But fate intervened. (I read that sentence in a book once. Isn't it great?) Mom and Jeff and I moved back here, and in no time, Mary Anne and I not only met and became friends, but figured out that our parents had been in love years ago. We reintroduced them and - zap! They started dating and today they'd gotten married. Finally. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if they'd gotten married after high school. For one thing, Mary Anne and Jeff and I wouldn't be here, at least not in these particular bodies. That was a weird thought.

I guess you probably want to know a little about the wedding. Well, since it was the second one for both Mom and Richard, they'd kept it simple and small. Mom didn't even wear a wedding gown, just a gorgeous new dress. They got married in the chapel of a local church and didn't have any attendants. (Mary Anne and I were awfully disappointed. We'd wanted to be bridesmaids.) The guests were three friends of my brother's (the Pike triplets), Mary Anne's and my friends from the Babysitters Club (I'll tell you more about the BSC later), some work friends of Mom's and Richard's, and my grandparents. Mary Anne's and my friends (just so you know) were: Kristy Thomas, Stacey McGill, Jessi Ramsey, Mallory Pike (she's the triplets' sister), Claudia Kishi, and Logan Bruno. Even though the wedding ceremony was short, it was pretty traditional. There were flowers at the altar, Mom and Richard said vows and exchanged rings, Richard kissed my mother on the lips in front of absolutely everybody, and Mom even wore something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue.

Now we were at this tres swank French restaurant called Chez Maurice. "We" is all the people I just told you about. We had had a sumptuous dinner (actually it was lunch, and I had had trouble finding a good vegetarian dish on the menu - Mom and Jeff and I are health nuts), my mother had just tossed her bouquet (standing backward on her chair and throwing it over her shoulder), and Mary Anne had just caught it.