"Harper!" Amelia's voice carries up the stairs. "Stop wallowing! I need help with my dress!"
I'm not wallowing.
I'm processing.
There's a difference.
The dress in question is hanging on my closet door—a simple cream sheath that Amelia found at a vintage shop in Brooklyn. Very her. Very "I'm getting married at a courthouse and I refuse to make a big deal about it even though Mom is absolutely making a big deal about it."
I grab the dress and head downstairs to find the kitchen in controlled chaos.
Mom is at the stove, making tourtière and cipâte and about fifteen other traditional Québécois dishes because apparently a courthouse wedding reception for sixty-three people requires the food output of a small restaurant.
Dad is at the table, hands shaking slightly as he tries to tie ribbons on small favor boxes. The Parkinson's has gotten worse in the past week—or maybe I'm just noticing it more now that I'm living here again.
Now that I’m fired. Now that I have nowhere else to go.
Margot is frosting a cake that looks professionally made, which is unfair because Margot is a nurse, not a baker, and shouldn't be good at this many things.
And Amelia is in the living room, currently tangled in tulle.
"Help," she says when she sees me. "I tried to put on the slip thing and now I'm trapped."
"How are you trapped in a slip?"
"I don't know! It has, like, fourteen layers and they're all attacking me!"
I untangle her, and we head upstairs to my bedroom—the designated "bridal suite" for the next two hours.
Margot follows with the cake, setting it carefully on my desk next to my old laptop.
"Okay," Margot announces, closing the door. "Wedding prep time. Which means we have exactly—" she checks her phone "—ninety minutes to get Amelia dressed, do her hair and makeup, and get to the courthouse."
"I can do my own makeup," Amelia protests.
"You absolutely cannot. Last time you did your own makeup, you looked like a drunken raccoon."
"That was for Halloween!"
"My point stands."
I help Amelia into the slip—which does indeed have approximately fourteen layers—and then the dress, which fits her perfectly.
She looks beautiful. Young and happy and so in love with Declan it's almost painful to watch.
I turn away, pretending to look for bobby pins.
"Harper," Margot says quietly. "You okay?"
"Fine."
"You're lying."
"I'm processing."
"That's what you said eight days ago."
"I'm still processing."
