My cousin Astrid served as my maid of honor. We were very close, but she tended to be flighty, and in the days leading up to my wedding she was hormonal and cranky and more concerned about the pimple on her chin than anything else. I was worried I had chosen the wrong person-my cousin Linda was more steadfast-but on the day of, Astrid shone brightly, I am happy to say.

Here are some thoughts on how you can help your sister on the day of the wedding:

Maintain her bouquet. Hold it for her when it needs holding. Keep track of it when she sets it down.

Have Kleenex at the ready, an emery board, dental floss, Band-Aids, tampons, eyeliner, mascara, and lipstick.

Know the schedule.

Make sure she always has a glass of champagne.

Make sure she eats! I didn’t get a single bite of food at my reception at the Quilted Giraffe, something I’ve always regretted.

Accompany her to the ladies’ room.

Tell her she’s beautiful when she smiles. You both are. My beautiful girls.

MARGOT

To talk to Edge alone, Margot had to wait for Rosalie to excuse herself for the ladies’ room. This turned out to be a test of endurance. Rosalie was downing glass after glass of champagne, but she hung stalwartly at Edge’s side. Her bladder must have been the size of a volleyball, but as Margot watched her, she seemed untroubled. She was more attractive than she had seemed in the church, which irked Margot.

Rosalie was quick and lively; she was a woman who oozed confidence and was comfortable in her own body. Her face was freckled, but her breasts, which were pushed up and out to lovely advantage by the bodice of her dress, were all roses and cream. Margot could barely keep her eyes off Rosalie’s sweet and luscious bosom, so Edge must have been mesmerized. Of course, Rosalie hadn’t breast-fed three children. Rosalie had one of those sexy-gravelly voices, which was perhaps the thing Margot envied the most. She had always yearned for a sexy-gravelly voice but instead had been given a voice that sounded camp-counselor chipper on a good day, and shrill and strident on a bad day. Margot couldn’t stand to hear herself recorded; she only liked her voice when she had a scratchy sore throat or had spent all night screaming at a rock concert, and her rock concert days now were few and far between. As a placement person, Margot knew how important voice was. After all, you not only had to look at someone eight to ten hours a day in the office but also had to listen to them. Rosalie had been blessed with a voice that was a cross between Anne Bancroft and Demi Moore.

Advantage Rosalie. Margot couldn’t deny it.

As the maid of honor, Margot was meant to chat and socialize; she was meant to make sure that Jenna had a full glass of champagne at all times and that Jenna ate a canapé from one out of every three trays presented to her. But Margot’s constant surveillance of Edge and Rosalie distracted her from these duties. He did see her, right? He knew she was here, he realized he couldn’t spend the whole night ignoring her, he would have to explain himself.

Margot stood in line at the bar with Ryan’s boyfriend, Jethro, who looked marginally less uncomfortable and out of place than he had the night before. Margot wondered if it was difficult to be openly gay, citified, and black at a WASP wedding on an island thirty miles out to sea.

She said, “What did you think of the ceremony?”

He said, “Well, it wasn’t without intrigue.”

Margot wondered for a second if he was talking about Edge and Rosalie-but how would Ryan’s boyfriend from Chicago know about that? Then Margot realized Jethro was referring to Pauline’s wild exodus from the church. She chastised herself for being so self-absorbed.

Margot said, “The Carmichaels are always good for some drama.” She hadn’t asked her father why Pauline left the church-partly because she felt she knew too much already, but mostly because she had been focused on only one thing, and that was Edge and Rosalie.

“It just as easily could have been the Graham family,” Jethro said. “Trust.”

Their turn at the bar came. Margot ordered three glasses of Sancerre-one for Jenna, two for herself-and then she was faced with the question of how to carry three glasses without spilling one down the front of her grasshopper green dress. Jethro offered to help, but he had three drinks himself-Ketel One and tonics for himself and Ryan, and a Heineken for Stuart.

Margot said, “Oh, I’ll manage,” and she held the three glasses in a balanced triangle with both hands and tottered through the grass in her dyed-to-match pumps toward Jenna, who was talking to her gaggle of young teacher friends. Margot handed off the wine and said, “You eating?”

One of the young teachers-Francie or Hilly-said, “I just made sure she had a chicken skewer.”

Jenna beamed at Margot. “Isn’t it beautiful?” she said. “Isn’t it perfect?”

Margot took a breath and willed herself not to glance over at the proposal bench, where Edge and Rosalie were standing, talking to Kevin. Was it beautiful? Yes. The sky was brilliant blue, the sun had achieved a mellow slant, the tent was a masterpiece of natural elegance. There was a jazz combo playing now-four members of the sixteen-piece band that would start up after dinner-and the music floated on the air along with chatter and perfume. Waiters passed trays of champagne, along with chicken satay and lobster fritters and blue-cheese-stuffed figs wrapped in bacon and mini-beef Wellingtons. The local Nantucket legend, Spanky, had set up his raw bar in an old wooden dory. This was where Margot parked herself to spy on Edge. She would double-fist her wine and suck down oysters and flirt with Spanky-all the while, her surveillance camera would be trained on Edge and Rosalie. They were still talking to Kevin and might remain there all evening. Kevin never shut up.

Margot ate three oysters. She was joined, temporarily, by Stuart’s father, Jim, who attacked the pile of jumbo shrimp rather indecorously.

Jim said, “Hell of a party.”

Margot faked a smile and slurped another oyster. “Mmmhmmm.” No other response seemed to be required of her, thank God. She needed Jim Graham to stay right where he was, shielding Margot and keeping her safe from any conversation that might cause her to miss her chance with Edge.

Rosalie’s glass was empty, Margot could see, as was Edge’s. But then the girl with the champagne came by, and Rosalie accepted a glass with a smile, and Margot read Edge’s lips as he ordered a Scotch.

Margot’s heart cracked open a little bit more. Margot kept a bottle of Glenmorangie in her liquor cabinet at home for the evenings when Edge stopped by.

Rosalie had a steel-reinforced bladder. She outlasted Margot; Margot had to go. She bypassed the elegant portable bathrooms set up in a discreet corner of the yard beyond Alfie, and instead went into the house and headed up the stairs to her own bathroom.

On the second floor, Margot heard voices, then a rhythmic banging. Margot stopped. The noise was coming from Jenna’s room. Finn and Nick. Margot nearly shouted at the top of her lungs. GROSS! But she refrained, slamming the door to the bathroom to make her point instead.

She hiked up the skirt of her grasshopper green dress and peed, holding her forehead in her hands. The banging continued against the wall behind her, and she heard Finn cry out in ecstasy, and Margot thought, All right, I’ve had enough. She washed her hands and stared at her reflection in the dingy medicine cabinet mirror.

I’ve had enough!

But she wasn’t sure what that meant, and she didn’t know what to do.

Suddenly she heard her mother’s voice. She knew it was her mother’s voice and not her mimicking her mother’s voice because Margot did not like what the voice said.

It said, Get back out there, honey. Pronto.

A glass bell sounded: dinner was served. Everyone sat except for the wedding party; they lined up so that they could be introduced by the bandleader and then take their places at the head table. Everyone in the wedding party had been asked to divulge one “interesting thing” about themselves to be read aloud by the bandleader. Margot was introduced as follows:

And now, ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for our maid of honor, who has taken surfing vacations on four continents-Margot… Carmichael!

Polite applause. Margot wasn’t crazy about the surfing vacation answer because all those vacations had been taken with Drum Sr., and at least half the people in this tent knew it. But the word interesting had presented a challenge because the things that filled Margot’s days-work placing executives in major corporations, raising three kids as a single parent, conducting a clandestine relationship with her father’s law partner-weren’t interesting. Margot would have liked to have said that she played classical guitar or spoke five languages, but neither was true. The fact was, she didn’t do anything out of the ordinary, she didn’t have any skills-except for surfing. And although her surfing had always been eclipsed by Drum Sr.’s surfing, she had ridden waves in Bali and Uruguay and La Jolla and the north shore of Oahu and the frigid waters of South Africa. There was a picture hanging in her father’s office of Margot in her wet suit with her dark hair slicked back and her face tanned-somehow the Asian sun had not brought out her freckles-crouched on her board in the tube of a left-hand break off the tiny Balinese island of Nusa Lembongan. Edge had once admitted to being captivated by that picture of Margot, even before the two of them started seeing each other.

You look powerful, dangerous almost, like a jaguar ready to pounce, Edge had said. It’s incredibly sexy.

That had been one reason why Margot chose to mention the surfing. She had wanted Edge to recall that picture of her.

Margot sauntered across the dance floor like a game show contestant toward her seat, thinking, Smile brightly! Don’t trip! Shoulders back, head high!

She couldn’t help herself. She sneaked a look at Edge, who was sitting next to Rosalie at her father’s table.

He winked.

Margot made it to the life preserver of her seat as the bandleader introduced “Our best man-who scored a perfect sixteen hundred on his SATs and still didn’t get into Princeton-Ryan Connelly Graham!”

Margot thought, He winked! She didn’t know whether to be thrilled or indignant. Indignant, she thought. How dare he wink! But thrilled won out. He had noticed her!

Then a thought broke through Margot’s despair. Maybe Edge had brought Rosalie to this wedding as a front to throw Doug off their trail. Margot felt sweet relief, followed by a glimmer of actual happiness. Of course that was why Edge had winked at her like a conspirator. He must have assumed she knew that was why he’d brought Rosalie. Rosalie was a straw candidate. Margot wondered where they were staying. Had they gotten two rooms? Oh, please, Margot thought. Please let that be the case. Please let this be a huge misunderstanding on her part.

She drank red wine with dinner. Did she eat? She and Jenna had set up no fewer than six tastings to come up with the menu of field greens with dried cherries, goat cheese, and candied pecans, the choice of seared rib eye or grilled swordfish, the baked potato with choice of decadent toppings, the pan-roasted asparagus with lemon and mint-and yet Margot could only recall eating a single perfectly toasted salty-sweet pecan and one bite of rosy, juicy meat dragged through béarnaise sauce. Ryan was seated next to her on one side, and Jethro on the other. Ryan was a conversational dynamo, he could uphold his own side and Margot’s side with minimum output from Margot, and whereas Margot flogged herself for not doing a better job-Ryan had once confided that he thought Margot had ten times the personality of Jenna-she was determined to constantly monitor the situation between Edge and Rosalie.

They seemed so happy, Margot thought, that they had to be acting. Definitely acting. This was all a game.

And then, just as the dinner plates were cleared and Ryan pulled a sheet of paper from his breast pocket on which he had written his best man’s toast, Rosalie pushed back from the table and stood. Edge stood also, and for a second Margot feared they were leaving. But Edge was only standing to be polite, and the crack in Margot’s heart widened. When Edge had taken Margot to dinner at Picholine, which had been the most sublime and grown-up dinner date of her life, he had stood when Margot excused herself for the ladies’ room, and then stood again upon her return. It was one of the fine, old-fashioned, charming things about him-elegant manners, respect for the gender.