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I sat back down, reached for my mug, then let my hand glide right on by. No thanks. “That’s my only problem right now, Sis. My bulldog is acting oddly.”
And you’re afraid if you get married your nieces will die, Inner Bitch pointed out. And you’re maybe being haunted by a mermaid.
There are no such things as mermaids, I thought back at her. This was something else. A brain tumor, maybe.
“You sure you’re okay?” Sandra asked.
“Yeah. I’m good. Fine.”
“Okay, good. That’s settled. So, about your wedding?—”
“Actually, let me get on the Misty situation. Because… I can’t focus on the wedding until I make sure my niece is safe.”
My sister looked at me the way she looked at her twins when they were lying to her face. “You just said she was probably fine.”
“Yeah, but— but I’ll feel better when I make sure.”
And you don’t want to talk about the wedding.
“Is there some reason you don’t want to talk about your wedding, Rachel?”
It always gave me a chill when my inner voice agreed with my sister. “Can’t it be that I just don’t feel like it yet?”
“You’ve been engaged since before the pandemic.”
“And we had to delay the wedding three times during the pandemic. Every time we thought it was over?—”
“But now it really is,” she said. “Mostly. We have vaccines. Rache, I’m your sister. You can tell me the truth. I’m on your side, you know that, right?”
“Of course I know that.”
Sighing, I gazed out at the water and foothills beyond. God, I loved it here. Especially in the fall when the leaves started to turn, but my second favorite season was the spring. The leaves on the trees were all young and new, and every week something else burst into bloom. The poplars, the cherries, the apple trees.
A fish jumped. A mosquito landed on my arm. I smacked and missed.
“Are you and Mason okay?” Sandra asked said at length.
That made me sit up straight, my impending mellow shattered. “Of course we are. We’re more than okay. We’re sickeningly okay.”
Her brows rose, her eyes closed. She blew a sigh through O-shaped lips and said, “Thank goodness. I was getting worried.”
“You never have to worry about that.”
She smacked her hand on the binder. I think it was louder than she intended. It made me jump. “Then what the hell is the problem?”
Was I going to tell my sister that I’d had a dream her twin daughters were dead, and didn’t know if it was a premonition, a warning from the other side, or an impending psychotic break? No. She had enough to worry about, the enough being that her kids had the audacity to grow up and leave her.
“If you guys are okay, and there’s nothing wrong,” she said, in a slow-build-up kind of way, and then she flipped open the book, “let’s at least pick the dress!”
I glanced down. Before my eyes was a stack of catalogues from wedding boutiques, and I had no choice but to look through them with her. I took the one from the top and leaned back in my chair. Sandra did the same, and soon we were leaning over to show each other gowns— she as suggestions, me as punchlines.
When I showed her one with a big bustle and said, “For the bride with no ass of her own,” my sister did not laugh. She kind of scowled at me, so I flipped pages with what I hoped was a more serious attitude.
“Honestly, why do wedding gowns all have to look like they belong on aspiring cartoon princesses?”
“What don’t you like?” Sandra asked, glancing over to see where I was looking.
“Poofy skirts. Poofy sleeves. Poofy veils.
