The Marriage at the Rue Morgue (A Rue and Lakeland Mystery) by Jessie Bishop Powell

everything Lance and I had put into worrying about this wedding was trivial. Here we were fretting over a commitment that had been real for a decade, while these two were looking forward to a relationship they had only enjoyed for a comparatively little while.
    Seeing them put my own wedding jitters in perspective. But Natasha and Gert’s fretful exchange earlier had also increased my certainty that my own mother’s worried state about tomorrow’s ceremony would be approaching a high. If we didn’t get to her lunch soon, she would very likely spend the first ten minutes of that lunch telling us off.
    Lance wrapped his arm around my shoulders. I put mine around his waist and started edging him down the steps. He smelled good, like sweat, the barn, and an Ohio forest.
    “Congratulations,” I told the Oeschles. I tried to remember if I was supposed to give any kind of a toast tomorrow night. Surely, yes. I wondered how I could mention Natasha in it.
    Lance allowed me to pull him along, and we were about to turn away when Stan said, “Do you think Art needs any help out there? I’d be glad to lend some muscle if it would do any good.”
    “I don’t think muscle is what he needs,” I said, still tugging Lance away. I didn’t add,
And your muscles are a little past their prime.
    Lance shook his head and added, “But if you get a chance to call him and tell him to stay out of trouble for us, it would really help.”
    “Glad to,” Stan said. “I’ll give him a ring before we go in here.” He looked into the courthouse building as he spoke, like he thought they might miss their hearing time standing talking to us.
    “Thanks,” I said. “We won’t delay you any longer.”
    “I hope it all goes smoothly,” Lance added as I finally got his feet moving in the right direction.
    “The problems are all behind us,” Stan called after us. “It’s smooth sailing from here on out.”
    Stan’s problems might have all been behind him, but Lance’s and mine were only beginning. “Drive fast,” I said as we got into the truck. “Before Mama works herself up into a swivet.”
    Lance drove in silence for a few minutes. Then he said, “There’s something you should know.”
    “What? With Art?” My mind was already back at the center.
    “No. With Bub and Mom.”
    “What?” I said again. I did not have time to worry about Alex and Sophia right now.
    He said, “I was trying to tell you right when things went crazy this morning.” Even as he spoke, he was flying down the road, guiding our pickup out of town and back toward my parents’ house. “I meant to bring it up as soon as things calmed down, but they never really did, and I got preoccupied driving to get the license.”
    “Lance, what is it?” Wasn’t it enough that Alex was here at all?
    “Mom thinks the wedding is a bad idea,” Lance told me.
    I clucked my tongue against the roof of my mouth. “That’s not new.”
    “She’s decided it’s cursed.”
    Okay. That
was
new. “Oh, no. I know she doesn’t like me, but that’s going a little far.”
    “It isn’t you. Or she says not,” Lance explained. “It’s the location. She wants us to use our own house or go to a church. Now that she’s been over to your folks’ place, she swears it’s got bad karma.”
    “Your mother wouldn’t know bad karma from bad lunch-meat!”
    “I know, I know. I didn’t say
I
think this.”
    But I wasn’t finished. “She doesn’t like it that my parents’ house used to be a funeral home? It’s a little late. If she wanted a say in it, she should have come and helped us pick a venue that suited her. What business does she have voicing an opinion about any of this now? We’re getting married
tomorrow.
Couldn’t she have spoken up sooner? And I don’t know if . . .”
    Lance interrupted me. “It gets worse.”
    “It what?” I stared holes into Lance’s right ear while he went on speeding down the road.
    “Gets worse,” he repeated. “She called in