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Chapter 1
ENSLEY
I can’t believe what I’m seeing.
I’ve heard about situations like this at weddings.
In viral videos. Social media rants.
But this is the first time I’ve seen one right in front of me.
I glance over at my best friend, Ronnie. She’s the bride, dressed in a beautiful but simple knee-length sheath.
Her mother’s dress.
The mother who died only two years ago, before Ronnie’s engagement.
The wedding was supposed to be a small event at the park where Ronnie’s mom used to push her on the swings. She wanted to honor this amazing woman who had been a mother figure to all of us in the bridal party.
Well, the original bridal party.
Now there are ten bridesmaids and ten groomsmen. A country club. A swing band. And a seated dinner for four hundred.
This wedding got hijacked.
And now this.
The guilty party is the person right in front of me. Her arrival has left all the bridesmaids in shocked silence, piled up in the corner like a bushel of peaches in our strapless, puffy dresses that flatter no one.
Ronnie lets out a whimper. I know that sound. She’s trying to control herself to avoid an outburst.
I can’t believe it. I just can’t.
The center of the attention is Felicia, Ronnie’s new stepmother.
We don’t know what came over Ronnie’s dad when he married her. But Felicia is a firestorm. She commandeered their lives, using those big pouty lips to convince Ronnie’s dad to sell their thirty-year family home for a McMansion near this country club.
Felicia is a trustee of the club, and once Ronnie announced her engagement, Felicia insisted the wedding should mirror theirelevated station, whatever that means.
I felt helpless during the last few months, watching Ronnie’s charming dream wedding unravel.
But not today.
Not with this.
Because Felicia has entered the room, not in the stately blue dress we thought she was wearing as stepmother of the bride.
But in a full-length beaded white gown. She even has baby’s breath in her hair and a tiny white veil over her eyes. All that’s missing is a bouquet.
Next to her, Ronnie looks like a flower girl.
She’s been in the room a full minute, and no one has spoken.
“Well?” Felicia asks. “What do you think? It’s the dress I always wanted to wear to an affair like this.”
I see how it is. Felicia married Ronnie’s father in a weekend getaway to Vegas that probably involved vodka and edibles, and she’s making up for everything she missed.
Ronnie tries to get a few words out. I can tell how much it’s killing her to say something nice. “It’s a lot.”
