Happily Never After

Dark-haired Lillith was making a kissy face, just as energetic and full of spunk then as she had been until the night she died.

Kelly shut her eyes briefly, unable to look at Lillith very long.

They were standing just as they had planned to stand the next day, lined up by height. Dolly, the shortest of the bridesmaids, was on the very end, holding up her dress, because she’d just caught her hem in her high heel and torn it. She was glaring over at Kent Snyder, who, Kelly remembered, had just made a rude joke about Dolly, the clumsy cow.

Kent had been very drunk. The photographer had caught him sticking his tongue out and holding up two fingers to make devil horns behind Bill Gaskins’s head.

Alex VanCamp looked bored. None of them had known Alex very well. He’d been a special friend of Sebastian’s from college, and he’d seemed as if he could have been interestingly dangerous, if he’d found them worth the trouble of leading astray. Dolly had flirted with him, to no avail.

Kelly remembered thinking how peculiar it was that no one in the wedding party seemed to be connected to Tom, not even his groomsmen. Should that have tipped them off? He had seemed like a stranger at his own wedding.

Which brought her, finally, to Tom’s handsome face.

This was the one face that should tell the whole story, and yet, even now, it didn’t. Gorgeous in his tux, he was smiling that familiar lopsided smile, and one of his eyebrows was arched, as if he found the whole thing entertaining, but unimportant.

He seemed unaware of Kelly, of course, though just thirty minutes before she’d been with him in a corner, crying, touching his face one last time. But then, in a weird way he seemed unaware of all of them, as if he were alone in the picture.

Sophie clung to his arm, her whole body yearning toward him. But his body wasn’t responding. Not a single muscle bent in her direction even a fraction of an inch.

Still, though any stranger could look at this picture and see that the bride was more in love than the groom, Kelly didn’t think anyone would guess that, less than seventeen hours later, the groom would disappear.

“Hello?”

Kelly dropped the photo, shocked to realize that someone had answered the telephone. It was a woman.

“Hi. My name is Kelly Ralston. I’m trying to locate Kent Snyder. Do you know if I have the right number?”

A pause stretched oddly. “Yes,” the woman said finally. “This is the right number.”

Kelly couldn’t believe her luck. She’d been trying all morning to reach any of the other members of the wedding party. She wasn’t sure why—just a vague sense that one of them might know something about the wedding lace she’d found on the roadside marker, whether it really was a match for Sophie’s gown.

But they’d all moved away. Only she and Lily had stayed in touch. Tracking even one of the others down had proved more difficult than Kelly had imagined.

Kelly wouldn’t have chosen to start her inquiries with the hard-drinking, slightly vulgar Kent Snyder. But she’d take what she could get. Though she’d left messages several places, this was her first breakthrough.

“Oh, good. I’m sorry to bother you, but Kent and I—” What could she say? They hadn’t been friends, exactly. She’d spent a lot of time with him for the week of wedding festivities, and then she’d never seen him again.

“Some years ago we were in a wedding together. I needed to get some information, and I thought perhaps he could help me. Is he there?”

“No,” the woman said. “Look, what did you say your name was?”

“Kelly Ralston.” Kelly thought the woman sounded edgy. Darn it. Kelly hoped she hadn’t stumbled into some kind of divorce tangle. “I was Kelly Carpenter at the time. We were both in Sophie Mellon’s wedding, ten years ago, in Cathedral Cove.”

“Well, I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you, Kelly, but Kent is dead.”

Kelly was so surprised she couldn’t speak for a moment. Her glance fell on Kent’s picture. He had been a good-looking young man, in a thick-neck, not-very-bright sort of way. He’d been putting on weight even in his early twenties. His shirt was too tight, the buttons threatening to burst. And his face was already too red, flushed by alcohol.

“Kelly?” The woman on the telephone softened her voice, though she still sounded edgy. “I’m sorry. I know it’s a shock. It was to us, too. It was an accident. Two weeks ago.”

Kelly’s voice felt rusty, as if she’d been mute for hours, not seconds. “He had an accident? A car accident?”

“No, although God knows it’s a miracle he never did, the damn fool.” The woman cleared her throat. “It was a hunting accident. He must have stumbled. His gun went off.”

“I’m so sorry.” Kelly shut her eyes. “But are you sure? I mean, are you sure it was an accident?”

“I guess you didn’t know him all that well. I lived with him for eight years. I knew him inside and out. He was a good man, but he drank too much, no reason to sugarcoat it. He had no business handling a gun, the condition he was in, but there was no stopping him when he had his mind made up.”

Somehow Kelly got through the rest of the call, offering condolences and apologies for calling at such a terrible time. When she put the telephone down, her hands felt cold.

Strangely numb, she picked up one of her rich green-glass leaves and held it to the light. The striations really were lovely. She hoped she’d got all the veins “growing” in the right direction.

She remembered what her first stained-glass teacher had told her, all those years ago in the basement of the Mellon house. A gorgeous young French artist, Jean Laurent, had been hired to create a two-story St. George and the Dragon window to hang at the top of the Coeur Volé staircase.

Kelly and Sophie had both instantly fallen in love. But while Sophie lusted after the Frenchman’s black hair and bulging shoulders, Kelly had fallen in love with the glass. The shining green of the dragon’s scales, and the rich, glowing red of his bleeding heart, the twining vines and billowing clouds behind St. George’s triumphant sword.

Probably Jean had become Sophie’s lover. Kelly remembered odd absences, lingering glances. But he had also recognized Kelly’s passion and he had given her hours of his time.

When you cut your leaves, he showed her, or created your clouds, you couldn’t just pick the prettiest spot on your sheet of glass. You had to pick the one that followed the correct lines and rhythms of life.

Hair curled, leaves grew, shadows fell, and even dragons died, according to natural laws. Violate them in the glass, and the entire piece would always be vaguely unsatisfactory.

She picked up a second leaf, twirling it slowly in her bandaged fingers.

Natural laws.

She picked up the picture in her other hand. Two of those smiling people were dead now. Did that follow the laws of nature? Two of ten was twenty percent. If you took any random group of ten relatively intelligent, well-to-do twenty-somethings… Would twenty percent of them be dead within ten years?

The phone rang again.

She dropped the picture but held on to the two leaves. She clicked the talk button.

“Hello.”

“Is this Kelly Ralston?”

“Yes. Who is this?”

“This is Phil Tammaro.”

At first Kelly didn’t recognize the name. Tammaro? Did she know anyone named Tammaro?

“I’m Dolly’s husband.”

Oh, of course. She’d left a message there, after she’d finally tracked Dolly down through three completely different marriages, names and addresses.

“Yes,” she said, eager to make up for not remembering. “Yes, Phil, thank you for calling me back.”

“I just came in. I heard your message. I thought I’d better tell you—”