Page 32 of My Ex-Best Friend's Wedding

“Actually, I have a few errands near Title Waves. Let me go grab my list. You could go with Bree and pick up the things I need while I supervise cleanup then get THE DRESS ready.” She turns to Clay. “Perhaps you could take Spencer with you and show him around a bit after you drop off Lily.”

She scampers off to her bedroom to retrieve—or, I suspect—concoct the list of errands before anyone can refuse. Spencer considers Bree and me. “You should go. It’ll make your mother happy and you can take a few photos while you’re there.” He gets up and reaches for a remaining plate and glass to carry to the sink. “If Clay’s busy I’ll hang out on the back deck or take a walk on the beach. I don’t think the groom should be here while the bride is trying on THE DRESS anyway.”

“You’re welcome to come along, man,” Clay says. “I have to stop by one of our rental properties in Corolla—that’s north ofDuck—but I can show you some of the sights up there and on our way back.”

“Beach bars, more likely,” Bree huffs then glances to see if I noticed.

“I have nothing against bars on beaches,” Spencer says. “In fact, it occurs to me that being on vacation pretty much compels me to visit at least a couple.”

My mother comes back with a list. She hands it to me with a determined if satisfied smile. “I’ll have THE DRESS ready when you two get back.”

“Right.”

I look at Bree out of the corner of my eye as we leave the house and take the stairs down to the drive. She looks every bit as uncomfortable as I am at being thrown together. Neither of us speaks as we climb into her Jeep. I’m annoyed and oddly nervous. It’s no accident that Bree and I haven’t been alone since her wedding.

As she pulls onto the Beach Road my thoughts ping all over the place, ill-formed and at random, a mishmash of the past and the present. The day Bree and I strutted around with those cardboard birthday crowns on our heads. Our certainty that being born on the same day meant something important. The way we could talk for hours and hours without any effort at all and then call each other to talk some more. The years we spent sharing a bedroom and then a college dorm room. The countless meals we’ve eaten together. The problems we’ve hashed out.

I’ve avoided her as much as I could on my visits home not just because of my long-held anger at her, but because it hurts to have to weigh each word with someone with whom you once shared a private language that gushed out in a stream of consciousness.

It’s easier to not think about her when I’m in New York. But she was such a part of who I was here that without my connection to her this place feels out of context, much less likehome.

I try to tamp down my impatience. Surely my mother doesn’t think that putting us in a car together and sending us out to do unnecessary errands is going to fix everything between Bree and me. But then I think that if my motherdoeshave some sort of medical issue or illness—something my imagination refuses to let go of—then maybe that’s what’s driving her to get us back together. Maybe this is some sort of Hail Mary pass.

We’re on the Washington Baum Bridge, Roanoke Sound flying by on either side—a drive we’ve made together countless times—when I surprise both of us by asking, “Have you noticed anything odd about my mother’s behavior?”

I continue to stare out the window but I feel her eyes on me. “Oddmeaning... ‘out of character’?”

“Yes,” I half snap because I’m already sorry I was first to speak. And because I’d forgotten Bree’s habit of double-checking definitions. “I’m pretty sure that’s what it means.”

She turns her eyes back to the road. Just when I think she’s not going to respond she says, “Well, she has seemed a little stressed out lately. Why?”

I’m not going to tell her what my imagination has been conjuring. How out of control it’s been lately. “Nothing concrete. She just feels a bit off to me.”

“Maybe you don’t see her often enough to be able to tell the difference.”

Before I can react to the dig she says, “Sorry. That was out of line. I’m just irritated with...” She cuts herself off as if there’s any chance I don’t know she’s complaining about Clay.

“But I’m guessing you’ve already turned your mother’s behavior into a fatal illness.” She smiles almost reluctantly but her voice is no longer quite so irritated. “Remember when you had the flu that time, but you were convinced you were dying? It was right after we saw that revival ofLove Storyat the Pioneer.”

Her words stir memory. I can still smell the acrid, burned metal smell of the projectors that almost drowned out the smellof popcorn. (Which was no mean feat given how much buttered popcorn had been popped in that place since it first opened in 1918.) “I may have overreacted a little.”

“A little? As I recall you wrote out your last will and testament.”

“Hey, you were going to get my prized copy ofGone With the Wind.”

“Completely dog-eared.” Without looking I know she’s rolling her eyes.

“Well loved,” I counter.

As we come off the bridge and turn east to Manteo, more memories knock on the door I thought I had nailed shut. This is the route my school bus took to Manteo Elementary School, where we first met, and which I know from my last visit bears no more resemblance to its old, original self than we do. I stop just short of asking if she knows what happened to Mr. Daniels, who was our favorite PE teacher. Open too many floodgates and a person can drown.

She takes a right on Sir Walter Raleigh, which is lined with nicely maintained clapboard homes with beautifully manicured lawns then passes Essex, where my mother’s friend Deanna’s Dogwood Inn sits on the far corner. The waterfront is a block away. I can see the tip of the re-created Roanoke Marshes Lighthouse at the edge of the boardwalk that lines the Shallowbag Bay Marina.

Bree turns into an alley and pulls into a reserved spot with a sign that says,I READ THEREFORE I PARK.

“Nice.”

“Just one of the perks of being a titan of business.” She reaches for the door handle. “Come on. Mrs. McKinnon is expecting me. Do you have the list?”

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