One for the Books Read online

  “Isn’t he officiating your wedding?” Paula Turner, the library clerk, asked. She was working at the station on the other side of Ms. Cole, checking in the books from the book drop.

  “Yes,” Lindsey said. “Since we’re getting married on Bell Island, where Sully grew up, and not in a church, we thought, being the local justice of the peace, he’d be the perfect choice.”

  The coastal town of Briar Creek overlooked an archipelago called the Thumb Islands, which had sported the summer homes of some of America’s richest families during the height of the Gilded Age. A hurricane in 1938 had all but wiped out the old Victorian mansions that had once dominated the islands, and now the residences were smaller and more sustainable, mostly used as summer cottages. Only a few islands, like Sully’s parents’ Bell Island, were equipped with electricity, making them habitable year round.

  Paula glanced at the calendar on the desk. “The wedding is in a little over a week. Are you ready for it?”

  Lindsey blinked at her. Why was it so jarring when someone else told her the wedding was around the corner? It wasn’t as if she wasn’t aware. It just felt more significant when someone else said it. Her heart thumped hard in her chest, but she refused to freak out. This was why she and Sully had decided on the island. They wanted to keep their wedding small and simple, for friends and family only, in the Sullivans’ large brick house on Bell Island.

  “You look flushed, and not in a good way,” Ms. Cole said. “Maybe you should sit down.”

  “Oh, no, I’m fine,” Lindsey reassured them. She went to wave Ms. Cole’s concern away and noticed that her hand was shaking.

  “Uh-huh.” Ms. Cole glanced from her hand to her face and frowned. “Sit.”

  “I’ll get you a glass of water,” Paula said. She slipped off her stool, moving it close so Lindsey could sit, before going into the workroom where there was a water cooler.

  “You’re not getting cold feet, are you?” Ms. Cole asked.

  “Uh . . . I . . .” Lindsey stammered.

  “Cold feet? Who’s getting cold feet?” Nancy Peyton and Violet La Rue appeared at the circulation counter.

  They were carrying bags of food for the lunchtime crafternoon that met every Thursday at midday. Both women were wearing winter coats, hats and scarves, as the weather had turned decidedly wintry over the past few days and the temperature had plummeted.

  “With this freeze snap, it’s small wonder your feet are cold,” Violet said.

  “I think that was a metaphor,” Nancy returned. Her bright blue eyes were filled with concern.

  “Oh,” Violet said. A former Broadway actress, she could convey more in one word than most people could in a whole sentence. She studied Lindsey. “You don’t look well, dear.”

  “I’m fine,” Lindsey protested.

  “No, she isn’t. She’s freaking out,” Paula said. She handed Lindsey a glass of water. They all stared at her as she took a sip.

  “I’m not, really,” Lindsey said on a swallow. The water went down hard. “It’s just that the wedding is coming up so fast—”

  “Isn’t it thrilling?” Ferne Knauss, a patron and former librarian, paused beside the desk on her way out. “Well, speaking for me and my quilting circle, we can’t wait. Our group has made you a special surprise. Goodness knows you’ve given us plenty of time. It feels as if I’ve been waiting for you and Sully to tie the knot for years. And is there anything more romantic than a winter wedding? Maybe we’ll get lucky and it will snow.”

  “Uh . . .” Lindsey’s eyes went wide as Ferne waved the Nova Scotia quilting pattern book she’d just checked out as she strode to the door.

  “I thought you said this was going to be a small friends-and-family-only wedding,” Nancy said.

  “It is,” Lindsey said.

  “Really?” Violet asked. “I didn’t think you were that close to Ferne and her quilting circle.”

  “I’m not,” she said. “I mean, I enjoy them all, but we’re not best pals or anything.”

  “Well, you’d better make room for a few more at your wedding reception because it sounds like they’re planning on being there,” Ms. Cole said.

  “Oh, man.” Lindsey rubbed her temples with her fingers.

  “Look on the bright side. Maybe they made you a nice quilt,” Paula said.

  Lindsey tried to smile, but given Brendan’s warning about her cake being too small, Mrs. Housel’s inquiry as to their registry and now Ferne Knauss’s announcement that her quilting circle was coming, she couldn’t help but think that something, somehow, had gone horribly awry.

  “You all received invitations, correct?” she asked.

  They all glanced at each other and then nodded.

  “They were really beautiful, too,” Paula said. “I especially liked the calligraphy.”

  “The woman at the stationery store specialized in that,” Lindsey said. “And I had her mail the invitations for us.”

  Ms. Cole frowned. “There was no RSVP card included.”

  “Since we invited so few people,” Lindsey said. “We knew we’d get verbal confirmations from everyone, and we have.”

  They were all silent, trying to puzzle out what could have happened that Lindsey’s guest list seemed to have expanded without her knowing.

  “When you made your guest list, did you start with a big number and then cut it down?” Nancy asked.

  “Yes,” Lindsey said. “We originally had over a hundred people on the list, but the island is so small, we decided to keep it to just our inner circle.”

  Violet gave her a shrewd glance. “Is there any chance you gave the stationer the wrong list?”

  A cold knot of dread tightened inside Lindsey’s chest. She stood and swayed on her feet. Given how crazy things had been at the time she’d hired the stationer, it was a distinct possibility.

  Suddenly her intimate wedding for thirty-five was looking like it would be for three times that many. She thought she might be sick. She didn’t even know if they could fit that many people on Bell Island. She glanced around at her friends in panic.

  “What am I going to do?” she asked.

  Chapter 2

  To start with, don’t panic,” Violet said. She was always fantastic in a crisis because, after a long and storied career as one of the first black actresses to win a Tony Award, there wasn’t much that she considered impossible.

  “Panic? Me?” Lindsey asked. “Why would I do that? Just because my tiny wedding that was supposed to be an intimate gathering is now a much bigger affair with a cake that’s too small and not enough food and nowhere near enough tables and chairs to seat everyone on an island that probably can’t have that many pe—”

  “Breathe,” Nancy interrupted her. Lindsey sucked in a great big gulp of air. She was feeling the tiniest bit woozy.

  “I need to call Sully,” she said. “How am I going to explain this? I’m a librarian. I’m supposed to be more organized than this.”

  “You were dealing with a stalker at the time when you were arranging for your invitations to go out,” Paula reminded her. “It was an easy mistake to make.”

  “Easy. Difficult. Stupid. Hard to tell the difference right now.” Lindsey said. She couldn’t even wrap her brain around this change of plans.

  “Come on,” Nancy said. “Let’s go set up the crafternoon room for our meeting. We can discuss it while we work on your wedding favors, which we need to get going on, especially now that we’re going to have to make a lot more of them.”

  “Wedding favors?” Lindsey asked. Since when was she having wedding favors?

  “It was supposed to be a surprise,” Paula said. She was their resident crafter. She tossed her seasonally dyed cranberry red braid over her shoulder. “Don’t worry. I picked something so easy even you can do it. Pine cone fire starters. They’re amazing.”

 
In short order, a bewildered Lindsey found herself sitting at the table in the crafternoon room with her closest friends, discussing Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, while dipping pine cones in melted colored wax. The lunch Nancy had provided was a typical British repast of hot tea and sandwiches, specifically curry chicken salad and cheese-and-pickle sandwiches, which Nancy had assured Beth, when she arrived, would be followed by Scottish shortbread and English thumbprint cookies.

  “When did you decide to make wedding favors?” Beth asked Lindsey, as she dipped her pine cone into the peppermint-scented blue wax.

  “I didn’t,” Lindsey said. “This is Paula’s idea, and it’s a good thing, too, because apparently there are more guests coming to the wedding than I’d planned on.”

  “You sound stressed,” Nancy said. “There’s no need to be. We have everything under control.”

  “But how?” Lindsey asked. “I was planning on a tiny wedding, and now it looks like a good portion of the town is planning to come. How am I supposed to know how many people to provide for? This is a nightmare. And what if it’s just the beginning of bad things happening to our wedding?”

  “Easy, Lindsey,” Mary Murphy said. She was Sully’s sister and shared his reddish brown curls, deep dimples and unflappable disposition. Since she owned the local restaurant in town, she was excellent in a foodie crisis. “Ian and I are making the food, and we can adjust to whatever you need.”

  Since their restaurant, the Blue Anchor, was the only restaurant in town, it was a given that they would cater the wedding, but Lindsey hated that she had just tripled their workload.

  “But I want you to enjoy the wedding,” Lindsey protested.

  “We will,” Mary assured her. “That’s why we have employees. It’ll be fine. It’s just as easy to cook for one hundred as it is for thirty.”

  Lindsey stared at her.

  “It is,” Mary insisted. Then she grinned. “Especially, when I’m not doing the cooking.”

  “I feel like an idiot,” Lindsey said. “I don’t even know how many people we should be cooking for. And your poor parents. They’re opening up their home for our wedding, and I’m quite sure they didn’t bargain on a wedding of this size. And around the holidays, too. Ugh.”

  Just before the crafternoon meeting had begun, she’d called the woman at the stationery store, who had confirmed Lindsey’s fear that she’d left the wrong list. Lindsey had accidentally given the calligrapher their original guest list before they had decided to keep it small. Lindsey felt like a complete moron. How could she have messed up the invitations to her own wedding? It boggled. And because she hadn’t included an RSVP, she really didn’t know how many people were planning to show up, given that people tended to bring plus-ones and all.

  “My parents won’t care,” Mary said. “They adore you. Don’t you worry about it.”

  “I am worried,” Lindsey said. “This is so unlike me, and I don’t know how to fix it.”

  “Listen,” Paula said. “There’s no need to panic. The Briggses are having their annual party on Saturday, at which the entire town shows up. You and Sully could make an announcement at the party, letting people know that there was a mistake and invitations were sent to too many people and that you need to rescind some invitations. Sorry, not sorry.”

  “That doesn’t seem like it would be incredibly rude?” Lindsey asked.

  Paula shrugged. “Um, no. Rude is showing up at a wedding when there’s been a mistake in the invites. It’s your wedding. It should be the day that you want not what other people expect.”

  “She’s right,” Beth said. “And I am more than happy to go around town informing people that there was a mistake and they need to rethink their plans to attend your wedding.”

  Lindsey smiled. “Thank you, both. I appreciate the thought, I do, but I don’t want to offend anyone. This was my mistake, and I need to own it.” She sighed. “It’s just that I’m not really into the whole princess-for-a-day thing. I’m an introvert, and speaking in public is not my bag. In fact, I hate it. I don’t know how I’m going to get through the vows in front of the people I love and trust, never mind even more people.”

  “We know,” Violet said. “We’ve seen your process for gearing up for the annual speech you give at the Dinner in the Stacks fund-raiser. It isn’t pretty. But, somehow, we’ll manage this, and you’ll have a beautiful wedding.”

  Lindsey felt her shoulders drop. “Thank you.”

  The table fell silent as they all dipped their pine cones into the wax and let them set on the parchment paper Paula had set out. With each dip, the wax on the pine cones became thicker, and Lindsey could see that they would indeed make lovely mementos for her wedding. The best part was that they were useful and not something that would take up room or gather dust. In fact, she was going to take one home tonight and try it out in her fireplace.

  “These really are lovely, Paula,” she said.

  “Thank you.” Paula smiled, and then a teasing light lit her eyes and she said, “Since Lindsey is too preoccupied with her wedding to offer some Dickensian facts, I have a few items to share about A Christmas Carol.”

  “Do tell.” Violet encouraged her with a wink.

  “Did you know that it only took Dickens six weeks to write A Christmas Carol?” she asked. “He started in mid-October of eighteen forty-three and finished on December second.”

  “Six weeks? It’s about thirty thousand words long, isn’t it?” Nancy asked.

  “Yes, and it was adapted to the stage by Edward Stirling six weeks after it was published,” Violet added. “It came to New York shortly thereafter.”

  “Fascinating,” Nancy said. She glanced at Lindsey. “Did you know all of this?”

  Lindsey shook her head. “No, but I did know that he named Scrooge’s sister Fan, or Fanny, after his own favorite sister.”

  “Aw, that’s sweet,” Beth said. She tied a cotton string, which would act as a wick, around another pine cone as she prepared to dip it. “I heard that Dickens did readings of A Christmas Carol right up until three months before he died. In fact, he used to drink a sherry with a raw egg beaten into it before his readings. Maybe you should do that before your vows.”

  Lindsey grimaced. “Thanks, but I don’t think Sully wants me to throw up on his shoes mid-ceremony.”

  The others laughed, as she intended, and she was surprised to find she felt better. They would get a handle on the wedding. Maybe not everyone who got an invitation was planning to attend. It could be that there wouldn’t even be that many people at her wedding. She could always hope. Right?

  * * *

  * * *

  The Briggs party was well underway when Sully and Lindsey arrived. Parking was at a premium, so they left their car at the bottom of the hill and walked up the narrow street to the estate, which perched above the surrounding area like an osprey on its nest surveying the land around it for predators and prey alike.

  Lindsey enjoyed the Briggses’ mansion—as a guest. It was a modern, hurricane-proof glass structure that offered a 360-degree view of the islands in the bay and the town surrounding it. Steve and his wife, Jamie, lived alone in the eight-thousand-square-foot concrete, steel and glass structure, with hired help coming in daily to do the cooking, cleaning and yard work. With ten bedrooms and twelve bathrooms, it seemed like a ridiculous amount of space for just two people, but Lindsey supposed she shouldn’t judge. Maybe they needed that much space to coexist.

  She’d only seen Jamie Briggs at previous annual parties, as Jamie wasn’t in residence very often in Briar Creek, preferring life in their Manhattan apartment to the small seaside town. The few times Lindsey had met her, Jamie had struck her as being a bit of a drama queen, but that could be because she was more high-maintenance than any person Lindsey had ever met—and being a public servant, she’d met her share.

  “How long have Steve and Ja
mie been married?” she asked Sully.

  They were halfway up the hill. Sully wasn’t even breathing heavily, and Lindsey was mouth-breathing as she tried not to audibly pant and wheeze. Although she rode her bike to work every day, inclines were not her favorite thing, and this was a steep one.

  “Seven years?” Sully said it as a question, making it clear he was guessing.

  “Is she also from around here?”

  Sully glanced at her, and Lindsey noted that he slowed his steps, clearly catching on to the fact that she was about to pass out. She would have continued trying to bluff, but to what purpose? She let her wheeze out as she paused and turned to him to hear his answer.

  “No, Jamie is a Darien girl,” he said.

  Lindsey nodded. Darien was one of the many towns that made up the Gold Coast of Connecticut. It stretched from Greenwich to Fairfield and was inhabited by people who were known mostly for being loaded. Manhattan financial guys, Kennedys and celebrities like Robert Redford, Keith Richards and Martha Stewart resided in the area, making it extremely exclusive.

  Briar Creek and the Thumb Islands did not have that sort of cachet. It suddenly made sense that Jamie Briggs was seldom seen there. The annual party was her one moment to acknowledge the people of her husband’s hometown, which he loved so well, and then she could disappear back into her glam life in the city.

  “Ah,” Lindsey said.

  Sully paused to look at her. She was wearing a green knit dress and black suede boots. Her curly blond hair was long and loose, and she wore a black wool pashmina over her dress for warmth. The wind coming in off the water was bitter, but she hadn’t wanted to deal with a coat. Sully was wearing a black blazer over a white dress shirt and jeans, having also skipped wearing a coat. Given the workout they were getting walking up the hill, they really didn’t need jackets to keep them warm.