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“I know your mom would’ve been good with this,” Dad added, unaware of the whole ‘Russian Mob’ thing. My dad was unaware of every facet of Jay’s criminal life. I knew he wasn’t one hundred percent convinced, no way my dad was that naïve, but he didn’t know everything. Because if he’d known everything, he wouldn’t be standing here with tears of happiness in his eyes.
“She would’ve loved this,” he continued. “She loved you, sweetie. So much. More than life.” He reached into his jacket as I struggled with my feelings about my mother.
I’d been struggling with them all day. Wondering what this day might’ve been like if she was alive. Would she be surly, vacant and medicated? Vibrant, warm, loving? Or someone else entirely?
I had Janet. Yeah, she flew all the way in from New Zealand for the wedding. She’d brought a good amount of wine, too, as a wedding present. Wine that we’d cracked open earlier with Zoe, Yasmin and Wren, while Wren moaned that she couldn’t have any of it. Wren who, unsurprisingly, became fast friends with Janet.
Yes, I had my warm, slightly crazy and wonderful friend from New Zealand, I had my best girlfriends, and I had my dad, but I did not have my mother. Although her absence had pretty much been the norm for a large part of my life, it never felt more yawning than it did today.
“She would’ve handled this stuff better than me,” Dad told me as he unwrapped something he had in a handkerchief. “I know there’s something about blue, old, borrowed and new. I fucked up on the borrowed and new.” He held open his hand. “But I’ve got something borrowed. Blue. Your mom wore this on our wedding day.”
I looked down at my father’s callused hand. On top of the handkerchief was an ornate hair comb. Silver with tiny, ornate flowers—daisies—glittering with diamonds and sapphires.
Dad cleared his throat. “You don’t have to wear it,” he stated quickly. “In case you think it’s bad luck after what happened with your mom, or if it doesn’t go with your dress—”
“Dad,” I interrupted, putting my hand on the hair comb. “It’s perfect.” My voice broke slightly.
“Will you put it in for me?” I asked him, voice small.
Dad looked vaguely panicked. “I’m scared I’ll mess up your hair Wren will do me, ‘prison style’ like I overheard her threatening her boyfriend for almost knocking over a candle earlier.”
I laughed at the very serious tone to my father’s voice. “Don’t worry, I’ll protect you. Wren wouldn’t dare hurt the bride on her wedding day. It would ruin the aesthetic.”
“I don’t know what that means, but okay,” Dad chuckled.
I turned, and my father gently slid the clip into my hair.
“You’re going to have a wonderful life, sweetie,” he whispered.
And because he was my dad and because the day already felt perfect, I believed him.
Jay
He should leave.
Should walk out of this place, get in a car, then on a plane and leave.
Without Stella.
Sure, it would break her. Shatter her. But she’d still be alive, breathing, albeit in pieces. Though Wren had outdone herself at making this wedding in to something spectacular, something worthy of Stella, Jay reckoned neither of them had imagined having various men with semiautomatic weapons patrolling the area to make sure no one came in armed, planning to kill the bride solely for marrying him.
Then there would be the bomb experts he’d had come in to check the place for explosives and weak spots. Everyone working the party had had to be vetted, thoroughly. Then searched for weapons.
Yes, if Stella was marrying some square jawed, all-American who worked in an office nine to five and had a semi regular upbringing with two parents who would eventually divorce and a golden retriever who would eventually die, she wouldn’t have to worry about someone killing her on her wedding day.
Of course Stella wasn’t worrying about someone killing her on her wedding day. She was far too innocent for that thought to even cross her mind. She was smart, Stella. Jay knew she understood his business, understood that he wouldn’t be going so far as to have a full-time bodyguard on her if the threat wasn’t real.
Stella also lived in a world where things like getting murdered by the Mob on her wedding day was a plot to a movie, not an actual, possible scenario. She trusted Jay with her life. Just by going through with this, by wearing his fucking ring, by taking his fucking name, she was trusting him with her life.
So he should’ve left. Because it was sick, and it was fucked up. Because Jay would be fucking ruined if something ever did happen to her on his watch. Because Stella deserved better.
But instead of walking out the door, he buttoned his jacket. He took a drink of the whisky he’d poured for himself and Richard when he’d come in for the obligatory father of the bride speech. Though he’d gone much easier on Jay than he deserved. There had been thinly veiled threats that Jay knew that Richard would make good on if he hurt his daughter. Richard loved that girl more than anything in the world, and Jay couldn’t imagine it was easy to be watching someone like Jay take her in to a life that wasn’t meant for her.
