“Sure, send her in,” I say, swallowing.

And then there’s Blix, striding in, looking like she got dressed from the bargain bin at a 1970s clothing consignment shop, but in a good, fun way. She’s wearing a long pink tulle skirt and some kind of silvery, shimmery shirt with a bunch of lacy scarves all tied up in loopy knots, long turquoise earrings, and about a hundred beaded bracelets. Nothing goes together, and yet somehow she makes it look like an art project. Her crazy white Einstein hair is moussed up into little points, and she’s wearing bright red lipstick, and her eyes are extra beady and sharp today—X-ray eyes, Noah calls them, the better to see deep into your soul.

I have to admit I feel a little flicker of hope that maybe she really is a witch. Maybe she’s like the fairy godmother in Cinderella and she’ll say, Bibbity bobbity boo and conjure Noah up right in front of me—and then my life, which seems to have curled up into the fetal position, will somehow stand up and stretch and crank itself back up into normalcy.

Yes. I am precisely that far gone.

Ellen, Sophronia, and Natalie look shocked. I raise my hand in a listless wave.

“Well, what the actual hell?” Blix says, and we all laugh weakly. “The life force is running out of this room! I’ve been at funerals that had better vibrations than this.” She puts her hands on her hips and looks around at us, taking in our wedding finery, and for a moment I think she might be about to dispense some fashion advice. Perhaps we need more of something. That’s what’s gone wrong: not even one floaty scarf among the four of us.

But instead, she comes over and takes my damp hands in her cool, bony ones, and says, dryly, her eyes shining with trouble and mischief: “I’m not here to make you feel worse, but I just want to tell you that I hope we don’t have to kill him today. But if we do, we do. I want you to know I’m up for it. You girls with me?”

I see Natalie start to blink very rapidly.

“I don’t think we’ll have to kill him,” I say quietly, although I had, of course, been thinking the same thing. I wouldn’t be surprised if Blix knows that.

“Yeah, well, he’s pushing his luck,” she says and pulls up a chair like somebody who’s settling in for the duration. “But we’ve got to take care of you. The important thing is: Are you breathing consciously? You’re not, are you?”

I try to breathe, to make her happy.

“You know, what we need here is to raise the vibe. We need the Breath of Joy. It’s a yoga thing. I’ll show you how to do it.” And to my surprise, she stands up and throws her arms up over her head and then swings them down fast by her sides while she bends her knees and collapses her middle. When her head is almost down to her knees, she lets out a loud “ARRRRRRRGH!”

She rights herself and looks at us. “Five times! Fast! Come on, ladies. Yell it out. Arrrgh! Arrrrgh!”

We all do it, except for Natalie. The rest of us are scared not to.

Blix claps her hands when we’re finished. “Excellent, excellent! Oh my God. You young women are so beautiful, you know that? And men are—well, I like men just fine, but if we’re honest, we have to admit that most of them are just smelly, sweaty, grunting ball scratchers. Somehow we’re supposed to love ’em anyway.” She shakes her head. “Gotta love it. Nature’s joke. Can’t live with ’em, can’t shoot ’em.”

And with that, she leans over and plants a soft, dry kiss on my cheek and stares into my eyes. She smells like powder and chai tea and something herbal, possibly marijuana. “I like you,” she says. “Take it from me. He’s my grandnephew, but like so many men out there, particularly the ones from my family, I’m sorry to say, he’s not worth a poot. I think now’s as good a time as any to ask yourself if you really do want him after all. Because, I’m just saying, we could all leave now and go to the beach. Skinny-dip or something.”

She stands back upright and laughs again. “You’re welcome,” she says, “for that image I just put in your heads of me skinny-dipping.”

Then she reaches into her massive bra and whips out some bottle of essential-oil that she says I need to inhale because it will calm me down, bring on the positive vibes, center my aura. She puts it under my nose. It smells like roses and lavender. She’s chanting something I can’t quite hear, closing her eyes, and she presses her forehead up against mine in a mind meld and says, “For the good of all and the free will of all, so mote it be,” and then she opens her eyes and looks around at us. “Look, sweetie, I’ve got to get back to the family. The natives are getting restless out there. Trying to figure out what’s come over the prodigal son, figure out if this is all their fault. Raising him so entitled and all.” She wrinkles her nose. “I’m sorry he’s putting you through this. I really do think there might be something wrong with that boy.”

“Maybe he just overslept,” I say. “Or maybe the bridge is stuck in the up position and he can’t get across. Or maybe he misplaced part of his tux, and he didn’t realize which tux shop my dad was using so he’s lost, and his phone isn’t charged.”

Blix laughs. “Yeah, and maybe Mercury is in retrograde, too, or he’s got jet lag or there are sunspots. Who knows? But you are going to be fine. Big life. Remember that. I told you that. A big, big life for you.”

She blows kisses to all of us and sashays out. And that’s when I hear it: the roar of Whipple’s BMW out in the parking lot. They’re here. Fifty-eight minutes late, but they’re here, and oxygen flows back into the room like somebody turned on the valve once again.

I stand up, still shaking.

We hear pounding footsteps, and then the door bursts open, and there is Noah, standing there looking more like he’s arriving to film a battle scene than to get married. His hair is sticking up all over the place, and he didn’t shave, and his eyes are like little black dots in a sea of bloodshot white space—and—and—oh my God, he is wearing his tuxedo shirt with his pair of blue jeans.

I put my hand over my mouth. I may be making a little sound. Something a pigeon would say.

“Marnie,” he says. “Marnie, I have to talk to you.”

He leads me outside. Outside outside—not to the parking lot, or the little sidewalk area in front where all the nice people gather after church to talk. No, he takes me by the hand to the meadow off to the side of the church, where the church school holds picnics. Where I got my first kiss when I was in seventh grade. Steve Peacock. His parents are right now in that church waiting to watch me get married.

“Marnie,” he says, and his mouth is so dry it makes a clacking sound when he talks. I want him to stop saying my name. I want him to look normal and happy and groom-like, but none of that is going to happen. “Marnie,” he says, “baby, I am so, so sorry, but I’m afraid there is no way I can do this.”

And the world—the big, vast, beautiful world—vanishes, shrinking down to a little point right in front of me. The only thing left is the blood roaring through my ears, and some deep feeling that nothing—nothing—is ever going to make sense again.

FOUR

MARNIE

This kind of thing has actually happened to me before.

In third grade, I was chosen to be Mary in the Christmas Eve pageant. I was to wear my mother’s blue filmy bathrobe, and I made a foil halo that tied to my plastic headband. Being Mary was the high point of my life up to that time—a life in which I was already realizing that my older sister, Natalie, was going to walk away with all the best prizes, things she didn’t even seem to strive for: good grades, teachers’ admiration, boyfriends, the plastic diamond ring in the Cracker Jack box.

But Natalie couldn’t be Mary because she had already been Mary two years ago, and so she had to be a shepherd. It was all me, and I would be propped up there by the manger, holding the Smiths’ eight-week-old baby, who was playing the part of Baby Jesus. Mrs. Smith had taught me how to support the baby’s head and everything.