The Christmas Wedding - James Patterson [35]
“Honestly, me neither,” she said.
“It’s like that old line about Venice,” Tom said. “It’s what God would have done—if He only had the money.”
Then I had an idea. I took the cell phone out of my pocket and speed-dialed Lizzie.
“Did I wake you?” I asked, but I didn’t wait for an answer. “I hope not, but even if I did, you’ll be glad I called. We’re all standing in the barn, the barn that Stacey Lee has turned into a Christmas palace. And we’re all oohing and aahing and crying and laughing, and I thought…well, I’m going to hold the phone up…I just wanted you to be here too. And Mike, if he’s up.”
My singing voice should be called my croaking voice, but I sang “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” as loud as I could.
Everyone joined in, including Lizzie on the other end of the phone. Within seconds we were the most beautiful choir in all of New England. The lights sparkled. The old horse whinnied. And my heart filled with such joy it actually hurt. There was nothing like having your family together, especially if you were all friends.
Chapter 41
LIKE LOTS OF OTHER people in Stockbridge, we counted on the Red Lion Inn for special-event dinners. Graduation parties and sweet sixteens (Emily didn’t seem like a sweet-sixteen type, but she couldn’t get the gifts without the party), significant anniversaries, and, best of all, those early-autumn afternoons when the tourists had gone back to New York and Boston, and the locals could get a table without a reservation.
It was at the Red Lion that we celebrated the day thirteen-year-old Seth astonishingly had a hole in one. And, leave it to Stacey Lee, the Red Lion was the place she selected to celebrate making her goal at Weight Watchers. “I had fresh fruit for dessert,” she always said defensively about that dinner.
So the Red Lion had to be the place for the rehearsal dinner.
I had another reason for choosing it: The food was good, simple fare. At times it seemed that the wedding was turning into a feast of food rather than a feast of love.
The dinner was held in the Rockwell Suite, a big dining room hung with the art of Stockbridge’s celebrity, Norman Rockwell. It was billed as a rehearsal dinner, but, as I told everyone, there was nothing to rehearse. I’d done this show before.
The fact was, though, the rehearsal dinner would have almost as many guests as the wedding itself.
Kurt’s daughter and son-in-law were here from Burlington. The twins who did odd jobs around the farm, Jonny and Nick Ramiro, asked if they could come. Then there were a few decades’ worth of students whom I adored, and who’d sat through my lectures on Emily Dickinson, Fitzgerald, the Brontës, and Stephen King, and the not-to-be-missed “Proper Use of the Hyphen” talk. And so the invitations went out, until the manager at the inn said we had to cap it at one fifty.
Finally, the night arrived.
“Gaby, I owe you, like, a big thank-you,” Gus said when he saw me at the door. I assumed he was referring to my lie about his wallet and the marijuana.
“Sometimes a little fib solves more problems than the truth ever could,” I said.
“Oh, yeah, that. But I wasn’t talking about the joint. I mean, thanks for covering for me. That was cool, but I really want to thank you for not putting me at the kids’ table tonight. Really. Seriously. Thanks so much.”
“That’s because I don’t think you’re a kid. Now make sure you don’t act like one.”
He didn’t exactly smile at me, but I was pleased that he didn’t sneer either. As he turned and walked away I couldn’t resist adding, “You know, Gus, it’s amazing how a fake velvet jacket from H and M can really dress up a pair of ripped jeans.” This time he smiled.
When I looked up, the room was becoming noisy and crowded, exactly what I wanted. All my rowdy friends and relatives in one place.
I was most delighted to see Mike walking in with only a cane. Lizzie had told me that he’d been using a walker around the house, but he was determined to look like, in his words, “a normal person” at the wedding events. I rushed over to him and my strong,