There is only one happiness in this life, to love and be loved.
—GEORGE SAND
The fateful opening notes of Wagner’s “Bridal Chorus” rang out over the Wedding Ballroom and the procession began. Not a minute too soon, thought Mercy. Their marching orders were not to dawdle, given the animosity between the Renault cousins, the amount of champagne the bride-to-be had consumed, and the growing strength of the storm outside. She wondered how much the guests had had to drink. Given all the free drinks and hors d’oeuvre, everyone here was probably already a little intoxicated.
The first to walk down the aisle to the orchid and vine arch as the rousing chords sounded were Lillian and Father Bernard, flanking the groom, Claude. They were followed by Uncle Hugo and Aunt Pru, Nick and Paige, Verity and Florian, Mercy and Marcel, and Grace and Duncan. Toby barreled down the deep-pink carpet runner with the always stalwart Elvis holding him to a trot rather than the all-out gallop the toddler was aiming for. Susie Bear pulled little Helena along in the cart at a stately pace, giving the baby girl plenty of time to fling rose petals around the room at the guests.
Finally, thought Mercy, as she and the rest of the wedding guests gazed up at the top of the aisle, waiting for her beautiful grandmother to appear. The healer in her dog’s life. The rock in her life. The love in Claude Renault’s life.
The star of this show.
“Here comes the bride,” whispered Verity loudly enough for everyone in the room to hear.
Mercy tried to be happy for her grandmother. But the more she learned about the Renaults, the more she worried that Patience might live to regret this alliance.
A glimpse of shimmering champagne satin and thwack!—an enormous crash of thunder bellowed above them and then a devastating crack pierced the air. Darkness fell like a sword in the growing dusk; not even all the candlelight and the flashes of lightning were enough to counter the gloaming. The musicians stopped playing and the inevitable anxious murmuring of the guests began.
“Lightning strikes,” said Grace, checking her phone. “Power is out all over southern Vermont.”
“We do have a generator,” said Prudence. “Let me make an announcement.”
Leo appeared out of the gloom. “I’ll check for damage.”
Aunt Pru stepped up onto the raised stage. “No need to panic, everybody, simply make your way to your seats at your assigned tables and we’ll wait this out. Use your cell phone flashlights if you’d like. The power may be out but the wine is still flowing.” She paused a moment as one baleful roll of thunder after another rumbled the inn. “The generator should kick in eventually.” She said something to the musicians, who began playing again, more softly this time. Schubert, Mercy thought.
Helena cried, and Amy lifted her out of the cart. Toby wailed as his father took him into his arms. Even Elvis abandoned his post and came to Mercy’s side, nuzzling the back of her knee with his nose. Thunder and lightning could be triggers for the war-weary dog. And for her.
The Wedding Ballroom stood draped in deep shadow. Mercy shone her cell light on the spot where her grandmother should have been waiting to walk down the aisle.
No light. No music. No bride.
“I don’t see Patience,” she told Uncle Hugo.
The colonel used his flashlight app to search for his sister. “Maybe she’s waiting it out up by the bar. I’ll go look.”
Mercy flashed her light around some more. There was Troy, next to Paige and Nick and Toby, unshackling Susie Bear from the cart.
She started toward him. Elvis found Susie Bear before she found Troy but then there the man was, solid as the Green Mountains. “I can’t see Patience.”
“The generator is down,” Leo reported to Prudence. “I don’t know if lightning struck it or what. Maintenance is working on it.”
“Is anyone else from the wedding party missing?” asked Troy.
Mercy shone her light around. There were Father Bernard and Lillian, tête-à-tête, Nick and Paige and Toby, Verity and Feinberg, her parents Grace and Duncan, Amy and Brodie and Helena. Claude and Uncle Hugo were presumably off tracking down Patience.
“I don’t see Florian and Marcel.”
“Of course you don’t,” said Grace, not looking up from her phone. “‘Widespread power outages, damaging winds, golf-ball-size hail, danger of flash floods.’”
As if to prove her mother’s forecast correct, the storm intensified. Sheets of rain obscured the windows; lightning flashed and thunder roared and the guests grew restless. Schubert notwithstanding.
“I’m worried about Patience,” said Mercy.
“Everything will be fine when the lights come back on,” said Prudence.
“Famous last words,” said Nick.
Uncle Hugo and Claude were back. “No sign of her. At least that we could see.”
“We’ll have better luck finding her with the dogs,” said Troy.
“What about Florian and Marcel?”
“What about them?” asked Claude.
“Have you seen them? We seem to have lost sight of them.”
“We were together when the lights went out,” said Claude. “Maybe they’re hanging out with Philippe. Or maybe they went back to the room for something.”
“We’ll find them,” said Thrasher, who shouldered his way with Wyetta gracefully through the tables to join them.
“I don’t like this,” said Mercy.
In the end, they decided to split up. Troy and Susie Bear went with Thrasher to check out the Renault brothers, and she and Elvis, Claude and the colonel went after Patience.
“Find Patience,” Mercy told Elvis. “Patience.”
Her grandmother was one of the shepherd’s favorite people, and he was always happy to find her. He ran off and Mercy chased after him, with Claude and the colonel bringing up the rear.
Elvis didn’t go far. He stopped at the bar separating the dining room from the lobby and there she was, radiant even in the dark in her gleaming champagne satin wedding dress, drinking a glass of Veuve Clicquot Yellow Label. She gave Elvis a pat.
“We were worried about you,” said Mercy.
“I’m fine. When the lights went out and the music stopped and the caterwauling began, I thought I’d better not risk navigating the wedding aisle until things calmed down. I figured Grace would get things in hand as she always does and when the string quartet started up Wagner’s ‘Bridal Chorus’ again, I’d know it was time.” Patience slipped off the barstool and smoothed her satin skirt. “I guess now is the time.”
Now or never, thought Mercy.
“I have to find Florian and Marcel first,” said Claude.
“What happened to them?”
“They walked down the aisle right on cue,” said Claude a bit defensively, “but they disappeared once the lightning struck.”
Here one minute, gone the next, thought Mercy.
“Troy and Susie Bear went with Thrasher to track them down.”
“Maybe they’re waiting for the music to start again, too,” said Patience.
Claude took her grandmother’s lovely face into his capable surgeon’s hands. “I’ll be right back. And then we’ll get married, whether the lights are on or not.”
If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, thought Mercy.
“Go on,” she said to Uncle Hugo. “Go with him. We’ll be fine until you get back.”
Mercy and Patience sidled up to the bar, sliding onto the stools in their satin dresses. Elvis laid his handsome head on Mercy’s lap. She was grateful to have this time with her grandmother, even if it was on a time-out from a wedding-in-progress and even if it was in near total darkness as an extreme storm system roared outside.
Her eyes were getting somewhat used to the lack of light now, but it was darker here at the bar, away from the big windows and French doors, and there were fewer candles burning.
Elvis’s ears perked, and he growled, turning toward a shadowy figure in pants and a hoodie at the end of the deserted bar. The man—something about the way he moved even in the dark said “male” to her—tugged a pistol out of his pocket and aimed it at Patience.
“No,” said Mercy.