The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [217]
When Dan and Annie said their vows, she heard them this time, unlike at her first wedding. They said, “I do” to promises that, with love’s help, they would be able to keep.
Clark and Sam and D. K. and Malpy and Teddy gave Annie away to Dan. Sam cried out loud when the minister told Dan, “You may kiss the bride.” Dan said in his dinner toast in the bright noisy tent that everyone in Emerald knew that Clark and Sam and D. K. and Malpy and Teddy would never give Annie away at all.
Georgette, the maid of honor, caught the bouquet in her rose-silk Vera Wang, a dress as thin as a slip and the first dress, as she said in her maid of honor toast, that she’d ever worn that was a size eight since she and Annie were ten years old.
Georgette started the dancing in the tent, doing the cha-cha to “Baby It’s You” with D. K. rolling himself backward and forward in his wheelchair, yelling, “This is a good day on the Mekong.”
Georgette led Trevor through a salsa (she was taking salsa lessons) while pretending that he was leading her. They talked about the Baalbek archeological dig where Trevor had vacationed, and a trip to Luxor that they both had always wanted to take.
Malpy raced among the dancers, barking at them with enthusiasm. Teddy growled weakly in her pagoda.
Georgette ran up to Annie’s room where the bride was changing clothes to leave for her honeymoon. “Annie, I’m not drunk. I’m a little drunk. I don’t even drink except at your weddings. So please don’t get married again. I’ll get a reputation as a binge drinker.”
Annie promised she wouldn’t.
Georgette took a deep breath. “I just feel I have to tell you something. Maybe it’s wrong. But I feel like…”
Annie asked, “This isn’t about Brad again, is it? I’m sure he did hit on you. Every chance he got.”
Georgette shook her head violently. “No, he’s really good-looking but, I’m sorry, forgive me, he’s a jerk. Besides I couldn’t. We’re practically, well, sisters. That’s what I want to tell you. We’re—”
“Cousins,” Annie smiled. “We’re cousins. Your aunt Ruthie’s my mother. Is that what you were going to say?”
“You just have to be faster, don’t you?” Georgette hugged her friend. “Yes, I did my blood work and Clark’s got every test he ever ran on you. We’re cousins.”
Annie kissed her again, smiling. She picked up the crystal on her dresser, the wishing bell, the small neon-blue sunglasses. “Just don’t do blood work on the Peregrines,” she said. “Or Clark. You’ll be in for a shock.”
“Oh my God,” said Georgette. “Just tell me Trevor’s not your brother because then he’d be my cousin. And I really like him. Good-bye. Have a wonderful honeymoon. I love you. Good-bye.” Georgette threw a handful of paper confetti on Annie’s head.
Dan and Annie raced down the porch steps through the rainbow of confetti and ran out into the meadow between Pilgrim’s Rest and the Nickerson house.
D. K.’s tethered hot-air balloon, the same one in which Annie had for the first time in her life left earth for air, floated against the blue summer sky. D. K.’s nieces held the ropes that tethered the basket. As Annie and Dan climbed inside, Clark held Malpy in a tight clasp to make sure he didn’t leap in the basket too.
They fired the burner and in a whoosh the huge ruby-red and emerald-green balloon ascended with Sam’s hand-painted banner of Congratulations flying out behind them, among old shoes and cans.
As Dan and Annie floated up over Pilgrim’s Rest, they heard the hum of a small airplane buzzing by. It was D. K. in his Pawnee Cropduster, tipping his wing to her. Down in the field below, she could see Sam and Clark, Georgette and Trevor, all dancing. The tiny plane with its black American eagle painted on its nose vanished into clouds.
Chapter 55
Above the Clouds
On their honeymoon, fourteen thousand feet above the sea, Annie and Dan hiked steadily, pausing to rest in the thin air, trekking the steep trail that twisted through misty green mountains into Machu Picchu. They stopped to watch as dawn lined up its rays with Intipunku, the sun