24

“Butter knives,” she gasped as Lee rolled sideways, releasing the pressure on her lungs. Beneath her, Mavis bucked and squirmed.

Mavis had been stabbing them with plastic butter knives.

Ian leaned down, cell phone jammed between his ear and chin. “I tried to tell you.”

Rachel covered her eyes with both hands. A warm trickle ran backwards toward her hairline. Tears or blood? Mavis gave another mighty buck. Rachel felt Ian’s hands grasp her upper arms, steadying her.

“Signal thirty-six in progress,” Ian said into his phone. His hands were gentle as they rolled Rachel to the side. He then reached for Mavis, neatly flipping her over and drawing her hands behind her. He placed a knee in the small of her back. “Lee,” he grunted, “a little help?”

Lee hadn’t heard. He’d crawled to Sharon’s side and lifted her to her feet, cradling her head against his chest. “It’s fine. It’s OK. I’m fine. You’re fine. Rachel’s fine. We’re all fine. They were just plastic butter knives.”

They were just plastic butter knives.

The edges of Rachel’s vision went dark, the blackness moving steadily inward. Swallowing a wave of nausea, she pushed herself upright and scooted to Ian’s side.

“I have cuffs on my waistband,” he told her without looking up. “Under my jacket.”

Of course he did.

Any other day, Rachel would have balked at the task before her. Beyond embarrassment now, Rachel angled behind him, ignoring the crowd of wedding guests looking on. She lifted the tails of his jacket and found the cuffs, unhooking them and extending them toward him with shaky, bloody hands.

Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him? That’s what Lady Macbeth would have asked. Only Mavis wasn’t an old man, and this wasn’t her blood on Rachel’s hands. It was her own. She watched, mesmerized, as a drip seeped from the shallow cut and hit the white tiles with a soft pat. “Yet here’s a spot,” Rachel whispered.

“Rachel?” Ian’s voice was gentle. “I need you to focus. I can’t let go.” He wrestled to keep a squirming Mavis from breaking free. “She’s too strong. I need you to cuff her.”

Silencing Lady Macbeth, Rachel met his gaze and his face blurred as tears brimmed over. “I don’t know what to do. I’ve never cuffed anyone before.”

Incredibly, she saw the corners of his eyes crinkle. “There’s a first time for everything.”

Rachel slid the cuffs over Mavis’s wrists and cinched them. Ian didn’t shift his position but kept her pinned to the floor as she gibbered and screamed.

Rachel couldn’t seem to stop crying. She met Lee’s gaze over the top of Sharon’s head. Unaccountably ashamed, she stared at the slash marks across the backs of her hands. How long she sat that way she did not know.

Eventually, a pair of hands slid around hers, at first turning them this way and that to check her injuries. Then they tightened in a comforting clasp. Rachel tipped her head forward and rested it in the pocket between Ian’s shoulder and neck. His right hand released hers and moved to her back. He pulled her in, patting reassuringly. It’s OK, the pats said.

In the background were the sounds of Lee talking to the first responders who had arrived on the scene. Eventually one of them would need to speak with her. Again. At the thought, she pushed her face further into Ian’s neck. As far as she was concerned, she was never coming out. It was dark and warm and safe, and it smelled like soap.

He shifted and she leaned harder against his shoulder. He slid an arm around her back, tucking her against his chest. Her breath came in loose shudders. She couldn’t imagine opening her eyes and facing everyone.

She felt the warm rumble of Ian’s voice as he murmured something to one of the officers. He slid an arm beneath her knees. Then he rose, lifted her, and carried her up the aisle toward the rear of the hall.

In her fantasies, being carried like this had always seemed romantic. Now, with her eyes and nose streaming and her hair spilling down and her calves burning and the backs of her hands oozing blood, she felt nothing short of humiliated.

She’d been wrong before. This was the most ridiculous thing that had ever happened.

~*~

Rachel sat on the floor, back against the wall, sandwiched between Lynn and Ann. Lynn held her hand, and Ann pressed a shoulder into hers, propping her up. An ice pack braced between the back of Rachel’s head and the wall.

The wedding, while not canceled, was on a two-hour delay while emergency services finished up and the hall was put back in order. “It’s like a rain delay in baseball,” Rachel said listlessly, “except instead of rain, it’s blood because someone’s mother stabbed you with butter knives.”

Then she burst into a fresh bout of laugh-crying. Tears dribbled to her chin before dripping down onto her neck.

Ann nudged her. “You need to get it together.”

“I’m together.” Since she hadn’t seriously injured herself, at least she could boast that she was still in one piece. The ice pack at the back of her head and the adhesive bandages on her hands and the gauze on her shins didn’t count. Those were just flesh wounds.

Ann snorted. “You look it.”

She hadn’t considered this. “It can’t be that bad,” she said, mostly trying to convince herself.

Ann gave a little fake cough. “Lynn, will you do the honors?”

“I really don’t think that’s a good idea,” Lynn squeezed Rachel’s fingers.

“She’ll have to see eventually,” Ann pointed out. “You don’t want her going back out there like this, do you?”

Rachel pushed her feet against the floor to scoot up higher against the wall. “I want to see.” She’d given her report to the officers looking like this. Wedding guests with cell phones had recorded videos of her looking like this—videos that were most likely already online. She’d snuggled her face into Ian’s neck while looking like this. She had to know.

Reluctantly, Lynn lifted her cell phone and switched the camera to selfie mode so the three of them could use it as a mirror.

Rachel’s horrified expression upon beholding herself did little to improve the situation. Her hair pins had come loose; her deep side part was long gone. Beneath this frizzy travesty, her pale face only highlighted the streaks of blood crusting back toward her hairline. Meanwhile, her eye makeup had departed for points south. “You guys!” she shrilled. “Why didn’t you tell me?” She twisted her hands through her hair, desperately hoping to achieve some semblance of order. Halfway back to her scalp, her hands got stuck. She jerked them out and swiped at the dried blood at her temples to little effect.

Ann pushed to her feet. “I’ll see if I can track down some wipes.” At the door, she paused and looked back at Rachel, now drooping against Lynn’s shoulder. A smile dawned. “I can’t wait to tell Donovan that you took someone down with a flying teep kick. In a dress and heels, no less.”

Rachel groaned and covered her face again. “Don’t start.”

“I’m not kidding!” Ann’s voice was light and firm. “Although if the video clips go viral, I might not have to tell him—”

“Stop!”

Lynn squeezed Rachel’s hand. “You might have been a little misguided, but let me tell you something—you looked awesome.”

“Your form was off,” Ann told her.

Lynn shot Ann a look. “But your heart was in the right place.”

After Ann left, Rachel stared into space, silently reliving the afternoon’s events, second-guessing every move she’d made and wondering when, if ever, she would get things right. It wasn’t until she heard the door open that she lifted her gaze, expecting to see Ann returning.

But it wasn’t Ann who entered carrying a small blue box of baby wipes.

It was Ian.