Her voice carried like the horn of a semitruck on the New Jersey Turnpike. Several diners turned to stare. The woman she’d nearly trampled looked especially offended.

Mama’s smile was like ice. “C’ndee, honey.” Syrup dripped off the word “honey.” “Didn’t your mama ever teach you that if you don’t have something nice to say, you shouldn’t say anything at all?”

“No, Rosalee. Honey.” Something that wasn’t sweet oozed off the word. “We always spoke our minds and worried about the consequences later. Being truthful was more important than faking nice in my family.”

They glared at each other over The Book. I hoped the heat didn’t singe the pages. Or, if it did, it burned up the one with the picture of that lime-colored gown and stupid parasol.

“Now, what’s this I heard about family, Aunt C’ndee?”

A good-looking guy with an Ivy League voice stood beside the table, smiling down at us. His teeth were as white as his polo sport shirt, worn with the collar casually turned up. He looked like he was ready to head to his private club for an afternoon of squash.

C’ndee’s dark mood brightened in an instant. “Anthony!” she called, rising to embrace him in a smothering, two-armed hug.

“This is my nephew, everyone. Tony Ciancio.” She rotated him by degrees so he could face each of us. I was heartened to see he looked embarrassed at being spun like a game show prize.

“It’s nice to meet you, ma’am.” Greeting Mama first, he demonstrated that he, at least, had good manners. “I’ve heard that wedding of yours is going to rival a Broadway show. I don’t doubt it, because you’re as pretty as any leading lady.”

Mama rewarded him with a flutter of her eyelashes.

“And you must be Mace.” He turned to me, green eyes lively in a chiseled, sailboat-tan face. “I’m looking forward to visiting Himmarshee Park. I hear you have a great nature path. People say that the wading birds and those huge cypress trees are something to see.”

He had me at “nature path.”

Tony stuck out a hand to Henry, who stood up as the two men shook. I could see my cousin’s sharp eyes assessing this outsider from the North. With his corny jokes, his football-star-gone-beefy paunch, and his rumpled suits, Henry liked to play the country bumpkin. But he’d graduated top of his class from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Henry Bauer, Esquire, is no dummy.

Tony met Henry’s gaze head-on; confident, yet not aggressive. “I’m looking forward to seeing the Brahmans play at Himmarshee High,” he said. “I understand they have a pretty good chance at a state title this year.”

A delighted grin spread across my cousin’s face. He pumped Tony’s hand, and then clapped him on the back. “Their chances are excellent, my friend. Excellent!”

Charlene came back just then with our food. She looked around for a place to put down her big tray, crowded with heavy plates. Tony jumped to clear away water glasses and coffee cups from an adjoining table.

“Let me give you some room.” He flashed a blindingly white smile. Charlene, in full swoon, nearly lost her tray.

It was hard to believe C’ndee and Anthony Ciancio ever sat at the same family table. He must have gotten her share when they were passing around charm and courtesy.

Food safely delivered, Charlene’s eyes drank in Tony’s long, lean build. Apparently, she was one thirsty waitress. “Are you that male model in Rosalee’s wedding book? The one in the white suit?”

He shot his aunt a puzzled look. She patted his cheek twice, doubly affectionate, I guess.

“Tony’s not a model. But he’s gorgeous enough, even after driving south all night,” C’ndee said. “He’s here on business, actually. We’re looking at some opportunities to expand in the area.”

Mama and I each raised an eyebrow. In the month since she’d steamrolled into our lives, this was the first we’d heard about C’ndee starting a business in Florida. I’m sure Mama was calculating how geographically distant that definition of “in the area” might be.

“Is that right?” Henry clapped Tony’s back again. “What are y’all planning to do?” Tony hesitated for just a moment, seeming to weigh how much to say. “We want to do a full-service, event-planning business.”

All of us looked at him blankly.

“Like bringing in demolition derby and monster-truck events?” Charlene asked.

C’ndee looked horrified.

“More like special-occasion events,” Tony said. “We’d do everything from décor to food.”

Henry and I looked at each other over the rims of our coffee cups. He zeroed in like the attorney he was: “Is a wedding the kind of special occasion you’ll handle?”

Tony nodded.

“Looks like you arrived in the nick of time, then,” I said, my tone as neutral as a judge.

Betty Taylor was busy at Hair Today, Dyed Tomorrow, combing out a permanent for the wife of the president of the local branch of First Florida Bank. She grinned above a head full of unnaturally dark curls as Mama and I came in, bells jangling on the beauty parlor’s door.

“Mornin’ ladies.” She punctuated her greeting with a hurricane-force blast of hair spray. Coughing, First Florida’s First Lady squeezed her eyes shut.

“I see you’re working, Betty. How ’bout I come back for our consult some other time?”

“Oh, no you don’t, Mace. I think you’d rather go to the dentist than come to my shop. Sit down over there, next to that hairdryer.” She pointed her purple comb to a far corner. “I’ve got to finish here and then I have one quick cut to do. We can talk about your hair then.”

Mama reached up on tiptoes to grab a handful of my hair. “I’m thinking something with lots of curls, Betty.”

“Ow, that hurts!”

“But it has to look nice with the girls’ bonnets.” She let go of my hair, her hand making a hat-shaped arc above my head.

Bonnets? Lord deliver me.

“Aren’t the parasols enough, Mama?”

“In for an inch, in for a mile, Mace. You can’t be half a Southern belle.”

Mama had been promoting fancy hairdos for the wedding. Of course I’d been resisting. Betty was supposed to persuade me to go along today by showing me sample styles in some kind of beauty book.

“Don’t worry, Mace,” Betty said. “I’m a professional. You’ll look gorgeous.”

I glanced at the bank president’s wife, who looked like a poodle in earrings.

Muttering darkly, I grabbed a People magazine and took a seat to wait. Mama bustled around the shop, straightening up and lighting her aromatherapy candles.

“Hey, y’all!” A voice came from the supply closet in the back.

“Hey, D’Vora,” Mama and I chorused.

Betty’s twenty-something beautician trainee, D’Vora had made a big boo-boo last summer involving peroxide, an overly long cell phone call, and Mama’s platinum dye job. But all Mama’s hair grew back; and she’d forgiven D’Vora for the mishap.

Now, I looked up from an article on Angelina Jolie’s brood to see D’Vora emerging from the closet, juggling several bottles of shampoo and conditioner. I wondered which ones were responsible for the smells at Hair Today: green apples, tropical fruits, and citrus, all overlaid with the ammonia-like odor of permanent solution. Add in Mama’s aromatherapy candles and the lingering cloud of hair spray, and the shop was an allergist’s nightmare.

As D’Vora began restocking shelves, I saw she was wearing her customary, jazzed-up uniform: painted-on purple pants and too-small smock, zipper revealing her cleavage. Appliquéd flowers and lilac-colored butterflies along the neckline further accentuated her chest.