The Bride Wore Size 12 (Heather Wells 5)

“No,” I say, chewing a grape. “It really wasn’t.”

“You know, Nicole is lucky we live here in the United States, because back where I come from, if a woman did something like that to another woman—especially the bride of her brother—”

Magda makes a slashing motion beneath her chin, accompanied by a sound like oxygen being sucked from a windpipe. A nearby student, preparing a healthy fruit salad for herself, looks a little frightened.

“That’s it,” Magda goes on. “That woman is dead. Because someone will have killed her. I can find someone to do it for you, if you want. Don’t tell Pete”—Pete is Magda’s boyfriend, an ex-cop who is now one of Fischer Hall’s best security officers—“but I have a lot of friends who will do that kind of thing. For Heather Wells, they’d do it for free. You know how popular your records were in my country. Still are,” she adds, loyally.

“Well,” I say, after taking a quick sip of my breakfast beverage, which I feel I need after Magda’s somewhat dramatic performance as well as her offer. “I’m flattered. Thanks, but I don’t think that will be necessary. Cooper’s handling it on his own.”

I’d come out of the bathroom the night before after using my rotating facial brush—I’d been told if I used it every night, by my wedding day my skin would be glowing—to find Cooper on his cell phone with his little sister.

“That’s it, Nicole,” he was saying, appearing to be finishing up a volatile conversation. “This whole thing is your fault. You had no right. No, I don’t care why you did it. No, an apology won’t help. Didn’t you hear what I said? You made her cry. So you are dead to me. Stop calling. Corpses can’t dial phones.”

Then he hung up.

I raised my eyebrows.

“I didn’t cry,” I’d said.

Cooper had swung around, startled to see me in my fuzzy pink robe and slippers, with my face glowing from the bristles of the rotating facial brush.

“Christ,” he said. “I didn’t know you were there.”

“I can see that,” I said. “But I didn’t cry. And you don’t have to be so mean to Nicole. She thought she was doing a good thing. A mother-and-child reunion, like in the Paul Simon song.”

“Yeah, well, I just gave her a new song,” Cooper growled. “Since she loves writing them so much, now she can write about a big brother who’s going to bury his sister if she doesn’t correct her egregious mistake.”

I hadn’t been able to keep from smiling. Cooper’s family may not have had any felons in it, like mine, but it did have its own drama, like his twin sisters, whose conception came as something of a late-in-life surprise to his mother. Jessica and Nicole were sent off to boarding school at an early age to get them off their parents’ hands, but now, newly graduated from college, they were back home and as incorrigible as prepubescents.

I preferred them over my mother, however.

“You can’t bury her,” I said, sinking down onto the side of the bed. “She isn’t dead. That’s a terrible thing to say at a time when a girl really is gone. Think how Jasmine’s parents must be feeling. They really are going to have to bury their daughter.”

“All I care about is how you feel,” Cooper said, sitting beside me and wrapping a strong arm around my shoulders. “What happened tonight never should have happened. I’m sorrier than I can say that it did. Let me make it up to you.”

“Okay. Stop being so mean to your sister.” I leaned into him. His warmth was reassuring, as was the steady thump of his heart against my arm.

“That isn’t quite what I meant by ‘let me make it up to you.’ ”

“Why? It’s what I want. And why did you tell Nicole that I cried? I didn’t cry.”

“Yes, you did,” he said. “You had the water running so you thought I couldn’t hear you, but I did.”

“Oh.” I stared down at my toes, embarrassed. I’d gotten a new pedicure for check-in, That’s Hot pink. It looked good.

Jasmine had had a pedicure too. Powder blue, like her walls.

“I figured you wanted to be alone,” Cooper said, “or you wouldn’t have sat crying in your bathtub, you’d have come out and cried dainty tears on my strong manly chest.”

“I didn’t expect to start crying,” I said. “My mother just makes me so mad.”

What she really made me was sad—sad that I didn’t have a mother who loved me the way Kaileigh Harris’s mother loved her, so much that she couldn’t let her go, not even to have lunch without her, which wasn’t exactly healthy, but at least it showed she cared.

But I was afraid I might start crying again if I admitted this out loud, and I didn’t want to start crying again, especially after I’d finally gotten control of myself.

“I know she does. Your mother makes me mad too,” Cooper admitted. “So does my sister. I don’t want anyone interfering with what’s supposed to be our day, and I don’t want anyone making you unhappy.” He took a deep breath, then added, all in a rush, “That’s why I’m going to tail your mother while she’s here in town.”

“What?” I stared at him. “Cooper, have you lost your mind?”

“Probably. But it’s the only way I can think of to make sure she’s here for the reason she says she is, to see you, and not to run some kind of scam that might end up hurting you—”

“Cooper, no.” I shook my head. “You already have a case. A paying case. The best way to deal with people like my mom is to ignore them.”

“I didn’t say I was going to talk to her. I’m only going to tail her. Just a little.” He held his thumb and index finger an inch apart. “Heather, come on, you have to admit it’s a little odd. Why is she here now, a month before the wedding? And what’s the deal with her not wanting to stay in a hotel?”

I sighed. I had to admit he was right. These were both questions I’d wondered myself. “And honestly, look at it from my perspective,” he went on. “I’m a detective. What kind of boyfriend would I be if I didn’t detect the person who’s making the girl I love most in the world so unhappy?”

This went straight to my heart.