The Sometime Bride

earth are you staring at, child? Did I forget to wax my mustache?”
    “Do you really think so?” Carrie asked, studying her grandmother’s face for wisdom. “Believe Mike and I met for a reason? That in spite of our odd beginnings, it was somehow meant to be?”
    “Certainly, I think so! Didn’t I ever tell you how your grandpa and I met?”
    Carrie shook her head. She’d thought she’d heard all of Grandma Russell’s stories by now, but this, apparently, was a new one.
    “It was back in the days of panty raids…” her Grandma began sheepishly.
    Carrie chortled. “They still do those, Grandmother.”
    “Do they now? Well, how prehistoric! At any rate, as I was saying, it was back… Well, whatever! I’ll just cut to the chase and tell you. The October of my Freshman year at the Women’s College, there was a panty raid on my dorm one night. And your old grandpa just happened to be below my window in the marauding crowd.”
    “You threw your panties at Grandpa?” Carrie gasped. From the little she remembered of her grandfather, he’d always seemed such a straight arrow.
    “Not my panties, heavens no. Needed those. Tossed something much more enticing…”
    Carrie waited patiently as her grandmother drew out the moment for suspense.
    “Myself!”
    “Yourself? You threw yourself out the window?”
    “Well, not intentionally or anything like that. But I was young, you see. A brand-new student. And it was all so exciting and hedonistic. The very idea of panty raids.”
    Carrie giggled, trying to envision her white-haired grandparents in the picture Grandma Russell was painting.
    “Well, anyhow,” her grandmother continued. “I was leaning out the window just a bit, trying to get a better look at the boys down below. One was quite handsome. Tall, redheaded, sure of himself. Looked to me like a Scot.”
    “Grandpa,” Carrie guessed.
    Grandma Russell smiled, then chuckled at the faraway memory. “Indeed, it was your grandfather. And a very striking young man, at that. Well, I happened to catch his eye, you see. I could tell because there he was at the bottom of the window looking straight up at me. Not chanting or carrying on like the other boys. Just very stoically standing there, looking up with the most curious smile. And then it happened. Somebody moved behind me, and I lost my balance and fell. Tumbled right out the window and over the sill—straight into your grandfather’s arms!”
    “He caught you?” Carrie gasped.
    “More or less.” Grandma Russell grinned and turned a curious shade of plum Carrie didn’t think she’d ever seen on her grandmother. “But the important thing is, even the parts he didn’t catch survived the fall. It was only half a story, with the back of our building constructed into a hill. But still, from that time on, your old grandfather and I had a lot of fun joking about that fateful day I ‘fell’ for him.”
    Carrie studied her grandmother, trying to discern whether what she’d just shared was honest-to-goodness family lore or a simple cock-and-bull story. Either way, Carrie knew and appreciated exactly what her grandmother was trying to do.
    “So, then,” Carrie said, balling up her tissue and tucking it into her purse. “There’s something to this fate business after all.”
    “Not a doubt in the world.”
    Carrie’s face fell. “But we’ll still have to cancel the wedding, Grandmother. I’ve been avoiding making all the calls. Every time I’ve picked up that telephone, something inside just wouldn’t let me do it.”
    “Well.” Her grandmother smiled. “Maybe that something inside knows there is going to be a wedding after all.”

    Mike stared into his closet and frowned. Less than two hours to showtime and not a thing to wear.
    He scratched his head, thumbing through the several designer suits Alexia had given him. It was no wonder he didn’t like his wardrobe. It was all a patent reminder of not-so-pleasant times gone by. Well, all right, maybe not all of it.
    Mike pulled out a charcoal gray suit, one of the few he had purchased on his own. The others, he realized, would have to go. Not to mention that glaring ring on his dresser.
    Why Mike had waited so long to return Alexia’s ring, he really couldn’t say. For sure, he needed the money. And the Caymans…
    Mike laid out his suit on the bed, recalling the long, lazy, and often playful afternoons most recently spent with Carrie. Was chasing his dive-shop dream really all it was