live without my best friend for the last twenty years, I know in my heart that Kendra will never be able to survive a life that doesn’t include her daughter.

Lauren

“Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?” Spencer has asked me this at least five times since Jake—I’m just not ready to start throwing the wordfatheraround—called fifteen minutes ago to ask if I’d come over to the Dogwood to “talk.”

I don’t want to go alone but I don’t want anyone to come with me, either. Not even Spencer. As I get up from the banquette, leaving him and Bree to finish the Chenin Blanc, there’s a tiny part of me that imagines Bree coming and holding my hand—after all, she listened all those years while I tried to piece together a father from a photograph of a man in a powder-blue tuxedo.

I leave her house to walk the few blocks to the inn, my knees wobbly. I try my hardest not to even think about my mother and what she’s done, but as I’ve learned while trying to clear my mind and to meditate, trying not to think about somethingisactually thinking about it. She might as well be walking right beside me.

As I near the Dogwood I see him sitting on the front porch swing. He’s moving languidly, one long jean-clad leg bending and flexing as he swings back and forth. He appears deep in thought and as I watch him, it’s clear some of those thoughts are troubling. I take in details I missed during our turbulent introduction earlier today. I notice that his nose is slightly hooked at the bridge. That his mouth is wide and expressive while his chin is square and determined. He’s attractive in a subtle way, average until you really look at him. Or he really looks at you.

“Hi.” His face lights up when he sees me. He halts the movement of the swing with his foot then motions to the empty space next to him. I take a seat, intensely aware of how momentous a moment this is. I feel shy and a little frightened. Yet I have an urgent need to know... everything.

“So.”

He smiles. “So indeed.”

“I don’t know where to start or even what to ask. I mean, I’ve been imagining this in some shape or form virtually forever—having a father, I mean—but I never really imagined you...”

“Coming back from the dead?” His tone is wry but wrapped in a layer of hurt.

“I just don’t understand how she could have done this to me... to us...” It takes everything I have not to cry.

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