filed out of the fog. Each of them wore the same neon-green crushed-velvet dress with balloon sleeves and puffy bows ringing the waistline. Only Veronica would conspire to make those homely young women wear such terrifying monstrosities. Watching the bridesmaids lumber down the aisle, Clarice thought, I know I can’t be the only one here thinking “Gorillas in the Mist.”
The bridesmaids were followed by the flower girl, Veronica’s nine-year-old granddaughter, Latricia. Veronica had chosen Latricia because she was the prettiest of her three granddaughters and consequently her favorite. Clarice had tried, as diplomatically as she could, to talk Veronica out of that decision. Latricia was a cutie, but no one would ever accuse her of being the least bit intelligent. Latricia’s flower girl technique amounted to running several quick steps, then stopping suddenly. Every time she stopped, she dug her hand deep into the green toile-covered wicker basket she carried, took out a fistful of green carnation petals, and flung them as hard as she could directly into the face of whoever sat nearest to her. She kept this up until her mother, the matron of honor, bellowed, “Latricia, cut it out! Now!” Latricia completed her walk at a steady pace. But along the way, she glared at the wedding guests and stuffed flower petals into her mouth.
Odette said, “That is not a bright child.”
A trumpet fanfare began and Reverend Biggs raised his arms to let the guests know that they should stand for the entrance of the bride. Sharon emerged from the pink cloud on the arm of her father, Clement.
Her appearance was greeted with oohs and ahhs from the guests.
“My goodness, she’s so thin I wouldn’t have recognized her. She looks adorable,” Barbara Jean said.
It was true. Sharon looked divine. With the aid of her hypnotist, Sharon had wiped fifty pounds off her figure in just a few months. The gown her mother had purchased several sizes too small for her now fit perfectly. Though Clarice had sworn to herself that, as a part of her new life, she had given up on diets forever, she couldn’t help but think that when she and Veronica started speaking again she would have to ask for that hypnotist’s phone number.
The trumpet music ended and a syrupy, string-heavy tune began to stream from the speakers as the doors closed behind Sharon and her father. A few steps beyond the pink cloud, Sharon slowly raised her bouquet to her veil-covered face and began to sing “We’ve Only Just Begun” into a microphone that was hidden among her flowers.
The song was clearly a Veronica touch, Clarice thought. A girl of Sharon’s age would never have chosen an old Carpenters’ song, popular long before her birth, to sing at her wedding. And Sharon certainly wasn’t singing it as if it were a personal favorite. All around the courtyard, people squirmed in their seats and grimaced in response to the bride’s voice. The newly slimmed Sharon may have looked like an angel in her ivory-colored, form-fitting bridal gown, but she sang like a screeching demon freshly released from the deepest pit of hell. Clarice thought, Why, oh why, didn’t Veronica spring for a few voice lessons in addition to Sharon’s hypnosis?
Right on cue, a dozen white Bostonian doves fluttered away from a cage hidden behind the spitting fish fountain as Sharon wailed, “A kiss for luck and we’re on our way.” About ten feet up in the air, the doves formed a circle and flew in formation in response to whistled cues from the bird wrangler, who crouched behind one of the taller pseudo-Roman pillars. The effect was impressive enough to draw scattered applause.
Unfortunately, that impressive moment didn’t last long. As Sharon caterwauled her way toward her groom, a dark blur appeared overhead and streaked toward the doves. In a scene reminiscent of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, an enormous gray-and-brown falcon snatched one of the doves away from the formation and zipped off with it clasped in its talons. The dove wrangler began frenzied tooting, presumably calling the other eleven birds back to their cage. But the doves kept flying higher. They had already sensed the arrival of the second hawk. It descended upon them an instant later and reduced their number to ten.
The remaining birds, shrieking loudly, returned to their trainer. He secured them inside a large cage and then hustled them away from the courtyard. The location of the two missing doves was made clear to the assemblage by the twin streams