“It’s darling!” Linda said.

“And I sell these boxes: Kitchen in a Box, Bathroom in a Box… just things I buy in bulk and combine in a kit and deliver, you know? I’ve tacked an ad on every campus bulletin board for miles around. I’m open seven days a week and I’m slaving away like a dog; that’s why I set the wedding for a Monday. Didn’t want to miss the weekend shoppers. As it is, I’m closed till Friday, which I hate. But Driscoll acts like this is some kind of hobby. When he heard about Gram’s loan he was, ‘Oh, you wouldn’t want to get in over your head, hon.’ He was, ‘Wouldn’t want to bite off more than you can chew, now, hon.’ So discouraging and dampening; he doesn’t think I’m up to this. Doesn’t credit me with the brains to buy a simple shower curtain for college kids and a few damn rings to hang it with.”

“Now, Susie, that is just not fair,” Spence told her staunchly. “He’s only trying to protect you.”

“Plus he leaves spat-out fruit pits all over the apartment,” Susie said.

Eliza suddenly set the mug on the bureau, as if this were the last straw.

“So I stopped Nightmare on Elm Street,” Susie said, “and I gave him back his ring and sent him packing. And then I phoned the realtor, but I guess it was too late at night. And I’m sorry you all came for nothing, but I said to Dad, I said, ‘Which is more trouble: calling off the wedding or suing for divorce?’”

“Where is Sam, anyhow?” Eliza wondered.

Delia was glad she hadn’t had to ask that herself.

“He went to dress for the wedding,” Susie said.

“But you did tell him-”

“I did tell him I’d changed my mind, but he just shut his eyes a minute and then he said he had to go dress for the wedding.”

Yes, that was Sam, all right.

Delia stood up. She said, “I should get busy.”

“Doing what?” Linda demanded.

“I have to phone the realtor.”

She started for the door (the nearest phone was in Eliza’s room), but Linda said, “Delia, my stars! Are you just going to accept this?”

“What else can I do?” she asked. “Drag her by the hair to the altar?”

“You could reason with her, for God’s sake!”

“This is not a now-or-never proposition,” Delia told her. (Really she was telling Susie, who stood leaning against the bureau, watching her with interest.) “If Susie isn’t sure she wants to marry Driscoll today, she can marry him tomorrow, or next week, or next year. What’s the hurry?”

“She can say that,” Linda told the others. “She didn’t fork over an arm and a leg for three airline tickets.”

Delia latched the door quietly behind her.

At the same time, Sam’s door, catty-corner across the hall, swung open and he stepped forth. He was tugging down his shirt cuffs. He caught sight of her and stopped still. They were separated by the stairwell, with its varnished wooden balustrade, and so she waited where she was. He said, “Why, Delia.”

“Hello, Sam.”

His suit was that slim, handsome black one they had bought on sale several years ago. His face looked thinner. It was all straight lines-straight gray eyes and an arrow of a nose and a mouth that seemed too straight until (she knew) you saw the upward turns at the corners. His glasses happened to be slipping, the way they had a tendency to do, and when he raised a hand to adjust them he appeared to be doubting his eyesight. She said, “Didn’t you know I was coming?”

“I knew,” he said.

“Well… I guess you heard Susie’s not going through with the wedding.”

“She’ll go through with it,” he said. He rounded the balustrade-no, not to approach her (though already she had taken her first step forward to meet him), but to start down the stairs. “We’ll proceed as planned,” he sent back as he descended. “She’ll come around.”

Delia gazed down at him over the railing. She could clearly see his scalp through the fair hair on top of his head. If I glimpsed him in a crowd, I’d say he was just another worn-out, aging man, she thought. But she didn’t really believe that.

She made herself turn away and go into Eliza’s room.

Here, too, she sensed a difference. The furniture was the same, but there wasn’t a single object on the bureau, and only the gaunt, old-fashioned black telephone sat on the nightstand. Had Eliza changed rooms, or what? This one had been hers from the day she was born.

I knew, he had said. We’ll proceed as planned, he had said.

Well, no point dwelling on it. Delia propped the realtor’s card on the nightstand, lifted the receiver, and dialed.

“This is Joe Bright,” a man announced thinly. “I can’t come to the phone right now, but you may leave a message after the beep.”

“Mr. Bright, this is Delia Grinstead calling, Susan Grinstead’s mother. Could you please get back to me as soon as possible? It’s very important. The number is…”

As she hung up, she heard the doorbell ring downstairs. “Hello, come in,” Sam said, and next she heard one of those drawling, gravelly, Roland Park matron voices. Instantly, she lost all her confidence. She wasn’t wearing enough makeup and her dress wasn’t dressy enough, and when she looked in Eliza’s mirror, her face seemed unformed and childish.

But she might have just imagined that, because when she started down the stairs (planting her feet just so and holding her head very high), everyone looked up at her with the most respectful attention. The pastor-a tweedy, shaggy man-said, “Mrs. Grinstead! What a pleasure!” and Driscoll’s parents broke off their chitchat with Sam.

“It’s a pleasure to see you, Dr. Soames,” she said. (Considering she attended church only on major holidays, she was impressed that she remembered his name.) “Hello, Louise. Hello, Malcolm.”

“Why, hello, Delia,” Louise Avery said, as if they’d last seen each other yesterday. She was a leathery woman with a lion’s mane of gold hair rearing back off her forehead. Her husband-older, smaller, crinkly-eyed-said, “I don’t guess you could have brought some sunshine with you.”

“Oh,” Delia said, and she glanced past him toward the door. “Is it raining?” she asked.

“No, no, we’re sure it will hold off till later,” Louise said. “I was telling Malcolm this morning, I said, ‘At least this is one good thing about a home wedding.’ Can you imagine if they’d planned a big formal church affair? Or something out on the lawn?”

“No, I certainly… can’t,” Delia said.

She looked over at Sam, but he was fitting Dr. Soames’s rolled umbrella into the umbrella stand, and he didn’t meet her eyes.

Maybe they would just have this wedding without the bride, she thought. Was that the plan?

In the living room, all available chairs had been lined up facing the fireplace. That must be where Dr. Soames would stand. In the dining room, Linda and Eliza were setting out platters of pastries. In the kitchen, the twins were gazing enraptured at Driscoll; he was discussing the honeymoon. “I told Sooze we ought to just head to Obrycki’s for crabs,” he said. “Call that our honeymoon, in keeping with the general tone of the wedding. And she said, ‘Or why not carry-out?’ but in the end we settled for three days at-Oh, Miz Grinstead! Hey there!”

“Hello, Driscoll,” Delia said. She was puzzled to see him looking so cheerful. He was dressed in a navy suit with a white rose in the lapel, and his face had a scrubbed, fresh, oblivious look. She said, “Ah, have you… talked with Susie this morning?”

“Oh, can’t see the bride before the ceremony, Miz Grinstead!” he said, wagging a finger.

“Yes, but just to talk with her-talk on the phone, maybe,” Delia said.

“Say! Where’s those ushers of mine, Miz Grinstead? Any sign of them yet?”

“Ushers?”

“Ramsay and Carroll!”

“Well, no, I… gosh, I hope someone thought to wake them,” she said. Neither one of the boys had yet lost the knack of sleeping till noon.

“Maybe you should give them a ring,” Driscoll told her.