Rae watched Wulf stride down the basilica’s stone hallway and wished she could be helpful.
As soon as Wulf was out of sight, the four bridesmaids slammed open the bride’s room door and rushed to Flicka, who reclined on a fainting couch, holding black-stained tissues under her eyes.
“Are you all right?”
“He wasn’t terrible to you, was he?”
“He never comes to anything and yet he’s interfering.”
“You are all right?”
Rae hung back by the door. In high school, Lynda the Buttinski had appeared every time someone was crying like a tissue-summoned demon.
Flicka fluttered one hand toward the dressing table. Mathilde snatched fresh tissues out of the box and replaced the ones Flicka held, checking for stains on Flicka’s face and dress but finding none.
Rae checked her phone and the weather, trying to find something to say. She tried to imitate Dieter, who was doing such an excellent impression of not-being-there that she hadn’t noticed him for minutes.
Wulf was only gone for a few minutes. When he came back, he glanced around the room at the bevy of ladies ministering to his sister. They retracted their hands when he came in. “Ladies, may we have a moment, please?”
Rae took a step toward the door. They shouldn’t interfere with family matters.
Flicka held her fingers to her temples. “They’re okay, Wulfie. Just tell me what he said.”
Rae leaned against the wall, trying to be invisible. Dieter glanced at her, and she shrugged. One corner of his mouth twitched up, and he resumed staring straight ahead.
Wulf’s blue eyes met Rae’s before he turned back to Flicka. “He will sit in the front pew to show his support for the wedding. He will say nothing during the ceremony. I will walk with you down the aisle and give you away.”
Flicka nodded, then her face crumpled into tears again and she reached with both hands up toward Wulf. He scooped her up in his arms and cradled her.
“He won’t say anything,” Wulf crooned to her. “If anything happens, I have men ready to escort him out. He’ll be gone before anyone notices a commotion.”
Flicka huddled against Wulf’s shoulder and looked for all the world like a lost child instead of a princess bride. “I always wanted you to give me away. He’s been insisting for months, but I always wanted you.”
Wulf said, “I wanted to.”
Rae watched them with a practiced eye.
As Rae had studied in her child development class, more than five years age separation between siblings began a new birth order cycle. Thus, because Wulf was nine years older than his sister with no intervening children, Flicka should act like an only child, birth order-wise.
Wulf was a mystery. He was a twin in birth order, which meant that he should be a parallel-first, but he was raised to be not the heir but the spare during those oh-so-formative years until he was eight. Constantin was the heir and, having seen Wulf’s father, she bet that Wulf had felt his place as a second child. From birth order, she would have bet that Wulf would have become a beta male to Flicka’s, ahem, bossy little princess, but he wasn’t.
Watching the way he held her, he wasn’t a beta male in the slightest. He had become her father.
Considering how Flicka clung to him, he had probably been a good father, even though the role was thrust upon him when he was only fifteen years old.
Rae’s heart swelled and broke at the same time.
“It’s all right,” Wulf murmured to Flicka. “I’ll take care of it. You need to get ready.” He beckoned Siphiwe. “Madam, if you could help her.”
Wulf led Rae out into the hallway while Siphiwe repaired Flicka’s make-up with the whooshing airbrush.
He said, “I wish I could have handled your cousin so easily. Here, if my father begins to make a scene, everyone will understand if my security removes him.”
“Yeah. That wouldn’t have worked out at home.” In Pirtleville, if men in black suits had hustled Jim Bob out of the church, everyone would have assumed that the revolution had begun and it was time to go home, dig up the ammunition, and load their assault rifles because the black helicopters were coming. “You were really good with her.”
Wulf reached for Rae’s hand. “You’ll have to sit alone for the procession. After I give Flicka away, I can sit with you. Will you be all right with that?”
Rae took his hand and felt the warmth and strength there. “It’s okay. I understand family duty.”
The sharp look in his blue eyes suggested that he understood exactly what she meant, but he didn’t pursue it.