“Dearly beloved,” Reverend Julie McPartlin began, “we have come together in the presence of God to witness and bless the joining together of this man and this woman in Holy Matrimony.”
Hadley thought of her own wedding. Las Vegas, during an industry convention. What a cliché. When Dylan asked her, his eyes dark and soulful and a heartbreaker smile on his lips, it had seemed reckless and romantic.
“… therefore, marriage is not to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly, but reverently, deliberately…”
She hadn’t even been sober. They had smoked two joints beforehand and giggled through the whole thing. What did it say about your approach to marriage when you treated the start of it as an ironic joke?
“Into this holy union Russell Howard Van Alstyne and Clare Peyton Fergusson now come to be joined.”
Beside her, Harlene honked into a tissue. Hadley watched as she reached out and grabbed her husband’s hand. Mr. Lendrum was sixty-something and built as if he’d been stitched out of lumpy cotton batting, but Harlene looked at him, for a moment, in exactly the same way Clare Fergusson was looking at Russ Van Alstyne.
Was there some sort of secret everybody but Hadley knew? Or was it that some women had a clear-eyed view of the good guys, while all she had ever been able to see was users and bastards?
Then came the readings and the homily and the prayers and communion and finally it was almost over, thank heavens, because the kids were getting twitchy. The priest delivered a final prayer over the kneeling couple. “Is the chief going to become Episcopalian?” Hadley whispered to Flynn.
“I think he’s going to stay Law-Enforcementarian,” he said under his breath. She snickered.
The choir stood and the organ started up, a soft, rhythmic beat that sounded almost like the beginning of a sixties tune. “Ooo! I know this,” Hudson said. “We’re doing this with the adult choir at Christmas.”
“Tomorrow will be my dancing day,” the choir sang, and Reverend Clare and the chief walked back down the aisle, both of them looking as if they’d been lit up from inside. The music and voices soared, sharp and sweet. On every side of her, people’s eyes were wet, and Harlene was honking, and Flynn turned to Hadley and smiled.
Weddings. It was like they put some sort of drug in with the flower arrangements.
“Do you think it’ll last?” Hadley said, determined to break the spell.
Flynn looked at her as if she had asked if he thought the sun would rise in the east tomorrow. “Are you kidding?” He leaned in so his breath was warm in her ear. “It’s true love.”
“There’s no such thing.”
He thumbed toward Hudson. “Tell him that.”
Her son was looking up at the choir, his hand keeping the irregular beat. “To call my true love to my dance,” he sang in his piping soprano, “Sing O! my love, O! my love, my love, my love; This I have done for my true love.”
Flynn smiled at her. “Let’s go dance.”
The reception was a blast, despite-or maybe because of-the rich Virginians and the priests. There were other kids there, nieces and nephews and the children of friends, so after they had bolted down some dinner, Hadley let Hudson and Genny join the others playing flashlight tag in the field next to the tents.
The chief and Reverend Clare kicked off the dancing to the old Beach Boys tune “God Only Knows,” and soon the floor was packed with everyone from Mrs. Marshall and Norm Madsen, sedately fox-trotting, to the youngest Ellis boy, popping and locking. Hadley danced with Nathan Andernach, the perpetual bachelor of St. Alban’s, and with Nathan Bougeron, who had left the MKPD before she arrived for a job with the state police, and with a good-looking guy from Maryland who turned out to be a priest, which kind of freaked her out. She danced with Lyle MacAuley, and with Noble Entwhistle, and with Duane Adams, one of the part-time officers.
She didn’t dance with Kevin Flynn. She had thought about it, driving over to the Stuyvesant Inn, and realized all those throat-closing, eyes-meeting moments were based on the fact that he was the only unattached guy remotely her age she saw on a regular basis. But, hey, at a wedding reception? Lots of possibilities. So she smiled at men she didn’t know and said yes to anyone who asked her, and stayed away from Flynn.
After the cake cutting, Granddad announced he was taking Hudson and Genny home. “You stay put and have a good time,” he said, when she protested she should leave, too. “’Tain’t natural for a girl pretty as you to sit home all the time.” He winked. “I’ll leave a light on for ya.”
So she stayed. She danced and chatted and laughed. She congratulated the newlyweds. “Are you Clare Van Alstyne now?” she asked the reverend.
“No, I’m Russ Fergusson,” the chief said.
Reverend Clare elbowed him. “We’re keeping our names just as they are.”
“Good idea,” Dr. Anne said, sipping a drink. “Professional identity and all that. How about you, Hadley? Is Knox your maiden name?”
Hadley shook her head. “No. It was Potts.”
Reverend Clare frowned. “Didn’t your grandfather tell me you changed your first name from Honey to Hadley?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Honey Potts,” the chief said.
“My God, that sounds like a porn star name.” Dr. Anne patted her shoulder. “You poor thing. What were your parents thinking of?”
“I suspect they were stoned when they came up with it,” Hadley said. “When do we get to do the Chicken Dance?”
“Shortly after my mother is dead and buried in the family plot,” Reverend Clare said.
Instead the guests twisted and jived and even swung to some country songs the chief had managed to sneak in past his mother-in-law. Eventually, steaming hot and out of breath, Hadley snuck out for some fresh air.
The open spaces between the inn and the tents were strung with small clear lights, giving a deceptively summerlike look to the autumn landscape. The near-freezing temperature was shocking on her bare skin, but it felt good. She tipped her head back and looked at the bright cold stars, like God’s wedding decorations. A man came out of the dance tent. Long and lean, and for a moment she couldn’t see him clearly. Then he walked toward her, and the soft light fell on his thick red hair, and she said, “Oh. Here you are.”
Here you are. As if she’d been looking for him, not avoiding him.
Flynn held out a glass. “I thought you might like something cold.”
“I’m driving, so I’m not-”
“It’s ginger ale.”
“Oh.” She took the drink. “Thanks.”
Here you are.
She was parched, she discovered. She drained the glass dry and handed it back to him.
“We haven’t danced yet.” His jacket was gone. He had loosened his tie and rolled his shirtsleeves up.
“No,” she agreed. No? Real swift. She must have left her brains inside the tent.
“I figured it was because of the work thing.” He took a step closer to her. “We’re both young, we’re both single, you don’t want people to misinterpret what’s going on.”
That sounded reasonable to her. “That’s right. Nobody ever believes you when you say you’re just friends.”
From the speaker near the tent flap, Bonnie Raitt sang, “People are talking…”
“So let’s dance out here.” He rested the empty glass against the canvas.