Toni knew stories enough to be ready for what ought to come next. Not in here epic hero's journey -- she wasn't positive where her father would fit there -- but in a hacky pulp novel. She would seek some solace or breath of air on the porch, meeting some member of the wedding party off whom she would bum a cigarette. She narrowed it down to Charlotte or Alex, she supposed, unless Amy was hiding more extensive secrets from her big sister. They would together look down at the wedding tent, Amy ordering her father around, and her smoking partner would bestow upon Toni some homespun wisdom that would put the morning before and the day to come into a new focus. There might be some reworked cliche about the family you chose being more important than the one to whom you were born, depending on the relative ham-handedness of the author.
Toni didn't smoke. She never had a taste for it or the adolescent rebellion it suggested. It was not the most significant issue with this hypothetical, but it would suffice.
Nathaniel and Jason disappeared upstairs for some no doubt intensely masculine business, such as making sure that her groom looked presentable in his suit. They would not provide her direction, nor should she want them to. Toni would soon spend the rest of her day caressing her new husband. They could both use the breathing room now, and she did want him more than presentable to match her.
Toni had seen from the corner of her eye Alex, in the hallway between the living room and kitchen, watching Cathy and her father arrive, hug, and be redirected. As Alex had the least to do with her -- and as she had made short work of the empty jars in need of floral arrangement -- Toni floated toward the living room, ostensibly to see what progress had been made, but mainly for the company.
The room was absent any evidence of the preceding night, not even a visible flake of glitter. Alex must have experience indeed to have eradicated them all.
The room also lacked Alex or Charlotte.
Cigarette or no, the fates had given her no choice but to stand on the wraparound porch and surveil the field below. It may lack for homespun wisdom, but it would have to do.
She had barely settled her elbows on the wood railing before she heard a sound like shotgun fire from a small distance from the house. She could not allow any murder to occur on her blessed day, though not being murdered herself ought to be at the top of the list. If the bride got one to the belly now, there wouldn't be enough time to call the caterer. A story, yes, but she needed to stick to ones where she would have the last word.
Beside the barn, wearing no more than a sports bra and shorts, Charlotte split logs with an ax that seemed half her height. Away from an audience of which she was aware, Charlotte worked diligently and efficiently. Toni could read like tea leaves, like the flight path of migrating birds, like squirrel entrails, the tension of Charlotte's muscles. She could see in the heft of the ax, her exhalant grunt, Charlotte's anxiety about this day. How could she be wholly okay with this man she loved getting married -- possibly the only man Charlotte had ever or would ever love -- no matter how gay she was? For years, Jason was the axis around which much in her life turned. Of course, this day would be hard for any ex. She saw too that Charlotte wanted to make herself useful to pay back her debt not merely in crashing the wedding -- which ranked as a minor sin now -- but in intruding upon Jason's life at all.
As log after log fell to pieces before her, as she shone with sweat, Charlotte seemed the most in her element, the most comfortable. She looked panther sleek. Toni had always considered Jason's romantic fondness for Charlotte to be a little suspect since his ex had never ceased to seem to be performing. She understood that Charlotte was physically attractive and sexually adventurous -- the latter in a way that Toni still found intimidating years later -- but she had seemed too artificial.
Now, cutting this wood, wiping her brow with the back of her hand, Toni saw Charlotte without pretense. She doubted that Charlotte was even thinking -- to say nothing of overthinking. And she was beautiful in a way that she hadn't been before. Toni understood it, years of mystery that no words from Jason had clarified, resolved in droplets of perspiration.
Toni stayed watched a few minutes more, as first appreciating an unfiltered Charlotte, then just the aesthetic appreciation of someone so attuned with their body and strength. She would have killed for a camera to capture these moments. Toni expected that Charlotte would have forgiven her with enough time and seeing the pictures. But she didn't want to so much as step on a twig that would alert the other woman.
After a few more logs turned to a pile, Toni returned to the coolness of the house.
Toni had barely breached the door and had the air conditioner cool the moisture from her skin when Jason handed her a handwritten list of names.
"A list of everyone who swore they would rather die than miss our wedding," Jason said. "I barely managed to check my email. These were waiting for me."
"And these little marks next to their names?"
"The reasons for their calling and saying they would not be able to come," he said. "None of them have died."
She looked at the legend, then the list. Seven car accidents/impairments, eight major illnesses, two unrelated people who couldn't get a babysitter, one acute case of anxiety, one "forgot the date," one "forgot to buy a plane ticket."
"Hm. I thought it would be more." She knew that these were just weak excuses her friends gave. They were passionate, creative people, but those qualities seemed to be coupled with being inherently unreliable. What did it say about Jason and her that these were the people with whom they had surrounded themselves? She glided her finger down the list. Only two of the absences bothered her, a beloved childhood cousin whom she had not seen in a decade and a friend from college. The rest meant that there would be more than enough cake to go around.
Thomm Quackenbush is an author and teacher in the Hudson Valley. He has published four novels in his Night's Dream series (We Shadows, Danse Macabre, Artificial Gods, and Flies to Wanton Boys). He has sold jewelry in Victorian England, confused children as a mad scientist, filed away more books than anyone has ever read, and tried to inspire the learning disabled, gifted, and adjudicated. He can cross one eye, raise one eyebrow, and once accidentally groped a ghost. When not writing, he can be found biking, hiking the Adirondacks, grazing on snacks at art openings, and keeping a straight face when listening to people tell him they are in touch with 164 species of interstellar beings.