A Wedding on Lilac Lane by Hope Ramsay (best book clubs .txt) 📕

“He was a tourist. But you know, we might as well hang for a sheep as a lamb.”

She snorted. “Where do you come up with these sayings?”

“Dad mostly. Which is weird because he’s not originally from the South, but you’d never know it. I think he collects them from his older patients. Come home with me, Ella.”

Chapter Twenty

Louella Pender, the owner of A Stitch in Time, could be a difficult boss at times, but on Thursday, she surprised Brenda by agreeing to let her take a longer-than-usual lunch break. So today, instead of eating a bag lunch out on the boardwalk, Brenda strolled down to Rafferty’s deck, where Ella was waiting for her underneath one of the restaurant’s brightly striped umbrellas.

“Hey,” Brenda said, sprinting up the stairs to the deck and giving her daughter a kiss. Oh, what a beautiful day it was. The sun was shining, Jim had revamped her outlook on life, and Ella had returned to the family fold, at least for the moment. The day was so perfect that a multitude of mid-week sailors had skipped work.  Sails dotted the bay in all directions.

“So,” Ella said once Brenda had seated herself, “I have good news and bad news.”

Her ebullient mood fell right into a pit. Brenda closed her eyes and braced for the inevitable. She fully expected Ella to tell her she was going back to touring with Urban Armadillo. “Okay, I’m ready. Lay it on me.”

Ella laughed. “Mom, it’s not that bad.”

Brenda opened her eyes. “I don’t care. I don’t want any bad news.”

“Okay, I’ll start with the good news. We’ve booked Synchronicity Too for the party.”

“What? Is it big enough for a hundred guests?”

“Right, that’s part of the bad news. We’re limited to no more than forty. And the only date we could get was April twenty-second.”

“That’s two weeks from now.”

“I know. And I checked with Annie Robinson and she’s already booked for that night, so we have to find another caterer. But what do you think about the boat? I think it’s perfect. And Granny told me that you and Jim had your first date on that yacht, so it’s romantic.”

So the bad news had nothing to do with Ella leaving, thank goodness. Brenda’s smile came easy then. “Yes, Jim and I had a first date, of sorts. He pressured me into joining him on the yacht for the Festival of Lights boat parade at Christmastime. To this day, Jim insists that he cured me of my Christmas-itis on that cruise.”

“Christmas-itis?”

“Don’t ask. Jim turns into Santa’s clone at Christmastime, as you well know. He didn’t think I was sufficiently joyful, and he set about to correct that.”

“Good for him. So you have nice memories of the boat?”

“Well, if you must know, Jim kissed me for the first time during the Christmas cruise. Jim and I were checking out the stateroom, and Jude had put some mistletoe on the door of the captain’s quarters. Jim caught me unawares.”

“You mean that big stateroom at the end of the hall?” Ella asked.

Brenda nodded. “Yup. That one. I have to say the kiss was more than a peck on the cheek.”

“Mom, TMI,” Ella said, her face going bright red.

Brenda studied her daughter’s blush. Ella usually wasn’t that squeamish about sex talk. What was up with her?

Just then, the waitress came by, and they both ordered shrimp Caesar salads and unsweetened iced tea, which was a good indication that both of them had spent much of their lives living north of the Mason-Dixon Line.

“So, there is one other thing,” Ella said once the waitress left.

Brenda’s heart rocked in her chest. “What?” she asked a little too quickly.

“Well, I was wondering if you wanted to work on something to play for the guests.”

Brenda straightened in her chair. Who was this child? In the months since she’d been home, Ella hadn’t once suggested that they play a duet. But suddenly the clouds she’d imagined on this beautiful day evaporated into nothing.

“What did you have in mind?” she asked, trying not to sound too enthusiastic.

“I was thinking about Mozart’s ‘Duo for Two Violins.’ The allegro number 5. We used to play that a long time ago.”

The familiar pressure in Brenda’s chest eased, and she floated entirely free of her worries. Once, before Ella turned fifteen, they had bonded over the notes on the page. But she’d pushed too hard and driven Ella away. This was her time to get her daughter back.

“I think it would be fun to play a duet,” she said. The words were an understatement.

“Great. We’ll have to get together a few times to practice.” Ella watched the sails in the harbor for a long moment, her gaze sorrowful or something.

A frisson of worry replaced the floaty feeling. “What’s the matter, honey? Something bothering you?”

Ella shook her head, maybe a little too quickly. “No, I’m fine. Really.”

“Are you sure you’ve told me everything?” Brenda asked.

Ella gave her a long stare, hesitating as if she wanted to say something toxic. But the look faded quickly. “We’re screwed if it rains on the day of the party,” she said with a little smile.

“Do we have a rain-check plan?”

She shook her head. “No. Jude said we could still have the party on the boat, but it would have to be below decks and the boat won’t leave the pier. So I think we should alert the altar guild. All those church ladies need to put your engagement party date on their prayer list.”

Brenda laughed in spite of her worries. “I’ll make sure your grandmother knows.”

“That’s all it’ll take, I’m sure.”

Brenda couldn’t shake the feeling that the rain plan wasn’t the reason her daughter seemed tired and distracted this afternoon. She took a wild guess at the problem. “So, is Dylan okay with this plan? He seems so—”

“What?” Ella almost jumped down her throat.

Aha! Eureka. The problem was Dylan. Brenda was not surprised.

She leaned forward and patted Ella’s hand where it rested