The Oleander Sisters. Elaine Hussey

then downed two aspirins and waited. When the jackhammers in her head subsided, she went back into her bedroom and picked up the phone. Emily answered on the first ring.

      “Em, you sound funny. Are you all right?”

      “Just a little tired is all, Sis. Too much excitement.”

      “I’m sorry about the way dinner turned out. Was Larry mad?”

      “He was a little upset, that’s all. What man wouldn’t be? But after I talked to him, he was fine.”

      “You’re sure?”

      “Oh, for Pete’s sake, Sis. Let it alone. Andy’s downstairs dragging out more boxes and I’ve got to get to the café to put together an order list. I’m going to need more supplies for the wedding petit fours.”

      Sis hung up, still hoping there wouldn’t be a wedding. But she had the sinking feeling that she was riding on a train that had already left the station. It didn’t matter how hard she yelled, Stop! Let’s all get off. They were going to end up listening to Emily pledge Till death do us part to a man they all considered a coward.

      The aroma of coffee and bacon coming from the kitchen told Sis she’d better get moving. She dressed quickly, then went to Jim’s room and knocked.

      “Come in.” He was sitting at his window wearing the white dress shirt she didn’t know if he’d slept in or worn during an all-night vigil with the moon or put on again this morning.

      An unbearable tenderness came over Sis, and she sank into the only other chair in the room, the one at his desk where the encyclopedia was open at C for compass. Or was it compassion? Did the encyclopedia tell you that compassion was not something you searched for, but a feeling you carried in your heart whether you knew it or not, one so powerful it could render you speechless?

      Sis studied the slump of her brother’s shoulders, the blond hair grown too long and straggling down the back of his neck, the hollow in his cheek as he tilted his head toward the view beyond the window.

      “I thought you might want to go down to breakfast with me.”

      “Yeah, Sis. The family dinner went so well.”

      The flash of sarcasm gave Sis hope that the Jim of old was somewhere inside those baggy clothes.

      “Did you see the look on his face when Beulah talked about 4F-ers?” she said.

      “It would have been funny if Em weren’t fixing to marry him.”

      “Well, she is, and there’s not a thing either of us can do about it except carry on.”

      “You carry on, Sis.” He turned his back to her and stared out the window.

      Sis sat there awhile, undecided, and then she went downstairs to brace herself with a cup of coffee. A day that had started off so badly was bound to get worse.

      The scene in the kitchen stopped her cold. Sweet Mama was sitting at the kitchen table with her hat on. It wasn’t a garden hat, which might have made sense if she’d been working outside and just forgot to take it off. It was a wide-brimmed white Panama with a virtual flower garden on the brim, red and pink peonies the size of saucers with a big blue feather spouting out from the bouquet.

      Beulah looked up from the coffeepot and lowered a look at Sis that said Don’t you say a word.

      Sis hurried to the cabinet and turned her back to hide her dismay. She took her time selecting a mug from the array that had collected over the years. She selected one with Alabama the Beautiful from a long-ago trip to Natural Bridge. Then she stood there just holding on, wishing the grandmother wearing the flower garden hat was still the same strong woman who had loaded Beulah and her grandchildren into the car for a three-hundred-mile trip in spite of the fact that she’d had to fight for Beulah every step of the way.

      When Sis had regained composure, she went to the pot and poured her coffee.

      “We having a garden party in here.” Beulah smiled at her. “Where’s your hat?”

      Sis grabbed her garden hat off the peg by the back door and sat down to have breakfast. Carrying on.

      Still, wearing a hat at a battered old table for a nonexistent garden party would be mild compared to the facade she’d have to wear once she got to the café. How she would ever get through the petit fours and the cheese balls, not to mention the wedding madness that had overtaken the regulars, Sis didn’t know.

      Sometimes she wished she could hole up in her room like her brother while Beulah trekked up the stairs with sweet tea and sympathy.

       Six

      EMILY DIDN’T KNOW WHAT was wrong with Sis. Ever since their talk about having her wedding in the garden, she’d been snappish and forgetful. It had gotten worse since that awful dinner with Larry, and that was more than a week ago.

      Yesterday Sis forgot to order coffee with chicory, and she still hadn’t brought those polka-dot sunglasses she’d promised Andy last week.

      Still, nothing could mar Emily’s happiness. The cheese balls for her reception were in the refrigerator, the petit fours decorated with pink icing were rapidly piling up in the chest freezer in the pantry and she was going to do one last campout with her son before the wedding.

      Standing in the backyard of Sweet Mama’s Café, enjoying a cup of coffee before the breakfast crowd started getting too big for Sweet Mama to handle, Emily kicked off her shoes and smiled as Andy raced around the ship, his untamable hair flying every which way. She made a note to add a trip to the barber to her list of things to do before the wedding.

      “Can we camp out here tonight?”

      “No. We’re going to camp out at Sweet Mama’s house.”

      “Can we take the rocket ship?”

      “We’re going to sleep in a tent.”

      “Why can’t we sleep in the rocket?”

      “Because then there wouldn’t be enough room for Aunt Sis. You want her to join the campout, don’t you?”

      “I can sleep on the roof. See?” Andy clambered on top and stretched out. When his feet hung over the side, he curled up in a little ball. “Just right,” he yelled.

      “That’s not a good idea, Andy.”

      “How come?”

      Ordinarily, Emily reveled in these meandering conversations with Andy, but lately he’d been trying her patience. Deliberately, it seemed. Was it because he didn’t want to share her with Larry or was there some deeper motive?

      It was a relief when her neighbors Tom and James Wilson came through the back door of the café. Still bachelors at fifty and some said set in their ways, they were nonetheless two of the sweetest guys Emily had ever met. Tom was carrying a toolbox and James was wagging a little stack of lumber.

      “We’ve been seeing you and Andy toting stuff out of your house for his little project out here,” Tom said. “Hope you don’t mind some help.”

      “Of course not!” Emily hugged them both and they got pink in the face.

      Soon the sound of hammering blended with Andy’s laughter as they shored up the cardboard boxes with scrap lumber. Tom looked like a rumpled, friendly elf with his shirtsleeves rolled up and his white hair sticking out from an old fishing hat with the lures still attached to the band. James was just the opposite. Tall, reserved and elegant, even with a hammer in his hand, he was dressed in a summer suit of blue pin-striped seersucker.

      “That ought to do it,” Tom said, pushing back his fishing hat and reaching over to ruffle Andy’s hair. “Now that little rocket ship is sound as a dollar, even if it rains.”

      Emily hoped the little ship didn’t have to be put