The Christmas Wedding - James Patterson [1]
You’re looking at the bride right now, and she’s actually smiling. She’s happy. Very much so. You know I don’t complain, but there was a long, dark time after your father died and I’m finally out of that black hole.
You’re probably wondering who the lucky groom is. Well, as you used to say when you were just little brats, that’s for me to know and you to find out.
Everybody is coming home to Stockbridge for Christmas. Claire, Emily, Seth, and Lizzie. You and your children, your spouses, your lovers, dogs, cats, whoever and whatever. We haven’t been together as a family since your dad died.
So it’s Christmas in Stockbridge.
Then you’ll find out who the lucky man is. Till then. I love you. And I’m so happy I almost can’t believe it.
See you at Christmas…when all will be revealed.
BOOK ONE
Christmas Dreaming
Chapter 1
CLAIRE AND HANK
CLAIRE DONOGHUE, Gaby’s eldest daughter, had just finished her mother’s video, and, well, wow. Go, Gaby! For the moment, though, Claire was paying her household bills, and bill paying was kind of like playing “I love you, I love you not” with hand grenades. Sooner or later, Claire knew, one of them was going to blow up in her face. In everybody’s face.
“I love you, South Carolina Electric and Gas,” she said, placing that bill in the stack she intended to pay.
“I love you not, emergency root canal.”
It was as good a system as any for deciding how to parcel out their slim income to pay the usual fat stack of bills. It was only during the luckiest of months that Hank’s money from construction work, and Claire’s income from tutoring, covered most of the bills. This was not one of those months.
Claire sat at a small, wobbly oak table in the chilly sunroom. She wore two Shetland sweaters in two different shades of dark blue, white painter’s pants, and fingerless woolen gloves. She called her style cheap cute. And, in fact, Claire was cute. Even after three kids, she was still holding her own—pug nose rather than spreading pig nose, smattering of freckles, short reddish-brown hair, “girlish” figure.
The truth was, though, she felt anything but cute; she felt tired and run-down. She felt like total crap, and nobody knew it, and nobody much cared.
James Taylor was playing softly on Claire’s laptop. She liked James okay, always had.
I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain.
Claire knew what he was singing about. She gazed out of the sunroom and although their house was three blocks from the beach, she could see a sliver of the gray December ocean. The sand was cold and the horizon lifeless. Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, was a summer hot spot, but for Claire and Hank Donoghue it was their year-round home. That meant that when the tourists left and the cheesy concession stands closed down and the splintery boardwalk was deserted—well, that meant that Claire and Hank were left with each other. And that wasn’t always a good thing. Not for the past few years. And definitely not today. Hank just kept getting worse and worse and worse.
“Hey, babe,” she heard him call from his downstairs den. “Can you bring me a big coldy-oldy tea and maybe-baby some Eyetalian crackers?”
Claire knew he was asking for an iced tea and Pepperidge Farm Milano cookies. She also realized, from his ridiculous language, that he was stoned out of his mind.
“In a minute,” she called. She did not want a fight today. Or any day, really. She couldn’t stand his blowups, but she didn’t know what to do about them. The kids loved Hank.
She stood up, but she couldn’t stop obsessing about the video from her mom—the one that had knocked the wind out of her. So, Gaby was getting married. That was pretty terrific. But her mom wouldn’t say to whom. Just when and where. Christmas Day back home in Massachusetts at their farm. Gaby loved her mysteries.
“Hey, Claire, where’s the grub?” Hank shouted again.
Claire rolled her eyes and headed for the kitchen. She couldn’t help thinking that her mom would never, ever fetch coldy-oldies for her father—and her father would never have asked, certainly never