the thinnest layer of white tulle, the merest illusion, and as soon as it was in place, Eleanor stood back with tears in her eyes as she admired her granddaughter in the mirror. Ruby looked serious and innocent, and spectacular in the dress that had survived more than half a century since her grandmother wore it.
“Darling, you look incredible,” her grandmother whispered and Ruby faced her in the mirror, and for the first time in a long time, thought about her mother.
“She really missed the boat on everything, Grandma, didn’t she?” Eleanor knew who she meant and nodded with a sigh. She meant Camille. She had left Ruby motherless three weeks after she was born, and broken her parents’ hearts. It was a long time ago now, but still a dull ache for Eleanor and Alex whenever they thought about her.
“I’m sure she would have wanted to be here,” Eleanor said sadly. She didn’t speak of Camille often. It was still painful, twenty-two years after her death. “She followed the wrong path, and got lost along the way.” But she and Alex had been there for Ruby, and she had never lacked for love or attention and was grateful to them for it. Now she and Zack would have a family of their own. But she still wished at times that she had known her mother. It made her want to be the best mother in the world to her children one day. The way her grandmother had been to her.
Camille had also had a wild streak, which Ruby never did. Eleanor couldn’t imagine Camille wearing the wedding dress that Ruby had on, under any conditions. She had done everything to reject her parents’ values and fight tradition, whereas Ruby embraced it. Ruby had wanted everything to be as close as possible to her grandmother’s wedding, and had carefully studied the wedding albums. She was even carrying an identical bouquet of tiny phalaenopsis orchids and lily of the valley.
Eleanor carried Ruby’s train down the stairs for her, as Wilson had done for her, and Alex stared at his granddaughter when he saw her. He felt as though he had been cast backward fifty-two years. Except for the red hair, Ruby looked just like her grandmother. And now that he saw it again, he remembered the dress perfectly. It was just as beautiful on Ruby as it had been on Eleanor.
The three of them rode to the church together, in the car they had hired with a driver. It was a vintage Rolls-Royce. Alex waited for the chauffeur to set up his wheelchair for him when they reached the church, and he got into it smoothly, and then Eleanor helped Ruby out. Alex was going to roll down the aisle next to her. They entered the cathedral through the rectory, and waited for the music to start as their cue, and then Ruby walked slowly down the aisle, next to her grandfather, with her eyes on Zack waiting for her at the altar, as their friends stared at her in her grandmother’s exquisite wedding dress. She looked like a vision from the past, but there was something timeless about it. Zack looked totally bowled over by her when she stood next to him, and Alex rolled himself next to the first pew to take his place next to Eleanor.
“I feel like I’m watching you at our wedding,” he whispered to her and took her hand. Except that the church had been a temporary one, and the park outside had been tented.
Zack and Ruby had decided on traditional vows, and exchanged simple gold wedding rings, while Eleanor and Alex cried unabashedly, and when the minister declared them man and wife, Zack kissed her so hard she was breathless and everyone laughed and applauded, and then they went back down the aisle, beaming at their friends.
When the wedding guests arrived at the house, Alex looked at them in amusement. Some of the richest men in America were there, and they looked more like boys going to summer camp than business moguls. About half of them had worn suits that looked brand new and in which they appeared supremely uncomfortable, and as though they’d never worn a suit or tie before in their lives. The other half of the men had come in jeans and had worn jackets with them, a few had worn shorts in spite of what the invitation had said. Some of the boys in suits were wearing T-shirts