An hour later they both left for their day. Natalie was seeing new clients. She had promised to look at one of the hotel rooms that had had a leak, which was a good opportunity to redo it. And Hugues had a dozen meetings back to back, and a meeting of the Hotel Association to attend. He had been the chairperson several times over the years. And it was always a useful way to maintain good relations with the owners and managers of other hotels. Heloise was back at the front desk at three and had promised to cover for one of the concierges for two hours.

The days afterward were equally insane. Heloise barely had time to get ready for her party, and Sally handled all the details, although Heloise had gone over everything with her again the day before. It was going to be a grand celebration of her birthday and graduation. The room was all decorated in white and gold with white flowers on every table and gold balloons hanging from the ceiling. And her father had hired a fantastic band, and let her friends stay till four A.M. After that they served breakfast in a smaller room. Heloise said it was the best party she’d ever been to, and she had a ball. Her father wanted to reward her for her work at the École Hôtelière, and he had also wanted her to feel special and not pushed out of place by their wedding.

Hugues and Natalie disappeared discreetly around eleven and left the young people to have their fun. As it turned out, it was a happy prelude to their wedding, Natalie enjoyed it, and Heloise had definitely been nicer to her since they came back from her graduation. She was being more mature about it and was clearly less angry at her father and even his future wife. It was as though she had finally understood that she wouldn’t lose him. She wasn’t happy about his marriage to Natalie, but she was no longer on a mission to make her life a living hell. And she was a little embarrassed now by how angry she had been. She had admitted it to Jennifer when she got back from Lausanne.

Natalie was spending the weeks before the wedding struggling with the seating at the reception, and in spite of the holiday weekend, they were expecting just over two hundred guests. But so far everything was going according to plan, although Natalie was visibly nervous about it and had never organized such a major event in her life. She found it much harder to keep track of than designing an apartment or a house, or keeping all the orders straight. This wasn’t her thing at all, and she was relying on the hotel staff to guide her and give her advice, and trying not to disturb Hugues about it. He had enough to do running the hotel, and she wanted him to be surprised.

They were having a rehearsal dinner the night before the wedding, for family and people from out of town. The only family she had were her brother, his wife, and their children, and Hugues had none at all except Heloise. But they were still expecting sixty guests at the rehearsal dinner and holding it in a room they used as a private dining room upstairs. There would be no music and no dancing, so it was a simpler event to plan. But they still needed flowers, and had to decide about the menus and the wines, and the calligrapher had to do place cards and seating charts. Natalie felt as though she were running a war, with charts and lists everywhere, and she carried a radio so Sally could communicate with her at all times. Natalie had left Heloise out of the arrangements in deference to her, but she had invited her to her bachelorette dinner, which Heloise declined, saying she had to work, which was true. But she also didn’t want to celebrate the fact that her father was marrying her. It would have been hypocritical and sounded embarrassing to her to watch middle-aged women give her sexy underwear to seduce her father. Natalie was doing fine as it was.

The male employees of the hotel had given Hugues a surprise bachelor dinner the month before, with Moroccan food and belly dancers, but in spite of that it was a pretty tame event. They had also invited his few friends, all of whom worked or ran other hotels. Given the amount of time he spent working, it was hard for him to maintain friendships with anyone, which was the nature of the business. The hotel and the people in it became your life and left you time for no one else. But the bachelor party had been fun, and Hugues had danced with several of the girls, but no one had done anything embarrassing or gotten out of line, which wasn’t always the case with other bachelor dinners they’d had at the hotel, where hookers were often involved and paid for by one of the guests. No one would have dared do that to Hugues, he wasn’t that kind of man, and it was all good fun.

By the day before the wedding, Natalie was a nervous wreck. She had taken a room on another floor to hang her wedding dress and where she would get her hair and makeup done the day of the wedding. And her brother and sister-in-law were staying at the hotel. Only their two boys had come; their twin sisters were still too sick with mono. And the day before the wedding, Natalie had booked a massage and a manicure and pedicure. Heloise saw her at the hairdresser that afternoon, wearing a masque. She stopped in to say hello, and Natalie opened her eyes when she heard her voice. She had hardly seen her in days.

“How’s it going?” Heloise asked politely.

“Terrible,” Natalie said, trying not to move her mouth too much so she didn’t crack the masque, which looked like green clay. She felt like the witch in The Wizard of Oz. “My face is breaking out. My stomach is upset. The singer for the band is stuck in Las Vegas and isn’t coming. And I wish we’d eloped.” She looked like she was about to cry.

“It’ll be fine,” Heloise reassured her. “Just try to relax.” And then, with a sigh, she conceded silently. She knew a lot more about these things than her future stepmother, and she had done nothing to help so far. “Do you want me to talk to Sally?” she asked softly. Natalie stared at her and nodded.

“Would you mind? I have no idea what I’m doing, and I’m so nervous I feel nuts.” And she was taking medication that made her feel more so, but she didn’t tell Heloise that. Hugues was aware of it and trying to do all he could to calm her down. But the medication, coupled with the normal stresses of planning a wedding, was overwhelming her, and she looked it.

“I’ll go up to her office in a few minutes when I have a break,” Heloise promised with a smile. “Just concentrate on your hair and nails. Leave the rest to us. And take a nap.” Natalie nodded and watched her leave the hair salon. She had the feeling the war might finally be over. She wasn’t sure that it had ended, but she hadn’t heard gunfire since Heloise and Hugues had returned from Lausanne.

Half an hour later Heloise was upstairs with Sally, going over the details of the wedding. Most of it was under control, and she and the very competent catering manager discussed what wasn’t and made a few changes that no one would notice, about placement of tables, and the size of tabletops. Someone had ordered the wrong chairs, and Heloise asked for the best ones. The flow of guests, the timing, seating charts, where to place the ceremony so everyone could see it-they were subtle changes, but they made a difference. Together she and Sally corrected it all. And Sally said it was nice of her to do it.

There was supposed to be a rehearsal, but it had been canceled because her relatives were coming in too late and there was no time before the rehearsal dinner. And Heloise told Sally to have all the flowers for Natalie and her sister-in-law, for Natalie’s hair and both bouquets, sent up to the suite that Natalie was using for her dress. And the sprig of lily of the valley for Hugues’s lapel should go to his room, not hers. Suddenly it no longer made Heloise feel sick to think about the wedding. She had made her peace with it and wanted to help.

“What about you?” Sally asked her cautiously. There had been no flowers ordered for her. “Are you carrying a bouquet?” She hadn’t dared ask Heloise anything about the wedding until then. Now she seemed to be on board.

“I’m not in the wedding,” Heloise said quietly, looking a little sheepish.

“You’re not?” Sally looked surprised, and realized she had never discussed it with the bride. She didn’t ask Heloise why. She knew. And so did everyone in the hotel. Heloise had made no secret of how much she disapproved of the marriage since it was announced.

“My father asked me to be his witness, instead of a best man.” It was more of a European tradition, but she had never confirmed it to him, and he hadn’t pressed the point. He was just going to be grateful if she came to the wedding, without expecting more. And even that hadn’t been sure. She had threatened not to many times. She thought about it then as she looked at Sally, and they were old friends, since she’d been a child. “You’d better make a sprig of lily of the valley for me, and I’ll pin it to my dress.” It identified her with the groom, not the bride, and was what a best man would have worn in her place, or a small white rose, but she preferred lily of the valley, which had been her favorite flower all her life. She loved it when brides used it in their bouquets. Natalie was carrying white Phalaenopsis orchids, which she said would work well with her dress and were more sophisticated.

Heloise finished up the details with Sally then, and both of them were satisfied. They had tied up a lot of loose ends that Natalie had been unsure of, and Sally didn’t want to make the decisions for her. Now Heloise had it all in good control and had made excellent choices. She loved weddings and was great at details.

And then she went upstairs to their apartment. She was on her lunch break from the desk. Natalie had just walked in and was lying on the couch, looking sick.