Because I’m not a fan of weddings. Or of Kelly.
But if I hadn’t been such a fool and gone, I’d have met Becca there, seen her tiny ghost companion, and maybe been able to prevent what had happened earlier that day.
I was a loser who pretty much deserved all the terrible things that were happening to me. I also needed a drink. But it was my friend CeeCee’s turn to choose the place we were stopping for after-work libations, and cocktails didn’t appear to be on the menu.
“Well, Lance Arthur Walters is one of the richest men in America, and twenty-five years our senior,” CeeCee went on as we slid into seats at a table at the Happy Medium, her aunt’s coffee-slash-holistic-healing shop. “Obviously, it’s a love match.”
“Man, Kelly’s taken gold digging to a whole new level.” I sighed. “She’s basically gone pro.”
“It’s antifeminist to judge another woman for her choices, no matter how crappy they might be. And if you’d bother to read my online alumni newsletters, you’d already know all this.”
“Hey,” I protested. “You’re one of my best friends. You’re supposed to tell me this stuff, not wait for me to read about it in some newsletter.”
“That I write.” CeeCee shook her head, her asymmetrically chopped white bob—CeeCee is an albino—bouncing. “Honestly, Suze, you’re the worst. Do you ever even go online?”
“Of course. To buy things.” I thought wistfully of my boots. “Not always successfully.”
“I meant to connect with people socially.”
“Why should I, when all the people I want to socialize with are right here in town?” Then I remembered my youngest stepbrother, who’d just started his junior year at Harvard. “Oh, except David, of course. But we make it a point to talk on the phone every Sunday.”
“You’re so weird,” CeeCee said. She flipped open her laptop. “But don’t worry. I’m setting up you and Jesse with a nice Web page for when you open your practice. Drs. Hector J. and Susannah S. de Silva, Carmel Pediatrics Center, specializing in your child’s complete health. Licensed to diagnose and treat the physical, emotional, and developmental needs of children. No gold diggers allowed.”
“God, I was kidding about that, okay? I don’t think Kelly literally married for money. Although considering what her stepdaughter told me about her views on engagement rings, one could argue the fact.”
CeeCee ignored me. “What do you think of this?” She spun her laptop around to face me. “I’ve been playing around with your last names as a logo. See how the two S’s curl around the staff like the snakes in the symbol for medicine? Well, technically the caduceus is the symbol for commerce, but enough people have misused it over the years that I figured no one realizes it anymore. And of course, even if you don’t end up taking Jesse’s name when you two tie the knot, we don’t have to change it. The two S’s still work. Dr. Susannah Simon, or Dr. Susannah de Silva, either is—”
I thought it best to cut her off. The topic of Jesse and me marrying was becoming painful. Nothing ruins a wedding faster than the groom going on a murderous demonic rampage and killing the bride, then her family. Boy, did I need a cocktail.
“So what else has Kelly been up to since graduation?” I asked, trying to sound casual. “I see Debbie with Brad once in a while at family functions, and we talk, and sometimes she mentions Kelly, but I seem to have missed the fact that she’s a stepmom.”
CeeCee glanced worriedly around the nearly empty coffee shop. “Shhh. Not so loud. Kelly’s more the yacht club type, but you never know. She might pop in here once in a while.”
I smiled. Once called the Coffee Clutch, the shop had been our hangout all through high school, until a well-known corporate coffee chain had attempted to purchase it from the previous owners.
This did not sit well with the Carmel-by-the-Sea town council, which had managed successfully to ban all chain restaurants, big-box stores, and even traffic lights and parking meters since the town was incorporated in 1916. The goal was to maintain Carmel’s position as Travel + Leisure magazine’s Most Romantic City in America (it was currently number three in the world, after Paris and Venice), and keep it looking like the same charming beach village (atop a cliff overlooking a white sandy beach) it had been for a century.
The council—with the help of people like CeeCee’s aunt, who’d stepped in and bought the Clutch herself, in order to prevent it from going corporate—had resolutely met that goal year after year, to the point of not allowing homeowners even to chop down trees.