The second book in the Aurora Teagarden series, 1992

In less than a year, I went to three weddings and one funeral. By late May (at the second wedding but before the funeral) I had decided it was going to be the worst year of my life.

The second wedding was actually a happy one from my point of view, but my smile muscles ached all the next day from the anxious grin I’d forced to my lips. Being the daughter of the bride felt pretty peculiar.

My mother and her fiancй strolled between the folding chairs arranged in her living room, ended up before the handsome Episcopalian priest, and Aida Brattle Teagarden became Mrs. John Queensland.

In the oddest way, I felt my parents had left home while I had stayed. My father and his second wife, with my half brother Phillip, had moved across the country to California in the past year. Now my mother, though she’d still be living in the same town, would definitely have new priorities.

That would be a relief.

So I beamed at John Queensland’s married sons and their spouses. One of the wives was pregnant-my mother would be a step grandmother! I smiled graciously at Lawrenceton’s new Episcopal priest, Aubrey Scott. I oozed goodwill at the real estate salespeople from my mother’s business. I grinned at my best friend, Amina Day, until she told me to relax.

“You don’t have to smile every second,” she whispered from one corner of her mouth, while the rest of her face paid respectful attention to the cake-cutting ceremony. I instantly rearranged my face into more sober lines, thankful beyond expression that Amina had been able to get a few days off from her job in Houston as a legal secretary. But later, at the reception, she told me my mother’s wedding wasn’t her only reason for coming back to Lawrenceton for the weekend.