Angels All Over Town (31 page)

I kissed Sam’s neck, to let him know I understood, but I was watching the ship steam closer. It was a freighter; I could see its rusty hull, its yellow derricks. Smoke twisted from its stacks and dissolved in the pure cold air. Its approach had started the clock, but our interlude, Sam’s and mine, held steady.

About the Author

LUANNE RICE
is the author of twenty novels, most recently
Summer of Roses, Summer's Child, Silver Bells, Beach Girls, Dance With Me, The Perfect Summer,
and
The Secret Hour
. She lives in New York City and Old Lyme, Connecticut.
Beach Girls
was the basis for the Lifetime television network miniseries, and
Silver Bells
was a recent Hallmark Hall of Fame feature presentation.

Visit the author's website at
www.luannerice.com
.

ALSO BY LUANNE RICE

Summer of Roses
Firefly Beach

Summer’s Child
Dream Country

Silver Bells
Follow the Stars Home

Beach Girls
Cloud Nine

Dance With Me
Home Fires

The Perfect Summer
Blue Moon

The Secret Hour
Secrets of Paris

True Blue
Stone Heart

Safe Harbor
Crazy in Love

Summer Light

For every love,
there is a season...
Celebrate sandcastles, sun, sea, and sky—

A Summer
of Reading

WITH

LUANNE RICE

"Few writers evoke summer's translucent days so effortlessly, or better capture the bittersweet ties of family love.... Gorgeous descriptions...sensitive characterizations...a seaside essential. Those who can't get to the beach will feel transported there."

—
Publishers Weekly

Please read on for details!

Summer
of Roses

LUANNE RICE

Revisiting the remarkable characters introduced in her bestselling
Summer's Child,
Luanne Rice brings full circle one of her most compelling explorations of the human heart...all the many ways it can be broken...and the magic that can make it whole again.

"Rice masterfully weaves together a batch of sympathetic characters into a rich and vivid tapestry, all while exploring complex human emotions and the healing power of love."
—Flint Journal

Summer of Roses

M
y wedding was like a dream. It was almost everything a wedding should be, and when I think of it, even now, I see it unfolding like the kind of beautiful story that always has a happy ending.

I got married in my grandmother's garden, by the sea, on a brilliant early July morning at Hubbard's Point. The daylilies were in bloom. That's what I remember, almost as much as the roses: orange, cream, lemon, golden daylilies on tall green stalks, tossed by the summer breeze, trumpeting exultation up to the wild blue sky. But the roses were my grandmother's specialty, her pride and joy, and that year, for my wedding, they were all blooming.

Scarlet Dublin Bay roses climbed the trellis beside the front door of the weathered-shingle cottage, while Garnet-and-Golds and pale pink New Dawns meandered up the stone chimney. The beds by the iron bench bloomed with red, yellow, peach, and pink classic English varieties, while those along the stone wall, by the old wishing well and the steps up to the road, were low shrubs of white and cream roses. A six-foot hedge of
Rosa rugosa
—white and pink beach roses—lined the seawall, along with deep blue delphiniums and hydrangeas.

It was a perfect setting for a perfect wedding—something that most people, including me, never imagined would happen. I guess I thought I wasn't the marrying kind. Let's just say that I was a little on the guarded side. I had lost my parents very young. As a child I had been in love with our family. I know how dramatic that sounds, but it's true. We were so happy, and my parents had loved each other with wild, reckless, ends-of-the-earth abandon. I had watched them together, and taken it in, and decided, even at four, that nothing less would ever do for me. When they were killed in a ferry accident during a trip to Ireland, although I wasn't there, but home in Connecticut with my grandmother, I think I died with them.

So my wedding—and everything that had led up to it—the miracle of meeting Edward Hunter, and falling so madly in love with him, and being swept off my feet in a way I'd never expected or believed could happen—was a resurrection of sorts. A rising from the dead, of a little girl who went down to the bottom of the Irish Sea with her parents, twenty-seven years earlier.

Edward. He seemed to love me with everything he had, not wanting to let me out of his sight. His expression, his embrace, his presence—all had the intensity of a hurricane lamp turned up high. And when he poured that light on me, I was transfixed.

He was just over five-eight, but since I'm just under five-two, I had to stand on tiptoes to kiss him. A rugby player at Harvard, he was broad-shouldered and muscular. His red Saab bore three stickers: Harvard University, Columbia Business School, and a bumper sticker that said
Rugby Players Eat Their Dead.
The joke was, Edward was so gentle, I couldn't even imagine him playing such a rough sport.

When I go back to our wedding day, I see his red car parked in the road up at the top of the stone steps, behind the rose-and-ivy-covered wishing well. I can see the graceful arch curving over the well—with
Sea Garden,
the name of my grandmother's cottage, forged in wrought iron back when my great-grandfather was still alive—the black letters rusting away in the salt air even back then, twelve years ago. I remember the moment so well: standing there in my grandmother's yard, knowing that soon I would drive away with Edward in that red car—that I would be his wife, and we would be off on our honeymoon.

Can I say now, for certain, that I looked at that iron arch and saw the corroding letters as a reminder that even that which is most beautiful, intended to endure forever, can be corrupted or destroyed? No, I can't. But I do remember that the sight of it gave me my first cold feeling of the day.

My grandmother and Clara Littlefield—her next-door neighbor and best friend from childhood—had gone all out to make my wedding a dream come true. The yellow-and-white-striped tent stood in the side yard between their houses, on the very tip of Hubbard's Point, jutting proudly into Long Island Sound. Tables with long golden-cream tablecloths were scattered around, all decorated with flowers from the garden. A string quartet from the Hartt School of Music, in Hartford, played Vivaldi. My friends were in their summer best—bright sundresses, straw hats, blue blazers.

Granny stood before me, looking into my eyes. We were the same height, and we laughed, because we were both so happy. I wore a white wedding gown; she wore a pale yellow chiffon dress. My veil blew in the sea breeze; my bouquet was white roses, off-white lace hydrangeas, and ivy from the wishing well. Granny wore a yellow straw hat with a band of blue flowers.

"I wish Edward's family had been able to come," she said as we stood by the wishing well, ready to begin the procession.

"I know," I said. "He's trying to make the best of it."

"Well," she said. "Things happen...you'll see them soon, I'm sure. One thing I know, Mara—your parents are with you today."

"Granny, don't get me started."

"I won't," my grandmother said, wriggling her shoulders with resolve. "We're staying strong as I walk you down the aisle, or I'm not Maeve Jameson."

"My parents would be proud of you," I said, because I knew she was thinking of them every bit as much as I was trying not to—and I gave her a big smile, just to prove I wasn't going to cry.

"Of us both," she said, linking arms with me as the quartet started playing Bach.

So much time has passed, but certain memories are still clear and sharp. The pressure of Granny's hand on mine, holding steady, as we walked across the grass; my beach friends Bay and Tara beaming at me; the smell of roses and salt air; Edward's short dark hair, his golden tan set off by a pale blue shirt and wheat linen blazer; his wide-eyed gaze.

I remember thinking his eyes looked like a little boy's. Hazel eyes. He had been so helpful all morning—taking charge of where the tables went, which direction the quartet should face. It was sort of odd, having a man "in charge," here on this point of land filled with strong women. Granny and I had exchanged an amused glance—letting him do his thing. But here he was, standing at our makeshift altar in the side yard, looking for all the world like a lost little boy as I approached him. But then I caught that blank stare—blank, yet somehow charged—and it made me hesitate, holding tight to my grandmother's hand.

Yes, I remember that stare, the look in his hazel eyes. It was fear—standing there under the striped tent, watching me approach, my betrothed was afraid of something. The years have gone by and told me all I need to know about his fear—but let's go back to my wedding day and pretend we don't have all this knowledge. Back then, in quick succession, I thought one thing and felt another. No—that's backwards. I felt first, thought second.

I felt cold—the same chilly primal shiver I'd experienced looking up at his car, seeing that salt-pitted, rusty metal arch. But I chased the unwanted, ugly chill with this thought:
Edward—hey, honey, Edward! Don't be afraid...please don't worry that it's too soon, or my grandmother doubts you. I love you....I love you.

I love you.

Words I had said so rarely up until that time—but since meeting Edward, I had used almost constantly. The old Mara Jameson had been too closed off and guarded to let them slip off her tongue; but the new Mara Jameson couldn't say them enough.

This was my home, my side yard, my family and friends—Edward was far from everything comfortable and familiar to him. His family hadn't been able to make it. These thoughts were flying through my mind as my grandmother passed my hand into his with the whispered words "Take care of her, Edward." Edward nodded, but the expression in his eyes didn't ease.

Memo to self and brides everywhere: if you're standing in front of a justice of the peace, about to get married, and all you can think about is why your husband-to-be looks very uncomfortable, it's a red flag worth paying attention to.

The ceremony occurred. That's how I think of it now: words and music. What did they all mean? It's hard to say, harder still to not be cynical. The ceremony disguised one basic truth: marriage is a contract. Let's put romance aside. First and foremost, marriage is a legal, binding contract, where two people are joined in partnership, their assets merged, their fates legally entwined through powers vested by no less than the state.

When I think back to the look in Edward's eyes, I believe that he was afraid that I might not follow through on the deal, might not sign on the dotted line. What would have happened if I hadn't? If I had listened to that tiny voice inside, if I had felt the cold chill and known that it meant something worth paying attention to?

But I didn't listen. I pushed my feelings aside and pulled other things out of the summer air: love, hope, faith, resolve. I held Edward's hand. "I do," I said. "I do," he said. He kissed the bride. People cheered, and when I looked out at my friends, I saw more than one of them crying and grinning at the same time. They were so very happy for me.