Chapter 16

Charlie was seated at the desk in her office inside the house, watching Betsy fidget in her chair.

They had returned from the capital the previous day. It was necessary to get caught up on all of the work that had accumulated over the past few days. Fortunately, it hadn’t taken nearly as long as she expected to get caught up on the business aspects of Betsy’s life. The staff had taken care of nearly everything in their absence.

She looked down at Betsy’s calendar for a moment, flipped through a couple of pages, and then sighed. She was not looking forward to dealing with this issue. She knew from personal experience this was a particularly emotional time of a woman’s life. Sweet young women could turn into fire breathing dragons at the first sign of a problem.

She grimaced when she realized that she’d also be dealing with four mothers.

“What?” Betsy asked upon noticing the sour expression on Charlie’s face.

“When are you going to start planning your wedding?” Charlie asked.

“I don’t know. I suppose we ought to worry about it a couple of weeks before we have it. I mean, what’s there to plan?”

Charlie shook her head in dismay. She’d never met a woman who approached her wedding in such a lackadaisical manner. All of the brides she’d known in the past frantically pursued every little detail wanting to make sure that everything went off without a single problem.

“A lot of things have to be done before the wedding,” Charlie answered.

“What? Chuck and I show up, we say ‘I do, ‘ and then we hide out somewhere for a honeymoon,” Betsy said.

“What about the location?”

“We have it in the backyard.”

“Flowers?”

“We’ve got a lot of flowers in the backyard already.”

“Music.”

“What music?”

“To play before, during, and after the wedding.”

“We’ve got birds that will sing for us. In the worst case, we bring over the rooster and it will crow,” Betsy said with a smile.

Feeling the onset of a major headache, Charlie rubbed her forehead. It didn’t seem to help in staving it off. She felt a disaster looming on the horizon.

She asked, “Food?”

“We’ve got enough set aside.”

“Dress?”

Grinning, Betsy answered, “I’ll get a black leather barbarian babe outfit.”

“No!”

“Okay, I’ll wear my formal black robe. Chuck can wear his suit.”

“That’s better. Who will you invite?”

“Anyone who wants to show up,” Betsy answered shrugging her shoulders dismissively.

She knew that her parents would be there. The staff was already there. The handful of neighbors who might want to attend could walk over. Sally and Steve were around all of the time anyway. She figured a couple of people from the university might want to come, but she had two boats that could ferry them over to the island.

“We need a guest list,” Charlie said.

“Why?”

“We have to send out invitations and make arrangements for people to stay somewhere.”

“I’ll just tell everyone the date. They can show up if they want to come. My family will sleep in the backyard. Everyone else already has a place to stay.”

Although Betsy had attended William’s wedding, she had been a little girl at the time. Her best memory of that entire event was her swim in the shark tank. She had been oblivious to the fact that it had been a huge affair with thousands of guests. She hadn’t cared that there had been lots of individual parties to allow the bride and groom to interact with different groups of people who were important in one form or another.

She knew that the times were different and that would impact the guest list significantly. It wasn’t possible to have that kind of huge wedding in the current economic climate. All of the major airlines had gone out of business. Hotels, as well as other kinds of banquet facilities, had closed. The former powerful people who made up the rich and famous were no longer rich, although a few were famous now that their crimes had come to light.

Charlie asked, “What if it rains?”

“They’ll sleep in the living room.”

“What about people other than your family?”

“I suppose that the local people will stay locally.”

Charlie said, “We need to go about this in a more structured and organized manner.”

“Why?”

“Didn’t you ever dream about your wedding as a little girl?”

“No. I never thought I’d get married,” Betsy answered.

Charlie was stunned into silence, thinking about what Betsy had said. It was a sad commentary on her life, that she had grown up thinking she would never get married. Having lived with her while she was still hyperactive, she could understand how Betsy would believe that. It was draining being around someone who was constantly moving.

“Okay. I’ll just accept that it will be no more than a typical ‘Betsy’ party.”

“There’s a typical ‘Betsy’ party?” Betsy asked blankly.

“It’s just that whenever you have a social event, there’s no guest list, invitations are passed along by word of mouth, and whoever shows up, just shows up,” Charlie replied.

“That’s not true,” Betsy said.

“How about that Luau?”

“That’s just one time.”

“How about when all of those people showed up right after you were arrested?”

“That’s different.”

“How about when your mothers, Sally, Steve, and Sanders showed up that one time?”

“That wasn’t really a party.”

Charlie said, “I’ll give you that one. You’ve got to admit that people just show up without much planning involved.”

Betsy sighed. “I guess my wedding will be a typical Betsy party.”

“I can deal with that,” Charlie said knowing that she didn’t have much choice in the matter.

“Are we done planning my wedding?”

“Yes,” Charlie said. She mumbled, “If you can say that what we’ve got is a plan.”

“Great. That was easy,” Betsy said sounding relieved.

“For you maybe,” Charlie said.

She had a feeling that the closer the wedding date approached the more Betsy would want to get involved and that it wasn’t going to turn out well. Last minute plans at a time when the whole world was upside down, tended to fail in spectacular ways.

“At least I’m having better guidance with Sally’s wedding,” Charlie muttered.

Sally was getting married a month before Betsy. It was to be a small affair on the beach at noon. A guest list, small though it was, had been assembled, invitations sent out, and arrangements made for those who had to travel.

“How’s that going?” Betsy asked.

“It is going well,” Charlie answered.

“I can’t wait. I’m gonna be a bridesmaid,” Betsy said.

That was another thing that Betsy had never expected to happen. No one would have ever wanted her as a member of a wedding party, before. She had been a hyperactive woman who was bouncing around like a Superball tossed in a closet. She would have been a major distraction to an important occasion.

“Who is your bridesmaid?”

“Sally, of course,” Betsy answered.

“Well, at least that’s one question answered,” Charlie said, making a note of it.

“I’m going for a swim,” Betsy said racing out the door.

After a quick stop in her bedroom, Betsy ran to the kitchen on her way to the beach. Surprised, she came to a complete stop, and looked at the man having coffee with Alice. It had been quite a while since she had seen Alice looking so happy.

“Hello.”

“Hello, Betsy.”

The man replied and then turned his head so that he wasn’t staring at her. Although he should have been used to it; none the less, it was still disconcerting to talk with his mother’s employer, while the young woman was naked.

Betsy asked, “When did you get here?”

“About ten minutes ago.”

“Does Charlie know you’re here?”

“Not yet.”

“Is Penny here?”

“Yes.”

“Where is she?”

“She headed for the beach, right after we got here.”

“Tell Charlie that she’s got a week off,” Betsy said, then turned back towards the house as she added, “Never mind, I’ll tell her.”

Betsy popped over to Charlie’s office and shouted, “You’ve got the week off.”

“What?” Charlie asked looking up at Betsy.

“You’ve got the week off,” Betsy said, grinning broadly.

“Why?” Charlie asked, but Betsy wasn’t there to answer.

Charlie got up from behind her desk to track down Betsy. Her behavior was odder than usual and that demanded investigation. Charlie made it almost to be the back door before realizing that there was a man seated at the kitchen table. She turned and looked at him. She screamed.

Betsy, halfway to the beach, heard her and smiled.

“I think Charlie just had an orgasm.”

Betsy reached the beach and looked around for Penny. She didn’t see the woman, and guessed that she must have gone for a run along the beach. It dawned on her that this was the first time in ages where she had been by herself. She sat down under a palm tree to take stock of how things were going in her life. For the most part, her life was going well.

Her relationship with Chuck exceeded any expectations she’d ever had about having a man in her life. He took care of her as if she was a princess. They resonated on many levels including business, family, friends, and desires for the future. It was more than she had ever dreamed possible.

Her businesses were doing well. Farms were starting to harvest their crops, and produce was making its way to the processing plants at sufficient levels to assure a food supply for the year. It wasn’t her efforts alone that made it possible for a year’s supply of food to be available for the remaining population of the country. She owned a number of farms, but not that many.

She had been on the spot with needed materials for the processing plants to keep them operational. That had given her partial ownership in a lot of important companies in the food supply chain. Warehouses were refilling with food and distribution was returning to normal.

She felt like the trip to Washington had been a complete waste of time. She’d heard the President’s impromptu ‘State of the Union’ speech and had been underwhelmed by his vision for the country. She had a feeling that a lot of other people had that same impression. He had given that same old song and dance that it was necessary try to return things back to normal.

It seemed to her that her words to the President had fallen on deaf ears. She had believed that the threat of losing his job would make him face up to the situation. Instead, he had attempted to convince the American people that the problems weren’t nearly as bad as they might appear while offering up a scapegoat for whatever inconvenience people might be experiencing at the moment. It was a stupid strategy.

Congress was doing a better job of addressing the issues associated with the crisis after her little speech, although it wasn’t doing that much better than the President. Part of the reason for their better response was that many congressmen and congresswomen were up for re-election. They were desperate in trying to come up with some legacy that would convince voters to return them to the capital. The individuals whose seats in the Senate or House of Representatives were secure, embraced the cause of fixing the problem as little more than a typical exercise in politics. Still, it was too little and too late.