Buzzkill (Pecan Bayou Series) (2 page)

“What a
shocker,” Maggie said dryly.

I sliced another
cookie off the store-bought roll of refrigerator dough. Nothing like a homemade
Christmas.

“How about the
day after that?”

“Can’t do it.
I’m supposed to meet with Myrtle Richey,” I said. “She’s supposed to sing for
the wedding. She wants me to hear the solo she’s picked out for us.”

“Myrtle? Are you
serious?”

“Aunt Maggie,
please. I’m doing the best I can with all of this wedding craziness. Besides,
we have plenty of time.”

“How about the
photography?”

“Yes, I have a
card here somewhere for a guy who says he can shoot our wedding right after he
does some soccer team shots down at the Y.”

“Betsy! That’s
your wedding photographer?” My aunt was incredulous.

“When I started
writing about wedding planning in my column, he called up the Gazette and
wanted to be my photographer,” I said. “It seemed like a win-win to me. He’s
already done some portraits of Zach.”

“The guy takes
team pictures. What’s he going to do, pose you two hiking the bouquet?”

My head began to
ache. Aunt Maggie was usually never this critical, but today it felt like I
hadn’t done anything right. Here I was “The Happy Hinter,” and I needed so much
advice I could give Dear Abby a hand cramp.

“Baby girl, I
hate to say this,” my aunt said, “but I think you need a weddin’ intervention.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re out of
control, Betsy. I know you are usually the one who’s organized around this
town, but this wedding thing has snowed you under.”

“I can handle
it. It’s just a wedding,” I said, chewing down what was left of my fingernail.

“Hold that
thought.” Maggie pulled out her phone and hit the speed dial. “Hey, Ruby? Who’s
that weddin’ planner fella who keeps sending brides to the beauty shop?”

Maggie nodded
her head as she grabbed a pencil from my kitchen counter and wrote a name down
on the back of an envelope. “And you think he’s real good?”

She nodded
again. I wondered if she even noticed Ruby couldn’t see her.

“Well, I thank
you very much, my dear. I’ll be in tomorrow for my weekly style.”

Maggie pushed
the off button on her phone.

“A wedding
planner?” I asked.

“Not just any
wedding planner,” she said. “Mr. Andre. He is the finest the tri-county area
has to offer.”

“Aunt Maggie, I
don’t need a wedding planner,” I protested.

Ignoring me, she
started punching a number into her cell phone. When the party on the other end
answered, she began telling my tragic story.

Leo and I were
trying to stay on a budget for the wedding. Bringing in one more person to pay
was something I probably should discuss with him.

“Oh, well, I
didn’t know you were so popular,” Maggie rattled on. Maybe he was too busy to
plan my wedding. What a relief! Still, the more I thought about it, the more I
wondered how it would feel to not have to worry about all the little details
that could drive a person mad.

“How much?” Ah
yes, the two words that jump-start the heart of any bride. “I see. Well, we
could stop by this morning.”

“Aunt Maggie,” I
whispered. “Aunt Maggie, what are you doing?” Maggie shushed me away with her
hand.

“See you there
in about an hour then.” She ended her call and faced me, holding up her hand to
stop my protests.

“Betsy, I’m
doing this for you and Leo, and don’t worry about the cost,” she said firmly.
“Mr. Andre is well worth it.”

My mouth hung
open. First, I never expected to be hiring someone with a name like “Mr.
Andre,” and second, I didn’t expect my aunt to be paying for it.

“How much?” I
asked.

“Enough.”

“You don’t have
to do this.”

Maggie reached
over and cupped my chin in her hand. “No, I don’t. Just consider this a wedding
gift to you from me and Danny. Your wedding is in two months, and you, Miss
Happy Hinter, are not battle-ready.”

******

“Okay now, let’s
see.” Mr. Andre lowered his head, revealing the roots of his mousse-spiked,
bleached hair. He wore a dark maroon suit with a matching jewel-toned silk
shirt unbuttoned midway, showing sparse hair on his skinny chest. The smell of
his cologne drifted over and tickled my nose. “Do you have a photographer?”

“Yes,” I
ventured.

“No,” Aunt
Maggie cut in. “She has some guy who shoots kiddie team pictures.”

“Oh my.” Andre
circled something on his clipboard. “No photographer.”

“And you’ve gone
for a wedding cake tasting?”

“A tasting? I
think I already know what vanilla and chocolate tastes like by now.”

Andre shook his
head as if I were a child. “No, my dear. You will be pleased to find out there
are other flavors like white amaretto, champagne – girl, you can even get
peanut butter if that’s what floats your boat. So I take it you haven’t had a
cake-tasting session?”

“You would be
correct,” I replied.

“I see.” He
circled another line. “And your flowers?”

“She’s using
Lenny Stokes, and she’s already put a deposit down,” Aunt Maggie said.

Andre grimaced.

“I see. I’ll
need his number and address so I can get in contact with him to put him on my
approved vendors list.” He circled another line. “And what is the venue?”

“We are going to
have the ceremony at the community church.”

Andre’s eyebrows
raised as he nodded and smiled. I had finally done something right.

“Do you have any
kind of documentation on this?” he asked.

“Not officially,
no,” I said. “I have talked to the pastor about it, though and he says it’s
open. We live in a small town, Andre. Documentation isn’t always required.”

“Mr. Andre,” he
corrected.

“We just don’t
have the same kinds of waiting lists like there are in the big city.”

He clutched his
hand to his chest. “Well, that’s a relief.”

“And your
invitations?”

“We weren’t
going to send those out until mid-January. We were afraid people would lose
them. I have them ordered.” Mr. Andre’s eyes slanted toward me. “Well, they’re
not exactly ordered, but I do have them picked out.”

A pause hung in
the air as Mr. Andre summoned up the strength to go on. “Are you sure we’re
planning a wedding and not some kind of country barbecue where they cook a pig
over a spit?” He clasped his hands together in front of him to emphasize his
point. “You are in crisis mode, Madame Happy Hinter.”

I gulped. So
maybe, just maybe, I hadn’t nailed down enough of the details. I felt a tear
escape onto my cheek. Andre, used to overwhelmed brides, reached over to a
satin-covered tissue box and slapped it down on the table in front of me.

“Dry your eyes,
sweetie. We’ve got work to do,” he said. “You should know what a lucky girl you
are. I just removed myself from a wedding on the same day. No one – I repeat,
no one – does a wedding like Mr. Andre, but even I have my limits on
troublesome brides and monster mothers. As fate would have it, I’m yours.”

He walked over
to a filing cabinet and pulled out a large white leather binder. Mr. Andre’s
picture was on the front, and underneath that, “Weddings Exclusively by Mr.
Andre” was embossed in gold lettering.

“I don’t care what
religion you are,” he said. “This, lovey, is your new bible. Carry this with
you everywhere and fill it with notes, questions, business cards, quotes and
everything – I mean everything – that has to do with your wedding. Is that
clear?”

“Yes, sir,” I said
and saluted before I could stop myself. Aunt Maggie broke out into a laugh, but
Mr. Andre turned quickly, fixing his eyes on her. She quickly stifled her
reaction and stood up a little straighter, becoming just another draftee in the
world of white satin.

“So, Mr. Andre
is going to check out the photographer and the florist, and we are going on a
wedding cake tasting tomorrow.” Leo, who had been sitting on the floor of my
den with his back up against the couch, looked at all the paperwork I had
spread out on the coffee table. He rubbed his eyes and then picked up some of
the cost projections.

“Um, Betsy …”

“And then of
course we have to consider a caterer if we are going to have anything more than
wedding cake,” I rattled on.

“Betsy?”

“And as for the
band, if we think we want a band, we will want to audition some groups in the
next few weeks. That’s going to put us over budget, but it will add to the
ambiance of the evening …”

Leo reached over
and grabbed me by the shoulders, turning me toward him. He gently touched my
cheek with his hand. “Betsy, have you just crawled out of a plant spore
somewhere? Where did my slightly disorganized, budget-conscious, sweet little
Betsy go to?”

I smiled. “She’s
right here.”

“No, she’s not.”
He cupped my chin. “Bridezilla is here.”

“Leo!” I pushed
at his shoulder, almost knocking him into the Christmas tree next to the couch.
He picked a little white angel off the tree and floated it in front of me with
his hands.

“The bridezilla
of Pecan Bayoooouuu!” His voice resembled the announcer on the late late movie,
right about when the monster comes out of the lagoon. I folded my arms and
tried to keep from smiling at him.

“Seriously,
Betsy. Why are you so … together all of a sudden?” he asked. “Did you check out
a book on wedding planning? Wait, there’s some sort of show on cable, right?”

“Can’t you
believe that for one moment I could pull off a little event like creating a
wedding?” I asked in return.

“No.”

“Leo!”

“Sorry,” he
said. “But really, what happened?”

I slumped and
looked down. “Okay, you’ve got me. Aunt Maggie paid for Mr. Andre.”

“I’m not so sure
I like where this conversation is going,” he said.

“Be serious.”

“So, do I need
to be jealous of this Mr. Andre?”

“He’s a wedding
planner.”

Leo laughed and I
continued, ignoring him.

“He's the 
premier wedding planner of the tri-county area. Brides come from miles around
to get him to ‘sculpt their dream day. Nothing to worry about.’”

“Now I’ve heard
it all,” he said. “So how much is Mr. Andre costing your aunt?”

“Too much, but
she wanted this to be her wedding present.

I went to my
desk in the next room, now piled with brochures, and of course, my wedding
bible. I returned and handed him a list of names. “Here is the final guest
list. I added the names you emailed me so we’ll be ready to stuff and mail the
invitations.”

Leo glanced at
the list. “Who is Charlotte Kelsey? I thought I’d met all of your family.”

“You haven’t met
her and you probably won’t meet her,” I said. “That’s my mother.”

“Your mother as
in the one-who-left-your-dad-after-having-an-affair-with-another-patrolman
mother?”

“That’s the
one.”

“So why are you
inviting her?”

Why was I
inviting the woman who had managed to miss all of the important milestones in
my life? Why would I honor her absence with an invitation to my wedding? He had
a point.

“I guess I did
it … just because it seemed like the right thing to do.”

“That’s why I
love you,” he said. “Always choosing the path anyone else would avoid.”

“Even if there
might be a dead body on it somewhere?”

Leo laughed.
“Even then. I’m surprised the town mortician hasn’t asked you to carry around
some of his cards.”

“Very funny.”

“What would you
do if she wanted to come to the wedding?”

“First I would
try to recognize her,” I said. “I haven’t seen her since I was four, but don’t
worry about it. She won’t come. She didn’t come to my graduations, both high
school and college, she didn’t come to my first wedding, and she has never, not
even once, acknowledged that I have Zach. I mean, seriously. What kind of
mother is that?”

I picked up a
pen and drew through her name on the guest list. “You know, the more I think
about it, the more I think let’s just leave her off.”

“Are you sure?”
asked Leo.

“I … I don’t
know,” I faltered. I took a deep breath and tried to change the subject. “And
your mother will be up from Galveston? I really haven’t had a chance to spend
much time with her.”

“She’s pretty
excited about the wedding,” he said. “She’s going to be bringing my Aunt Flo
and Mrs. Martin, one of the ladies she teaches science with at the high
school.”

Since Leo’s
father died of a heart attack five years ago, his mother had kept busy with
friends and her hobby of watching the Galveston sky for hurricanes.

“Anything else
on Mr. Andre’s list?”

“Oh, and I have
a printed sample of the invitation for you to look over.” I sorted through the
papers and came up with an ivory invitation with a scalloped edge. I settled
back next to him and handed it over.

“Isn’t it lovely
with its delicate gold lettering?”

Leo’s gaze fixed
on the invitation.

I reached over
and took a gulp of my wine. “So with that issue on the table, I was hoping we
would marry in Pecan Bayou, right? You weren’t thinking Dallas?”

“Oh, no, Pecan
Bayou is fine. As a matter of fact, I can’t think of a place I would rather get
married,” he said.

“I’ll talk to
Pastor Green to see if we can get the community church. It
is
a Saturday
on Valentine’s Day, so it may be busy.”

“That’s true.
Everyone wants to get married on Valentine’s Day,” he said. “That way you never
forget your anniversary. Hallmark sets the whole day aside for you, and roses
go on sale at the grocery store. You can’t beat that.”