Get Portia married. The words loop in Emma’s head as she slides into her pumps. Get Portia married. If she just keeps saying it, everything she can’t control—and oh, how much there is—will melt like the last winter snow.
Today, she’s walking her daughter down the aisle. Accepting the love and congratulations of her dearest family and friends. Soaking up the light that flashes in Lyle’s eyes every time he sees his soon-to-be wife.
She says, “I’m gushing like a Hallmark card.”
“What?” Carolina calls from the other side of the bathroom door. She’s supposed to help Emma get dressed, but with her bum knee, she’s more of a cheerleader than a gopher.
Emma is due at the venue for pictures in ten minutes. She steps out of the bathroom.
Carolina is sitting in a wing chair dragged into the hallway. Upon seeing Emma, she exclaims, “Oh, Marie.” She’s holding a bag of peanut M&Ms just like Sally did in their favorite, iconic WHMS scene.
Tears threaten to ruin Emma’s still-wet mascara. “I’m supposed to be wearing a bridal gown when you say that.”
Carolina hands over the M&Ms and edges forward to give her squeeze. “Close enough, my precious friend.”
The first thing Emma notices when she arrives is Doris gesticulating at a trio of groomsmen like an airport marshal working the tarmac. They’ve shed their tuxedo jackets and, presumably at Doris’s direction, hoisted a marble baptismal font off its footings.
Emma knows what she’s doing. The font sits alongside the entrance to where Doris insisted the center aisle begin, and she’s been petitioning to have it relocated since their first meeting with the wedding planner.
She’d said, “Can’t we just move that thing?” As if it were an appliance cluttering her countertop.
The planner patiently explained that no, its placement is ceremonial and intentional. “The monks brought it over from Italy in 1909.”
Emma is tempted to stop the groomsmen before they’re discovered and blamed for Doris’s actions. But frankly, she has no mental capacity for worrying about Doris Fluke today. She has an ex-fiancé threatening to crash the party and her sanity, an ex-husband whose pregnant girlfriend looks as if she has the Rock of Gibraltar protruding from her belly, and a daughter who deserves one beautiful day to believe that everything will fall into place.
As if she’d summoned him with her thoughts, Devin walks outside and says, “Hey! You seen our girl?”
Emma can’t take her eyes off Greta. She’s six feet of radiance in a full-length black dress with spaghetti straps that somehow further highlight her amazing boobs and perfectly toned arms. It makes her so angry she wants to spit.
“What?”
“Portia,” Devin repeats. “Have you seen her?”
Greta’s belly is encased in chiffon. She’s very pregnant. A human gift bag puffing over with tissue-paper fun.
She forces herself to look away. “Um—I was just going to peek into the bridal suite now.”
Devin moves to follow her, but she has the presence of mind to stop him. “No boys allowed.” Every mother deserves one special moment with her child on a day like this.
She turns down the colonnade and makes her way to the room where Portia and her bridesmaids are getting ready. As she retreats, she can hear Doris changing her mind about the baptismal font. “No, I don’t think it works there. Move it about a foot to the left.”
A moment later, Emma finds Portia, beaming, laughing, and surrounded by her three best friends.
“Mom!” From the shoulders up, she is all bride. The salon swept her hair into an elaborate knot, giving perch to the veil that she and Emma chose, its organza airy as meringue.
The rest of her looks like a lumberjack in a button-down flannel and jeans. For now.
“Hello, ladies. I stopped by to see if you need anything.”
Portia checks the clock. “Ooh! I lost track of time. I’d better get into my dress.”
The gown is hanging along the wall, steamed and ready.
“You look great, Mom.”
Emma couldn’t decide on a “mother of the bride” dress, so she bought two. Last night, she tried them both on for Andi, Carolina, and Fern. They voted unanimously for the champagne A-line with the illusion top. “Thank you. I’ll return the other one while I’m out returning all the stuff I bought for your Sacramento shower.” She winks.
Portia giggles, then mouths, Thank you.
Her bridesmaids have pulled the gown from the hanger and unzipped it. One is pooling the skirt on the floor, creating a hole into which Portia can simply step through. She’s down to her strapless bra and pantyhose when an explosive crash! echoes through the vineyard.
“Dammit, Doris,” Emma mumbles. That woman will never learn.
It takes several minutes for the janitorial crew to clean up the mess from the destroyed baptismal font, delaying photographs. By the time the bridal party steps in front of the camera, Doris has sputtered so long and so angrily at the wedding planner that her mascara is running.
“Did I not WARN you?” Doris is so angry her hairdo is shaking. “Did I not SAY the bowl was to be moved?”
“That’s it!” The wedding planner throws her hands in the air and walks away. “Portia. Lyle. I wish you every happiness on your big day. But I quit.”
Portia gasps. Lyle runs after her. “I’m sure we can work something out.”
They can’t. The woman is gone. The bridal party, assembled in a line beneath a veranda strung with twinkle lights and flowering jasmine, gapes at her disappearing shape, saying nothing.
“Well, I never—” Doris straightens her back and puffs her wilting hair.
“Mother.” Lyle’s voice is sharp. “Behave yourself. This is our day.”
“But I—”
He walks directly up to her and puts a finger on her lips. “I don’t want to hear another word out of you unless it’s congratulations, I love you, or Portia is the most beautiful bride I’ve ever seen.”
Emma loves her son-in-law so much she could kiss him on the lips, but there’s already been enough chaos.
“Glass of champagne for the nerves?” When pictures wrap up, Fern sidles up to Emma holding a glistening crystal flute.
“I love you.” Emma takes a long sip. The bubbles tickle her nose and send her belly aflutter. “Where are Andi and Carolina?”
“Out front. On Carlton watch.”
Emma had almost, for a brief moment, forgotten him. The champagne suddenly turns sour in her throat.
“Don’t worry, though. None of us think he’s going to show. Oh, also—” Fern’s eyes go wide with good news. “Carolina remembered this morning that Chandler also kept a digital copy of the video. You know, a backup, in case we lost the original. She called him and he agreed to bring it.”
“I didn’t know he had a copy.”
Fern shrugs. “I didn’t, either. But if that video was our insurance against blackmail, I guess it makes sense.”
Emma supposes it does.
“Excuse me.” One of Portia’s bridesmaids gingerly interrupts their conversation. “But are you Fern McAllister?”
“I am.”
Emma looks at her friend. Does she know this woman somehow?
“I just wanted to tell you that I am such a fan of Smart Girls Say Yes. I made my book club read it. We just couldn’t get enough.” She stops suddenly and looks at Emma. “Oh, my God. Are you Emma Emma?”
She inwardly groans but keeps her face placid. This is hardly the first time she’s been identified, but it is the first of Portia’s friends to make the connection. “That’s me.”
The bridesmaid squeals. “I loved you! That story at the end. You know, with the revenge porn? What ever happened to that guy?”
Emma and Fern exchange knowing glances. Funny you should ask, she wants to say.
“He’s history,” Fern answers.
“Oh, and congratulations!” She does a little hop and taps her bouquet against Fern’s chest. “I saw the announcement in Variety. I can’t believe Dakota Winters is making it into a movie!”
Did Emma just hear that correctly? “Fern?” She studies her friend’s face for clues.
The bridesmaid, however, just keeps talking. “I mean, she’s exactly who I’d choose to make it. Is she going to star in it, too? Ooh, have you met her? What’s she like? Gorgeous, I bet. And so smart.”
“Fern?” Emma can’t tolerate one more second without an answer. “Did you sign the deal with Dakota Winters?”
Fern opens her mouth, but nothing comes out.
“She did,” squeals Portia’s friend. “The announcement said it’s in early production, so it won’t come out for at least a year but probably two. Is that right?” She directs the question at Fern, whose face is so red the whites of her eyes glow.
“It is,” Fern says slowly. Then she looks at Emma. “I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you. I was going to and then all the stuff with Carlton—”
Emma stops her. She doesn’t want to hear excuses and she sure as hell doesn’t want to hear Carlton’s name.
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Doris crossing the veranda toward the colonnade. It gives her a brilliant idea.
“Doris?” She calls while waving her hand. “Doris!”
Doris turns and makes her way over. She’s about to speak when Emma interrupts her.
“I know how upset you must be about the whole fiasco with the wedding planner. I explained it all to my friend Fern, here, and she’s volunteered to step in for the day.”
Emma turns to Fern with a grin that says, Don’t even try to fight me.
She continues, “Fern is excellent at this sort of thing, so whatever you need, just ask. Absolutely nothing is out-of-bounds.” Or perhaps that’s too much of a stretch. “At least, nothing that Lyle and Portia agree to, of course.”
Fern looks as if she may vomit. The bridesmaid takes her leave. Doris doesn’t even stop to thank Emma for coordinating a solution.
“For the amount of money they’re charging us here, you’d think they’d be more willing to meet our needs.” Doris takes Fern by the elbow and leads her away. Before they moved out of earshot, Emma hears, “I need you to clean a footprint off the aisle runner. If I hadn’t unrolled it for inspection, we’d never have known.”
There is no preparing for life’s milestones. Before becoming pregnant, it’s impossible to imagine the sensation of a human life growing in your belly. Nor is it later possible to imagine shoving that same life out of a hole in your nethers the size of a lipstick tube.
Nothing can describe the desperate hope and love and helplessness that is parenthood.
Had anyone tried to tell Emma what it would be like to feel Portia gently take her elbow at the end of the wedding aisle, she wouldn’t have believed them. To say she looks beautiful is as insufficient as calling the Grand Canyon “grand,” or the sunset over the Pacific “inspiring.” She’d once heard a doctor explain that memory is stored in the body more than the brain, and in this moment, Emma understands. She aches with love and joy for this child, this daughter who made her a mother.
Devin is on Portia’s other arm, and Emma realizes that nothing he’s ever said or done would make her want to strip him of this moment. He is Portia’s father as much as she is her mother. They are both better, more complete human beings because of her.
The music begins to play. The wedding is running a half hour behind. Emma doesn’t even want to imagine how much that marble font is going to cost Doris and Sylvester. But she doesn’t have to. It’s not her problem.
“Ready?” Portia whispers.
Devin answers, “Let’s roll, Princess.”
Emma can’t speak. She can barely walk. Her feet have left the ground.