Mary Grace was tired of this shit.  As Gwen Stefani would say, it was bananas.  With her platinum blonde Jean Harlow pin curl ‘do and alabaster skin that rarely saw the sun unless covered with sunscreen fifty, Mary Grace was often told how much she resembled the pop singer.  She heightened the comparisons by getting regular teeth whitening treatments and never leaving the house without what she considered her trademarked red-stained lips; today’s shade was Red Hot, courtesy of Colorevolution.  Of course Mary Grace considered her appearance far superior to that of Ms. Stefani, and at thirty-seven had quite a few more years of beauty ahead of her.  She didn’t even envy her marriage to hottie Gavin Rossdale.  Mary Grace had invested in that ball and chain thing to reap less than lucrative results.  The most valuable things she got from the deal were a Hilton Head townhouse, her cherished cardinal red metallic Mercedes-Benz CLS550, five hundred grand in cash and the irrefutable knowledge that gorgeous philandering husbands came a dollar a gross.  Two years later and she had managed to retain only fifty percent of those assets.  Yet here she was again, rolling the dice, pulling the handle, spinning the wheel, wearing a hypocritical white dress with Brennan Hammond’s arm linked through hers as they promenaded down a rose petal strewn path cutting through the center of ten rows of folding chairs containing some two hundred guests.  And at the end of it was Carlson, turning away from her and striding across the grass.
.        She felt her future father-in-law’s arm tighten, but she remained undaunted, holding her smile as she made her way towards the minister, the ten bridesmaids and groomsmen who were now all looking back at her with poorly concealed panicked expressions.  Her eyes locked with best man Tyler’s and she tried to read in them any evidence that he had prior knowledge of what appeared to be the groom’s cold feet.  She was somewhat relieved to discover he looked just as surprised as she felt.  She even detected a slight shrug, a tilt of the head.
.        This shit is bananas.
.        Brennan deposited her safely before the minister, between Tyler and maid of honor Beatrice, her older sister, who leaned in and whispered, “What’s going on?”
.        Without cracking her smile and barely moving her lips, Mary Grace–Maggy to her sister’s Trixie–answered, “Not sure,” although she had more than a mere inkling of what may be afoot.
.        “Excuse me for a moment,” she said to Father O’Neil.  He nodded back at her, his lip turned down in the beginnings of a pout.
.        She hurried across the lawn after her fiance, chased by the not-so-murmuring murmurs of her guests, their tongues already clucking out the tunes of “poor girl” and “such a shame.”
.        She found him by the small lake that bordered the rear of his family’s estate, looking out over it as if he imagined there an ocean, a country on the other side of it to which he could escape rather than the backyard of the neighboring manor.  He heard her approach and turned his head slightly to speak over his shoulder.
.        “I’m so sorry.”
.        She said nothing, her heart hammering, waiting for him to continue.  She’d always known this was a possibility.  Honestly, an outcome more realistic than the ceremony and the actual marriage to follow, ’til death did they part.
.        Finally, he spoke the words that turned the release valve on the building pressure in her chest.
.        “There will be a wedding today.”
.        Again he paused, and for a moment she held her breath, expecting to hear, just not yours and mine.
.        “And I anticipate it will be everything we expect from it.  I suppose I just needed a moment to . . .”
.        “Reflect?”
.        He turned to her and smiled.  Oh, what a crushing smile he had.  Under different circumstances it would be the kind to uplift and fill with hope and the warmth of knowing that when directed at her no harm would come to her, no sadness could break her soul.  But things being as they were, tears sprang to her eyes, the kind that if she didn’t catch them now, they would threaten to pour to overflowing, drowning the very life she was joining with him to cultivate.
.        He reached out to her.  “Reflect with me,” he invited, and she accepted, placing her small hand in his large one, feeling it wrap around hers with comforting security.  She stood beside him, lightly resting her head against his broad shoulder, barely touching so as not to ruin the hairdo that had taken two women and three hours to perfect.
.        “What are we looking at?” she asked softly.
.        “The future.  I had to see it before I could do it.”
.        “And did you?  See it?”
.        “I did.”
.        “And can you?  Do it?”
.        He turned and looked down at her, and she closed her eyes, unable to read in his the unbearable truth.  Either way, she thought, I am not going to win.

*        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *

Nicklas Tarminsson had always tried to instill in his girls a certain work ethic, a sense of understanding that the amount received worked in tandem with the effort invested.  Of his three daughters, none of them applied this concept to their lives with more dedication and tenacity than Mary Grace.  As early as five she figured out that merely asking for a cookie may get her one or two; crawling into daddy’s lap and batting her eyelashes and pouting her rosebud lips granted her access to the cookie jar as well as a chilled glass of milk.  Such shenanigans were deemed inappropriate once a girl reached a certain age, however, and at nine years old the reward system that was in place for older sister Trixie was implemented for both Mary Grace and her identical twin, Madeleine.
.        “Identical” was the technical term and while strangers may have a hard time telling the sisters apart, Mary Grace’s face was more heart-shaped, Maddy’s oval.  And where Madeleine was more reserved and bookish, a quiet loner who could more times than not be found playing hymns on the piano, it was Mary Grace who convinced her to learn some show tunes, which she would sing along to her sister’s playing with unrestrained glee.  It didn’t matter that she couldn’t stay, or even get, on tune.  What she lacked in skill she more than made up for in volume and execution.  She knew every word, danced with flair, and even her reserved twin came alive when playing piano for Mary Grace.  For that was how Mary Grace saw it: she was the star, her sister an employee to do her bidding.
.        This training would come in handy later, when she needed to convince a boss how happy she was at her job, how brilliantly he maintained his employees.  Or when she was called upon to entertain clients, or garner the most tips from delivering plates of food along with cheeky smiles and snappy one-liners to drunken club-goers during the late night shift at Denny’s during her college years.  But at nine she and her sisters were designated certain household chores.  The list was written on a dry erase board secured to the back of the door of the dry goods closet in the kitchen.  Beside each task was a designated dollar amount and two blank lines, provided for the doer of the chore to fill in her name and date upon completion.  There were fifteen tasks; on a lazy week of Mary Grace’s her name would appear a mere eleven times.  The girls were also rewarded monetarily for school performance and for her entire academic career Mary Grace was in the top five percentile of her class.
.        Upon entering her teens Mary Grace began to see a problem with her father’s reward system as it pertained to men as opposed to women.  She was a fast learner who soon discovered her male co-workers were rewarded with raises and preferential scheduling for even temperance and diligence while the girls with the most lipstick and tightest clothing were awarded the same.  The awakening came during her year-long stint as a fast food worker, her first paying job outside the home.  There was a definite pecking order, with fat, pimply, unattractive girls in charge of such unsavory jobs as cleaning up the dining area, scrubbing the bathrooms, re-stocking straws and cups and condiment packets.  The okay-looking girls and lazy boys were next, working the drive thru and the counter.  Hard-working boys came next in the hierarchy, getting to work the back line, frying up the burgers and preparing the food, joking with each other and never having to put up with some customer’s attitude.  And the sexy girls had it best of all, getting paid to sit in the back room with the boss while he did paperwork or hanging outside the back door, smoking cigarettes and gossiping.  She made an occasional appearance on the floor, to eat a French fry or assist at any station of her choice during peak times.
.        Figuring this out gave her a definite leg up on women still armed with the false sense that intelligence and hard work would earn them a higher paycheck or status.  There was intelligence, and then there was smarts.  Mary Grace was equipped with both, and in the workplace she annihilated any woman who was misfortunate enough to have only one.  What smart women knew was that salaries were not only reflected in a bi-weekly check.  They were in quarterly and Christmas bonuses.  They were in jewelry boxes and company cars.  They were in expense reports and vacation time.  They were evident in the seminars held in Jamaica, Miami and Hawaii instead of those that took place in Des Moines, Little Rock and Toledo.  What intelligent women knew was that you didn’t have to screw a succession of bosses to gain entrance through the back door of the boys’ club.   You simply had to become the mistress of the most powerful one.
.        Then, at twenty-six, Mary Grace met Wyatt Proust.  Tall and chiseled with dirty blonde hair and a smile to match, Wyatt was the newest hot-shot lawyer to join the firm where she was employed as personal assistant to one of the partners, Kyle Sloane.  Sloane had even hired him, grooming him to become his protégée and eventual replacement come retirement.  Unfortunately for Kyle, within six months Wyatt Proust had replaced him in Mary Grace Tarminsson’s bed.
.        Mary Grace had never seen herself as the marrying type, or even the kind of woman who built up her man to the detriment of her own aspirations.  But soon her aspirations became being a wife to Wyatt, and seeing to it that he was the kind of husband who could furnish her with the type of lifestyle she was accustomed to having without him.  And within five years, she achieved just that.
.        At thirty-two, Mary Grace was living her ultimate life.  She was rich, beautiful, and in love.  Her husband had opened his own firm with a fellow ship-jumper from Sloane, Harris and Schvitza, Bernard Krantz.  There was a million-dollar home in Essex Fells, four cars, a condo at MGM Signature in Las Vegas, a townhouse in an exclusive Hilton Head community, annual vacations to exotic locales as well as weeks spent abroad.  Mary Grace’s daily activities consisted of planning and attending social events, booking hotels and travel, going to the gym, Pilates and yoga classes.  She got involved with the community, volunteering at women’s shelters and donating time and money to local elementary schools, providing books and computers to students, organizing and overseeing activities on school-sponsored career days.  She even attended church at her sister Madeleine’s parish once a month, loaning her voice to her twin’s piano playing as they lead the congregation in that service’s selection of hymns.  Yes, Mary Grace’s life was as perfect a life as one got in this world.  But Mary Grace hadn’t just gotten it; she’d earned it.  And that made it all the more valuable.  She assumed Wyatt was just as happy.  Until the day he came home from work and told her the one thing that was missing.  Children.
.        The subject of children had come up before they were married and Mary Grace had floated along since that conversation  under the impression that they were on the same page, one in a story that didn’t include children.  Bearing a child would mean surrendering her body for nine months and her life for the rest of it.  That was something Mary Grace was not willing to do.  Surrogates, Wyatt suggested.  Adoption.  Mary Grace refused all of it.  Children would mean division.  Division of time, money, energy.  Children would mean staying home to shape them into responsible, productive people while the ghost of her strolled a Fijian beach, mourning a long-dead life.  No.  Absolutely not.  No children.
.        Two years later Wyatt came home from the office and told her his personal assistant was carrying his baby and he was leaving Mary Grace to be with her.