Liv Goldenhorn stared at the cage of bristling birds and tried not to panic.
Like all career wedding planners, she knew tradition and ritual didn’t arise from some universal experience of love and commitment. Rituals were reinvented and reinterpreted all the time. The idea that an engagement ring should cost three months’ salary originated from the marketing campaign of a Depression-era diamond company. Bridesmaids dressed alike to confuse the evil spirits of ancient Rome. Wedding veils came from arranged marriages, when families didn’t want the groom to spot his wife-to-be at the other end of the aisle and think, No thanks, then slip out the back door.
Nothing symbolized love so well as a dove, but you never released actual doves at a wedding: you released white homing pigeons. Unlike their delicate cousins, who would get lost and eaten by hawks, pigeons were born with internal Google Maps and were a perfect match for the lovely winged creature so favored by Aphrodite and modern brides alike.
But this was a cage of scrappy gray city pigeons.
“Ugh!” Ralph Gorman, her florist and best friend, grimaced and took a step back. “What are they doing in here?”
The birds clucked and cooed, shedding feathers in a heavy metal cage that sat at the kitchen’s service entrance. Liv folded her arms. “Preparing to be a flying metaphor for everlasting love?”
A bird squirted a white stream of poop outside the cage.
Liv snatched a paper towel, thankful the caterers were busy setting up cheese plates in the ballroom. This was Eliot’s fault. Her husband coordinated all live-animal deliveries, from ponies to peacocks. Where was he? The flight from his semi-regular consulting gig in Kentucky had landed over an hour ago, and he’d promised to come straight from the airport. The minutes were falling away like raining confetti; guests would arrive in under an hour.
Gorman—who loathed his given name and only ever went by his surname—inched closer, fingering the patterned silk neckerchief knotted at his throat. “Should they be in the kitchen?”
“Oh, yes.” Liv whipped out her phone. “Yes, I’m certain I told the delivery man, please leave a cage of winged rats where food for two hundred is being prepared.”
The number for Birds Birds Birds went straight to voice mail—it was Thanksgiving weekend. Liv swore and hung up.
“I can’t believe some idiot just left them here! Eliot must’ve booked the cheapest bird-rental company on Long Island.” She toed the metal cage. It didn’t budge. “Do you think we could move them?”
“Darling, I do flowers. Not manual labor. And speaking of…” Gorman gave her a look. “We have a problem.”
From the expression on his face, the non-doves would have to wait.
Liv flung a tablecloth over the cage, then strode with Gorman through an obnoxiously palatial estate, stepping outside to follow the winding path toward the ceremony site: a boathouse overlooking a picturesque frozen lake. Gorman explained that the bushels of lavender the bride had insisted on, desperate to evoke the golden haze of late summer in Provence, were attracting unwanted guests.
“Guests?” Liv repeated, her breath fogging in the crisp November air. “What, have some horticulturally inclined ex-boyfriends shown up?”
Gorman flicked something from Liv’s choppy black bob. “Bees.”
A local hive had moved into the boat shed rafters for the winter. Gorman and his partner, Henry, had recommended flowers with no fragrance and low pollen. The bride refused. The lavender, coupled with the space heaters warming the shed, had clearly made the bees think that spring had sprung early.
“Well, we are out of the city.” Liv scanned a run sheet that was rapidly making a genre shift from sober nonfiction to slapstick farce. Where in the world was Eliot? Half the items on the run sheet were his responsibility. “We can’t ask nature to be less nature-y for the duration of— Ow!” Pain needled her arm. “One just stung me!”
Gorman gave her an I told you so look. “Henry brought an EpiPen.”
“I’m fine.” Ignoring the hives already forming on her arm, Liv pushed open the doors to the boathouse. She expected to see the two hundred white chairs draped in French satin and a thousand flickering flameless tea lights. What she did not expect to see under the triangular arbor—reclaimed wood, from the bride’s childhood home—was the DJ making out with a bridesmaid. Her hand was down the front of his pants.
Liv gasped. “Zach!”
“Shit!” Startled, Zach Livingstone backed up. His pants dropped to his ankles. He tripped and grabbed the flimsy arbor for support. He and the arbor toppled over, crashing to the floor.
Panic shot through Liv’s chest.
The arbor was no longer an arbor. Two pieces of wood lay five feet apart, as if refusing to speak to each other. And Eliot wasn’t around to fix it.
“Liv, I’m so sorry.” Zach’s London accent rendered every word as plummy as Christmas pudding. “I was just showing this young lady the size of the, er, lake.”
The bridesmaid gave a tipsy giggle.
Henry Chu rushed into the boathouse with two bushels of fresh lavender. “What happened?”
“Arbor,” Liv sighed. “Zach.”
“Hello, Henry,” Zach called, popping to his feet and yanking up his pants.
“Oh, hi Zach.” Henry, petter of neighborhood dogs, sender of birthday cards, unflappable designer of all things floral, ducked and wove away from a bee circling his head. He glanced at Gorman. “Have you told her? They’re getting worse.”
But Gorman’s gaze had wandered to the hot, young Brit zipping up his fly.
Liv clicked her fingers in his face. “Gor! Let’s try to fix the arbor. Zach, button up your shirt, this isn’t Mardi Gras.”
Zia Ruiz breezed in, carrying wineglasses. “Oh, Liv,” she called, heading for the bar at the back, “looks like there’s a couple of pigeons loose in the kitchen.”
Liv pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to remember if she’d secured the cage door. Apparently not. “How good are you at catching birds?”
Zia laughed. “Not very.” Even in her white blouse and black pants, she retained a whiff of carefree boho backpacker. Maybe it was the ylang-ylang she wore instead of deodorant. If Liv didn’t trust her so implicitly, she’d assume Zia would be the kind who’d free a few caged birds.
Weddings were about tradition, but more so, how traditions were changing. Liv’s tradition was that the business she ran with her husband was respected, professional, and nimble in a crisis. She’d troubleshot hundreds of events, always able to steer the runaway horses away from the cliff at the last moment. But right now the steeds were bolting and she couldn’t find the reins. Liv picked up the two pieces of the arbor, glancing around for something that could be fashioned into a hammer.
Darlene Mitchell, the wedding singer, strode in with a wireless microphone. Her tone was as prim as her appearance: a cream silk dress that showed off her dark skin. “Zach. We need to sound check.”
Zach ran a hand through his flop of hair. “Coming, love.”
The bridesmaid’s lipstick-smeared mouth fell open. “Love?! Is she your girlfriend?”
He laughed. “Not exactly.”
Darlene shuddered. “Not at all.”
Satisfied, the bridesmaid continued to ooze over Zach, pressing herself against his side.
And while Liv should have been hurrying the two musicians along, and fixing the arbor, and finding a solution for the escaped pigeons and newly awakened bees, the thought that formed as clear as lake water in her mind was this: it had been months since Eliot had touched her like that. Maybe even years.
“What. The. Hell.”
Everyone froze.
Liv swung around.
The bride stood in the doorway.
Liv’s stomach dropped through the floorboards and into the frigid lake below.
Not the bride. Anyone but the bride. Today, the bride was president and prime minister, the CEO, God herself. Things could be a freewheeling disaster behind the scenes. The mother-in-law could slap the priest, or the best man could lose the rings in a bet involving hot dogs (true stories). But the bride must only experience a highlight reel of physical and emotional transcendence. It was her day, and it was perfect. Except now, it wasn’t.
“Oh my God, you look gorgeous,” Liv said.
Ignoring her, the bride addressed the bridesmaid. “You’re supposed to be helping me get ready, not screwing the busboy!”
“DJ,” Zach corrected, tucking in his shirt and giving her a wink. “And MC, and I’m also a musician. Man of many hats, really.”
“Sorry, babe. Got distracted.” The bridesmaid hooked an arm around Zach’s neck. “It’s a wedding.”
The bride’s gaze found the pieces of wood in Liv’s hands. “What happened to my arbor?”
Gorman, Henry, Zach, Darlene, and Zia all looked at Liv, who said, “Everything is completely under control.”
A couple of pigeons fluttered past the bride’s head. She jabbed a finger in the air. “Someone said those are my doves?” She advanced on Liv, a football field of white tulle dragging behind her. “I’m getting married. This is supposed to be my special day.”
Eliot would calm this woman with his own special brand of magic that quieted, charmed, and switched focus to a champagne toast with bridesmaids.
“It is!” Liv said. “And it’s going to be wonderful. Can everyone please get back to what they are supposed to be doing, and—”
The bride screamed. A protracted just-found-a-dead-body-in-the-bath scream.
Zia dropped a wineglass. Darlene’s microphone squealed. Henry, Gorman, and Liv all said “What?” as Zach said, “Bloody hell. Oh, that looks bad.”
The bride’s bottom lip had swollen to the size of an overripe raspberry. “Thomething bit my thip.”
“Bees,” whispered Gorman.
“Beeth?” The bride’s false eyelashes widened. “Beeth? I’m allergic to beeth!”
Liv’s phone buzzed. Eliot Goldenhorn (Huz) calling. Finally: a life raft.
“Eliot! I’m dying here! Where the hell are you?”
But it wasn’t Eliot on the other end of the line. It was a girl. Her voice had a light Southern lilt. She was completely hysterical. “I’m sorry, they just found him like this—I got your number from his phone, I know we haven’t met—I didn’t know who else to call!”
Everything—the boathouse, the bride, the beeth—disappeared. A new kind of horror broke in Liv’s chest.
“Who is this?” she demanded. “What’s going on?”
The girl took a shuddering breath. “It’s Eliot,” she wailed. “He’s dead.”
Eliot was dead.
Impossible. And yet, not.
Myocardial infarction: heart attack. Eliot was forty-nine. The same age as Liv. Eliot was in perfect health. Eliot was in a closed casket. Liv touched the side of it. The wood was smooth and very cold.
It was an icy day at Salem Fields Cemetery in Brooklyn. The sky was the color of dryer lint.
Ben had Velcroed himself to her hip. She could only see the top of her son’s small head. He should be wearing a scarf. Liv couldn’t remember if he’d worn one. She couldn’t remember getting ready.
Liv understood she should mingle with the mourners gathered on the stumpy grass. She told her feet to move toward them. Her feet didn’t. She couldn’t leave the casket. And so the people started moving toward her. They were speaking to her. She recognized some of them; she was replying to them. But Liv couldn’t hear a thing. She was suspended behind a barrier, as transparent and tough as bulletproof glass. From behind the glass, she had a sense of what these people thought they saw. Liv Goldenhorn: someone resilient and impressive, the sort of person you wanted to sit next to at a dinner party. She’d stripped her own floors, gotten her son into the good public school, and once fought off a mugger by bashing him with her New Yorker tote bag and screaming she had syphilis (a lie). Even her own cheating husband’s funeral was something Liv Goldenhorn had been determined to get through.
But standing by Eliot’s casket, she was realizing that Liv Goldenhorn was just an idea of a person. And ideas about people could change.
More words were said. The casket was lowered. Handfuls of soil were tossed on the polished wood. And just like that, it was over. The mourners started drifting toward the street. There was a lightness in their voices and shoulders. Their brush with mortality was over; life was back to normal. Liv’s entire world had been obliterated in just one week—her routine, her sense of safety, her livelihood, all snatched away. There was no more normal.
She wrapped both arms around her son, holding him as he finally broke down and cried. Ben was eight but looked younger. His features were fine and expensive-looking, like a porcelain dinner set viewed behind glass.
“I’m here, baby,” she whispered over and over again. “I’m here. I’ll always be here.”
It was the sort of lie done out of kindness.
She held her only child until he quieted, smoothing his dark hair off his fevered face. Her miracle baby. The baby who defied all odds. Conceiving Ben was supposed to have been the great challenge of her life. The absolute hardest thing. And then Eliot died, and four years of IVF seemed like a relaxing holiday.
Liv’s mother must’ve seen something off in her face because she took her grandson’s hand and said something about meeting them by the car—C’mon Benny, let’s give Mom a moment—then they were gone.
Liv stood at the cemetery gates, wondering if she was going to cry but instead feeling an endless absence of everything. A feeling without a horizon.
She didn’t know where to put her hands. What time it was. What had just happened.
A week ago, she was married.
A week ago, everything was predictable.
For better, or for worse.
Eight days later, Liv was hauling a bag of mindlessly purchased groceries from the trunk of her car when someone behind her tentatively spoke her name.
Liv’s instinct was to ignore them. She did not need yet another pity lasagna. But the safety of her brownstone was half a block away.
A young woman stood on the sidewalk. She appeared both apologetic and, oddly, optimistic.
Liv squinted, momentarily mesmerized by the woman’s flawlessly heat-styled doll-blond curls. Liv hadn’t washed her own hair in over a week.
The girl was talking to her. First pointing to the brownstone, where Liv intimated she’d been waiting, then saying something about being sorry for your loss. She was slathered in so much makeup she looked like a frosted cake. Through layers of lip gloss, she spoke the slippery syllables of her name. With a Southern lilt.
The realization of who this person was cut into Liv’s mind so fast she almost dropped the groceries. It was like realizing that the dark shape in the water wasn’t a rock. It was a shark.
Liv’s heart started beating fast, roaring blood into her ears.
Now she was saying something about emails: “… didn’t reply to my emails or voice mails. I’ve already come by twice.”
Between them, a thick white envelope. The girl’s hand was steady as she offered it. Her fingernails were painted translucent pink.
Liv let the groceries fall to the sidewalk. Her fingers felt as thick as sausages as she ripped open the envelope and unfolded a sheaf of good linen paper.
It was a copy of Eliot’s will. They’d both written wills after their son was born; Liv hadn’t returned her lawyer’s recent calls because she knew Eliot had left everything important to her, and Ben. But this will appeared to have been updated. Three weeks ago. Liv tried to scan the tight black font. She recognized her name. Eliot’s name. And, another name with slippery syllables.
She refocused on the girl. There was a pimple near the corner of her mouth, expertly concealed with foundation.
“What,” Liv said, “does all this mean?”
Savannah Shipley’s glossy lips pulled into a smile. “It means that… well, Mrs. Goldenhorn, I guess you’re looking at your new business partner.”
It was such a ludicrous statement, Liv couldn’t get her head around it. The girl’s smile turned hopeful. She appeared poreless, like a balloon. Liv imagined popping her. The way she’d whip around midair, deflating, before landing in a soft, spent heap on the concrete.
“That is impossible.” Liv handed back the will. “There is no more In Love in New York.”
The girl’s eyes widened. Of course they were the color of the Mediterranean. Of course they were. “But the will says—”
Liv grabbed the groceries and slammed the trunk, obliterating her words. She hurried across the street and up the brownstone’s steps, retreating into the safety of her house and its locked front door.
Liv’s hands were shaking as she glugged white wine into a glass, hoping to erase the last few minutes from her memory. Praying she’d never see or hear from that girl ever again.