Tall Tales and Wedding Veils by Jane Graves Page A

woman said, grinning like a lunatic. “Heather’s mother.”

    She was dressed like a mom, wearing a flowered cotton shirt, baggy jeans, and sandals, with her bobbed hair tucked behind her ears. She grabbed a man’s sleeve and pulled him over.

    “And this is Heather’s father, Fred.”

    Heather’s mother was smiling. Her father wasn’t. He was a tall, solid, chunk of a man, the kind who ripped phone books in half for fun.

    “What are all of you doing here?” Heather said.

    “Your mother called to tell us you’d gotten married,” one of the women said. “Of course, we all want to meet your new husband.”

    Translation: They all wanted to see if Heather really had lost her mind. From the way a few of them were looking at her right now, the jury was still out on that, but that didn’t stop them from drawing her into hugs and Tony into handshakes, introducing themselves as Aunt this and Uncle that and Cousin somebody-or-other. Tony wanted to say something, but then he and Heather were sucked into a vortex of bodies moving toward the house. He shot her a helpless get-me-out-of-here! look, but she appeared to be just as flabbergasted as he was.

    They went up the steps, through the door, and into the living room, surfing along on the tide of humanity. He had a vague sense of the room around him. Neat and clean but very dated, with a flowered sofa that had to be twenty years old and walnut veneer furniture. Over the fireplace was a horrendous portrait of some old woman, the kind of thing some oddball families displayed rather than cramming in a dark corner of the attic. And somewhere in this house there had to be doilies. And in the bathroom, one of those crocheted toilet-paper covers. He’d stake his life on it.

    Two people were sitting on the sofa who hadn’t greeted them at the curb. One was an older lady Tony didn’t recognize. The other was Heather’s cousin Regina, whom he’d met last night.

    Regina rose from the sofa, looking as impeccable as before. Sleek hair, perfect figure, flawless skin, breasts she’d probably paid a fortune for—the kind of woman he usually went for. But her snooty expression backed up what Heather had told him about her last night, which meant if he ever cracked that gorgeous shell, she’d be bitchy all the way to the bone.

    The family parted, and Regina came to stand in front of Heather and Tony, smiling sweetly even as insincerity oozed from every pore. “Well, it looks as if congratulations are in order. Heather, you could have told me when I talked to you this morning that you’d gotten
married.
”

    She shot a nervous glance at Tony. “I . . . I guess I was still half-asleep.”

    Regina turned to Tony. “I had no idea when I met you last night I’d be welcoming you to the family today. Imagine that.”

    Yeah. Imagine that.

    The older woman rose from the sofa. She wore beige pants and a silky blouse with lots of gold jewelry, her hair an unnatural shade of red-blond.

    “I’m Heather’s Aunt Beverly,” she said. “Regina’s mother.”

    Sweet smile. Calculating brain. Tony could smell that kind of woman at twenty paces. Like mother, like daughter.

    “So tell us about your wedding,” Bev said. “I can’t think of
anything
more lovely than a spur-of-the-moment midnight wedding in a Las Vegas wedding chapel.”

    “Yes!” Barbara said with a heavenly little sigh. “Isn’t it romantic?”

    Tony didn’t know if Barbara was always a little dim or whether she was so caught up in the blessed event that her sarcasm detector had stopped functioning.

    “So tell us all about it!” one of the women said. “We want to hear every detail.”

    “There’s not much to tell,” Heather said.

    “You might start with how you ended up married after only four hours,” one of the men said, and the woman next to him jabbed him in the ribs. He whipped around and whispered, “Cut it out, Sylvia! It’s a fair question!”

    “Hush, Burt!” she whispered