“You will,” Alix said. “Mom told me that I’m to wear a wedding dress with so many crystals and faceted beads on it that I can carry one candle and the thousands of reflections will light up the whole church.” She looked at Glenn. “And now you know my mother.”
He laughed. “I think I’m going to like her.”
Jared was looking at Alix. “Not to your taste?”
His face was so serious that Alix turned pink. “I’m more of a cotton girl.”
Izzy spoke up. “Alix doesn’t care about the dress or the flowers. She just wants to be married in a building of architectural significance.”
That made everyone laugh.
“In your chapel,” Izzy said over them. “You should get married inside the chapel that you designed.”
“I don’t think—” Alix began.
Ken cut her off. “I forgot about that. You told me on the phone you were designing one but I’ve not heard any more about it.”
“It’s nothing really. It’s just—”
“She made a model,” Izzy said.
“Could we see it?” Ken asked.
“No,” Alix answered. “It was just for fun. We’ve been working on a house, with a rock in one wall. It’s—”
Jared put his hand over hers. “I would really and truly like to see the model you made.”
Ken knew his daughter well enough to see that she was worried about criticism of the design, but with everyone staring at her so expectantly she couldn’t say so. He nodded at her in encouragement and Alix left the table to go upstairs to get the model.
When she returned she looked so apprehensive that Ken wanted to warn Jared to make no criticism. But he needn’t have worried.
Jared just looked at it and said, “It’s perfect.”
Ken didn’t think Jared had ever thought that word, much less said it before. Certainly not about anything that had to do with a building.
“Do you really like it?” Alix asked, and everyone at the table was quiet. It was the first time she’d ever sounded like a student asking for praise.
“You’re asking Montgomery, aren’t you?”
“I guess I am.”
He put his hand over hers. “I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t think it was. I’ll tell you how much I like it: I don’t want to change a thing.”
“The steeple isn’t too tall?” she asked.
“No.”
She opened her mouth to speak.
“And it’s not too short either,” Jared said.
She closed her mouth.
He squeezed her hand. “Where do you think it should be built?”
“When I designed it, I was thinking of Nantucket.”
It was Izzy who interrupted what had become a private conversation. “Too bad that chapel isn’t here now. If I got married in it, we wouldn’t have to try to cram a hundred people into the back garden.”