El-Mudad immediately called her bluff. “I would be delighted. I will be...circumspect. But delighted. I can easily move my visit with the girls back a day or two.”
Neil tried to hide his amusement in his water glass but ended up laughing anyway. He choked and Olivia said, “Put your hands up, Afi. Shake them! Shake them!”
It was a trick I’d taught her for choking on liquid. I had no idea if there was any science behind it, but we’d always done it in our family, and it seemed to work.
Neil, however, was not about to throw his arms up and start flailing around like a car dealership inflatable man.
Mom’s eyes narrowed. “Or, you could bring them here. I would hate for them to feel excluded. Since they’re family now.”
The fact that my mother would go to such lengths to spite my husband over an ill-timed laugh didn’t surprise me. What did shock me was how easily the dinner had worked in our favor.
“Well,” Tony said, wiping his mouth with his napkin. “What do you know? Miracles happen.”
Epilogue
The morning of the wedding brought clear blue skies and warm—but not unbearable—temperatures. One of the second-floor guest suites had been converted into a bridal command center, mostly because it had a built-in, lighted vanity with trifold mirror. I’d been bugging Neil since we’d bought the place to manage somehow to move the whole set up into our bedroom, but I was glad he hadn’t; I wouldn’t have wanted basically all of my female relatives crowded into my closet.
Aunt Marie stood behind Mom as the hair stylist worked on an elaborate but sophisticated updo, not crowding so much as hovering in judgment. “I still think you should have gone with the extensions and leaving it down.”
“I want something classic. Something not...mutton dressed as lamb.” Mom’s eyes flicked to Marie’s in the mirror, annoyed. “Besides, keeping my hair down would have covered up the back of the dress.”
“And her skin is glowing,” I stated emphatically. “Marie, you have to go for a full Korean body scrub while you’re in town. You will never feel so soft.”
She shook her head and moved over to the side table, where pitchers of mimosas and crystal glasses had been set out by the caterers at first light. She refilled her glass. “No thanks. I’m not showing my big bare butt to a bunch of strangers. Sophie, you sure you don’t want any?”
I shook my head. I couldn’t spend the entire day drunk off my ass. Not only would it make being a good hostess at the reception difficult, but my blood sugar probably would do something goofy if I overdid it on such a stressful day.
I didn’t know what I was so worried about. It wasn’t like Tony was going to leave Mom at the altar, or a meteor was going to strike the church or something. The weather was perfect, everyone had managed to get here without a hitch. The bed and breakfast we’d put overflow guests in hadn’t burned down. There wasn’t an outbreak of land sharks. But my stomach still twisted up into knots at the thought that anything, no matter how small, might go slightly imperfectly on Mom’s big day.
“I’m fine with water,” I said. “I’m more nervous about this wedding than I was for my own.”
Marie laughed right in my face. “Sophie. You puked at yours. Come on.”
“Don’t,” Mom warned her sister. “There’s still time.”
“I’m not going to puke,” I insisted. So long as I stayed away from the alcohol, I would be fine. I hoped.
“You’re both going to be drunk at church,” Grandma said from the other side of the room. She already wore her mother-of-the-bride dress, a stately lilac chiffon sheath with a beaded, long-sleeved jacket. “Don’t forget, the wedding is at two, so you need to be done with all your drinking by one.”
“We’ll be at the church by one, Ma,” Marie reminded her. “And it’s not like I’m going to sneak hooch in there. Besides, if the wedding starts at two, we don’t have to stop drinking until one-thirty. They’re not gonna get to communion before two-thirty.”
Grandma made an eye roll that I knew by heart.
There was a knock at the door, and we all called, “Come in!”
Amal entered with Olivia by the hand. At the sight of my mom, Olivia raced across the room. “Rebecca! Olivia is ready for her dress!”
“I think it’s a little too early to put on your dress, flower girl,” I said, indicating the garment bag hanging on the door. “We’ll put that on at the last minute so you can still play.” I glanced over at Amal and tried for a friendly—not nervous—smile. “You look beautiful.”
“Yes, I know,” she said loftily, tugging at her black satin cummerbund. She’d chosen to wear a tux and tails, but the front of the jacket was cropped, tails lined in a flash of purple satin to match the vest and cravat, and the trousers were tailored tight to emphasize her hips.