I push open the actual bathroom door with a metal-handle-on-wallpaperthwack, and four startled heads snap up to stare at me, the harbinger of loud sounds.
“Oh,” I whisper. “Sorry.”
The ivory-gowned bridesmaids are gathered around what looks to be a woman crumpled on the tile. No… a bride.Thebride. Imogen Baldwin, I can assume, from her flower-studded blonde updo, white-knuckled bouquet, and long pearl-colored gown, a vision of Carolyn Bessette. I’d seen her name on the hand-calligraphedwedding invitation Winston had texted me—Together with their families, Bernard Baudelaire and Imogen Baldwin joyfully request you to celebrate their marriage with a night of divine company and artful mingling—but this is the first I’m seeing her.
Since the cocktail hour had gone excruciatingly long. And it had seemed like the wedding wasn’t happening.
And…
“Oh no,” I say, too surprised to formulate a smarter sentence.
The bride takes one look at my startled face, then bursts into tears.
“He—didn’t—come,” Imogen Baldwin sobs into an embroidered hand towel, chest hitching between words. “He said he only left those other women at the altar because he realized they were going to leave him first, but I told him I wouldn’t and I thought he believed me, and he promised me he would come. Hepromised.”
Well, I would hope so, I think. Or that’s what I would think, if my heart wasn’t breaking for her and this specific, horrible lie she’d believed enough to look so beautiful.When someone shows you who they are….Grandma always said, never fully finishing the thought. She didn’t have to. “Imogen, you can’t blame yourself. We all believed him!” one bridesmaid says, waving her hands around Imogen’s glitter-dusted shoulders, as if she could stop her from ruining her perfect makeup by Jedi-mindtricking her problems away. “And it’s going to be okay. That’s the woman I was telling you about—Cat Cromwell. The woman who helped me! She can fix this.”
That’s when I register the person waving her hands around is Prestly. She’s wearingsomuch more blush than when we video called, and it’s honestly really cute, but also oh. Oh no. “I reallycan’t,” I start to explain, “Because I was just here and, God, I’m so sorry, but that Winston guy knows Bernard, so it’s a bit too—”
There’s a knock on the door, then an unmistakably male voice. Vaguely French, as a Baudelaire would be, and just a touch remorseful. “Imogen? Are you in there? Please, can you come out? I know you’re mad at me, and I should’ve been here sooner, but—it doesn’t feel right. Imogen… I can’t do this.”
The women grow quiet. A cold sweat slides down the back of my neck as they turn, one by one, to look at me. The bride is last. Her eyes are wide and glassy, expectant and furious and hopeful and in need of something from me. Andthat’sa look I can read very, very well.
Chapter 2THE ENGLISH OPENING
“She offered youhowmuchmoney?” Renata gasps, and that starts the barking up in the living room again. “Rowan! Enough!”
A toddler in a hot-pink Inspector Paws onesie comes trundling into the kitchen. “That’s not my name,” Rowan growls before dropping onto all fours and blinking expectantly up at me.She’s going through a dog phase, Renata had whispered when she let me in, and her daughter wound around my legs before going for my shoes. Before Renata could stop me, I’d made the benevolent mistake of calling Rowan by her “dog name,” Special Agent Beagle.
I stare at Rowan. The curly-haired four-year-old stares back up at me.
“You need to listen to your mom,” I say, because that seems like the thing to say. But when her shoulders droop, I hide my mouth behind my hand and silently addSpecial Agent Beagle, and then she’s jumping up and running down the hallway, squealing.
“Nice try,” Renata mumbles, going for the half-empty bottle of rosé. “She only listens to you.”
“Because I’m the fun aunt and therefore everything I say is much more exciting. Also, she’s four. And perfect. Give yourself a break.” I purse my lips as Renata refills a novelty Halloween mug.Trickis written on the side in hot pink, with a dog collar below it. “Do we need to have an Inspector Paws intervention?”
“Jesus, yes. Can you break our TV while you’re here? Wait.” Renata sets down the mug and leans toward me. Like her kid, my best friend Renata is 90 percent curly brown hair, 5 percent barely restrained chaos, and the rest pure goodness and love. She’s also one of the few women I know who’s taller than me, and when she leans, I get to feel like a tiny garden gnome staring up at angry Galadriel. “Back to you and the bride and this thing you should not do.”
I go for the wine mug. “I might do it.”
“Dude. No.”
“The internship that Maisie wants to do next fall is unpaid. And we’re waiting to hear if Bailey got into that one art school, but I know she did. And then she’s inart school, and I know she’s going to be the next Hilma af Klint—”
“Who?”
“Have her explain it. But they need the money.”
Renata’s brow wrinkles as I swig the lukewarm rosé, like she’s the one boldly trudging through bitter grocery store tannins. “You’re not your sisters’ keeper,” she says.
“I feel like that one book is kind of all about us being our sisters’ keepers.”
“With Cameron Diaz?”
“The Bible, idiot.”
Renata takes the mug from me, then chugs it. After she swallows—wincing, ha, there’s the tannins—she says, “You’ve never done a job like this. First of all, you were literally at this guy’s wedding. That’sway too close. And the bride is asking you to fake-date aprofessional athlete. Aren’t people obsessed with Formula 1 drivers’ girlfriends? Like, to a weird degree? If you even get close to pulling this off, there will be blogs about you, photographs, internet stalkers. And that’s all before you break up with him. Publicly.”
