“Ah, you must be Hadley!” the woman says. “I’m so glad you made it. Don’t worry, dear. The girls are waiting for you downstairs.” She says girls as if it rhymes with carols, and Hadley realizes this must be the bride’s mother, from Scotland. Now that Dad and Charlotte are getting married, Hadley wonders if she’s supposed to consider this woman—this total stranger—a grandmother of sorts. She’s struck a bit speechless by the idea of it, wondering what other new family members she might be acquiring once the day’s events are set in motion. But before she has a chance to say anything, the woman makes a little flapping motion with her hands.
“Better hurry,” she says, and Hadley finds her voice again, thanking her quickly before heading toward the stairwell.
As she bumps her suitcase down one step at a time, she can hear a flurry of voices, and by the time she hits the bottom, she’s completely surrounded.
“There she is,” one of the women says, putting an arm around her shoulders to shepherd her into a Sunday-school classroom that appears to be doubling as a dressing room. Another grabs her suitcase, and a third guides her into a folding chair, which is set up in front of the mirror that leans against the chalkboard. All four women are already wearing their lavender bridesmaid dresses, and their hair is sprayed, their eyebrows plucked, their makeup done. Hadley tries to keep them straight as they introduce themselves, but it’s clear that there’s very little time for pleasantries; these women are all business.
“We thought you might miss it,” says Violet, the maid of honor, a childhood friend of Charlotte’s. She flits around Hadley’s head, taking a clip from her mouth. Another, Jocelyn, grabs a makeup brush and then squints for a moment before getting to work. In the mirror, Hadley can see that the other two have opened her suitcase and are attempting to smooth out the dress, which is as hopelessly wrinkled as she feared.
“Don’t worry, don’t worry,” says Hillary, disappearing into the bathroom with it. “It’s the kind of dress where the creases just give it a little life.”
“How was your flight?” Violet asks as she jams a brush through Hadley’s hair, which is still tangled from the hours spent on the plane. Before Hadley has a chance to answer, Violet twists her hair into a knot, pulling so hard that Hadley’s blue eyes nearly disappear.
“Too tight,” she manages, feeling like Snow White, getting pecked to death by too many helpful forest creatures.
But by the time they’re done with her a mere ten minutes later, Hadley has to admit they’ve pulled off some sort of miracle. The dress, while still a bit squashed, looks better than it ever did when she tried it on back home, thanks to Mom’s last-minute triage yesterday morning and some creative pinning by her fellow bridesmaids. The spaghetti straps are the perfect length and the lavender silk hangs just right, ending at her knees. The shoes are Mom’s, strappy sandals as shiny as two coins, and Hadley wiggles her painted toes as she studies them. Her hair is pulled back into an elegant bun, and between that and the makeup, she feels completely unlike herself.
“You look like a ballerina,” Whitney says, clasping her hands together delightedly, and Hadley smiles, a bit shy amid so many fairy godmothers. But even she has to admit that it’s true.
“We better go,” Violet says, glancing up at the clock, which reads 12:08. “Don’t want Charlotte to have a heart attack on her wedding day.”
The others laugh as they take one last look in the mirror, then the whole group hurries out the door as one, their heels loud on the linoleum floor of the church basement.
But Hadley finds herself frozen in place. It’s only just occurred to her that she won’t have a chance to see her father before the ceremony, and something about this sets her completely off-balance. All of a sudden everything seems to be happening much too fast, and she smoothes her dress and bites her lip and tries unsuccessfully to slow her rushing mind.
He’s getting married, she thinks, marveling at the very idea of it. Married.
All this she’s known for months—that he’s starting a new life today, a life with someone who’s not Mom—but until now it was only ever just words, the vaguest of notions, the kind of future occasion that seems like it might not ever actually happen, that sneaks up on you like the monsters in childhood stories, all fur and teeth and claws, without any real substance.
But now, standing here in the basement of a church with shaking hands and a hammering heart, she’s struck by what this day actually means, by all that she’ll lose and gain with it, by how much has already changed. And something inside of her begins to hurt.
One of the bridesmaids calls from down the hall, where the echoing of footsteps is growing softer. Hadley takes a deep breath, trying to remember what Oliver said on the plane about her being brave. And though at this particular moment she feels quite the opposite, something in the memory makes her stand up a bit taller, and so she holds on to this as she sets off after the group, her eyes wide under her makeup.
Upstairs, she’s led around to the lobby at the front of the church and introduced to Charlotte’s brother, Monty, who will be the one walking her down the aisle. He’s rail thin and ghostly pale, and Hadley guesses he’s at least a few years older than Charlotte, putting him on the other side of forty. He offers her a hand, which is cold and papery, and then, once the introductions have been made, proffers his elbow. Someone hands her a pink and lavender bouquet as they’re maneuvered into line behind the others, and before she can even really register what’s happening the doors are thrown open and the eyes of the congregation are suddenly upon them.
When it’s their turn Monty nudges her forward, and Hadley walks with small steps, a bit unsteady in her heels. The wedding is bigger than she’d imagined; for months she’s been picturing a small country church filled with a few close friends. But this is nothing short of a gala event, and there are hundreds of unfamiliar faces, all turned in her direction.
She adjusts her grip on the stems of the bouquet and lifts her chin. On the groom’s side, she spots a few people she vaguely knows: an old college friend of her father’s; a second cousin who’s been living in Australia; and an elderly uncle who for years sent her birthday gifts on the completely wrong day, and who—if she’s being really honest—she sort of assumed was dead by now.
As they make their way up the aisle, Hadley has to remind herself to breathe. The music is loud in her ears and the dim lighting of the church makes her blink. It’s hard to tell whether she’s warm because there’s no air-conditioning or because of the panicky feeling she’s trying hard to push away, that familiar sensation that comes with too many people in too little space.