Encore. I love stories. Words. The way perspectives can be completely changed with just a well-placed word or nudged with a subtle suggestion here and there. There’s nothing like it. I really love this story because it’s one that I was excited to share from the beginning, with no idea how it would end, that never happens. It was fun discovering how it unfolded along with everyone else when I first shared, but I have to confess I always felt disappointed by the ending. So I was excited last winter when I was approached to submit the Family Wedding series for an audio webcast. It was a chance to revisit the characters and find an ending that felt true - it’s still the beginning of something, and it gives as many questions as answers. But I like it...
Previously: Our Family Wedding VII (Strangers at the Wedding)
It takes an army of guards to get the guests out of the chapel, and then it’s just us - the two families - and the stranger. Unexpectedly, it begins to rain heavily outside, like a bad omen. Later we would all wonder why it rained on that sunny afternoon in June, but now we all sit apart from one another, scattered around the chapel and lost in our thoughts. We can’t leave anyway; already, news of the interruption has spread through the city and the sleazy blogs would be waiting for us out there.
The atmosphere is subdued, the kind that makes you whisper even though you have no reason to. But then the conversation turns around, the blushing bride is not so innocent after all. We all turn on her. Of course, her parents blame themselves. They hadn’t known she had ever been married. No one knew. Almost no one.
Velda finally stands up, her back as straight as her fragile, aging bones would allow, and walks up to stare the stranger down. “You signed the papers, I had them delivered, you signed, and I have them.”
He doesn’t flinch. He holds us all spellbound, again, as he tells of the second most devastating week of his life. Days before the lawyers would have delivered, he gets news that his brother has been killed in a bar fight and he returns home, never to set foot in the city again. Ironically, thanks to the reckless actions of The Groom that night years ago, this stranger, a runaway prodigal son, finally returned home because his own brother, the golden heir, was gone. Ironic. Someone may have signed Velda’s papers, but it couldn’t have been him.
As soon as that spell wears off, we all want to know what had happened with the groom and how his family had kept it a secret. It happened seven years ago, abroad, it was easier to hide the scandal and pretend it had never happened, and it had been decided that he would not run the family businesses. They never intended to deceive anyone, they said, the wedding had only been allowed because they thought they could eventually trust the Bride and her family with their secret.
The groom himself was silent; sitting by himself in a corner watching us all. Every time he lays his eyes on me, I feel my skin prickle. He knows. The violence radiates off him in waves and I wonder which one of us he will go after first.
Finally, Velda silences us all by moving to stand protectively in front of the precious Bride. She glares accusingly across the room at all of us, then back at her. "Her secrets are not the most horrifying things in this room, and I think it is time they were all out in the open." We all gasp in shock, fear, anticipation. Velda’s lips trembled in anger as she spoke. She turned and walked towards the father of the groom, the man who had been her friend and right hand for many years.
"I trusted you!" she hissed at him in that low voice that she used when she was furious, the voice that has terrified us all for most of our lives. And then she crumpled right before our eyes and laid there on the chapel floor. She was not breathing.
*
Velda once told me a story: "Children born into adultery are doomed to repeat the mistakes of their parents, and daughters are just like their mothers..." she said.
Then she told me about a secret marriage between two innocent college kids, and how she made sure it ended as quickly as it began.
One secret gave way to another.
Velda had every member of the family watched at all times, she always knew what we were doing.
She had known of the Bride’s trip to a doctor to get rid of an unwanted baby.
Rumors of a possible affair with a future father-in-law (not true, I started them for fun).
As the pieces of the story came together, I helped Velda realize that she had been the fool for too long...
*
She told me all of this one night after I moved into her mansion to escape my family, the craziness of planning my big sister’s wedding making it difficult to spend another minute at home. As she spoke, she seemed to forget I was there. I would notice the faraway, blank look in her eyes, the constant trembling of her right hand. Velda was very sick, and she was trying really hard to hide it. I realized the rare opportunity right away. Velda was an old woman, desperately angry and betrayed, and she wanted revenge. Penance. The last word. So, I came up with a plan that would put a stop to all the secrets and give Velda the stage she wanted. It was supposed to be a minor distraction, that’s what Velda thought.
I wrote the bride’s college husband a polite, slightly embellished letter asking him to attend the wedding, saying how much she wanted him there, and how afraid I was for her. One thing led to another as we wrote back and forth those weeks before the wedding, and by the time I finally met him… well, falling like that was a surprise.
The only other thing I had not planned was Velda's collapse at the wedding, but even that worked out perfectly. Velda never recovered from her stroke. And I was her only heir. I had made sure. But no one needs to know that just yet.
There was a frenzy of panic when Velda hit the floor. The perfection of the climax of the moment overwhelmed me and while I celebrated on the inside, I was the perfect picture of a distraught, utterly confused baby of the family. As we hurried out of the chapel to follow the ambulance to Holy Trinity where Velda was later declared dead, someone held my hand and pulled me back into the chapel’s entryway, shutting the door. I wasn’t surprised to see who it was. He flashed a dazzling smile, a very far cry from the concerned, abandoned ex-husband just a few minutes ago. "That was an impeccable performance," he whispered softly in my ear, "No one could have pulled it off better.
Now, can I take you out to dinner in public or do you have more plans to hide me in a fancy hotel for another week?”
And so, we did. A very fancy dinner far away from my family huddled around Velda’s cold, lifeless body, no idea their lives were about to change, again, forever.
My sister may have been his first choice, but in the end, the first man she ever loved is all mine. I got the best guy after all. You could say she gifted him to me…
Fín
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