In the days following the wedding, Margaret felt uncomfortable. Food passed without regard. Her shows, which she looked forward to and DVR’d even as she watched them piled up in large fragmented loafs on the hard drive. Margaret wasn’t feeling right and knew why.
At 4:45, minutes before the photographer wrangled the wedding party together, Sterling touched her breast. It was an accident. A delicious, slow-motion mistake that sadly went unacknowledged by Stir- as the guys from Phoenix called him. For Margaret, the memory of the incident lingered.
Three years before, in 1983, at another wedding she slipped downstairs into one of the rooms with Jac, pronounced Jåk, and nothing happened. Jac passed out.
The year after that at Carla and Berkley’s wedding she cut her toe on a pine cone in the clearing behind the wedding pagoda. The cut required four stitches. She nicknamed the scar, Gotham after the too-young man she was tied to for the three-legged race earlier in the afternoon. Gotham never called. She never got Gotham’s contact information.
Margaret’s wedding party record was legendary to Margaret. There was the time she did a keg stand in her bridesmade dress while guys with forgettable names whooped. That was at Megan and Limerick’s wedding. They divorced three years later and left their six children with both of their parents. But with names like that, who’s surprised?
There was also the scuba accident. (But really. Those people were not only certified, they were trainers. Margaret couldn’t be held responsible. Couldn’t.)
Naturally, Margaret worried. The awkward non-phone calls with her friends from the party should have began and ended a day ago. The awkward phone call with some dude, obviously trolling for weekend strange hadn’t happened yet.
Nor would it.
She rose from the velvet blue chaise lounger in the den and walked to the fireplace. Above the mantel rested a painting, not hung, of her great-great-great grandfather, Colonel Trapbeck Lourderfine.
“I’ve done no wrong.” She said and unwrapped the last of the Almond Roca.
The End.
