Page 13 of My Best French Wedding
“No! He’s here.”
“The groom?”
“The Walter!”
Corinne shot her a skeptical look. “That second glass of wine was a bad idea.”
“I’m not drunk!” Hildy hadn’t meant to yell but her nerves were shot. “I saw him,” she insisted. “On the tram.”
“Pretty sure I would have noticed ifWalter Burnswas on our train. Especially after your head started spinning around.”
“Not ours. The one going the other direction.” She needed to fast-forward this part of the discussion, because they didn’t have time to argue over whether Hildy was or was not delusional. “Do you seriously think I wouldn’t recognize him?”
Corinne opened her mouth and then closed it again. “No,” she finally conceded. “You could probably dig his femur out of a shallow grave and be like, ‘Aha! Definitely Walter’s thigh bone.’”
“Okay,” Hildy said, ignoring the macabre undertones. “So we accept the basic premise that Walter is here, in Bordeaux.”
“Coincidence?” Corinne ventured.
Hildy shook her head. “He’s here for thewedding. This is one billion percent an attempt to steal my story.”
“Did he cackle and twirl his mustache when he spotted you?”
“He didn’t see me.” The acid taste at the back of her throat didn’t fade when Hildy swallowed. “Too busy chatting up Fiona Prescott’s sister.”
It had taken a minute to place the woman’s face, but Hildy’s recall for names was excellent, especially when the person in question had flirted shamelessly with Walter in her presence. Maude Prescott, the older sister of the bride, was some kind of fancy plant expert with multiple degrees and an austere personal style that made Hildy feel ever so slightly unsophisticated.
“Fuuuuuuck,” Corinne groaned, to the delight of the nearby French children, who immediately began imitating her pronunciation, like a miniature Greek chorus.
Hildy smiled an apology at the teacher while backing away. It was cold comfort knowing she and Corinne were finally on the same page, existential dread-wise.
“I thought we had an exclusive.” Corinne rubbed her temples.
“We do.”
“Then she can’t turn around and let Walter write about the wedding too.”
It wouldn’t be the first time a bride had wriggled out of anagreement. The soon-to-be-married were prone to eleventh-hour freak-outs. Fortunately, most of them could be talked around if you knew which buttons to push.
“We need to get there ASAP.” The plan was already coalescing in Hildy’s mind. “He can scheme all he wants. Anyone who gets between me and this story will live to regret it.”
“This feels like the moment to remind you it would be hard to edit a magazine from prison.”
“Don’t worry. Plan A is to cut the head off the snake.”
“I feel so reassured,” Corinne muttered, as Hildy pressed a contact on her phone.
“Fiona? It’s Hildy. Bonjour to you too. Listen, I have some fun news!” She squeezed every last drop of false cheer she could muster into the words, hoping it would hide the undercurrent of panic. “We are so excited to get started, we’re coming today!”
4Walter
ONE WEEK BEFORE THE PRESCOTT-SCHAFER WEDDING
ON THE A89 AUTOROUTE, France—No one told Walter that jet lag would feel like coming out of general anesthesia.
The strangeness of his current circumstances—in the back of a luxury town car, next to a woman he barely knew, in a foreign country—kept fading in and out like a radio signal. All the snap decisions that had led to this moment felt remote and unreal, as if he’d been sleepwalking at the time.
It started at a wedding, and Hildy was involved: Those were the essential facts. Then again, that described most of the mistakes Walter had made in the last decade.
