Single Mama's Got More Drama. Kayla Perrin

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      I decided I’d wait until ten to call Carla about going to the zoo, it being a Sunday morning and all. On the weekends, I didn’t like to phone people too early. It was sort of an unwritten rule with friends and family: I didn’t call them before ten in the morning, and they didn’t call me. In fact, I liked to laze around in my pajamas most of the morning, sometimes later.

      When Eli had been alive, Sunday mornings had often become family bed time, with me, him and Rayna in our bed, watching the Disney Channel, snuggling and giggling—not having to worry about interruptions from the outside world.

      So I was a little surprised, when, at 8:40 a.m., my phone rang.

      I snatched the receiver off of the wall base in the kitchen, where I was mixing batter for pancakes. Seeing my sister’s number on the caller ID and given the time, I couldn’t help wondering if everything was okay.

      “Hello?” I said.

      “Morning, Vanessa.”

      My sister didn’t sound stressed. “Morning, Nikki.”

      “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

      “No, you didn’t. What’s up?”

      “Well…” she began, then hesitated.

      I frowned. Maybe everything wasn’t okay. Was my sister having a problem with her husband, Morris? They’d gone through a brief rough patch, but as far as I knew, they were blissfully in love again.

      “Nikki?” I prompted.

      “I have something to ask you. Something important.”

      “Okay,” I said cautiously.

      “I know this is going to seem a bit weird, but given everything that’s happened, I think it’s right.”

      “Just tell me already.”

      “All right.” Now, I heard a smile in my sister’s voice. “I’m hoping that you’ll agree…to be the maid of honor at my wedding!”

      It took a good couple of seconds for my sister’s words to register. And then I was confused.

      Considering she was already married.

      “Your what?” I asked.

      “My wedding,” Nikki repeated.

      “You already had one of those. Eight years ago.”

      “I know, silly,” Nikki said. “But Morris and I are renewing our vows.”

      “You are?” I asked, my voice a croak. Not because I wasn’t happy for my sister, but because I vividly remembered her first wedding. It had been a very elaborate and expensive affair. Mostly, I remembered how my sister had turned into Bridezilla as she planned the most important day of her life. She complained about practically everything. The floral arrangements weren’t big enough, not pretty enough, the bridesmaids dresses were too long, then too short. The menu changed at least once a week before it had to be firmed up. She wanted over-the-top elaborate on a scale that only celebrities typically indulge in. Anyone who tried to reason with her—namely, me, Morris and their wedding planner—got an earful and often a bout of tears thrown in on top of that.

      Nikki is my only sibling, and eight years my senior. She can be trying on a good day, but when she’s stressed out, she’s pretty much unbearable.

      “I know what you’re thinking. That a second wedding now is at least fifteen years too soon. But after Morris’s indiscretion, we felt it was best to have a brand-new start. You know.”

      “Hey, you have to do what you need to do,” I said. If she felt a renewing of vows was in order, who was I to argue? “What are you thinking? A small ceremony somewhere?” Hopefully a city hall wedding, where she couldn’t be too demanding. A justice of the peace could marry them, and then we all could be on our merry way without the headaches that would come from a bigger wedding.

      “Nothing too big,” Nikki said. “Maybe seventy-five or a hundred people.”

      “What?”

      “And it’s got to be on the beach. I said I want to go somewhere exotic, like Thailand. But Morris says the Keys will be fine, or maybe Jamaica or the Bahamas.”

      Was my sister serious? Or was she pulling an early morning prank? I didn’t know what was worse—that she thought one hundred people constituted a small wedding, or that she expected a hundred people to travel across the world to Thailand for her second “once in a lifetime” day.

      That had been her mantra the first time around. That she needed this extravagant thing, or that impossible to get thing because it was for her “once in a lifetime” day.

      How nice she got to have two.

      “Are you serious about Thailand?” I asked, half-chuckling. “I mean, you can’t be—right?”

      “What’s wrong with Thailand?” she asked, sounding a little dismayed.

      I felt the headache coming on already. Bridezilla Part Two. Oh, the joy.

      “I hear Thailand is one of the most beautiful places in the world,” my sister went on.

      “I’m sure it is…but I don’t think anyone has ever traveled there to have what they’d describe as a ‘small’ second wedding. Seventy-five to a hundred people? That’s not a small wedding, sis.”

      “What’s wrong with you?” Nikki asked. “Aren’t you happy for me?”

      “Of course I’m happy for you. I’m very happy that СКАЧАТЬ