Finding Her Prince

He stepped forward and touched her arm. “How is she today? You have a little glow, as if—”

“Yes.” She smiled, happy to have someone to tell. “I had a meeting with Dr. Feldman and the hospital social worker and one of the nurses. The social worker has recommended that Alice comes to me when she’s first discharged, because I’m the one who is most familiar with her care.”

“That’s great, Suzanne!”

“I know. And Dr. Feldman’s supporting it. She’ll still have the oxygen mask and the breathing alarm, and I know about those. It’s only temporary, until the custody hearing, but it’s a step in the right direction.”

Her teeth began to chatter with cold and nerves. “Mom won’t be happy, but she and Perry just haven’t been around enough to know how to deal with the oxygen.”

“Relax!”

She shook her head. “Can’t. I’ve just been standing here, thinking about it all, and…”

She couldn’t put it into words.

If she had been tense last week when they first met, she was doubly so today, their wedding day. She was marrying a stranger, and didn’t know if he’d be coming to her apartment tonight.

Didn’t know if Stephen Serkin-Rimsky had secrets, or sins. Of course! Everyone did! What were his?

“I’m sorry that you’ve gotten cold,” he apologized again. “There was a delay at the bank.” The explanation for his lateness didn’t answer any questions, just created more.

“The bank?” Suzanne echoed.

He didn’t answer. They both looked as if they’d been shopping, dressed in jeans and casual shirts, with their wedding clothes in large carrier bags. Where were the bridesmaids? The gleaming cars? The milling guests? All the usual trappings of the romantic church wedding she’d once dreamed of were missing. This was the strangest occasion, but you couldn’t expect smooth-as-silk glamour and romance under such circumstances, Suzanne decided.

Lord, she wasn’t going to waste precious time regretting a few details! If this arrangement increased her chance of becoming Alice’s mother, that was all that mattered. She still had no idea whether Rose and Perry would even show up today, and what it would do to her chances with Alice if they did.

Could she convince them that this wedding made a difference? Could she convince Dr. Feldman?

“Are you going to dress?” Stephen asked.

“Well, I wasn’t planning to get married in jeans.” She heard the defensive note in her voice, and wondered why he made her feel like this. She was like a cat on hot bricks. Would have been even without the decision on Alice’s temporary care.

“I meant, are you going to dress now?” he corrected himself politely, and she felt bad about how she’d overreacted to his innocent question. This couldn’t be easy for him, either. They were both doing it for Alice.

“I didn’t know if—” she began to explain, then changed tack. “You wanted to meet me here early. I thought you might have wanted to talk, or something. In fact you said you did, and I…thought I’d feel more comfortable talking in jeans.”

“Put on your dress,” he said softly. “I didn’t want to talk yet. We’ll have time for that in a while, and, yes, we’ll need to. When you’re dressed, I want to give you what I have brought.”

Suzanne nodded. Why was she so breathless? She hadn’t been running. It had to be nerves.

“There’s a room Mr. Davenport showed me, beyond the side door at the back of the church, where there’s a mirror,” she answered him.

“I’ll wait here,” he said.

“I’ll try not to take too long.”

But of course she did. What woman didn’t, on her wedding day?

She had bought the dress yesterday, after work. Her legs had ached from standing behind the library’s front desk, and walking its stacks, reshelving books. It was a college library, not the sunny community library she would have preferred, and most of the books were thick and heavy. Standing in the mirrored fitting room at the bridal store, she hadn’t felt as if she was about to get married.

In the end, she’d only tried on three dresses, and she’d chosen one based as much on its price as on its style. Having witnessed Rose openly drooling over Alice’s inheritance on Wednesday, Suzanne was doubly determined not to spent a cent that she’d later “pay off with no trouble” using her baby’s fortune.

Now, as she stood in front of a spotty mirror in the little room at the back of the church, the dress whispered in heavy folds of pale satin around her calves and hugged her upper body closely. She began to like it, and not just because of its price. It fit her, suited her and left plenty of room for a piece of jewelry above the elegant curve of neckline.

She had some jewelry. A necklace. Her stepfather had given it to Rose, and Rose had passed it on to Suzanne after David Brown’s death, saying, “It’s dated. And it was cheap. I never liked it.”

Suzanne herself had always thought that it was very pretty, a delicate design of garnets and silver. As a child, she’d often begged Rose to let her wear it, but Rose had never permitted her to do so.

Now, when she put it on, she found it didn’t go with the dress. The silver looked dark and tarnished against the lustrous new satin, and the color of the stones was wrong.

It didn’t matter, she decided. The sense of David Brown’s love, contained in the worn piece of jewelry, was more important. But when she adjusted it on her neck, it caught in her mass of hair, and when she tried to pull it free, one of the frail links broke and the whole thing fell, useless, into her hand.