True Love Read online

  “It’s …” Izzy whispered. “It’s …”

  Alix waited but Izzy said nothing else. “It’s what?”

  Izzy sat down on the built-in seat behind the table. “It’s the best thing you’ve ever done,” she whispered, then looked up at Alix.

  “Really?” Alix asked. “You’re not just saying that?”

  “Truthfully,” Izzy said. “It’s the epitome of all you’ve worked for. It’s truly beautiful.”

  Alix couldn’t help doing a few dance steps of triumph around the kitchen, then she began pulling dishes out of the cabinets and putting food on them. “I was really fighting it. I thought I was never going to come up with new and original, and old and traditional, at the same time. I went against the well-known Montgomery creed of following the land, but I did think of it as being built on Nantucket so that—” She broke off because when she looked back at Izzy, her friend was crying—just sitting at the table, tears rolling down her face, her eyes focused on the model of the chapel.

  Alix went over and hugged her. “We’ll see each other,” she said. “I’ll only be here for a year, then I’ll be back. You and Glenn will—”

  Izzy pulled away, sniffing. “It’s not that. I know you’ll be back.”

  “Oh. Is it Glenn? Do you miss him?” Alix got up and opened a drawer to pull out a box of tissues and handed one to her friend.

  “Do you know where everything in this house is?”

  Alix knew Izzy needed time to recover and Alix was going to give it to her—then she was going to find out what the problem was. Her best friend was deeply upset over something, but Alix had no idea what it was. Her intuition told her that whatever the problem was, Izzy had been holding it in because of Alix’s recent emotional drama.

  Alix turned away to let her friend have time to recover her dignity. Using an old blender that looked to be from the fifties, she made a tall drink for Izzy. For herself, she made a rum and Coke, with lots of lime juice added. Alix pulled a serving tray from inside a cabinet, knowing just where to find it, filled it, then took it all outside. It was almost too cool for sitting outdoors, but Alix knew that Izzy loved gardens.

  She treated her friend gently as she settled her in a heavy teak deck chair and handed her a drink. Alix wasn’t going to push her friend but just waited for her to speak.

  “Glenn called and I have to leave in the morning,” Izzy said.

  “He wants you back?”

  “Yes, of course, but …”

  Alix waited in silence. Izzy and she had been friends since the first day of architecture school. By the end of that week it was clear that Alix was more talented, that she had a shot at doing something that the world would notice, but Izzy had never been jealous.

  On the other hand, everyone had liked Izzy so much that she was invited everywhere. When she’d become engaged in their third year, Alix had only felt joy. They were two different people yet they suited each other well.

  “If it’s not Glenn and it’s not me, what is it?” Alix asked softly.

  Izzy looked around the garden. The only time she’d seen it was last night when she and Alix had made their wild dash to break into Montgomery’s guesthouse. At the time it had been wonderful to think only of Alix’s problems, to feed her chocolate, to see her delight at the old house, to laugh over the portrait of a handsome sea captain. For a few hours Izzy had been able to put aside her own problems.

  “This garden is beautiful,” Izzy said. “When it flowers, it’s going to be magnificent. I wonder who takes care of it?”

  “Montgomery,” Alix said quickly. “Isabella, I want to know what’s going on. Why is Glenn demanding that you leave so soon? I was hoping that you and I could see some of Nantucket together.”

  “Me too,” Izzy said, “but …”

  Alix picked up the pitcher and refilled Izzy’s glass. “But what?”

  Izzy took a deep drink. “It’s my wedding.”

  “I thought all of that was settled. We bought you the most beautiful dress ever made.”

  “Yes, and I thank you and your mother for that.” Izzy and Alix smiled at each other in memory.

  Glenn, not surprisingly, had proposed over dinner one Friday night. The next morning Izzy was at the door of Alix’s little apartment looking stunned and not knowing what to do.

  After admiring the engagement ring, Alix took over. “I know a great place for breakfast, then we can go window-shopping. You’re going to need an entire trousseau.”

  It was an old-fashioned word and concept, Izzy had said while doing her best to look as though she was too sophisticated to care about such silly things. But Alix wasn’t fooled. She knew her friend loved the whole idea of a romantic wedding.

  In the end, they bought Izzy’s wedding dress that day. They hadn’t meant to. Alix had been the one to persuade her friend to go to a tiny, exclusive shop on a side street across town.

  “We should go to one of those gigantic places and try on fifty dresses and drive the salespeople crazy,” Izzy said.

  “That’s a great idea,” Alix said, “and I look forward to it, but Mom told me that when I get married I’m to buy my dress at Mrs. Searle’s shop.”

  Izzy looked hard at her friend. “Which just happens to be near here?”

  “So it does,” Alix said, smiling.

  The third dress Izzy tried on brought tears to both their eyes. They knew it was the one.

  The dress had a plain silk satin top with a round, low neck and wide straps. The full skirt was whisper-thin tulle over a satin skirt embellished with tiny crystals in a flower pattern.

  “I could never afford this,” Izzy said as she looked for a price tag that wasn’t there.

  “It’ll be a gift from my mother,” Alix said. “To her number one fan.”

  “I can’t take this.”

  “Okay,” Alix said, “she’ll give you a toaster instead.”

  “I shouldn’t,” Izzy said, but she did. Later she thought that at that moment she’d been the happiest person on earth. What she’d not told Alix was how, later, her wedding plans had all fallen apart. When others began to get involved, Izzy had tried her best to be firm about what she wanted for her wedding, but her future mother-in-law said, “I can see that you’re going to be one of those bridezillas like they have on TV. We aren’t being filmed, are we?”

  Izzy looked across at Alix. “I don’t want to be a bridezilla.”

  “You mean one of those spoiled prima donnas who makes everyone’s lives hell?”

  Izzy nodded.

  “That’s as far from you as could be. Izzy, who put this idea in your head?” Alix filled her friend’s glass again.

  “Glenn and I just want a quiet wedding. Small. Maybe a barbecue. The dress from your mother is the only extravagance I want. It’s so beautiful and …” Again, tears started flowing.

  “It’s a mother, isn’t it?” Alix said. “If there’s one thing I know about, it’s mothers. Well-meaning, but they can eat you for breakfast.”

  Nodding, Izzy took a deep drink and held up two fingers.

  “I take it that means two mothers?”

  Again Izzy nodded.

  Alix poured herself another rum and Coke. “Tell me everything.”

  It all tumbled out. Alix knew that Izzy was the only girl in her family, but she hadn’t known that Izzy’s parents had eloped. “My mother used to play with bride paper dolls, but then she got pregnant with my brother, and she and my dad ran off together.”

  “So now she wants you to have the wedding she didn’t have,” Alix said.

  Izzy grimaced. “But she isn’t even the only problem.”

  Alix knew that Glenn was an only child and that his parents had money, but that’s all. “What’s his mother like?”

  Izzy clenched her teeth. “She’s an avalanche of granite blocks that destroys anyone who stands between her and whatever she wants. And what she wants now is for me to have a lavish wedding that will impress all her friends. She has a guest list
of over four hundred people. Glenn knows only six of them and I’ve never met any of them.”

  “Izzy, this is serious, and why haven’t you told me about any of this?” Alix asked.

  “It just happened, then you and Eric …”

  Alix put up her hand. “And I was wallowing in my own misery and didn’t see what you were going through. Listen, tomorrow I’m going back with you to help straighten this out.”

  “No,” Izzy said, “you can’t do that. I feel in my heart that all this was arranged so you could meet Montgomery and show him your work. I can’t imagine what your mother had to do to get you this house for a year. You can’t throw something like this away just for some wedding.”

  As Alix finished her drink, she looked around at the beautiful garden. It was growing cooler and they’d have to go inside soon. “Why do you have to leave in the morning?”

  “Glenn’s mother has arrived, and she wants to show me some bridesmaids’ dresses. Glenn said they have ruffles all over them and that she’s brought in two cousins who are to be in the wedding.”

  “Flower girls?” There was hope in Alix’s voice.

  “I wish. They’re thirty-eight and thirty-nine, and mean. And everyone hates my date of the twenty-fifth of August.”

  Absently, Alix handed Izzy a plate of food. For a while they ate in silence. Alix was thinking of all the times she’d had to be strong to keep her mother from steamrolling over her. “So,” Alix said, “I can’t leave here and you can’t stay.”

  “That’s about it,” Izzy said. The drinks had given her the ability to smile. “You should have seen Glenn’s mother’s face when I told her I’d already bought my wedding dress. She turned a lovely shade of purple. I wanted to hold a fabric sample up to her cheek and see if I could match it.”

  Alix gave a laugh. “Did you tell her my mother paid for the gown?”

  “Oh, yes,” Izzy said, then filled her mouth with food.

  “What did she say?”

  “That she thought Victoria Madsen’s books had no literary merit and should never have been published.”

  “Reads them avidly, does she?”

  “Oh, yes!” Izzy said, laughing. “I told Glenn what she said and he said her eReader is nothing but Victoria’s novels.”

  The two women laughed.

  “This is probably cruel of me, but I’d like to see them together,” Izzy said.

  “My mother and your mother-in-law?” Alix asked.

  “And my mother too! She controls with tears. She looked at my beautiful wedding gown and cried because she didn’t get to help me pick it out. She cried when I said I wanted to be married outside under a rose arbor. She said it would break her heart if I didn’t get married in some church she went to as a child. I’ve never even seen it! And she cried when she told me she was disappointed that I hadn’t chosen our next-door neighbor’s daughter to be my maid of honor. I couldn’t stand her as a girl, much less as a woman.”

  “Tears and tyranny,” Alix said.

  “The same difference as far as I’m concerned. Tomorrow I’m facing the war of the bridesmaids. I have to tell three women that they can’t be in my wedding because I don’t like them. Then Glenn’s mother will—”

  She broke off because Alix got up and started pacing around the garden. Toward the back was a pergola and Alix stopped to look at it.

  “I think these are—Ow! Yes, they’re climbing roses.” She’d pricked her finger on a thorn. “Izzy,” she said firmly, “you’re going to have your wedding here in this garden.”

  “I can’t do that,” Izzy said.

  “Why not? It’s your wedding.”

  “The two mothers would make my life a living hell.”

  “So we’ll make sure my mother is here,” Alix added, devilment in her eyes.

  Izzy’s eyes widened. “If there’s anyone …”

  “Who could stand up to your two mothers, mine can.” Alix smiled.

  Izzy looked across the fading light to Alix. “Do you think this could work?”

  “Why wouldn’t it? You just have to be firm and tell them what you’re going to do.”

  “I would have to leave Glenn and move here to plan this thing.”

  “No,” Alix said. “You need to spend time with him. Besides, if you divide, they’ll conquer. Tell Glenn he has to back you up on this or there won’t be a wedding.”

  “But I can’t do that!”

  “Okay, then split yourself down the middle and figure out how to please both mothers and let Glenn hide out with his cars.”

  Izzy couldn’t help laughing. “Sometimes you sound just like your mother.”

  “And here I thought you were my friend.”

  Izzy closed her eyes for a moment. “I think I’m like my mother because I may start crying right now. Alix, you are the best friend anyone ever had.”

  “No better than you,” she said softly. “I couldn’t have survived Eric if you hadn’t been there.”

  “Ha! It was the sight of Jared Montgomery’s lower lip that brought you out of the doldrums. Hey! I have an idea. Since you can write so well, how about helping me with my vows?”

  “We’ll get Mom to do it. Of course she’ll want a contract, a due date, money on signing, and a copyright, but they’ll be killer vows.”

  The two young women looked at each other and went into a fit of uncontrollable laughter.

  Upstairs, standing by an open window, Caleb Kingsley looked down at them. He was smiling. You could spend two hundred years making plans and you could die again when they fell through, but sometimes you saw and heard things that gave you hope.

  He was glad to see the two young women together again. Sisters in one life; friends in this one.

  Maybe, just maybe, this time he would get to hold Valentina for real. Forever.

  That night Alix called her father, Ken. Before she punched the buttons, as always, she reminded herself that it was better if she didn’t mention her mother. It wasn’t that the two of them hadn’t learned how to get along over the years, but give them any ammo and the questions started—with Alix caught in the middle.

  “Hi, baby,” her dad said on answering. “Did you get to Nantucket okay?”

  “You’ll never in your life guess who’s staying in the guesthouse.”

  “Who?” Ken asked.

  “Jared Montgomery.”

  “That guy who’s an architect?”

  “Very funny,” Alix said. “I know you teach about him in your classes, so you know that he’s a genius.”

  “He’s made some respectable buildings. I like that he knows something about construction.”

  “I know that’s your mantra. Dad?”

  “Yes?”

  “I designed a chapel.”

  “You mean a church?” Ken asked. “What for?”

  “I’ll tell you but only if you promise not to get straitlaced with me.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Dad?” Alix said, warning in her voice.

  “All right. No lectures. What did you do?”

  For the next ten minutes Alix told her father about breaking into Montgomery’s home studio and seeing his designs, his private sketches. “They were beautiful, so perfect.”

  “So you designed something small to impress him,” Ken said. She could hear the disapproval in his voice.

  “Yes, I did,” she said firmly. “I don’t know how long he’ll be here, but I hope I can show him some of my work.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be impressed,” Ken said.

  “I doubt that, but at least maybe I can get him to look at it.”

  “I am quite sure that he’ll do that,” Ken said emphatically. “Where is he now?”

  “On his boat. Izzy and I saw him sail away. He’s a beautiful man.”

  “Alix,” Ken said sternly, “from what I know of this Montgomery guy, he’s a tough player. I don’t think—”

  “Relax, Dad. I just want to be his student. He’s much too old for me.” A
lix rolled her eyes. She knew from experience that when it came to men her father thought none of them were good enough for her. She changed the subject. “So how are you and … you know … doing?”

  Instantly, her father went from hot to cold, but Alix wasn’t worried. Her dad was a softie.

  “Are you referring to the woman I’ve been living with for these last four years?”

  “Sorry,” Alix said. “I’m being rude. Celeste is very nice. She dresses beautifully and she—”

  “You can stop looking for good to say about her. Those clothes nearly bankrupted me. But it doesn’t matter now because she moved out.”

  “Oh, Dad, I’m sorry. I know you liked her.”

  “No, I don’t think I did,” he said thoughtfully.

  Alix gave a sigh of relief. “Thank heaven! Now I can tell you that I never actually liked her.”

  “Really? I never would have guessed. You were so good at keeping your opinions to yourself.”

  “I am sorry, Dad,” she said and this time she meant it. “Really, I am.”

  “Oh, well, bad taste in the opposite sex runs in our family.”

  “That’s not true. I mean it is for you and Mom, but Eric was …” Alix grimaced. “Actually, he was awful. Izzy said I only liked him because he gave me the opportunity to do two designs instead of one.”

  Ken laughed. “I’ve always liked Izzy! And she knows my daughter well.”

  “I’m going to miss her. She’s leaving in the morning.” Alix thought it was better not to tell him yet about moving the wedding to Nantucket. He might think she was taking on too much. “That blasted fiancé of hers wants her to be with him.”

  “Inconsiderate devil!”

  “That’s just what I said.”

  “Look, Alix, it’s late and we both need to sleep. When’s Montgomery getting back?”

  “I have no idea. I stayed in and worked while Izzy spent the day buying me new clothes.” She didn’t tell him that Izzy said the clothes were to impress Montgomery.

  “And sending the bills to your mother, I hope.”

  “Of course. Those two and Mom’s AmEx are the very best of friends. A holy trinity.”