CHAPTER1
Wereyou actually supposed to have a panic attack on your wedding day?
Could you change out your wedding party on the day of your wedding?
Could you just call it off if someone you wanted to be there wasn’t?
What if it rained?
What if all that happened all at once? Then could you just call it off?
Natalie Beckett had no answers to all the questions running through her head. Unfortunately, the answers were all she could think about. And she wanted them instantly. Should she have looked into them yesterday? Last week? Last month? Any day but today, because today was her actual wedding day.
It had taken close to a year of planning to get to this moment. Hours of her time and a lot of her dad’s money. That time and money didn’t change the fact that it suddenly all felt so wrong. Every single part of it.
Across the room, the bridesmaids were waiting out the last moments before the wedding, chatting in the corner with smiles and excitement. Without her. Weren’t they supposed to be her closest friends? Because if they were, she would want to talk to one of them. Any of them. But they weren’t her closest friends—not anymore, at least. Sure, two were Jason’s sisters, so maybe not exactly her closest friends ever, but the third was her best friend from college, and either she had changed, or Natalie had. Natalie was worried it was herself—she didn’t feel different.
Reaching up, she touched the elaborate hairdo that had her black wavy hair constrained into a ball on her head, with a few strands left free to hang around her face in little curls. Her fingers said that it was still perfect, that everything on the outside was perfect—everything but inside, Natalie herself. There was nothing perfect there.
In a flurry of pink, her friend Mia Lawson rushed across the room, pushing Natalie into the back room she had just gotten dressed in. Letting it happen, Natalie was relieved to see her return. Mia, at least, was a true friend. “The groom is coming down,” she said, explaining why the separate room was needed as she shut the door behind them. Once it was closed, she turned and looked Natalie up and down. “The book club is here. Don’t worry about it. They’re all upstairs, waiting and excited to enjoy your big day. Oh, and it is hot up there.Hot.You’re going to die in that dress. How many layers is it anyway?”
Natalie hugged the woman who she had asked to be her personal attendant a few months before when her supposed friend said she couldn’t cancel some trip with her boyfriend. Mia had jumped at the opportunity. She had actually done this so many times in her almost thirty years that it was second nature to the bubbly woman. On the other hand, Natalie had never been in a wedding before, and now she was in her own and a little freaked out.
Looking down at the bouncy woman, Natalie bit her lip. Could she ask another favor of the woman? Mia was a relatively new friend, though they had known of each other for years. Mia was a waitress, and Natalie was the librarian at the public library in the same small town, but they had both joined a book club and had become actual friends in the last six months. Close considering the six-year age difference, but from the outside, they had little in common. However, the more they got to know each other, the more Natalie wasn’t too sure about that. It was the same with everyone in the book club. They all were a little alike.
“Say it.” Mia rolled her eyes as she jumped up and sat on the only furniture in the room, a craft table that sat against the wall. The move proved she had no concern for her pink dress that showed off her curves or what she looked like sitting on the table.
It was one of the reasons Natalie loved her. Mia didn’t care what anyone thought, ever.
“Are you sure Hazel is here? She wasn’t at the rehearsal dinner last night.” Natalie bit her lip. Hazel was one of her oldest friends—if you could have old friends at twenty-three. They had gone through twelve grades of school together, and the graduating class was only twenty-seven, so they couldn’t miss each other. But all through that time, Hazel had not been her best friend. Her best friend had been Hanna.
Hanna May had been Hazel’s identical twin sister. They looked so much alike that Natalie sometimes couldn’t say her name because it hurt so much to remember her best friend was gone. That in her place was just a replica. That in itself made Natalie hurt even more. Hazel had lived in her sister’s shadow right up until Hanna died. And that had continued after her death.
For some reason, she needed Hazel here today. Natalie had only invited her two months before, even though she had sent out the rest of the invites mid-March, and it was late July now. They had become close in the last few months, sometimes laughing and talking like the old days. Natalie loved that it was possible they could be friends again. Now, as the hour arrived, she needed her there today more than anyone else.
Until last week she wouldn’t have wondered if Hazel was there or not. That was when Natalie had asked Hazel to talk in private about her being gone on her honeymoon. Hazel had a panic attack, the worst one Natalie had ever seen. The other woman had run off in a blind panic and had ended up in the middle of the street being held by their pastor, unable to breathe. At that point, Natalie hadn’t been able to handle the fact that she could cause that kind of reaction from one of her closest friends just by being near her.
She closed her eyes to try to stop the tears. It was her wedding day. No tears. But the memory of Hazel’s reaction reminded her of all that was lost. Trying not to go to that alternate reality that the two groom’s sisters were Hazel and Hanna and the groom was their brother Henry. It had been almost six years since that dream died on a back-country road, but it was still in her mind.
“Don’t cry.” Mia pulled a tissue from the bodice of her dress and handed it to her. “Hazel is here. She brought John Henry. They are here.”
Natalie breathed deeply, trying to ward off the tears. Hazel almost always was with her four-year-old son, so today would be no different. The only time she was without him was during book club—it was no place for a little boy. The topic was always grizzly, horrifying murder. Adults only.
“Is it too late to have her as a bridesmaid?” Natalie wondered out loud.
“Yes,” Mia stated. “Maybe she couldn’t get anyone to watch John Henry? She doesn’t always like to bring him to things.”
“Maybe.” But Natalie also knew Hazel didn’t like to go to things and used her son as an excuse more than anything. It was her excuse the night before for missing the groom’s supper. Fake or not, Natalie didn’t know.
“And Mandy, Tess, and Ruth?” She named the others in the book club, which met every two weeks. Three women who, a few months ago, she had barely known but were now her closest friends.
“All are here,” Mia assured her.
“Can you get married if it floods?” She looked out the little window where the rain was coming down in sheets. Mia seemed to actually have all the answers to Natalie’s questions, which was why she was the perfect personal attendant.
“It won’t flood, Natalie. Well, it would take more than this to flood.” They were in North Dakota and near enough to the Red River that it did flood almost every year. But not usually from rain, just from winter snowmelt.
“We’re going on a honeymoon, a beach honeymoon,” Natalie stated out of nowhere. It wasn’t even something she was worried about today, just every day up to today. It had been her main concern for weeks.