And now you’re here for her wedding, so how about you focus on the positive? I tell myself.
“Did you make the journey by yourself?” Eaton asks me, swirling the wine in his glass.
“I did,” I tell him, mimicking him by swirling my own glass.
“She was going to bring her boyfriend but…” Lacey says, trailing off.
“We broke up,” I say to her, flashing her a smile that says shut up in sister-language.
“Oooh, that’s tough,” Jana says, wincing in an exaggerated way. “Weddings are awful to attend alone.”
Rubbing salt in the wound, are we?
I shrug, still swirling the glass. “I guess. I mean, I am the maid-of-honor so I wouldn’t even have had any time for him anyway.”
“You need to stop swirling the glass,” Eaton says, nodding at me while he sips his wine. “You’re bruising the flavor.”
Bruising the flavor? Give me a break.
I look at dad who is grinning ear-to-ear. “Well, shucks, Eaton. Who knew there was a wrong way to drink wine?”
“Oh, Eaton is an expert on wine,” Richard says proudly. “He did his dissertation on the hybridization of New Zealand’s pinot noir in Blenheim.”
“That’s great,” I say. Fascinating stuff.
“So, your sister tells me that you’re the head of marketing for some big company in the US,” Jana says.
Oh goody, a subject change from the fact that I’m here alone to the fact that I no longer have a job.
“Was,” Lacey speaks up. “She was the head of marketing. She was laid off.”
“Wow,” Jana says to me, her expression full of pity. “You’re having a hell of a time.”
“But she’ll be fine,” Lacey interjects, giving me a look I can’t read. “She’s always fine.”
I want to ask her what the hell she means by that, but my father says, “Of course she’ll be fine. She’s my daughter.”
Lacey rolls her eyes.
“So how long are you in the country for?” Jana asks. “Got any fun plans?”
“Aside from this?” I ask cheerily. They probably don’t pick up on sarcasm very well. “No plans. Just here for the wedding. Going back home in a week.”
But what are you going home to?
“That’s a shame,” Eaton says. “New Zealand has so much to offer.”
“You should do what your sister is doing and charter a boat,” Jana says.
I frown. This is the first I’m hearing of this.
I look at Lacey and Richard. “You’re chartering a boat?”
“For our honeymoon,” Richard says. He jerks his chin to Tai playing rugby in the background. “Tai gave us a fantastic deal.”
I have so many questions. “What happened to Fiji?”
“We’re sailing to Fiji,” Lacey says, annoyed. “Don’t you read any of my emails?”
“And don’t worry, I’m an excellent sailor,” Richard says, as if I was worried. “Tai has taught me a lot over the years. It’s been a pleasure to be in the student role instead of the teacher. Besides, the yacht is practically push button. Top of the line.”
“How long is that trip?” I ask.
“About ten days, sometimes more,” he says. He looks to my father. “I invited your parents along with us, but I think your father has cold feet.”
It’s my father’s turn to look annoyed. “It’s not cold feet, little Dicky. It’s called work.”
“Why on earth would you want them on your honeymoon?” I ask, then give my father an apologetic smile. “No offense, dad.”
He shrugs and sips his wine, a much heartier gulp than the one before.
“Here’s the thing, Daisy,” Richard leans in and says in a conspiratorial tone. “A honeymoon is just a vacation for us. Your sister and I have been having sexual relations for many years already.”
“Ew,” I say, scrunching up my nose.
“It’s not ew,” he says haughtily. “It’s a very natural expression of the human body.”
“And here we thought Lacey would remain a good girl until her wedding,” my father says in such a way that I can’t tell if he’s joking or not.
All I know is that I am out of here.
“I’m going to go talk to mom,” I tell them and quickly hurry across the lawn to the BBQ where my mother is standing with a couple her age. Couples, couples, everywhere.
My mother introduces me to Tai’s parents, Sebastian and Keri Wakefield. His father is just as tall and tanned and handsome as his son, his hair grey at the temples with a peppering of a mustache. It’s like looking into Tai’s future, and I like what I see.
His mother is a lot shorter, brown skin, black hair, very pretty in an old-fashioned way, like nobility. The way she carries herself reminds me of a queen. And while his father is more quiet and stoic, a lot like his son, his mother is talkative and warm. I like her immediately.
“So you’re the one that Tai went to pick up,” his mother says to me.
“Guilty as charged,” I tell her.
“I bet he was about as agreeable as a bag of cats,” she says with a cheeky smile.