Beautiful Day(91)

“Well, we’re almost ready,” Margot said. This wasn’t really true. She was ready and Autumn was ready; like a good groomsman, Autumn was drinking a beer in the backyard.

But when Margot went upstairs to check on the other two girls, she discovered that Rhonda wasn’t happy with the work of the makeup artist at RJ Miller, and so she was redoing her makeup herself. This process entailed cleaning, moisturizing, and reapplying with surgical precision, which was tying up the bathroom. Finn was standing morosely in front of the full-length mirror, applying aloe to her already-peeling sunburn. Makeup was lost on Finn because she had been doing nothing but crying since they returned from the salon, though everyone was pretending not to notice. The crying was Finn’s way of getting Jenna to pay attention to her, but Jenna wasn’t taking the bait, and Margot was proud of her.

Then Nick ascended the stairs in his tux, having just finished with pictures, and Jenna excused herself to the third floor to finish getting ready “in peace,” which really meant that she wanted to get away from Finn and Nick. Finn and Nick vanished down the stairs, holding hands, and Margot hadn’t seen them since.

Margot thought, There was no way Abigail Pease was going to get all four bridesmaids in the same picture frame any time this century.

Margot considered going downstairs and telling Abigail Pease this. There had been discussion of Abigail snapping candids of the bridesmaids getting ready, but what would those pictures look like? Autumn swilling a Heineken, Rhonda with foaming cleanser all over her face, Finn sobbing in Nick’s arms. Abigail might take a photo of Margot fretting about any or all of the above—or she might capture the envy on Margot’s face when she saw Jenna in their mother’s gown. Jenna looked stunning, and whereas Margot felt a bloom of love and pride—and relief—that this was so, she was also jealous. She wished that she had had a real wedding where she might have had an opportunity to wear Beth’s dress, instead of some salmon-colored chiffon number from A Pea in the Pod. She wished she had gotten married here at the Nantucket house instead of on a cliff in Antigua, where she had never been before and would never go again. She wished she had married someone different, someone better matched to grow with her.

Someone like Edge? But Margot couldn’t imagine being married to Edge. To be married to Edge, history had proved, meant to one day be divorced from Edge.

Someone like Griff? Margot wondered.

Margot never made it downstairs to talk to Abigail Pease, because at that moment her father emerged from his bedroom in his tux, and Margot was distracted. And two seconds later, Beanie popped her head out of her bedroom and told Margot she needed to talk to her.

“The ring is gone,” Beanie said. She held out the brown velvet box. It was empty.

“Wait,” Margot said. “What do you mean?”

“The boxes were here,” Beanie said. She pointed to the Eastlake bureau, which matched the ornately carved twin beds that had, long ago, been the summer beds of Kevin and Nick. The beds and the dresser with the matching attached mirror were antiques that predated even Margot’s grandparents. How the boys had ended up with them was another mysterious family injustice. On the dresser was the second brown velvet box, which held Stuart’s wedding band. Stuart’s band was there, but not Jenna’s. Jenna’s was embedded with fourteen ethically mined diamonds, totaling nearly two carats, and was worth twenty or thirty times what Stuart’s was worth.

Had someone come into the Carmichael house and stolen the ring? The house was filled with people. Downstairs was crawling with catering staff and tent guys and, now, the production people for the band and the band members themselves.

“The boxes have been here the whole time?” Margot asked.

“The whole time. Entrusted to Kevin yesterday by Stuart.”

“Your bedroom door was unlocked?”

“Oh, come on,” Beanie said. “Of course. I never thought the rings were unsafe here. Would you have thought that?”

“No,” Margot said. “I can’t believe this. I really can’t believe this.” On top of everything else, she was dealing with jewelry theft? “Did you look around? It didn’t fall, did it?”

“Fall?” Beanie said. The idea was preposterous. If the box had fallen, would the ring have tumbled out? No way, never—and yet a second later both Beanie, and Margot in her green bridesmaid dress, were on their hands and knees, sweeping the dusty wooden floorboards and the ridges of the braided rug with splayed fingers, looking for the ring.

They found an earring back. No ring.

Margot stood up and straightened her dress. She said, “Was anyone else in your room?”