Bride & Groom

have the photos taken during the rehearsal and at the restaurant, Nuages. In entirely uncharacteristic fashion, I kept bursting into tears and didn’t notice what I ate. I remember that Pete and Rita sat together. My father and Twila, after a successful day of running dogs, concocted a plan. Instead of spending the week in Cambridge, Twila and her team were driving to Gabrielle’s house in Bar Harbor to enjoy the outdoors. Twila had never been to Maine before. She said that she wouldn’t need a bedroom; she and North would sleep under the stars. At one point, Steve and I decided that it was too late to arrange recorded music for our wedding; we reconciled ourselves to having no music at all.
    As I’d said to Judith, however, Ian wasn’t like other people. I am, of course, a real dog person, which is to say that I’m an expert on human oddity, and even by my standards, Ian was very odd. It’s more than a little peculiar, isn’t it, to provide the music for a wedding the day after your father has euthanized your serial-killer mother? As Olivia had promised, Ian dressed formally, as did the other musicians. Olivia and John Berkowitz did not attend. Mac, of course, was also absent. Everyone else we expected was there. As Rita, Leah, and I got dressed in Ceci’s bedroom, I kept peering out the window to see who was arriving. Twila’s dog-box trailer was parked on the street in front of the house; she intended to leave for Bar Harbor immediately after the reception. I saw Kevin escort his mother along the sidewalk. Behind them were Hugh and Robert, Althea’s Sherlockian friends, and from the other direction I saw—
    Ceci interrupted me and rattled my nerves by popping into the bedroom to free-associate. “Althea is being pigheaded!” Ceci exclaimed. “I have rehearsed my lovely poem about love and the moon for her, and I’ve offered over and over to help her with what she intends to say, but she refuses to let me so much as look at it, and I’m convinced that she’s going to make a fool of herself and humiliate you by reading from the Canon of Sherlock Holmes instead of from The Book of Common Prayer, a foolish title if I’ve ever heard one, what on earth is common about it, for heaven’s sake? My nerves are all on edge, I can’t help thinking that it was a dreadful mistake for you to ask Althea to marry you, well, not marry you, you’re marrying Steve, but it’s too late now, Althea, of course, not Steve, and speaking of veterinarians, has Sammy produced his collar yet?”
    “We think he’s waiting for the service,” Leah said. “And it’s not Althea we’re worried about, it’s Buck. We think he’s going to mortify Holly by saying that she’s marrying Steve because—”
    Ceci interrupted her. “What is that horrible noise? It sounds for all the world like a moose! Wild animals do wander into the suburbs these days, you know, deer, foxes, possums, not to mention rabbits and skunks, it couldn’t be a skunk, could it?”
    Returning to the window, I saw my dear stepmother, Gabrielle, standing next to Twila’s dog-box trailer, which was all too obviously the source of the moose calls. Gabrielle looked beautiful, as did her bichon, Molly, who was, for once, on the ground instead of in Gabrielle’s arms. Gabrielle’s hair had new highlights, and she wore a tiny hat that would’ve looked outlandish on anyone else, but somehow became her perfectly. She faced one of the dog boxes and was evidently addressing its occupant. I opened the window, but even then, I caught only a little of what she was saying. Her hat was bobbing up and down, and her arms were folded across her ample bosom. My father, however, was clearly audible.
    “NOT A WORD!” Buck hollered. “NOW LET ME OUT OF HERE! I SWEAR TO GOD, GABRIELLE, I WON’T SAY A WORD ABOUT SAMMY!”
    When Gabrielle unfolded her arms, I saw that in one hand she held a key. She went on to insert it in the padlock of the paternal dog box. She turned the key and opened the door. My father climbed out feet first.
    By then, Rita, Leah, and Ceci had joined me in watching the performance.
    “How did Gabrielle get him in there?” I wondered aloud.
    Leah answered. “She told him that part of Molly’s training for mushing camp was being in a dog-box trailer. Then she said that one of Molly’s tags was missing and that it had to be in that dog box. That was her plan, anyway. I guess it worked.”
    Fifteen minutes later, Buck took my arm and led me to