Twenty minutes until ceremony
This wedding is doomed.
Tessa twisted the elegant bouquet, a fairy tale in cream and blue, around in her hands. It was nearly the zero hour, and she was standing here alone in Briarwood Manor, holding on to her flowers for dear life.
A set of double doors led out to the garden. Tessa could see the blurred outlines of her guests through the wavy glass and she started to run a nervous hand through her curls before remembering what a pain it had been to get it pinned into the fancy updo.
This was going to be okay. She paced to the end of the hall and back. Totally okay, even though Mom had just run off to search for her sister, Renata, who for some reason wasn’t answering her phone for the last hour.
Everything seemed to be going perfectly up until this morning. She had spent months with the wedding planner, working out the details. The flowers arrived on time, deep blue irises and white roses, exactly what she wanted. Even her Medusa-like head of brown curls was somewhat behaving with an army of little silver pins stuck into it to keep it in place. Her hair never behaved.
Yet this dark pit in her stomach was telling her everything was not okay. And not just today. This nagging, gnawing feeling had been growing inside of her for a while now, but she had just kept herself too busy to have to think about it.
Until now, when there was nothing to do but wait.
Oh, she was being ridiculous. Blowing things out of proportion, as Graham would say.
All brides get nervous. That’s what everyone kept telling her for the last month. Anytime she even started to bring up her reservations that maybe, just maybe, it was too soon for her and Graham to settle down.
“It’s totally normal to have wedding jitters,” yet another well-meaning friend would assure her, followed by, “Oh my God, I’m SO excited for you!”
Tessa never even had the chance to say the next part. Deep down inside, she wasn’t thinking of postponing the wedding. She was thinking maybe there should be no wedding.
She and Graham had been going through a rough patch lately. This, too, was par for the course, everyone assured her. It was normal to question whether they were ready for a lifelong commitment, especially as the big day drew nearer. The problem was she was questioning not whether they were ready, but whether Graham was ready.
Whatever fears she had obviously couldn’t be that big of a deal because here she was, dressed in an off-the-shoulder satin gown with her best friends waiting for her to walk down the aisle. She just had to remember to keep calm and remember to say “I do.”
Julie, wedding planner and superwoman, swept across the foyer toward her. “You look incredible!”
Tessa blinked back at her. “Umm . . . so do you . . .”
The usually unshakable woman was walking too fast, talking in a blur and she sparkled. Not in a happy flush sort of way, though her cheeks were pink with color. No, Julie looked like she had been doused in, could be it, silver glitter?
“What happened to you?” Tessa asked.
Julie smoothed a hand through her hair in an unsuccessful attempt to tame it. “What do you mean?”
“Is everything all right?”
“Of course!” she assured, a bit too effusively. “Everything is going to be just fine.”
This wasn’t the first time Tess had needed Julie to talk her off the proverbial ledge. She took in a deep breath and let it out slowly; a challenge in the form-fitting dress. Julie was meticulous, organized, and completely in control, but something was definitely off about her. Aside from the glitter, she was working too hard to hold on to that cat-that-ate-the-canary smile.
Tessa’s dad had given her some advice the first time he’d taken her on a plane. She was five at the time and absolutely terrified. They shut the doors and she started crying even before the wheels started rolling. Dad had calmed her down by telling her just to keep an eye on the stewardesses.
“They’re pros, honey. They do this every day, so if they don’t look nervous, you have nothing to worry about.”
Dad was a road warrior, which accounted for his last-minute cancellation on her wedding. The thought of him not being there to walk her down the aisle was upsetting, but she was determined not to let that one setback ruin her wedding day.
Little did she know that it would be the first setback in an ongoing chain.
Julie Winters was a pro. Julie had her act together and had been a lifesaver time and again over the last month. But the wedding planner was flustered right now. She was more than flustered; she was flummoxed.
Tessa held on tight to her last thread of sanity. “Have you seen my sister?”
“She’s not here with you?” Julie’s voice trailed away as she looked around the foyer.
“I haven’t seen her for a while now.”
Her sister had disappeared shortly after a quick promise to grab coffee. The coffee had never come and Renata was missing as well. They’d already had to push off pictures from the bride’s side until after the ceremony. Tessa wrung the bouquet tighter.
“She’s probably in the ladies’ room,” Julie piped up with a pleasant smile before rushing off, heels clicking furiously.
Tessa was by herself once more, waiting to take her first step down the aisle.
She was panicking. This was so very un-Tessa of her. She had remained relatively calm through all of the wedding preparations. Even when she and Graham had “needed to talk” a little while back, she had barely raised her voice. It was a good thing, too. They were able to smooth things out and the wedding moved forward as planned.
“As long as there’s you, me, and cake, we’re good,” she had told Graham affectionately a few days ago.
He’d smiled at her.
Well, she didn’t see him smile. They had been talking over the phone. But most of their conversations had been over the phone lately with his busy travel schedule. Not that she’d had a lot of free time either until the summer had started. She had planned the wedding in between grading essays and running after-school tutoring sessions.
So Tessa had imagined the smile on Graham’s face that night even though he was in a hotel two states away. He had told her everything would be fine with that confident tone of his. It had reassured her. Somewhat.
She needed to see Graham, that was all. There was no taboo against the bride seeing the groom before the wedding. Just vice versa. A glimpse of her soon-to-be-hubby would set her head straight. She pulled the door open just a crack to peer out into the garden.
The gazebo where the vows were to take place had been decorated with vines of flowers and blue tulle. Guests were seated on both sides of the aisle and the notorious Uncle Seth was leading Aunt Bea to her chair. The dear old woman was already sniffling loudly. A couple of Tessa’s teacher buddies from the high school sat clustered in the back.
The altar stood conspicuously empty.
The part of her that was sensible and accepting and laughed everything off told her that Graham and his best man had merely stepped away for a moment. The voice of doubt, on the other hand, the voice that had been silenced for so long, started shouting. The butterflies in her stomach grew into big, flapping mutant bats.
Her sister was nowhere to be found. Even dependable Max, the longtime friend whom she’d asked to officiate her wedding, wasn’t in his place. Tessa needed to get some air before she passed out.
Everybody had abandoned this wedding but her.