Susan Wiggs - Return to Willow Lake

“I’ll come with,” Nina said. “You might need propping up when you see some of the final bills.”

Greg slipped his arm around Nina. “In that case, how about we have one last glass of champagne together? For courage.”

“Good plan.” Nina helped herself to a couple of flutes from one of the tables. “Join us down by the lake?”

Sonnet found a half-empty bottle and poured herself a glass. “I think I’ll stick around here and…” She paused. After all was said and done, the maid of honor had no further duties. “…drink alone.”

“Ah, baby.” Her mom offered a soft smile. “Your time will come, just like I was saying before the wedding. No one can say where or when, but it’ll happen.”

“Gah, Mom.” Sonnet grimaced. “I’m not mooning about my love life. That’s the last thing on my mind.”

“If you say so.” Nina lifted her glass in salute.

“I say so. Go away.” Sonnet made a shooing motion with her free hand. “Go drink with your husband. I’ll see you in the morning, okay? I’m planning to be on the noon train to the city.” She watched her mom and stepdad wander down the gentle slope toward the lake, their silhouettes dark against the moonlight.

They paused at the water’s edge and stood facing the moonlit surface, Greg holding Nina protectively from behind, his hands folded over her midsection. Sonnet sighed, feeling a wave of gladness for her mom. Yet at the same time, the sight of them embracing made her heart ache. Sonnet tried to imagine herself in that role—the bride. Would her own father walk her down the aisle, the tears flowing freely down his face? Doubtful. General Laurence Jeffries, now a candidate for the United States Senate, was more figurehead than father.

And when she pictured herself walking down the aisle, she couldn’t form a mental image of the guy waiting at the end of it. She wasn’t going to hold her breath waiting for him.

“I hate weddings.” Zach Alger sidled over and slammed back a bottle of Utica Club. “I especially hate weddings that require me to behave myself.”

Sonnet had spent most of the day sneaking glances at Zach, trying to accustom herself to this new version of her oldest friend. They hadn’t had a chance to talk at the wedding; the evening had sped by with her still doing her duty as maid of honor. Now, mellow from drinking and dancing, she regarded him through squinted eyes. It was hard to get her head around the idea that he had been a part of her life since preschool. That, perhaps, was the only reason she didn’t swoon sideways when he walked past, the way most women did. Still, it was hard to get used to his unique, striking looks—so blond he was sometimes mistaken for an albino, and now built like a Greek athlete, yet oddly oblivious to his effect on the opposite sex.

She gave him a superior sniff, falling into her old role as sidekick. “You mean there’s a kind of wedding that doesn’t require you to behave yourself?” She plucked an untouched flute of champagne from one of the tables that hadn’t yet been cleared.

“I’m a wedding videographer. I’ve filmed more weddings than I’ve been to baseball games. I haven’t seen a Saturday night in five years. And what do I do when one finally rolls around? I go to a freaking wedding.”

“Daisy’s wedding.”

“Any wedding. I hate them all.”

She scowled at him. “How can you be hating on Daisy Bellamy’s wedding?”

Just hearing herself say the words aloud filled her with a sense of wonder—not because Daisy had married the man of her dreams. That in itself was wonderful. But the real miracle was that Daisy had gotten married at all. Her parents’ divorce had been so hard on her. Back when Daisy’s dad and Sonnet’s mom were first getting together, both girls had agreed that marriage was too perilous and restrictive, and they’d made a pact to avoid it at all costs.

Now Daisy was soaring off to wedded bliss, and Sonnet was stuck keeping her end of the pact. She cringed at the picture of her own romantic future. Thanks to her impossibly busy career as a director at UNESCO, she had almost no time to date, let alone get swept away and fall in love. She dreamed of it, though. Who didn’t? Who didn’t want the kind of love Daisy had found? Or her mother and Greg Bellamy? Or the head couple of the Bellamy clan, Jane and Charles, who had been married for more than fifty years.

Of course Sonnet wanted that—the love, the security, the lifelong project of building a family with her soul mate. It sounded so magical. And so unreachable. When it came to a serious relationship, she had never quite figured out how to get from Point A to Point B.

Lately, though, there was a glimmer on the horizon from a most unexpected source. Her father—yes, her super-accomplished, goal-oriented father—had introduced her to a guy. His name was Orlando Rivera, and he was heading up the general’s run for office. Like the general, he’d attended West Point. He was in his thirties, ridiculously handsome, from the eldest son of a monied Cuban-American family. He had the dark appeal of a Latin lover and was fluent in English and Spanish. And, maybe most importantly of all, he was in the tight inner circle of satellites that revolved around her father.

“I’m allowed to hate anything I want,” Zach said, grabbing the champagne from her hand and guzzling it down.

Defiantly, she picked up a half-empty bottle that was bobbing in an ice bucket and took back the glass. “It was Daisy’s big day, and if you were any kind of gentleman, you’d be happy for her. And for me,” she groused at him. “I got to stand up at the altar for my best friend—”

“Hey,” he groused back. “I thought I was your best friend.”

“You never come to see me.” She feigned a dramatic sigh. “You don’t call, you don’t text… Besides, I can have more than one.”

“Best is a superlative term. There can only be one.”

She refilled the glass and took a gulp, enjoying the lovely head rush of the bubbly. “You and your rules. Both you and Daisy are my besties and there’s nothing you can do about it, so there.”

“Oh yeah? I can think of something.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her down toward the dark, flat expanse of Willow Lake.

“What the heck are you doing?” she said, twisting her hand out of his.

“The party’s over, but I’m not tired. Are you tired?”

“No, but—”

“Hey, check it out.” He led the way down the slope to the water’s edge.

“Check what out? I’m going to ruin my shoes.”

He stopped and turned. “Then take them off.”

“But I—”

“Lean on me,” he said, going down on one knee in front of her. He slipped off one sandal and then the other. She felt an unexpected frisson of sensation when he touched her. “That’s better, anyway.”

She sniffed again, unwilling to admit that the coarse sand on the lakeshore felt delicious under her bare feet. “Fine, what are we checking out?”

“I saw something.…” He gestured at the water lapping gently up the sandy slope.

She saw it, too, a glimmer in the moonlight. Then she frowned and lifted the hem of her dress to wade out and grab it. “A champagne bottle,” she said. “Somebody littered.” Holding it up to the light, she squinted. “There’s a message inside, Zach.”

“Yeah? Open it up and check it out,” he said.

“No way,” she said. “It might be someone’s private business.”

“What? How can you find a message in a bottle and not look at it?”

“It’s bad karma to pry into it. I won’t be party to snooping around someone else’s emotional baggage.” Defiantly, she flung the bottle as far as she could. It landed unseen, with a decisive plop. “What kind of idiot leaves a message in a bottle in a landlocked lake, anyway?” she asked.