To Have and to Hold (13 page)

Madison was just about to shut down her computer when she changed her mind and started a new e-mail. She couldn’t go to sleep without checking on someone.

From: MadFinn


To: Wetwinz


Subject: How r U?


Date: Thurs 18 July 10:49 PM


Just wanted to check up and see how ur doing. Do you miss me b/c I miss you guys A LOT! I was at this party for Stephanie & my dad tonite and felt like such a loser. Is it possible to feel totally alone when ur in a room with 300 people? Well, not that many but close.


Thanks again for all ur amazing ideas for the wedding collage. I worked on it for most of the plane ride since Dad was sleeping. And I have all the stuff here tonite so I can paste down flowers and work on my poem as soon as I finish writing this e-mail.


Which I guess is now. See ya.


Love,


Maddie


Madison glanced over at a bag of paper she’d tucked between the bed and the end table. Collage materials were bursting out of the side. Madison was lucky that neither Stephanie nor Dad had noticed it.

She leaned over, dragged the paper, ribbon, and glue onto the bed, and clicked the television on.

There was still a lot of work to be done for her project—and no time to do it. Stretching across the bed, Madison tried to work on her wedding poem. But all she was able to do was scribble lines across the page.

After everything that had happened that night, it was hard to get into the mood to write a bunch of flowery, happy stuff about Dad and Stephanie.

Really
hard.

Madison rested her head on her hands and stared at the T.V. She clicked the channels but couldn’t find anything to watch. After a while, the voices and music seemed to melt together.

Her eyelids felt heavy.

Within ten minutes, Madison was asleep.

K
NOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK.

Madison thought she was dreaming until she heard Dad’s voice.

“Madison! Madison!” he called out through the divider door. “Are you awake?”

Groggily, Madison opened her eyes. She had fallen asleep facedown on top of her collage materials. Her arms had lines and indentations on them from where she had pressed against the paper and ribbons.

And her hair looked like a bird’s nest.

“Maddie!” Dad called again. “Are you decent?”

“Dad? Hold on!” Madison said, blinking twice and leaping up from the bed. Panicked, she stuffed the collage materials under the bed and quickly yanked the blankets down. “Come in!” she called out, sticking her nose under the blanket.

Dad burst through the door. “You’re still in
bed
?” he asked.

Madison glanced at the clock for the first time. She hadn’t realized how late it was.

“Whoops,” she mumbled. “I guess I’d better get ready.”

Dad looked sweaty, even though the air-conditioning was on full blast in the hotel room.

“Hurry up, okay?” he asked Madison, running his fingers through his hair.

Madison smiled sweetly and jumped out from under the covers. “Okay!” she declared, throwing her arms around Dad’s waist.

Dad let down his guard with a sigh. “I can’t believe I’m getting married tomorrow,” he said.

“Me, neither,” Madison said.

“Stephanie looked pretty last night, don’t you think?” Dad asked with a twinkle in his eye.

Madison nodded. “I guess so. When she wasn’t crying.”

“She’s just so nervous, that’s all,” Dad explained. “I am, too.”

Dad glanced over at the table in Madison’s hotel room. On top was the copy of the book of love poems Dad and Stephanie had given her for the reading. Dad pointed to it.

“Been practicing?” he asked.

Madison felt all the color drain out of her cheeks. She hadn’t opened it since they had gotten to the hotel.

“I was looking at it last night,” Madison said.

“Shakespeare is hard to read,” Dad said.

Madison’s heart was beating fast.

The minute Dad left the room
,
she would open the book and start reading….

“Well, I better go shave and call Stephanie’s sister. She’s coming for us,” Dad said, planting a kiss on Madison’s head. “I will be back in about thirty minutes.”

Madison breathed a sigh of relief when Dad returned to his own room. She quickly gathered together her collage pieces from under the bed and headed to the bathroom for a shower.

She decided the best thing to wear was Fiona’s purple sundress. That way she could keep cool—and keep connected to her BFF at the same time. Madison didn’t know how the day would turn out. She worried that Stephanie’s nieces and nephews wouldn’t like her. Or maybe
she
wouldn’t like them. Either way, Madison hoped the dress would do her some good.

Luckily, the dress was a perfect fit. And she’d remembered to pack her purple barrettes at the last minute. Although black sandals didn’t completely pull the whole outfit together, they still went with almost everything, so Madison pulled them on. Strawberry-kiwi lip gloss came last.

“I wish Hart could see me like this,” Madison thought to herself, puckering her lips in the mirror. It felt odd to look and feel good after falling asleep on top of a pile of papers in a strange hotel miles from home.

“Wahoo!” Dad let out a holler and barged right back into Madison’s room.

She jumped, startled.

“Dad! What are you doing?”

Dad grinned. “Getting in gear, my dear!” he chirped in his best Texas twang. “I was dragging a little, but now I’ve decided to be worry-free. And don’t you look pah-retty?”

“Oh, Dad!” Madison put her hands on her hips. “Don’t talk like that,” she said.

“Ready to hit the road?” Dad asked in his normal voice.

Madison nodded. She grabbed her orange bag and headed for the door. Even though it was bulky, and she probably didn’t need half of the stuff inside, she didn’t want to be separated from it.

In the elevator, Dad couldn’t stop bouncing around. He started out humming. As the elevator beeped at each floor, he made his own beeping noises.

“Dad!” Madison groaned, rolling her eyes. “What is your problem?”

He laughed. “I told you. I woke up nervous. But I’m working on it.”

Madison couldn’t believe this was what Dad was like when he was nervous. Why couldn’t he bite his nails or do something else,
silently
?

“Dad, I hate to tell you this, but no one beeps when they’re nervous,” Madison said.

“Oh, really?” Dad chuckled. “Good thing you told me that.”

Madison sneered a fake-o sneer. “You are
so
embarrassing, sometimes.”

The elevator doors opened onto the hotel lobby, which was bustling with hotel staff and guests and luggage carts. Madison and her dad squeezed through a crowd of people, who Madison guessed were part of a tour group, because they all had cameras around their necks.

“I didn’t know Bellville was a tourist spot,” Dad said as they walked away. “Then again, maybe they’re all wedding guests. Ha!”

Madison laughed at that one. She knew that Dad felt the same way she did about the number of people that seemed to be participating in the Wolfe and Finn wedding. Namely, that it was
too large.

Outside in the parking lot, Madison met Stephanie’s sister Wanda for the first time. She had been assigned to driving duty for the morning and was escorting them to breakfast at a local restaurant.

The first thing Madison noticed about Wanda was her hair.

It was big. And in the Texas morning sun, it looked pink, which matched her head-to-toe pink ensemble.

“Golly, I didn’t have much of a chance to talk last night,” Wanda said to Dad, swatting at his arm with a little laugh. “And I didn’t meet
you
at all!”

Wanda gently touched Madison’s shoulder. “You are as pretty as a picture,” Wanda said. “Just like Stephanie always says. ’Course, I have seen your picture dozens of times. And where did you ever get that darling little dress! My Tiffany would just
loooooove
that!”

Madison tugged at her dress. “Thanks,” she said.

“Shall we hit the road?” Dad suggested, putting his arm around Wanda with a gentle nudge.

Madison could tell he was itching to start his day-before-the-big-day.

The leather seats inside Wanda’s car felt like ice cubes. Madison guessed they were permanently chilled from having the air-conditioning on all the time. The cool car was better than the Texas heat, but Madison was relieved that she didn’t have to sit there for very long. The drive over to Monica’s Café for breakfast passed quickly.

Monica’s didn’t look like much from the road, but inside, the café was filled with pots of colored flowers and brightly colored tablecloths. Stephanie still had not arrived, but most of her family was there already, sipping coffee and orange juice. The dining tables were arranged in a horseshoe pattern on a glassed-in terrace.

“I promise I won’t run off,” Dad said, squeezing Madison’s hand as they entered the restaurant. “Let me introduce you to a few people.”

Madison smoothed out the skirt on Fiona’s dress and took a deep breath.

Across the restaurant, she saw a group of girls talking together. They looked to be just about Madison’s age; they didn’t wave hello. One girl with long, blond hair looked right at Madison and then turned to whisper to another girl.

They reminded Madison of some other people she knew.

Poison Ivy and her drones.

“Maddie, I’d like you to meet Stephanie’s other sister, Bethany,” Dad said, turning Madison around to face a strange woman with cropped brown hair. She wore big, clunky earrings and too much makeup, but she didn’t stop smiling once, the whole time Madison talked to her.

“Madison Finn!” Bethany proclaimed. “Well, it’s about time, Jeff!”

Madison wondered how she had missed meeting all these people the night before. Everything was a bit of a blur.

“Nice to meet you,” Madison said, extending her hand to shake Bethany’s hand.

“Oh, Jeff,” Bethany whispered to Dad. “She’s a plum.”

Dad rubbed Madison’s back as if to say, “Hang in there, honey bear. I’m right here.”

Madison glanced around the room in search of other familiar faces.

That was when she saw him.

Across the room.

Smiling.

Madison looked away.

“Can we go over here?” Madison asked Dad, yanking on his arm and trying desperately to turn away from the boy.

“Hey!” Dad cried. “Wait a minute! I want to introduce you to some of Stephanie’s nieces and nephews….”

Madison’s throat closed up for a moment. She knew what—or who—Dad was talking about.

“Kirk!” Dad called out loud. “Get over here!”

Dad was all smiles as he introduced Madison to Kirk Smith, who was Stephanie’s sister Bethany’s son—and who was also the boy who had smiled at Madison.

Kirk shrugged and said hello to Madison, half smiling. His eyes crinkled up, and he shoved his hands into his shorts pockets.

“What’s up?” Kirk said.

“Up? Not much,” Madison replied, as if she were speaking a different language.

“Kirk, we wanted you to meet Maddie back in Far Hills, remember?”

“Sure,” Kirk said. “I remember.”

“Sorry about that,” Madison said.

“No biggie,” Kirk said. “Hey, want to meet some of the other cousins? There’s a bunch of us just hanging out on the patio.”

Madison looked to Dad for approval. Dad gave her his blessing with a wink. “Go have a good time,” Dad said.

Madison bravely followed Kirk out onto the patio. It was hard to resist a cuter-than-cute guy under these circumstances, Madison told herself, even if he was fourteen—almost two years older than she was. She considered whether maybe (just maybe) Kirk was cuter than Hart.

As they stepped outside, Madison spotted the Poison Ivy clone, sitting on a low wall with a bunch of other girls. Kirk walked over with Madison.

“Hey, Tiff,” Kirk said. “This is Madison. Um, Madison … this is Tiffany.”

Tiffany flipped her hair—just like Ivy—and then smiled wide, as if she were acting in a toothpaste commercial.

“Hiya,” Tiffany said. “So, now we’re all going to be cousins, huh?”

Madison swallowed hard. “I guess.”

Mr. and Mrs. Wolfe made some announcements, and breakfast was finally served. All the kids meandered inside. Most of the boys rushed on ahead of Madison, and Tiffany and the other girls stuck together.

Only Kirk hung back to talk.

“Thanks for being so nice to me,” Madison told him. “This is all so …”

“Insane!” Kirk laughed. “My family is, like … really strange, I know.”

Madison giggled. “Well, I wasn’t going to say that.”

“It’s okay, I’m used to it. Me and Tiff always say that they should do a reality TV. show about the Wolfe family,” Kirk said. “Not that I’d be caught watching it.”

Me and Tiff
?

Madison couldn’t understand how Kirk and Tiffany could be so close, but Kirk made it sound as if they were more best pals than cousins.

Breakfast was displayed on yet another gigantic buffet featuring an ice sculpture shaped like the state of Texas. Kirk pointed to it and laughed.

“Grandma Diane always puts out these freaky ice molds shaped like Texas and cowboy boots, and I’m, like, ‘Whoa!’” Kirk said dramatically.

Madison pointed to the spread of food on the table. “Is that steak? For breakfast?”

“Are you kidding?” Kirk said. “My family raises their own cattle. We always have steak, at every meal.”

Madison thought it was funny how Dad could first marry Mom, a total vegetarian, and then marry someone who was so into beef.

“Maddie!” Stephanie ran over and threw her arms around Madison. She leaned in and whispered, “Sorry about last night. I was upset.”

“That’s okay,” Madison said.

“Aunt Steph!” Kirk said, leaning over to give Stephanie a kiss hello. Before she could make contact, he leaned away. “Gotcha!”

Stephanie chuckled. “Watch it, buster!” she said. “What other trouble are you getting into around here?”