Mary looked stunned, as if she'd drop her cup.

Casey exclaimed, "I knew it!"

"How did you know it?" Kenny said.

"Well, you've still got your tuxedo pants on, Dad," she said, leaping to her feet to hug him.

"Oh…so I do."

"It's obvious you didn't spend much time in your room last night. Oh… sorry, Mary."

"Married?" Mary interjected belatedly. "But… but when did all this happen? I thought you two… oh, my… oh, gracious…" She started crying.

"Momma, what's wrong?"

"N-nothing. I'm just so happy." She covered her nose with a linen napkin. "You're really going to marry Kenny?"

"Yes, I am." Tess touched her mother's hand tenderly while the old woman stuck a stiff napkin under her glasses and dabbed at her eyes. Then the two shared an awkward hug across the corner of the table.

"Oh, my gracious me, this is too much."

Next, Casey threw a hug on Tess, and both of them felt tears gathering in their throats. "You guys…" she said, growing emotional, "you sure know how to make a girl happy." When the emotional level got critical, she cracked a joke. "Does this mean I have to call you Mother, Mac?"

"Mother Mac? Oh, please, no." They all laughed, because there were tears in a lot of eyes.

Then Mary said, "Kenny, come here," and put her arms up. He left his chair and went to hers, leaned down into her embrace and felt her loving arms fold around him as he dropped to one knee. "Oh, Kenny," she whispered, but could say no more. She could only feel her tears roll over her downy cheeks as he held her.

"I love her very much," he whispered, "nearly as much as I love you." He pulled back and looked up at her, squeezing her hands hard.

"It's just so unbelievable."

"It is… I know."

Mary freed one of her hands to take one of Tess's. "You and Kenny," she said.

"But the hard part is, Momma, I have to take him away from you."

"Oh, don't be silly." Finding her spunk, Mary released their hands and flapped her napkin impatiently. "I can get along just fine without him. I've got two sons-in-law and those big, strapping grandsons. They can help me when I need it."

"But you'll miss him."

"Well, of course I will. But-oh, my-how happy you've made me."

Suddenly Casey had a thought. "Oh, my gosh!" she exclaimed. "You'll be my grandma, Mary!"

"Well, now, that's a job I'll like!"

It took a while before they got around to eating breakfast. Who could eat breakfast with happiness like this chasing everything mundane from the mind? But finally somebody realized the food was getting cold, and they removed the lids and were two minutes into the meal when Casey stopped, and said it for all of them.

"Hey, you know what? This is going to be absolutely perfect-I mean, all four of us as a family. It's like it was meant to be."

It certainly was, their smiles all said.

Meant to be.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

They were married less than two months later in the church where she had sung in his choir. The wedding was scheduled for one o'clock on a Wednesday afternoon, because the church was booked for all the weekend days that month, and so was the bride. She had sung in Vancouver the previous weekend, and would be singing in Shreveport the next.

But on this day-a hot, late-summer, high-sky day with the temperatures in the nineties and the cicadas singing in the backyards-she would belong not to her fans, but only to her man.

One hour before the ceremony was scheduled to begin, Mary was in her kitchen, all dressed, when she heard Tess and Renee coming down the stairs. She'd been listening to the two of them talking and laughing and traipsing through the house most of the morning. Now here they came, ready at last.

"Well, Momma, here I am," Tess announced from the doorway.

The old woman turned and put a hand to her mouth.

"Oh, land… oh, me… I think this is the happiest day of my life. I believe I'm happier today than I was the day of my own wedding."

"Don't you go cryin' now, Momma, not after Renee and I got your makeup all pretty."

Mary got control of herself and made a stirring motion. "Turn around. Let me see."

Tess turned a full circle, showing off her bridal dress. It was very simple, made of white linen, with cap sleeves, a square neck, and a stovepipe skirt whose hem was created by points of open cutwork that overhung her ankles by three inches. On her feet she wore white linen pumps, on her head, instead of a veil, a circlet of baby's breath with her hair pulled up high inside it. Her only jewelry was a tiny pair of sapphire ear studs matching the ring Kenny had given her: an emerald-cut sapphire surrounded by diamonds.

"Isn't she gorgeous?" Renee said, leaning against the doorway.

"Lord o' mercy," Mary said.

The bride was definitely the prettiest thing in that kitchen, which hadn't changed a whit. The same ugly wall clock pointed to the hour. The same curled-up plastic doily sat on the same old-fashioned table. The same wounded Formica bled white up through a thousand scratch marks.

But the house was a cool seventy-two degrees, because Tess had said, "Momma, if you want me to get married at First Methodist you're going to have to let me put air-conditioning in that house, 'cause if you think I'm getting dressed in that attic in the middle of summer, you're wrong. I'll melt like an ice cream cone and you'll have to pour me into that church!"

So Mary had called Clarence Spillforth down at the plumbing and heating store, and said, "Clarence, I want you to come up here and put me some air-conditioning into my house because my girl Tess is gonna get married here. She's marrying Kenny Kronek, you know, and he's moving to Nashville to take care of her business for her, and his daughter, Casey? Well, she's been singing on Tess's records, don't you know. So, Clarence, when can you be here?"

Everybody in town knew what was happening over at First Methodist an hour from now. There would be lots of reporters at the church, and Tess had no desire to encounter her groom for the first time with shutters clicking from fifteen directions. So she and Kenny had made their secret plans.

She took Mary's hands, and said, "You understand, don't you, Momma? Kenny and I just want a few minutes alone together before we go to church."

"Well, of course. You got a right to do your wedding day the way you want. I'll get my purse, then I'm all ready to go."

While she went off to the bedroom, walking with scarcely a visible hitch these days, Tess and Renee exchanged a sentimental smile.

"Thanks so much for being with me this morning," Tess said, going to hug Renee, who rubbed her back.

"I wouldn't have missed it."

"You sure it's okay that I didn't ask you to be my bridesmaid?"

"Absolutely. You picked the perfect ones."

"Thanks for understanding."

"All ready," Mary announced, returning. "Let's go, Renee, and leave these two to do whatever it is they want to do."

At the back door, Renee paused, the last one out, and looked back at the bride. "It is the happiest day of her life, and it's no secret who's going to be her favorite son-in-law from now on. We're all happy about it, Tess."

"Thanks, sis."

They went out and the house grew quiet. In the alley the car doors slammed, an engine started, then disappeared. The only sound in the kitchen came from the humming of the clock. Tess went to the window above the sink and looked out. The back lawns were neatly mowed. Heavy red tomatoes hung on the vines in the garden. Up the side of Kenny's garage a huge purple clematis vine cascaded with brilliant blooms. The sun shone on his back porch where she and he had played together when they were children. His garage door was up, and inside she could see the tail end of a brand-new Mercedes she'd bought him for a wedding gift. It was a smart buy, he'd told her, for it could be legally written off on her taxes as a business expense, since he was now a vice president of Wintergreen Enterprises.

She smiled, realizing how perfectly his life was meshing with hers, and how much help he'd be to her in the future.

Then she checked the time again, and got her gardenia out of the refrigerator.

"Well, here goes," she whispered to herself, and headed from the room. But reaching the doorway, she turned to scan her mother's kitchen one last time as a single woman. She had no inkling what prompted her to pause and look back, but doing so, she experienced an unexpected bolt of nostalgia, and thought, Let it never change, let me always come home and find it just this way, plastic doily and all.

Outside on the stoop the sun was hot on her head as she paused and looked across the alley. It took less than five seconds before Kenny appeared on his back step, too, dressed in a gray tux with a cutaway jacket and a pleated white shirt. Even from this distance, his appearance made her heart race, this man she'd taken for conservative, who was constantly surprising her with his clothes.

They stood for a moment, studying each other across the depth of two backyards, recalling a dawn with the sun coming up through the trees behind him, and the sprinkler fanning the garden while Tess jumped the rows of wet vegetables, barefooted, and Kenny stood watching her with a cup of coffee in his hand and his bare toes curled over the back step.

No bare toes today. Instead, two enchanted people in their wedding finery, initiating a ceremony of their own design.

They walked slowly down their respective steps, across the backyards, between patches of summer grass. Instead of an organ, the cicadas piped a song from somewhere among the rhubarb leaves. Instead of bridesmaids, a pair of white cabbage moths fluttered along in front of Tess. Instead of an aisle, a coarse concrete sidewalk; and instead of an altar, an alley.