Page 43 of My Ex-Best Friend's Wedding

“No. There’s no way they could have known and not toldme,” he says with certainty. “They were good friends with the Munroes right up until the day your mother stopped our wedding. Munroe is Kendra’s last name. Jameson was her mother’s maiden name. To my knowledge our parents never spoke after that day even though our mothers had known each other since childhood. If what Kendra says is true and her parents expected her to give you up, it makes sense that they wouldn’t have told my parents. It could be why they severed ties with them.”

We sit and swing, lost in thoughts of what was versus what might have been. Two half brothers and two sets of grandparents. How could my mother have deprived me of so much?

“Okay. My turn.” His voice pulls me back from the path my thoughts have taken. “What was it like growing up here?” His voice softens. “Did you have the things you needed?”

I’m so angry with my mother that I want to tell him that it was horrible. That having no family ruined my life. But even now and despite my rage I know that’s not true.

“She had to cobble together jobs to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table. I always knew that, but I don’t really remember ever feeling any worse off than anyone else. Jobs were harder to get in the off-season but my mother always worked and she had lots of friends. People who lived on the beach here full-time—we all knew each other. And we were there for each other. We weren’t original families like the Creefs and Daniels and Austins and Midgetts and such here in Manteo. Or even like the first families that owned the original beach houses the guidebooks call the Unpainted Aristocracy.” Tears prick at my eyes again. “The only thing I didn’t have that I really wanted was a father.”

He draws a sharp breath, as if he’s just taken a punch, but I’m not going to apologize for answering his question.

A few moments pass before he asks, “When did you start writing?”

I let a swing or two go by while I consider the question. “Ialmost can’t remember a time when I didn’t. Even when my mother was reading me fairy tales I was rewriting the endings in my head. Not too long after Bree and I learned to read we wrote our first story together.” I actually smile when I remember us sitting at her grandmother’s kitchen table with our fingers wrapped around No. 2 pencils, our tongues clenched between our teeth, trying to sound out the words we’d need to tell the story of a sea sprite that couldn’t find its way back to the ocean.

He listens and nods. Then we skim along the surface for a while. I discover that his favorite color is blue while mine is red. That he likes his steak and burgers medium rare while I’m still feeling slightly guilty for eating meat at all. He has favorite football, baseball, and basketball teams while I haven’t spent more than thirty seconds thinking about football since I graduated from college.

The sun slips in the sky and the breeze grows cooler. We’re still tossing questions and answers at each other when the front door opens and Dee steps out.

“Sorry to interrupt.” She hands us each a bottled water. “But I come bearing messages.”

We screw off the caps and tilt the water to our lips and I notice how long and almost elegant Jake’s hands are. The way his Adam’s apple moves as he downs his first few gulps. Everything about him is new and fascinating.

I pat my pockets and remember that I left my cell phone at Brianna’s because I didn’t want to be interrupted and because I didn’t want to know when or if my mother called. We wait for Dee to continue.

“Okay, first of all, Bree said she’s making dinner and she’s expecting you both by seven. It’s six thirty right now.”

“Thank you.” I’m about to lob another question at Jake when I notice that Dee’s still standing there.

“And your mother has called three times. She just wants a quick word with you.”

My jaw tightens and I’m careful not to look at the father she kept from me. When I finally answer I keep my voice as neutral as I can because myfatherhas asked me to let go of the anger. “I’m afraid she’ll have to wait.” It takes everything I have not to add theuntil hell freezes over.

Twenty-one

Kendra

I spend the rest of Saturday in my bathrobe, slumped in the old cane rocking chair on the back deck, staring out at the ocean. The wind is strong. Clouds scud across the low gray sky. Waves pound the sand in a relentless rhythm that drums itself into my head. I’m vaguely aware that I should go inside but I just sit there. Rocking.

When it gets too dark to distinguish sky from sea I go inside, but I don’t even consider getting into bed. It’s nightmarish enough replaying what happened in the daylight. I cannot risk reliving it alone in the dark.

The thing I’ve feared above all else for forty years has happened and I now know that anyone who says that the truth will set you free has never been forced to listen as someone else revealed it. If only I could have come up with a way to tell Jake and Lauren about each other without doing harm to either, none of us would be hurting right now.

The soundtrack of Lou Rawls’s “If I Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda”—so sad and soulful and heavy with regret—plays in my head.

As I sit waiting and praying for Lauren to call me back, I tell myself that she’s an intelligent forty-year-old woman who’s about to get married and who might even have children of herown. Surely that will let her see this through the eyes of an adult rather than those of a hurt child.

I know that nothing I say or do is going to erase what’s happened or eliminate the mistakes I’ve made. I’m going to have to live with the fact that our relationship may never be what it was. That she may never again look at me in the way she used to. But, oh God, please let her forgive me enough to be a part of each other’s lives.

Just before sunrise Sunday morning I finally fall asleep on the living room couch, curled into a ball and clutching my cell phone. I blink awake to the sound of it ringing. Hope spikes through me. As I fumble the phone to my ear I tell myself that things are going to be okay. That Lauren just needed a day to cool off and absorb everything and that now she’ll hear me out.

“Hello?” My heart pounds as I push out the word.

“You need to come right now and deliver a cake or something.”

I slump back on the couch at the sound of Dee’s voice. “I’m not scheduled to cook or deliver anything today.” I scrub at my eyes and look out the window. The sun is already up. The sky is a clear, vibrant blue.

“I know. But Lauren’s here having coffee with her... with her father.” There’s a brief pause as we both absorb the word. “I can find a way to keep her here until you get here, but you’ve got to hurry.”

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