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“Her scrapbook of everything she wanted to do to the house but never had the money for after the Real Estate King died.” Lisa Livia handed Agnes the clipboard. “It’s her dream house hook. I know we only have two days, but all we have to do is the outside of the house. She wanted black shutters. And black carriage lights. And pink hydrangeas and white lilacs. It would really fry her to show up on Saturday and see her dream house finished and know you had it and she didn’t. And then I stopped by Betsie’s Bon Ton and got us our mother-of-the-bride dresses.”
“Us?” Agnes said.
“Yeah, you raised Maria with me for the first three years, you’re her mother, too. Wait’ll you see them. I got one for Evie, too. Betsie was having a sale.”
“Them?” Agnes said. “LL, they’re not all alike?”
“We’ll be cute as buttons,” Lisa Livia said. “Hot, too.” She opened the bag almost dropping her cell phone in the process. “And they had both a four and a twelve!”
“What were the chances?” Agnes said, and Lisa Livia said, “Pretty good, they had them in all sizes.”
She pulled the smaller one out and held it up against her. It was a hot pink halter dress with a ruffled sweetheart neckline and peplum bodice, also ruffled, ending in a pencil skirt, the whole thing covered in lighter pink hearts. “What do you think?”
“It’s so ... me,” Agnes said, stunned. She was going to look like a flamingo in that thing. A hooker flamingo.
“Well, it should be you,” Lisa Livia said. “You can’t wear a Cranky Agnes apron to the wedding.” She held the dress out so she could see the front, and Agnes got a good look at the back. There wasn’t any.
“I don’t really have the body for this, LL,” Agnes said.
“Are you kidding?” Lisa Livia said. “Your ass will look fabulous in this. I have no control over Evie Keyes, but you’re gonna wear this dress. Well, you’re gonna wear the twelve.”
“How did you know what size to get Evie?”
Lisa Livia shot her a look of contempt. “Like every dress shop in Keyes doesn’t know what size Evie Keyes wears. Besides, it was marked down to fourteen ninety-five. I could afford to make a mistake.” She held hers out again. “We need hats. And pink fuck-me shoes.”
“Oh, yeah,” Agnes said. “That’s what we need. Give me the house book and call Maria to call Downer.”
Lisa Livia shoved the dress back in the bag, handed the book over to Agnes, punched in Maria’s number on her speed-dial, waited a moment, and then raised her voice. “Maria? That dipshit Downer sent another flamingo.”
Agnes took the book and headed for the house, thinking, I bet Garth can landscape, as she tried to ignore the flamingos honking at each other behind her. Hot flamingos, she thought. I got hot flamingos and a $14.95 Whore Mother of the Bride dress from Betsie’s Bon Ton. That can’t be good. Maybe. Shane would probably like it. Not that it mattered since that was over with. Only guys who hadn’t killed from now on—that was her motto.
There was some progress: She’d broken up with a lying, swindling pig of an adulterer and stopped sleeping with the secretive but adept hitman who put acid in her basement.
“Who says I never learn?” she told Rhett when she was back in the kitchen, and went to take her shower.
Later that evening, after Shane had come back, monosyllabic and surly again, and Agnes had gone through the house book and made notes—Brenda really did have excellent taste—she finished the cake designs; made her To Do List for Thursday; packed up her engagement ring for resale; and fed ribs to Lisa Livia, Carpenter, Garth, Joey, and Shane (which was good, like feeding a large, demented, but sort-of-functional family). Then she and Lisa Livia cleaned the kitchen and socked away the leftovers while the men went down to the basement to bring up the Venus, making a lot more noise than just lifting a statue should have entailed, after which she left Carpenter and Lisa Livia on the screened porch discussing Greek art and automatic weapons with a bottle of bourbon; sent Garth out to the barn after telling him he should ask a girl to the wedding— “Me?” he said; “It’s the hottest ticket in town,” she told him, “and you’ve got a backstage pass.” —and took bourbon and coffee out to where Shane was sitting on the high dock.
She sat down beside him. “So, how was your day?”
“I’ve had better.” Shane took one of the mugs and the coffeepot from her.
She opened the bourbon and held out her mug, and he poured coffee into it and into his mug, and then she topped off his mug with the bourbon and did the same for hers.
“Listen,” she said. “About last night. You and me. I’m not really ready for ... I mean, this thing with Taylor and all ... I think I need ...”
“Okay,” he said.
That was easy, she thought, not sure how relieved she should be about that.
They sat back and watched the rest of the sun leave the sky and she could feel some of the tension leave his body in the peace of the evening.
“What did Taylor want?” he said finally.
“He brought the health inspector out to shut down the wedding.”
“Did you kill him?”
“No. He wants his engagement ring back, can you believe it?”
