Return to Willow Lake

Chapter Two

The wedding wound down like a noisy parade fading into the distance. In its wake was the curious mellow quiet of a just-passed storm. Sonnet stood on the broad lawn by the pavilion at Camp Kioga, surveying the petal-strewn aftermath and holding onto a well-earned sense of accomplishment.

As maid of honor, she’d been intimately involved with every aspect of the event, from coordinating Daisy’s bachelorette party to picking the colors of the table linens. But today hadn’t been about table decorations or small appliances. It had been about friends and family and a celebration so joyous she could still feel its echo deep inside her.

Rather than feeling exhausted after the long, emotional day, she was chased by a feeling of restlessness. It was strange, coming back to the place she’d once called home, seeing people who looked her over and remarked, “I remember when you were this tall” or “Why hasn’t some guy snatched you up by now?” as if being twenty-eight and unmarried was taboo in a town like this.

She smiled a little, pretending she didn’t feel the tiniest dig of impatience with her personal life. No. She wasn’t impatient. It was hard, caught up in the wedding whirlwind, to ignore the fact that nearly everyone in sight was coupled up.

Taking a deep breath, she went back to savoring the success of the day. The bride and groom had just departed. Her maid of honor duties were done. In the glow of twinkling fairy lights, the band was breaking down its set. The catering crew got going on the cleanup. The last of the wedding guests were slowly melting into the darkness of the perfect fall evening, the air redolent of crisp leaves and ripe apples. There had been a bonfire at the lakeshore, but it had burned to glowing embers by now. Some of the visitors headed for the parking lot, while the out-of-towners wended their way to the storybook pretty lakefront bungalows of the Camp Kioga, which through the years had been transformed from a family camp to a kids’ camp to its present iteration, a gathering place for celebrating life’s events. A good number of the guests were, like Sonnet, pleasantly tipsy.

A bright moon peeked over the dark hills surrounding Willow Lake, throwing silvery shadows across the still water and trampled grass. Childish laughter streamed from somewhere close by, and three little kids chased each other between the banquet tables. In the low light, Sonnet couldn’t tell whose kids they were, but their joyous abandon lifted her heart. She adored children; she always had. In a place deep down in the center of her, she felt a soft tug of yearning, but it was a yearning that would likely go unfulfilled for a very long time. Maybe forever. She had big plans for her future, but at the moment, those plans did not include settling down and having kids of her own.

In the first place, there was no one to settle down with. Unlike Daisy, who had found the love of her life and was going forward with clear-eyed certainty, Sonnet had no vision of who might be that person for her, that one adored man who would become her whole world. In all honesty, she wasn’t a hundred percent sure such a person existed. There was nothing missing from her life, nothing at all. It wasn’t as if she needed to add someone like the final piece of a puzzle.

Greg Bellamy, Sonnet’s stepfather, came walking across the now-trampled lawn, heading for the gazebo to shell out extra tips for the band. As father of the bride, he was all smiles. Sonnet went over to him, teasingly holding out her hand, palm up. “Hey, where’s the tip for the maid of honor?”

Greg chuckled, looking handsome but tired and slightly disheveled in his tux, the black silk bow tie undone and hanging on either side of his unbuttoned collar. “Here’s a tip for you. Take a couple of aspirin before you go to bed tonight. It’ll counteract those Jell-O shots you did at the reception.”

“You saw that?” She grinned. “Whoops.”

“It’s okay. You’ve earned it, kiddo. Great job today. You looked like a million, and that toast you made at the reception—hilarious. Everybody loved it. You’re a born public speaker.”

“Yeah? Aw, thanks. You’re not so bad yourself, for an evil stepfather.” Sonnet loved her mom’s husband. Through the years, he’d been a great mentor and friend to her. But he wasn’t her dad. Sonnet’s father, General Laurence Jeffries, played that role, although he had been virtually absent from her childhood, making a career for himself far from the bucolic charm of Avalon. When Sonnet went off to college at American University and then graduate school at Georgetown, however, she and Laurence had reconnected; she had dived into his world of public service and strategy and diplomacy, eagerly soaking up his knowledge and expertise.

She was the first to admit that hero worship made for a much more complicated relationship with Laurence than she had with Greg.

Nina came over to join them, her heeled pumps dangling from one hand. “What’s this I hear about Jell-O shots? You were doing them without me?”

“Trust me,” said Greg, “the champagne cocktails were a lot more fun.”

“I trust you. And you were an amazing father of the bride,” she said to Greg, smiling up at him.

“I cried like a baby girl.” He offered a sheepish grin.

“We all did,” Sonnet assured him. “Weddings seem to have that effect on people. Daisy’s even more so, because of all the trouble she’s had.”

“Speaking of trouble, I need to go make sure we’ve settled up with everybody else,” Greg said.

“I’ll come with,” Nina said. “You might need propping up when you see some of the final bills.”

Greg slipped his arm around Nina. “In that case, how about we have one last glass of champagne together? For courage.”

“Good plan.” Nina helped herself to a couple of flutes from one of the tables. “Join us down by the lake?”

Sonnet found a half-empty bottle and poured herself a glass. “I think I’ll stick around here and…” She paused. After all was said and done, the maid of honor had no further duties. “…drink alone.”

“Ah, baby.” Her mom offered a soft smile. “Your time will come, just like I was saying before the wedding. No one can say where or when, but it’ll happen.”

“Gah, Mom.” Sonnet grimaced. “I’m not mooning about my love life. That’s the last thing on my mind.”

“If you say so.” Nina lifted her glass in salute.

“I say so. Go away.” Sonnet made a shooing motion with her free hand. “Go drink with your husband. I’ll see you in the morning, okay? I’m planning to be on the noon train to the city.” She watched her mom and stepdad wander down the gentle slope toward the lake, their silhouettes dark against the moonlight.

They paused at the water’s edge and stood facing the moonlit surface, Greg holding Nina protectively from behind, his hands folded over her midsection. Sonnet sighed, feeling a wave of gladness for her mom. Yet at the same time, the sight of them embracing made her heart ache. Sonnet tried to imagine herself in that role—the bride. Would her own father walk her down the aisle, the tears flowing freely down his face? Doubtful. General Laurence Jeffries, now a candidate for the United States Senate, was more figurehead than father.

And when she pictured herself walking down the aisle, she couldn’t form a mental image of the guy waiting at the end of it. She wasn’t going to hold her breath waiting for him.

“I hate weddings.” Zach Alger sidled over and slammed back a bottle of Utica Club. “I especially hate weddings that require me to behave myself.”

Sonnet had spent most of the day sneaking glances at Zach, trying to accustom herself to this new version of her oldest friend. They hadn’t had a chance to talk at the wedding; the evening had sped by with her still doing her duty as maid of honor. Now, mellow from drinking and dancing, she regarded him through squinted eyes. It was hard to get her head around the idea that he had been a part of her life since preschool. That, perhaps, was the only reason she didn’t swoon sideways when he walked past, the way most women did. Still, it was hard to get used to his unique, striking looks—so blond he was sometimes mistaken for an albino, and now built like a Greek athlete, yet oddly oblivious to his effect on the opposite sex.

She gave him a superior sniff, falling into her old role as sidekick. “You mean there’s a kind of wedding that doesn’t require you to behave yourself?” She plucked an untouched flute of champagne from one of the tables that hadn’t yet been cleared.

“I’m a wedding videographer. I’ve filmed more weddings than I’ve been to baseball games. I haven’t seen a Saturday night in five years. And what do I do when one finally rolls around? I go to a freaking wedding.”

“Daisy’s wedding.”

“Any wedding. I hate them all.”

She scowled at him. “How can you be hating on Daisy Bellamy’s wedding?”

Just hearing herself say the words aloud filled her with a sense of wonder—not because Daisy had married the man of her dreams. That in itself was wonderful. But the real miracle was that Daisy had gotten married at all. Her parents’ divorce had been so hard on her. Back when Daisy’s dad and Sonnet’s mom were first getting together, both girls had agreed that marriage was too perilous and restrictive, and they’d made a pact to avoid it at all costs.

Now Daisy was soaring off to wedded bliss, and Sonnet was stuck keeping her end of the pact. She cringed at the picture of her own romantic future. Thanks to her impossibly busy career as a director at UNESCO, she had almost no time to date, let alone get swept away and fall in love. She dreamed of it, though. Who didn’t? Who didn’t want the kind of love Daisy had found? Or her mother and Greg Bellamy? Or the head couple of the Bellamy clan, Jane and Charles, who had been married for more than fifty years.

Of course Sonnet wanted that—the love, the security, the lifelong project of building a family with her soul mate. It sounded so magical. And so unreachable. When it came to a serious relationship, she had never quite figured out how to get from Point A to Point B.

Lately, though, there was a glimmer on the horizon from a most unexpected source. Her father—yes, her super-accomplished, goal-oriented father—had introduced her to a guy. His name was Orlando Rivera, and he was heading up the general’s run for office. Like the general, he’d attended West Point. He was in his thirties, ridiculously handsome, from the eldest son of a monied Cuban-American family. He had the dark appeal of a Latin lover and was fluent in English and Spanish. And, maybe most importantly of all, he was in the tight inner circle of satellites that revolved around her father.

“I’m allowed to hate anything I want,” Zach said, grabbing the champagne from her hand and guzzling it down.

Defiantly, she picked up a half-empty bottle that was bobbing in an ice bucket and took back the glass. “It was Daisy’s big day, and if you were any kind of gentleman, you’d be happy for her. And for me,” she groused at him. “I got to stand up at the altar for my best friend—”

“Hey,” he groused back. “I thought I was your best friend.”

“You never come to see me.” She feigned a dramatic sigh. “You don’t call, you don’t text… Besides, I can have more than one.”

“Best is a superlative term. There can only be one.”

She refilled the glass and took a gulp, enjoying the lovely head rush of the bubbly. “You and your rules. Both you and Daisy are my besties and there’s nothing you can do about it, so there.”

“Oh yeah? I can think of something.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her down toward the dark, flat expanse of Willow Lake.

“What the heck are you doing?” she said, twisting her hand out of his.

“The party’s over, but I’m not tired. Are you tired?”