Elin Hilderbrand - Beautiful Day

“I don’t want to talk about Pauline,” Doug said. “This isn’t about Pauline.”

“I never said it was about Pauline,” Edge said. “I just wondered if you had ever hurt anyone.”

“Well, I never lied to anyone,” Doug said. “I never cheated on anyone. I never led a woman on.”

“I wonder about that,” Edge said.

Doug ground his molars together. “I want you off this property in five minutes. No. Less than five minutes.”

“What?” Edge said. “You’re throwing me out?”

“I want you and Rosalie to leave immediately.”

“I can’t believe this,” Edge said. “I can’t believe you’re throwing me out.”

“She’s my daughter, Edge,” Doug said. “And you hurt her.”

“What if the roles were reversed?” Edge said. “Margot is young and beautiful. What if she had hurt me? She might have, you know, and I would have had to live with it. Every relationship comes with risks.”

“You would have been fine,” Doug said. “You always are. Now get out.”

“Thirty years of friendship,” Edge said.

“Only family matters,” Doug said, and he headed back into the tent.

A few minutes later, Stuart and Jenna cut the cake, they fed each other nicely (as Beth had suggested in the Notebook; Beth strongly disapproved of shenanigans with the cake), and then it was time for Jenna to throw the bouquet. Doug watched Margot gather up the single women-Autumn and Rhonda and all of Jenna’s schoolteacher friends. Doug wanted Margot to catch the bouquet. He wanted to see Margot meet someone worthy of her in a way that neither Drum Sr. nor Edge was worthy.

When she had come to the end of her story about Edge, she had said, I don’t believe in love, Daddy. I just don’t believe in it.

And Doug had said, What about your mother and me? We were in love until the day she died. I’m in love with her still.

I guess what I mean is that I don’t believe in love for me, Margot said. Some people are lucky that way-you and Mom, Kevin and Beanie, Stuart and Jenna-but I’m not.

Oh, honey, Doug had said. He wanted to refute what she said, but he knew the truth. He had seen families broken and children caught in the crossfire. He had facilitated the dissolution of households and corporations and dynasties. He had brought about thousands of endings. Some of those stories continued on in a happier way-every Christmas he received dozens of cards from clients who had remarried. But not everyone ended up this way, of course. Doug had a client who had married and divorced five times. Some people tried and tried but could not succeed at love. Was Margot one of those people? God, he hoped not.

Catch the bouquet, he thought.

The bandleader had some kind of corny procedure to follow as the girls assumed the ready position. They looked like the offensive line for the New York Giants. Jenna turned her back and raised her arms over her head and flung the flowers through the air.

There was a great burst of animated laughter. It seemed that, out of nowhere, Stuart’s brother, Ryan, the best man, had appeared and caught the bouquet. He held it up in a triumphant fist, and everyone cheered. Then Ryan pulled his boyfriend up from his chair and kissed him on the lips and the band launched into “Celebrate,” by Kool & the Gang.

And Doug thought, Unexpected twist there. But okay, why not?

He found Margot a few minutes later, licking thick white buttercream off her forefinger.

“That was so great,” she said. “Ryan.”

Doug said, “I had a talk with Edge. I asked him to leave.”

Margot pressed her pretty lips together, and her ice-blue eyes filled with tears. “Thank you, Daddy.”

“I know you’re forty years old,” he said. “But as long as I’m alive, I’m here to take care of you.”

Margot set down her cake plate and gave him a hug. When they separated, she wiped her eyes and said, “And now there’s someone I need to apologize to.”

“Yes,” Doug said, as he scanned the tent for Pauline. “Me, too.”

Thank-You Notes

When you order the invitations, you should order the same number of corresponding cards (white or ivory, with the same seashell or sand dollar on top, blank) to use as thank-you notes for your gifts. Try, try, try to send them promptly, the same day the gift arrives if possible, and add at least one personal line to each card. Your Intelligent, Sensitive Groom-to-Be should share this responsibility, but honestly, honey, I have yet to meet a man who can write a decent thank-you note.

For example, from Kevin we got one of the precious cards Beanie had ordered, and across it, in nearly illegible penmanship, he wrote THANKS FOR THE CASH! Love, Kev.

I thought then that marriage must have lightened our Kevin up. But his frivolity was short-lived.

I kept the card, however, as proof. I have it still.

Back up in her bedroom, Margot riffled through the cocktail purse she had taken to the Galley on Thursday night. Ellie was passed out cold on the bed, still in her dress and the silly paper plate hat, although she had shed her sandals, so that Margot could see the black bottoms of her daughter’s feet. As badly as Margot needed to find what she was looking for, she could not resist any of her children when they were sleeping. She hovered over Ellie, marveling at the perfect features of her face and the flawlessness of her skin. When she bent down to kiss Ellie’s lips, she smelled frosting. Probably, Ellie had had nothing to eat tonight but frosting. Margot carefully removed the hat so that the paper plate would not be crushed by Ellie’s nighttime thrashings. She pulled the bedsheets up to Ellie’s chin.

She thought, Go to hell, Edge Desvesnes. This is the real thing right here.

Griff’s card was exactly where she thought it would be, tucked in her cocktail purse next to her dead phone. Unable to help herself, Margot pressed the phone’s buttons, hoping it would spring back to life, the way certain human beings had been known to do, even after being declared dead.

But no. The phone was torched, fried, useless. Somewhere in its now-silent plastic-and-metal depths lurked the two unread messages from Edge. Which would have said something like Please call me. I need to speak to you about this weekend.

Margot was caught in a wave of sadness that nearly pulled her under. Fifteen months of her life, wasted, all that energy squandered on someone who was never in the game to begin with. A part of her yearned to lie down next to Ellie and cry herself to sleep. Rosalie is a better match for me. The New Year’s Eve party. While Edge and Rosalie were kissing at that party, Margot was picking popcorn kernels out of her teeth, watching the ball drop on TV. All those nights when Margot had waited for Edge to respond to her texts, moving from room to room in her apartment, thinking that maybe it was her phone’s cell reception that was the problem, Rosalie and Edge were at the office “working together” on the shitshow Cranbrook case. Twenty-eight years old. Sexy gravelly voice.

Margot pinched Griff’s business card between two fingers. She had to do this.

There were two phones in the house. One was hanging on the wall in the kitchen. One was on the nightstand in the master bedroom. This was a holdover from Margot’s teen years. When Margot and Kevin and Nick were teenagers, they were forced to make all plans on the phone in the kitchen, right smack in the middle of the action, where everyone could hear. Margot had preferred talking to her friends or boyfriends in the privacy of her parents’ bedroom, though this was frowned upon. The phone in her parents’ bedroom was basically only there to serve as a late-night hotline. The police called to say that they had broken up a party at Dionis and had a Carmichael child in custody (Nick). A daughter called to say she’d be late for curfew (Margot). A son’s girlfriend called to see if he was home because it was late and she hadn’t heard from him (Beanie).

Now that the master bedroom was occupied by Doug and Pauline, that phone was really off-limits, so Margot had no choice but to call Griff from the phone in the kitchen. It was as mortifying as it had been as a teenager. The kitchen was filled with catering staff, who were all trying to clean up while simultaneously preparing the late-night offerings for the after-party: potato chips and dip, pretzels with honey mustard, pigs in a blanket, White Castle burgers, and the fixings for s’mores, which would be cooked over the bonfire in the backyard, which Roger and his crew were now setting up beyond the proposal bench, at the edge of the bluff. Under the tent, the band played “Two Tickets to Paradise” and “Buttercup.” Margot was sure most guests were still lighting up the dance floor-but for her, this wedding was over.

She dialed Griff’s number and plugged her ear. She could barely hear the phone ringing. She thought she heard Griff answer, but after a second or two, she realized she’d gotten his voice mail. His recording was talking to her.

She hung up the phone. She had bumped into Griff so many times by accident that she hadn’t anticipated having a problem finding him.

When she dialed again, he picked up on the first ring. “Hello?”

“Griff?” she said. “It’s Margot.”

“Who?” he said.

“Margot,” she said, feeling like an imbecile. “Margot Carmichael.”

“Oh,” he said. “Hold on.” Margot could hear bar noises-music, and people laughing. He was probably sitting at the Boarding House, talking to some sexy blond advertising executive, telling her he missed having someone to talk to at night, someone to tell the stupid stuff. Since he didn’t believe in love anymore, anyone would do.