A Wedding Invitation
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© 2011 by Alice J. Wisler
Cover design by Jennifer Parker
Cover photography by Getty Images, Dimitri Vervitsotis
Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan
Ebook edition created 2011
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
ISBN 978-1-4412-3384-4
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
For all who passed through those dusty classrooms
of that memorable place we called PRPC
contents
cover
title page
copyright page
dedication
epigraph
recipes
questions for conversation
acknowledgments
about the author
other books by author
back ads
back cover
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
—
R
ALPH
W
ALDO
E
MERSON
one
February 1993
W
hen a pet goes missing, it’s hard to concentrate on anything but where he might be. Missing a cat can cause his owner to lose focus, forget, and do silly things—even hang clothing in wrong places. Today this is happening to my mother.
As though she’s walking through a fog, Mom stares into the distance and hangs the newest order of black dresses all together in a clump. The metal hangers clink against each other, and I wince, realizing what she’s done. The size twos are next to the size fourteens, yet the entire point of Mom’s store is that the small and large sizes are displayed conveniently on different racks, not all meshed together, tangled in a confused web.
Following behind her, I sort the designer dresses into their proper sections, wondering if I should remind Mom that she can’t compromise her organizational skills—they are her strength in running her boutique, Have a Fit.
With two dresses dangling from hangers in her hands, my mother mutters, “Where could he be?”
Her cat, Butterchurn, has never left Mom’s home before. Well, once, to chase a squirrel, but after realizing the fluffy creature could scamper up a tree trunk and escape onto the branches at a rapid pace, Butterchurn walked his rotund body back inside to rest by the fireplace, waiting for my mother to serve him catnip.
“Why would he leave? Where would he go?” Mom has a habit of muttering to herself, and this morning the habit has peaked. Since the boutique opened at ten, she’s mumbled continuously about Butterchurn’s possible whereabouts. I hear the distress in her voice as she says, “Three days, three days.” She lowers her head as though she’s praying. “Mrs. Low says I need to leave tuna outside. She said when her cat was gone, a can of tuna brought it back.”
I’ve met Mrs. Low once but don’t see her as the type to leave a can of fish around her property. Both her spacious lawn and the exterior of her house are carefully maintained.
“And I think she poured some blue cheese dressing on top because her cat has a fondness for blue cheese. I don’t think I’ve ever given Butterchurn blue cheese.”
Pausing from hanging size-three dresses with other size threes, I volunteer, “I could make a flyer.”
“A flyer?” Placing a finger along the side of her nose, Mom contemplates. Her gray head, at last, bobs in agreement. “We could put it by the Scones-and-Shop poster.” She’s referring to the large green poster about our event coming up later this month—shopping while enjoying free scones. I created that poster with a mixture of colored markers and tenacity.
“I see missing-pet flyers when I’m out on walks,” I tell her as I head behind the counter and open the drawer that holds tape, scissors, Sharpies, pens, Post-It notes, and other objects we need throughout our days in the boutique. I don’t tell her that seeing those flyers always makes me feel sad that someone is missing his or her pet. When I come across flyers that offer large rewards, they inspire me to look under bushes and in other obscure places. Although I’d love to be a hero, I have yet to find a missing animal.
“What color paper do you want me to use?” I ask as I note the various colors in the drawer.
“Yellow. Yellow catches attention.”
Luckily, there are two sheets of yellow construction paper, so I pull one out. “Do you have a picture?”
“Of Butterchurn?”
“Lots of flyers have pictures of the missing dog or cat.”
“At home I have the one you took last Christmas. I can bring it tomorrow.”
At the top of the paper I use a black Sharpie to form bold letters: MISSING CAT. I place a square in the middle of the page for the picture of Butterchurn I’ll insert tomorrow.
With the feather duster in her hand, Mom walks toward me to peek at my work. “Make the words large. Some of our customers can’t read small print.” Then with a swift flick of her wrist she lets the duster’s thick gray feathers fly across the phone. Moving toward the shelves that hold scarves, she begins to dust those.
When the flyer is complete, except for the picture of Butterchurn, I hang it behind the counter with a sufficient amount of tape. “Do you like it?” I ask as she reads aloud.
“Lovely. You have such good handwriting.”
Smiling, I busy myself with the task of ordering summer clothes for our store. This is a job Mom has recently entrusted to me, and I’ve grown to enjoy it. A colorful catalog from one of our suppliers lies open on the countertop. I see a much-too-thin model in a bright pink skirt and satin blouse and wonder if these skirts are items worth offering to our customers. I’m about to ask Mom her opinion when I hear her mumblings turn into, “I don’t know why Butterchurn doesn’t come home. I hope no one has . . .” She pauses; I look up to see that she’s taken off her glasses and her eyes are red around the rims.
“He’ll turn up,” I assure her. I hate to think of my mother’s world without her pet that curls against her whenever she reads Dickens or Hemingway. She and Butterchurn are like the historical landmarks a few miles away on the National Mall—you can’t imagine one without the other. I slip behind the counter to embrace her, but she brushes past me and goes to the shelf of hats and starts to dust them. My mother is not big on affection. Apparently her father was the stoic type and Mom inherited his genes, while Mom’s sister Dovie in Winston-Salem got enough affection for three people.