Нора Робертс - Vision in White

BY THE TIME SHE WAS EIGHT, MACKENSIE ELLIOT HAD BEEN married fourteen times. She’d married each of her three best friends—as both bride and groom—her best friend’s brother (under his protest), two dogs, three cats, and a rabbit.

She’d served at countless other weddings as maid of honor, bridesmaid, groomsman, best man, and officiant.

Though the dissolutions were invariably amicable, none of the marriages lasted beyond an afternoon. The transitory aspect of marriage came as no surprise to Mac, as her own parents boasted two each—so far.

Wedding Day wasn’t her favorite game, but she kind of liked being the priest or the reverend or the justice of the peace. Or, after attending her father’s second wife’s nephew’s bar mitzvah, the rabbi.

Plus, she enjoyed the cupcakes or fancy cookies and fizzy lemonade always served at the reception.

It was Parker’s favorite game, and Wedding Day always took place on the Brown Estate, with its expansive gardens, pretty groves, and silvery pond. In the cold Connecticut winters, the ceremony might take place in front of one of the roaring fires inside the big house.

They had simple weddings and elaborate affairs. Royal weddings, star-crossed elopements, circus themes, and pirate ships. All ideas were seriously considered and voted upon, and no theme or costume too outrageous.

Still, with fourteen marriages under her belt, Mac grew a bit weary of Wedding Day.

Until she experienced her seminal moment.

For her eighth birthday Mackensie’s charming and mostly absent father sent her a Nikon camera. She’d never expressed any interest in photography, and initially pushed it away with the other odd gifts he’d given or sent since the divorce. But Mac’s mother told

her mother, and Grandma muttered and complained about “feckless, useless Geoffrey Elliot” and the inappropriate gift of an adult camera for a young girl who’d be better off with a Barbie doll.

As she habitually disagreed with her grandmother on principle, Mac’s interest in the camera piqued. To annoy Grandma—who was visiting for the summer instead of being in her retirement community in Scottsdale, where Mac strongly believed she belonged—Mac hauled the Nikon around with her. She toyed with it, experimented. She took pictures of her room, of her feet, of her friends. Shots that were blurry and dark, or fuzzy and washed out. With her lack of success, and her mother’s impending divorce from her stepfather, Mac’s interest in the Nikon began to wane. Even years later she couldn’t say what prompted her to bring it along to Parker’s that pretty summer afternoon for Wedding Day.

Every detail of the traditional garden wedding had been planned. Emmaline as the bride and Laurel as groom would exchange their vows beneath the rose arbor. Emma would wear the lace veil and train Parker’s mother had made out of an old tablecloth, while Harold, Parker’s aging and affable golden retriever walked her down the garden path to give her away.

A selection of Barbies, Kens, and Cabbage Patch Kids, along with a variety of stuffed animals lined the path as guests.

“It’s a very private ceremony,” Parker relayed as she fussed with Emma’s veil. “With a small patio reception to follow. Now, where’s the best man?”

Laurel, her knee recently skinned, shoved through a trio of hydrangeas. “He ran away, and went up a tree after a squirrel. I can’t get him to come down.”

Parker rolled her eyes. “I’ll get him. You’re not supposed to see the bride before the wedding. It’s bad luck. Mac, you need to fix Emma’s veil and get her bouquet. Laurel and I’ll get Mr. Fish out of the tree.”

“I’d rather go swimming,” Mac said as she gave Emma’s veil an absent tug.

“We can go after I get married.”

“I guess. Aren’t you tired of getting married?”

“Oh, I don’t mind. And it smells so good out here. Everything’s so pretty.”

Mac gave Emma the clutch of dandelions and wild violets they were allowed to pick. “You look pretty.”

It was invariably true. Emma’s dark, shiny hair tumbled under the white lace. Her eyes sparkled a deep, deep brown as she sniffed the weed bouquet. She was tanned, sort of all golden, Mac thought, and scowled at her own milk white skin.

The curse of a redhead, her mother said, as she got her carroty hair from her father. At eight, Mac was tall for her age and skinny as a stick, with teeth already trapped in hated braces.

She thought that, beside her, Emmaline looked like a gypsy princess.

Parker and Laurel came back, giggling with the feline best man clutched in Parker’s arms. “Everybody has to take their places.” Parker poured the cat into Laurel’s arms. Mac, you need to get dressed! Emma—”

“I don’t want to be maid of honor.” Mac looked at the poofy Cinderella dress draped over a garden bench. “That thing’s scratchy, and it’s hot. Why can’t Mr. Fish be maid of honor, and I’ll be best man?”

“Because it’s already planned. Everybody’s nervous before a wedding.” Parker flipped back her long brown pigtails, then picked up the dress to inspect it for tears or stains. Satisfied, she pushed it at Mac. “It’s okay. It’s going to be a beautiful ceremony, with true love and happy ever after.”

“My mother says happy ever after’s a bunch of bull.”

There was a moment of silence after Mac’s statement. The unspoken word

divorce seemed to hang in the air.

“I don’t think it has to be.” Her eyes full of sympathy, Parker reached out, ran her hand along Mac’s bare arm.

“I don’t want to wear the dress. I don’t want to be a bridesmaid. I—”

“Okay. That’s okay. We can have a pretend maid of honor. Maybe you could take pictures.”

Mac looked down at the camera she’d forgotten hung around her neck. “They never come out right.”

“Maybe they will this time. It’ll be fun. You can be the official wedding photographer.”

“Take one of me and Mr. Fish,” Laurel insisted, and pushed her face and the cat’s together. “Take one, Mac!”

With little enthusiasm, Mac lifted the camera, pressed the shutter.

“We should’ve thought of this before! You can take formal portraits of the bride and groom, and more pictures during the ceremony.” Busy with the new idea, Parker hung the Cinderella costume on the hydrangea bush. “It’ll be good, it’ll be fun. You need to go down the path with the bride and Harold. Try to take some good ones. I’ll wait, then start the music. Let’s go!”

There would be cupcakes and lemonade, Mac reminded herself. And swimming later, and fun. It didn’t matter if the pictures were stupid, didn’t matter that her grandmother was right and she was too young for the camera.

It didn’t matter that her mother was getting divorced again, or that her stepfather, who’d been okay, had already moved out.

It didn’t matter that happy ever after was bull, because it was all pretend anyway.

She tried to take pictures of Emma and the obliging Harold, imagined getting the film back and seeing the blurry figures and smudges of her thumb, like always.

When the music started she felt bad that she hadn’t put on the scratchy dress and given Emma a maid of honor, just because her mother and grandmother had put her in a bad mood. So she circled around to stand to the side and tried harder to take a nice picture of Harold walking Emma down the garden path.

It looked different through the lens, she thought, the way she could focus on Emma’s face—the way the veil lay over her hair. And the way the sun shined through the lace was pretty.

She took more pictures as Parker began the “Dearly Beloved” as the Reverend Whistledown, as Emma and Laurel took hands and Harold curled up to sleep and snore at their feet.

She noticed how bright Laurel’s hair was, how the sun caught the edges of it beneath the tall black hat she wore as groom. How Mr. Fish’s whiskers twitched as he yawned.

When it happened, it happened as much inside Mac as out. Her three friends were grouped under the lush white curve of the arbor, a triangle of pretty young girls. Some instinct had Mac shifting her position, just slightly, tilting the camera just a bit. She didn’t know it as composition, only that it looked nicer through the lens.

And the blue butterfly fluttered across her range of vision to land on the head of a butter yellow dandelion in Emma’s bouquet. The surprise and pleasure struck the three faces in that triangle under the white roses almost as one.

Mac pressed the shutter.

She knew,

knew, the photograph wouldn’t be blurry and dark or fuzzy and washed out. Her thumb wouldn’t be blocking the lens. She knew exactly what the picture would look like, knew her grandmother had been wrong after all.

Maybe happy ever after was bull, but she knew she wanted to take more pictures of moments that

were happy. Because then they were ever after.

ON JANUARY FIRST, MAC ROLLED OVER TO SMACK HER ALARM clock, and ended up facedown on the floor of her studio.