Wedding in Great Neck (9781101607701) by Yona Zeldis McDonough Read Free Book Online Page A

asked, ready as ever to do her bidding.
    “I need your help,” said Angelica.
    “Just tell me where it hurts.” Lincoln felt puffed with pleasure. Despite everything, Angelica still felt she could turn to him. Not Betsy, not Don with all his money. Him.
Daddy
.
    “It’s about Gretchen. You see, Ennis
is
coming after all. And Gretchen is not going to be happy about it.”
    “That’s news,” Lincoln said. Which was more neutral than the
uh-oh
that he wanted to say.
    “I know. But he called to ask if it would be all right. And Justine and Portia really did want him there. So I thought in terms of the big picture and hoped Gretchen would understand.”
    “But you haven’t actually asked her?”
    “No,” Angelica said. “I haven’t.”
    “You want me to talk to her, then? Smooth it over?” said Lincoln, assembling all the pieces in his mind.
    “Could you? I would, but there’s just so much left to do before tonight. And besides, you know how it is with Gretchen, Daddy. She’s jealous; she always has been. I think she begrudges me this wedding. Do you know I asked her to be my matron of honor, and she turned me down?”
    “I’m sure she’s happy for you,” Lincoln lied. He was sure of no such thing; he had not talked to Gretchen in quite some time, although he had heard about her refusal to be in the wedding party. Since both the boys and her daughters were, her decision seemed, well, strange. He hadn’t discussed it with her, though. “But you can understand how she feels about Ennis. I mean, he did behave like an asshole.”
    “I know. Which is why I thought it would help coming from you. Because you’re a man. So do you think you could?” Her voice was coaxing and soft.
    “Of course,” Lincoln said. He was a man, all right. Right now, he was
the
man. “I’ll talk to her.”
    “Thank you, Daddy,” Angelica said. “I knew you’d come through for me.”
    “Always, sweetheart,” Lincoln said. But she had already clicked off. Lincoln stood staring at the cell phone as if he could summon her back by the force of his gaze. Angelica. His cupcake, his muffin, his dolly girl. She’d been dazzling him—and the whole world—with her strategically situated dimples, her thickly fringed dark eyes, her gleaming curtain of black hair since she was a half-pint.
    He and Betsy already had a daughter and two sons—Gretchen had been nine, Teddy seven, and Caleb five when Angelica was born—but she was the one who did him in, the one who, with the merest lift of her delicately arched brow, yanked at his heart like it was a big, fat flounder on the line, the one who pierced him with the pooch of her pursed, pink baby lips. He could still remember the hot weight of her pressed against his chest as he’d paced the living room with her in his arms, the velvety feel of her head as it tucked so neatly under his chin, the avian melodies of her gurgling. Gretchen had been solemn and phlegmatic; she soon turned into an oversized, galumphing girl. Teddy was red faced, colicky, and squalling; Caleb was so introverted that they thought for a while he might be autistic. Angelica, however, lived up to her name: she was a dream baby dropped into their lives at just the moment when the marriage had begun to show its first ugly and eventually fatal fissures.
    Betsy was already griping about money, and about his drinking, which at that point was hardly out of control, but she was such a puritan that she couldn’t let a guy get a little buzz on without huffing and hissing about “dependency” and “enablers”—by the former she meant his nightly beers; by the latter, the drinking buddies with whom he’d liked to kick back a few at the end of a long, dreary, commute-propelled week. Angelica had been an accident but a happy one, and for a while they really thought she was a sign that they were meant to remain together and a family. Whatever his problems with Betsy and with the booze, Lincoln loved his children, loved