Free The Love Season by Elin Hilderbrand

work my parents should be doing. The dirty work.”
    “You’re being kind of hard on them,” Renata said.
    “Please don’t take their side against me,” Action said. She stood up and grabbed the pole next to the door, as though threatening to step off the train at the wrong station. “I wouldn’t be able to bear it.”
     
    When Renata got back from her run, she was hot and dying of thirst. She stood inside the refrigerator and poured herself half a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice cut with half a glass of water. The sweat on her skin dried up and she shivered. She gulped her juice and poured more.
    On the marble countertop next to the fridge was a list written out in Suzanne Driscoll’s extravagant script. At first, Renata thought it was a list for Nicole—the lobsters, salad greens, and whatnot. But then Renata caught sight of her own name on the list and she snapped it up.
    Priorities: Pick date! Check Saturdays in May/June ’07 .
    Place: New York—Pierre or Sherry Neth .
    (Nantucket in June? Check yacht club.)
    Invites: Driscoll, 400. Knox side?
    Call Father Dean at Trinity .
    Reception—sit-down? absolutely no chicken!
    Band—6-piece min., call BV for booking agent .
    Renata—dress: VW? Suki R?
    Also: flowers—order from K. on Mad .
    Cake—Barbara J.’s daughter-in-law, chocolate rasp, where did she get it?
    Favors—Jordan almonds? Bonsai trees?
    Honeymoon—call Edgar at RTW Travel, Tuscany, Cap Jaluca
    “Okay,” Renata said. Her breath was still short from the run. This was a list for the wedding , her wedding. Suzanne’s list for Renata’s wedding. A little premature organization from a woman who was, quite clearly, a control freak, right down to the Jordan almonds.
    Renata looked around the kitchen. She was in foreign territory. This was nothing like the kitchen in the house where she grew up, which had a linoleum floor, a refrigerator without an ice machine, and a spice rack that Renata had made in her seventh-grade industrial arts class. (How many times had Renata begged her father to remodel? But no—this was how the kitchen had looked when Renata’s mother was alive; that was how it would stay.) Nor was the Driscolls’ kitchen anything like the Colpeters’ kitchen in the Bleecker Street brownstone. The Driscolls’ kitchen was a kitchen from a lifestyle magazine: marble countertops, white bead board cabinets with brushed chrome fixtures in the shape of starfish, a gooseneck bar sink in the island, a rainwood bowl filled with ripe fruit, copper pots and pans gleaming on a rack over the island. Renata knew she was supposed to feel impressed, but instead she decided this kitchen lacked soul. It didn’t look like a kitchen anyone ever cooked in or ate in. There was no sign that human beings lived here—except for the list.
    Something about the Driscolls’ kitchen in general—and the list in particular—made Renata angry and uncomfortable. Sick, even, like she might spew the juice she’d drunk too quickly into the bar sink. There was a telephone over by the stainless-steel dishwasher. Renata dialed Cade on his cell.
    Three rings. He was sailing. Can you hear me now? Renata looked through the glass of the double doors that led to the deck, the lawn, a little beach, the water. Sailboats of all shapes and sizes bobbed on the horizon. Renata might have better luck shouting to him, Your mother is already planning our wedding! She’s calling booking agents! She’s arranging for our honeymoon in Tuscany!
    The ringing stopped. It sounded like someone had picked up. But then a crackle, a click. No reception out at sea. Renata hung up and called back. She was shuttled right to Cade’s voice mail.
    “It’s me,” she said. Her voice sounded tiny and meek, like a girl’s voice, a girl too young and incompetent to plan her own wedding. A girl without a mother to help her. “I’m at the house. Call me, please.”
    Because, really, the nerve! Renata hung up. Here, then, was one of life’s