Chapters (45)
- Cover
- Blame Iton Paris
- Copyright Notice
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- Book One
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Book Two
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
“I’ve got to get a shower, or I’ll never be ready in time!” she said. “Laura, you aren’t ready yet? It’s getting late!”
“But, I”—I thought of the downstairs bathroom and bit my mouth shut. She was the mother of the groom, and her role in this French wedding had been much closer to that of the mother of the bride’s, so she was probably stressed, too. Anyway, what was I supposed to do, tell all these people who had worked so hard for our wedding that I should have priority on the nice bathroom just because it had the only decently lit mirror in the house?
They would think I was being selfish. I desperately missed my sisters, who already knew I was selfish. They also knew how loud I could yell, so I would have been able to do so without ruining our relationship. But my only American relative here this time around was at her hotel, as was Sue; and they probably wouldn’t even find the church, the way things were going. Come to think of it, I hoped they were at the hotel; I actually had no idea what had happened after Sue and Dwayne left to find Anna and Ken.
The men boomed up the stairs: Jean-Charles, Éric, and Sébastien all at once. “Tell me you’ve taken a shower,” I said.
“Not me,” Sébastien said. “But I’ve just been cutting wood, so I definitely need to. Can you believe we forgot the wood for the grills? I’ll hurry.”
I stared at him, tears of panic fighting behind my eyes. Clearly the groom did have to take a shower. Clearly he should have priority on the nice bathroom, too. But the other bathroom had only this tiny, foggy mirror and no lighting. I was going to get married in front of 130 people I hadn’t met and twenty I had without any makeup on.
“We’re fine,” Éric said of himself and Jean-Charles. “We just have to change.”
“Up here?” I said, my voice shooting up an octave.
Nobody even noticed.
“It’s 10:05,” Mamie said.
She’s a sweet old lady, I said to myself, a sweet old lady; don’t say anything. Claudine came out in a lace bra and a towel knotted at her waist, solving the question of how the men and women were going to change in the same room. Well, maybe not solving it, from my point of view, but certainly putting it in a French perspective.
“Leave the door open while you shower,” I told Sébastien. “I’ve got to get at that mirror.”
He must have detected something in my voice because he patted me on the nearest available body part, my elbow, as he stripped off his clothes.