The Husband Show

“The baby won’t stop crying,” he said, peeling paper from a frosted cupcake. All dark hair and dark eyes and wearing a white button-down shirt and black pants, six-year-old Matty was adorably rumpled. Aurora suspected the shirt wouldn’t be clean for very much longer.

Sure enough, a baby wailed from another room. “Uh-oh. Is that Laura?”

“Yep.” He carefully licked the frosting violet from the top of the dessert. “Grandma says she needs a nap. My mom made a lot of these.”

“How many have you eaten?” She suspected this wasn’t his first. She also suspected his mother didn’t know he’d been sampling the dessert.

“Today?”

She nodded.

He frowned in concentration, trying to remember accurately. “Four.”

“Wow.” Aurora had little experience with children and absolutely none with young boys. Lucia’s three children often seemed like strange, energetic creatures who made a lot of noise and couldn’t sit still.

“I ate seven last night,” he confided. “Without frosting. For supper.”

“Aurora!” The cupcake eater’s mother came rushing into the hall. “We were getting worried about you.”

“I was delayed. Sorry. I had a—”

“Matty! I thought I told you no more cupcakes.” She plucked the half-eaten cake from her son’s sticky fingers. “Go to the barn. Now. Tell Sam you’re all supposed to stay with him now.”

“Okay.”

“And stay in the barn this time,” she said.

“Where’s Mama?” Mama Marie was Lucia’s mother-in-law and a devoted grandmother. Well known in town for her Italian cooking and generous nature, she was known to everyone as “Mama Marie” or simply “Mama.” Aurora was a little afraid of her. She often had the impression that Mama Marie looked at her and disapproved of what she saw.

“She’s keeping Loralee from driving Meg insane.”

“Is the mother of the bride giving the bride more advice?”

“She keeps fussing over Meg’s hair, wants her to put on more mascara. You know the drill.”

“Right.” Loralee was not known for subtlety. Flamboyant, softhearted and outspoken, she was best experienced in small doses. “What can I do, besides guard the dessert and distract Loralee?”

“We’re going to get everyone out of the house and into their seats in the barn. I imagine the groom is getting edgy.”

“The groom has been edgy for weeks.” Aurora wondered if Owen thought Meg would change her mind again, the way she had done when she was eighteen and refused to run away with him for the second time. According to Meg, the first elopement hadn’t gone according to plan.

“And please tell Meg she looks beautiful. She’s stressing over her hair.”

“I’ll bet she’s gorgeous,” Aurora said, following Lucia up the wide mahogany staircase to the second floor.

“She is,” Lucia said. “Even if she doesn’t think so.”

“Does Sam have a brother?”

Lucia stopped at the top of the stairs. “Yes. Why?”

“I think he’s in town.”

“In town? This town?”

“You weren’t expecting him?”

“He and Sam have talked a couple of times, but Sam didn’t say anything about him coming here. They’ve wanted to reconnect, though. It’s been a long time since they’ve seen each other.” She seemed puzzled. “I thought we were going to fly to Nashville this summer, after the—”

“I told him you were here,” Aurora said. “He wanted to know why everything in town was closed, so I explained about the wedding.”

Her friend looked thoughtful. “I’ll tell Sam to call him right away. I made him turn his phone off this morning so we could get out here early. Otherwise it’s insane. The phone never stops ringing with business calls.”

“Is he planning another trip to, um, the jungle?”

“He’s always planning another business trip, another documentary,” Lucia said. “And then there’s the book project. But we have a wedding and a honeymoon in Belize first. At least that’s what Sam says now.”

“I think he’s more than ready for the wedding,” Aurora said. “When is it going to be?”

“Soon. But we’ll do something small,” she confided. “Something this summer, after school is out. By the way, I love your boots.”

“Thank you.”

“Vintage?”

“No.”

“They’re so original I thought maybe—”

“Aurora! Thank goodness.” The bride, who looked stunning in a simple ivory scoop-necked lace dress that skimmed her slender body and stopped below her knees, fairly flew out of her room to where they stood at the top of the stairs. She’d refused to consider a traditional wedding gown and had instead ordered her dress from Nordstrom, online.

A bold move, Aurora had thought at the time. But typical Meg and totally beautiful.

“What do you need?” she asked the bride.

“What time is it?” Meg smiled, but she looked a little harried. “Time seems to be moving very slowly this morning.”

Lucia checked her watch. “You have five, maybe ten, minutes. Guess what. Aurora found a man this morning.”

Meg seemed impressed. “What kind of man?”

“Sam’s brother, or so he says,” Aurora answered, following Meg back into the bedroom, Lucia trailing behind them. “They do look alike. A little.”

“What did you do with him?” Meg went over to the window, as if by looking outside she would spot him. The large, freshly painted pale blue room faced the back of the house, with three tall windows facing the barns and the hills beyond. Lace curtains hung to the polished wood floors and an enormous bed, its mattress covered in an exquisite blue and white Irish chain quilt, took up most of the space.

“I left him in town, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he followed me here. He knew that Sam was at the wedding.”

“Wow. What does he look like?”