A Coventry Wedding Read online

  She’d opened her mouth to thank him for the coffee and instead heard herself saying, “I want to postpone the wedding.”

  She still couldn’t understand what had motivated her. It was as if someone else had taken over her brain and spoken for her. Certainly not practical, dutiful Pru, who’d been filling her head with recriminations ever since. Maybe she had yet another personality inside her. Maybe someone would end up writing a book about her. They could turn her disorder into a network movie: Three Voices of a Reluctant Bride. Or better yet, a dozen episodes on HBO or Showtime. They’d get some actress with long red hair to play her. Not Nicole Kidman; she was too old. So was Julianne Moore. Lindsay Lohan was too young. Maybe Alicia Witt. Hud could play himself.

  Hud, Pru reminded her. You were remembering Hud’s reaction.

  Hud had been amazingly understanding. Once he realized that she was serious, he assured her that she was having a bad reaction to the way the wedding had gotten beyond their control. Instead of trying to talk her into getting married anyway, he agreed to the postponement. He called the network and had someone arrange his flight to Minneapolis so he could join several of his cast mates at Suds and Studs, a meet-and-greet for fans of daytime TV. He wasn’t even upset that she didn’t want to go to Minnesota with him. He suggested that she treat herself to a few days at a resort of her choice, where she could relax and stop thinking about the wedding. Chandra, the agent/publicist/raving lunatic who took care of Hud, could notify the minister, the church, the string quartet, the caterer, the band, and the five hundred wedding guests. He would even ask Chandra to cancel their honeymoon plans.

  All she had to do was tell her mother. Hud refused to burden Chandra with that job.

  She squirmed uncomfortably and looked at her silent cell phone. She had attempted to call her mother. Several times. It was impossible to catch Carol Halli in her office, so she’d finally tried to leave the message with her secretary.

  “Oh, no you don’t,” the secretary barked. “You deliver your own bad news. I’ve got one word for you: liposuction.”

  “Huh?”

  “Here’s a test. If you can tell me my name, maybe I’ll give your mother the message.”

  “Uh…”

  “Can’t do it, can you? Do you know why you can’t remember my name? Because over the past five years, your mother’s had more assistants than Baskin-Robbins has ice-cream flavors. I’ve kept my job a record seven months. I only have two paychecks to go before I’ve saved enough money to get this cottage cheese suctioned from my ass and thighs.”

  “What does your surgery have to do with my wedding?”

  “This wedding is your mother’s ultimate networking opportunity. If I tell her it’s off, she’ll fire me on the spot.”

  “That’s crazy,” she said, even though she had to admit that her mother was incapable of hanging on to an assistant. “Anyway, the wedding’s not off. It’s just delayed.”

  “I’m sending you to voice mail,” the secretary sang in a warning tone.

  “It’s Frida. No, Francie.”

  “So close,” the secretary said before adding, “It’s Nelda.”

  The next thing she heard was her mother’s I’m-not-in-leave-your-number message. After a hostile moment of wishing she could tell Nelda that she should keep her ice cream and cottage cheese strictly metaphorical, she tried to break her news in a tone that sounded as forceful and confident as possible. Then she hung up and raced to keep her appointment in Palm Springs with the man who’d made an offer on her car. Even though she was no longer days away from becoming Mrs. Hudson Blake with legal rights to the second set of keys to his Audi, she’d been counting the minutes until her wretched SUV paid back some of the money she’d spent to keep it running. Nothing would have stopped her from unloading it.

  She checked to make sure the twelve thousand dollars was still in its tight bundle at the bottom of her purse. When the tow truck driver showed up, she couldn’t let him know she was carrying that much cash, just as she didn’t want him to see the diamond that seemed too heavy for her slender fingers. Being desperate, stranded, and apparently affluent would make her an easy mark for him or whatever mechanic he took her to.

  She squinted at the name on the driver’s door of the tow truck: REVERE AUTO REPAIR. The letters beneath it were too faded to make out at this distance. It looked like CONVENT-something, but that made no sense. Although if she thought about it, nuns probably didn’t take a vow renouncing auto repair. Judging by how much car repairs had cost her, a garage seemed a more practical way for a convent to raise money than selling honey, sewing choir robes, or doing whatever nuns did. She wasn’t Catholic, so she had no idea. The closest she’d ever come to a nun was Sister Francesca on Sweet Seasons. Sister Francesca would never be mistaken for an auto mechanic, although Delaney Stewart, the actress who played her—

  Fatigue was taking her on mental journeys that would only end in sleep. She stretched her neck and tried to focus. After giving her the twelve thousand for her SUV, the buyer made arrangements to get her back to L.A., but at the last minute, she’d asked to be taken instead to her grandpa’s house in Redlands. A visit with Grandpa Bagby and Aunt Ruby would settle her frayed nerves and give her courage to deal with her mother. At least when her mother deigned to speak to her again.

  She didn’t want to think about her mother. Instead, she let her mind drift again, this time to summers at Grandpa’s when she was a little girl. Most of the local orange groves were gone by then, but he’d held on to some of his land and his trees. Enticed by the fragrance wafting through her bedroom window, she’d wake up early in the mornings, throw on shorts and a T-shirt, and run to the grove, plucking juicy oranges right off the trees to eat them for breakfast.

  Everything had been so much simpler then. She closed her eyes as she savored the memories, then jolted herself back to alertness and stared again at the tow truck. Where was the stupid driver? How long did it take to go to the bathroom or do whatever he was doing? She’d been to weddings that had taken less time—

  Yes, about weddings, Pru said. You went running from your groom to your grandfather hoping that he’d deal with your mother.

  Maybe that was true. But Grandpa was the only person who could keep her mother in line. Unfortunately, Grandpa hadn’t been home. It was only after she took the key from its hiding place and let herself inside Grandpa’s house that she remembered it was the week he and Aunt Ruby were gambling in Laughlin. They hadn’t planned to come back until just before her wedding so they could be at the rehearsal dinner on Friday night.

  There she’d been, stuck in Redlands without a car, too nervous to sleep, and trying not to regret her decision or to worry about whether Hud was sorry he’d been so nice about it. Just before dawn, she took the key to one of Grandpa’s trucks from a hook inside the pantry and drove to the 10 freeway, intending to find a place to eat breakfast.

  Which was when that irrational force kicked in again. Instead of stopping for food, she kept driving. The freeway was hypnotic, stretching in front of her like an enticing gray ribbon. She wasn’t sure what thoughts made her lose track of time before she finally realized she was near Phoenix. She stopped to fill the pickup with gas and told herself that she couldn’t keep driving east. She hadn’t left a note for Grandpa to let him know she’d taken the truck. What if he came home unexpectedly and reported it stolen? It was one of several old pickups that he refused to sell, but he would surely notice it was missing. And even if Grandpa had taken the most tender care of it, it had to be at least thirty years old. She was crazy to be driving alone so far from home in a truck that was five years older than she was.

  They just don’t make ’em to last like they used to, Grandpa always said whenever he was nagged to get rid of any of his battered old pickups. For no apparent reason and with no real plan, she’d trusted his faith in Ford Motor Company enough to keep driving east after Phoenix, still unwilling to go back and face the consequences of her actions. Or more ac
curately, to face her mother. It was never a good idea to thwart Carol Halli.

  When she saw the sign for Tucson, she promised herself she’d take the exit and turn back. If it hadn’t been for the annoying van in the right lane that wouldn’t speed up or slow down enough for her to move over, she would have.

  Of course, that didn’t explain all the other exits she hadn’t taken. She’d been ignoring the voice of Pru, fighting her sleepiness, and steeling herself to make a U-turn when the real trouble started, because the boring view was interrupted by a startling change of scenery.

  She’d never seen anything like the enormous boulders that were lying in piles on either side of the freeway. Even though she’d been forbidden to read fairy tales when she was a little girl—That’s not the way things turn out in real life, her mother always said in the no-nonsense voice that eventually morphed into Pru—the boulders evoked images of a lost tribe of giants throwing them in some kind of game. There were rest stops on both sides of the freeway, and travelers had parked so they could walk through the canyons of rocks. Some people were even climbing them. She slowed down, lured by a sense of magic that went against everything her mother had ever drilled into her head.

  Just as she pulled off the freeway, something under the hood of Grandpa’s truck began making an alarming clanking noise. She turned into a parking space and grimaced as the truck shook, wheezed, and died. That was when she discovered that her phone battery was also dead. She got out, intending to approach the first sane-looking person who came along so she could ask for the use of a cell phone. Then she spotted the flatbed tow truck and relaxed. As soon as the driver came back, she could put her problem in more capable hands. Mechanic’s hands.

  While she’d been waiting, anxiously eyeing the snake and insect sign, a white Jeep sped past her and came to a squealing stop. A lanky man wearing a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes climbed out and spit. He snapped his fingers, and a big white dog with a few black spots tumbled out on clumsy paws.

  She smiled. A man taking his dog for a walk was good scenery. But then the man jumped back inside his Jeep, slammed the door, and burned rubber driving off.

  After a moment’s shock, she yelled, “Hey!” and jumped out of Grandpa’s pickup to run toward the abandoned dog. She heard her cry echoed by a masculine voice and glanced up in time to see a man sliding down from where he’d been sitting atop one of the more accessible boulders.

  They met at the dog, each of them bending to give it a reassuring pat. They’d barely managed to avoid bumping heads, and their fingers touched briefly before both of them drew back and stood up straight.

  “I’m Sam,” the man said.

  After a pause, she’d said, “Call me Jandy.”

  Why, why had she given him that name? Was it because she’d been reminiscing about being a little girl running through Grandpa’s orange grove?

  Sam gave no indication at first that he noticed her choice of words. He stared in the direction the white Jeep had taken and muttered, “Loser.”

  “I can’t believe he just dropped the dog and took off,” she agreed.

  He shook his head, patted the dog again, and said, “Apparently it’s my destiny to get a dog today.”

  Just like on Hud’s balcony the morning before, a strange compulsion overtook her and made her say, “How do you know it isn’t my destiny? Maybe I’m supposed to get a dog.” Since she didn’t believe in destiny, nor had she ever been allowed to have a pet after an unfortunate incident with a turtle named Martha, she had no idea what provoked her to claim the dog for herself.

  After a few minutes of bickering over rightful custody of the dog, Sam suggested the coin toss. Heads I win; tails you lose. He’d “won” the dog, and she was stuck waiting for a tow truck driver who was apparently reading a Russian novel in the rest stop’s bathroom.

  “Poor dog,” she said aloud. She looked for Sue—

  Sue! What an unimaginative name. She was sure she could have come up with something more original.

  Like Jandy, Pru said.

  “Oh, shut up,” she muttered, continuing to scan the area. Sue and Sam had either left while she wasn’t paying attention, or they were concealed among the rock canyons.

  She wanted to leave, too. Instead, she would probably drop dead of heatstroke. Or a rattlesnake or scorpion would get her. Maybe a tarantula. She shuddered. Were there tarantulas in Arizona?

  She looked around again, intending to go back to her original plan. But no one was nearby, with or without a cell phone.

  Anyway, who would she call? Her mother wasn’t speaking to her. Grandpa and Aunt Ruby were out of town. Hud was in Minnesota. Her most recent temp job, working for the attorney who’d handled the appalling Burger v. Burger divorce and dog custody case, had ended a few weeks before. Even if she still had coworkers, none of them had cared enough about her to drive over five hundred miles to help her. She didn’t even have a best friend who’d do that.

  In fact, most of her friends were actually Hud’s friends. They were nice to her because she was engaged to him. But once Hud’s publicist contacted the Foundlings to tell them about the postponed wedding, they would probably forsake her one by one. It gave her a hollow feeling. Sue the abandoned dog was better off than she was. There was no one to fight over who got to keep January Day Halli.

  Are you really that pathetic? Pru piped up again.

  The relief that flooded through her when she suddenly spotted Sue, who didn’t give a damn about her, returning with Sam, who thought she was dumb, was a clear answer that yes, she was. Pathetic, friendless, stranded, and—

  “Hey!” she yelled again as Sam reached for the door handle of the tow truck. For the second time, she jumped out of Grandpa’s pickup. “Wait!”

  Sam turned and gave her a quizzical look as she ran toward him, then he said, “You need to let it go. I won Sue fair and square.”

  “You won her,” she said, “although fair and square had nothing to do with it. That’s not important right now. You’re the man I’ve been waiting for.”

  His eyebrow shot up again, then he grinned and said, “And I thought it was only the dog you were after.”

  Chapter 2

  As much as she wanted to cut Sam’s ego down to size, she reminded herself that she needed his help. Before she could explain, he held up a hand to silence her. “First things first,” he said. “Dehydration is always a possibility in this kind of heat.”

  She’d been sweating buckets, and her throat was parched, but he was crazy if he thought she was going to accept some kind of drink from him. She didn’t need the voice of Prudence to remind her that was a sure way to end up as the victim on a segment of America’s Most Wanted.

  She watched while Sam reached inside a cooler in the back of his spotlessly clean extended cab. It was hard to believe this was a mechanic’s vehicle. She’d expected stained rags, empty cigarette packs, and crushed beer cans. Maybe that was just her mechanic, whose nickname was Hog. She’d gotten to know Hog only too well because of her unreliable SUV. She should have sent him a wedding invitation and gotten a little of her hard-earned cash back in the form of a toaster. Actually, if there was any justice in the world, Hog should buy her a commercial-grade range. She wondered if the mechanic would miss her and her frequent checks. She’d probably paid for some little Hog’s braces. Or more likely, Mrs. Hog’s breast augmentation.

  The bottle of Ozarka water Sam held looked so cool and clear that she could almost feel the liquid sliding down her throat. There was no reason not to accept it since the seal around the nozzle hadn’t been broken. She’d never wanted water so much in her life as she watched him uncap the bottle and fill a red plastic cup. Then he set it down in front of Sue, who took a couple of indifferent laps before clambering into the truck, looking back as if to say, We all understand whose needs come first here, right?

  Sam drank the water that remained in the bottle, tossed the water from Sue’s cup toward a patch of sand, put the bottle and the cup
in a plastic bag, and tied the bag. Then he brushed off a miniscule smudge left by Sue on the truck’s seat before he turned back and said, “Sam Revere. What can I do for you?”

  The easy and honest response was to say January Halli and let him assume Jandy was her nickname. Instead, she heard herself saying, “Jandy Taylor.”

  What was wrong with her? Even though Taylor had been the name on her birth certificate, it hadn’t been her name since she was four and her stepfather adopted her.

  She shook off her self-recrimination, gestured toward Grandpa’s pickup, and said, “Something’s wrong with my truck.”

  Victim! Pru warned. Don’t let him think there’s no one else you can call to help you. Don’t give him the impression you’re an easy mark. And don’t let him think you’ve got enough money to pay a big repair bill.

  There had been a few times in her life when she’d lied to her mother just to avoid a confrontation, but she was usually honest. She hoped the lies she began fabricating along with her fake name were provoked by weariness and thirst. She hated to think that in addition to having a schizophrenic tendency to hear and be controlled by voices inside her head, she was turning into a pathological liar.

  “My husband’s been out of work for five months, but he finally got a job in”—she paused momentarily to search her brain for a city, any city—“Dallas. I stayed behind to sell our trailer, and now I’m on my way to join him. I’ve got enough to pay for a tow somewhere. After that, my husband can take care of everything.”

  Sam seemed a little amused as he looked across the parking lot at the pickup. “You’ll probably be stuck waiting for parts. Maybe several days. That truck was new when Ford was in the White House. Saturday Night Live still had its original cast. Fleetwood Mac was still an obscure British—”

  “I get it,” she interrupted. “That’ll be my problem. I just need you to tow it in.”

  “I could look at it,” he offered. “Stay,” he ordered Sue, who was sniffing the inside of the tow truck and paying no attention to either of them. As he walked toward Grandpa’s truck, he paused to toss the plastic bag in a garbage can, noticed that the dog wasn’t the only one who’d stayed, and called, “It’s worth checking out, right? Maybe it’s not as serious as you think.”