“I don’t know and I don’t care. I’m going with they’re here to tell me I look pretty. Do not rain—er, snow—on my parade today, Annie. Now, tell me the truth. Do you think I’m being…I don’t even know what term to use about me being married in my daughter’s wedding dress. Silly maybe? Maudlin?”

“Good Lord, no! I think it’s wonderful. Beyond wonderful. I know wherever Barbara is, she’s happy seeing you in her wedding dress. I hear the music, so it’s time to walk down the hall and out to the big room, where your husband-to-be awaits. I have to go first, so wait thirty seconds before you follow me. I have to be in place.”

“Go already,” Myra said, “so we can…God, I am so nervous. The worst part is I’m not even going to get a real ring until next month.”

“Oh, poo, like that matters. I’m going, I’m going. Remember, small steps.”

Myra heard a few oohs and ahs as she made her way to where Charles was waiting for her. Nellie, her book open in front of her, smiled. Myra tried to smile, but her lips wouldn’t move. When Nellie got to the part about the ring—and later she said she couldn’t remember the words—Myra felt her spirit daughter nudge her.

“I’m here, Mummie. Open your hand.”

Myra looked down at her clenched hand and slowly opened it. Her knees buckled, and she would have fallen except for Annie, who reached out to take her arm. Nestled in the palm of her hand was a plain gold wedding band. She knew without reading the inscription inside the ring that it was her daughter’s wedding ring.

“My wedding gift to you, Mummie.”

Myra’s heart soared as Charles reached for the ring and slipped it on her finger.

Nellie beamed. “You may now kiss the bride!”

Don’t miss Fern Michaels’s brand new and already wildly popular new series,

The Godmothers!

Here is a special excerpt from the first book,

THE SCOOP,

a Kensington trade paperback on sale now.

Chapter 1

Charleston, South Carolina

It was an event, there was no doubt about it. Not that funerals were, as a rule, events, but when someone of Leland St. John’s stature bit the dust, it became one. The seven-piece string band playing in the downpour, per one of Leland’s last wishes, had turned it into an event regardless of what else was going on in the world.

Then there was the tail end of Hurricane Blanche, which was unleashing torrents of rain upon the mourners huddled under the dark blue tent and only added to the circuslike atmosphere.