Emilie Richards - The Parting Glass

She just hadn’t reckoned with a flat tire.

Now the sisters stood outside Casey’s house and stared forlornly at the evidence.

“There’s debris all over the roads from the wind. I guess I drove over something on the way back from the saloon,” Casey said.

“Yeah, like a railroad spike. That tire’s a pancake.”

“And I sold my car,” Peggy said. “I hitched a ride over here from Uncle Den.”

“Charming.” Megan kicked what was left of the tire, most likely doing permanent damage to her ivory pumps. “I don’t suppose either of you wants to change this?”

“In this dress?” Casey looked down and shook her head. “Not a chance.”

“We’ll call a taxi,” Peggy said.

“This isn’t Manhattan. Nick will be married to somebody else by the time one gets here.” Megan kicked the tire again, shoes be damned. “Maybe somebody’s still left at the saloon. Casey, can you find out?”

Casey dug in her purse for her cell phone and made the call. They all stood perfectly still, waiting until she flipped it closed and shook her head. “It’s a miracle. They’re all on time for the wedding. Everybody but us. Jon’s already there with Nick, and I’ll bet his phone is off.” For good measure she punched in more numbers, with no success.

“Do you know your neighbors?” Megan looked around. “You must know somebody by now.”

Casey inclined her head to the left. “They’re out of town.” She inclined to the right. “I’m taking in their mail and papers.” She nodded to the house across the street. “They’re on the wrong side of one of Jon’s cases and about to move to a secure location. And the house next to theirs is empty.”

Megan peered around her, mind whirling. Casey and Jon had purchased one of Niccolo’s Ohio City renovations. The house, a brick Colonial Revival with classical detailing, suited the busy couple perfectly, and best of all, it was only four blocks from Niccolo’s house on Hunter Street.

“Okay, let’s hike it, then. We’ll get Charity.”

Her sisters groaned. Charity, Megan’s dilapidated Chevy, was renowned for its bad temper. Charity only began at “home.” The joke was rarely funny.

“Got a better idea?” Megan demanded.

“Well, we’ll see if Charity feels at home at Nick’s. If she doesn’t, maybe your neighbors will be more helpful than Casey’s,” Peggy said. “Let’s march.”

Megan started down the sidewalk at a fast clip. She heard her sisters behind her, but she was on a mission now. She had said she would marry Niccolo, and it was too late to call off the wedding gracefully.

They tramped in silence, three women in ballerina length silk dresses and hair whipping in the accelerating wind.

“It’s going to rain,” Casey said, a block from Niccolo’s house. “God, I hope we get to the car before it does.”

“It better not rain!” Megan marched on.

They turned down Hunter, and Megan could just see Charity at the end of the block in front of Niccolo’s—her—house. “Lord, let her start.”

“This really is a red-letter day. That was a prayer,” Casey said. “Megan’s praying.”

“I’ll have you know I’m in tight with the Lord. I had to be to get married in the church.”

“At least temporarily. Did Father Brady faint when you joined him in the confessional?”

“Father Brady is nicer and apparently more optimistic about my soul than you are.” Megan was afraid to look at her watch. They were cutting this close, and it was going to take some real time to repair all the wind damage.

The raindrops started just as they got to the car, but Charity started with the first turn of the key.

“Do you believe in omens?” she asked Peggy, who climbed in beside her.

“I’m too Irish not to.”

Megan double-parked Charity at the curb, but she didn’t turn off the engine. The small parking lot looked full and altogether too far away from the entrance she planned to use. St. Brigid’s had a side door just past the sanctuary that led to a stairwell. One flight up there was a room where the brides usually dressed—and now she fervently wished she’d decided to use it. Once upstairs and ready, she could make her entrance through another stairwell into the narthex and eventually up the aisle to meet Niccolo and Father Brady.

Too bad she hadn’t packed her hiking gear.

“We can do this.” She took a deep breath. “I’ll leave the key in the ignition. The neighborhood’s tough enough that maybe somebody will steal her. Once they see what they’re into, they’ll park her somewhere nice and safe until I can find her again.”

“We’re still fifty yards from a door,” Casey said from the back seat.

“It’s only sprinkling.”

Peggy wiped the foggy windshield with her fingertips. “You know what? You’ve lived here too long. By anybody else’s standards, that’s a downpour. And you hate getting wet.”

“Megan,” Casey said, “nobody will steal Charity, and you’re going to get towed if you stay here.”

Charity chose that moment to sputter and die.

“Looks like I don’t have a choice, and I’d rather bail her out of the impound lot than be late for my own wedding.”

“At least your ambivalence disappeared,” Casey said.

Megan didn’t bother to correct her. “Can you two get yourselves inside?”

Peggy had been scrounging under the seat for an umbrella. She held one out to Megan, a poor cousin of the species but still useful. “You go ahead. The weather’s only going to get worse. I’ll see if I can start this monster.”

“I’m not walking down the aisle without you. You have to hold me up.” After a lot of speculation on who should accompany her on the trip down the aisle, Megan had asked Casey and Peggy to walk just a step ahead of her, more escorts than attendants. She had a dozen male relatives who would have been happy to do the honors, but she had chosen her sisters instead. The man who should have walked with her wasn’t up to the task.

Megan gauged the distance and the raindrops. “Which should I ruin? My pumps or my panty hose?”

“I brought extra panty hose.” Casey was leaning over the seat now.

Megan removed her shoes and opened the door. “See you inside.” She flipped open the umbrella, and in stocking feet she sprinted across the grass to her favored entrance. At the door to the stairwell, she shook like a spaniel, closing her eyes and the umbrella and letting the raindrops fly. When she opened them, her future husband was staring back at her.

“Nick!” She put a hand over her heart. “What are you doing here?”

“Checking to see if you’d deserted me at the altar.”

She stared at him. The dark suit set off his wide shoulders, black hair and neatly trimmed beard. With his olive skin and Roman centurion features, he was the perfect finale to any walk down the aisle.

“You weren’t supposed to see me like this.”

He was smiling now. “I remember the first time we spent an evening together. Do you?”

At the moment she wasn’t sure she remembered her own name. She stared at him, this gorgeous, masculine human being who wanted to share her life.

“You invited me home after a day at work,” he said, “and you were exhausted. So you took a shower while I waited, and when you came into the kitchen your hair was wet. Sort of like it is now. And I was flattened by desire.”

“Flattened?”

“Metaphorically. More or less the opposite of my real state, I guess.”

She smiled. “I’d forgotten.”

“So I have a thing about seeing you wet. And dry, for that matter. Just seeing you.”

“Oh, Nick.” She wanted to fall into his arms. Instead she spread her skirt, holding it out with both hands like a little girl in petticoats. “Are you sure you want to go through with this? I’m not much of a bargain.”