Chapter 41 — Katerina

"So, are you having a bridal shower?" Abigail asked me, her blue eyes gleaming with intrigue. "Because I have a few ideas—"

"As do I," Georgia chimed in.

I was slowly beginning to sense that all of Alexander's female relatives that I knew were perhaps overly headstrong, pushy, and accustomed to getting their way in numerous aspects of life for several different reasons: charm, wealth, beauty. Impermanent, inconsequential things in the grand scheme—but so very important in this temporal realm.

"If you consent to throw me one, I would tolerate attending it..." I ventured politely. "But I would refuse to do any planning, of any sort."

It was true. I just wanted to coast by the days until my wedding, spending time with my current and future family members. I didn't want to have the shadow of worry hanging over me about last-minute planning details, or dieting to fit in my wedding dress, or any of those typical bride things that were so common on TV shows. I was content only to pass the time with those I loved and those I was growing to love. Which was why—and especially after the nightmare of an engagement party—I certainly didn't want to have a bridal shower.

"So that's a no," Sylvia stated, her voice sounding strangely muffled as she was hanging upside down from the bunk bed.

We had decided to take a girls' trip, seeing as it was perhaps one of the last free weekends I would have before I was required to attend numerous social functions that New York society, and Kiersten Harper more specifically, obliged me to. Our hotel was not five-star; it wasn't even four-star, and it had been furnished with two bunk beds. Abigail and Georgia shared one, while Sylvia and I took the other. The resulting atmosphere was rather reminiscent of being at sleep-away camp. The two native New Yorkers were, despite being unused to roughing it, good sports about staying in the small hotel room with its fluorescent lighting, ugly linoleum, unusual setup, and box-shaped television that was likely as old as I was.

"Then what should we do, while we're here in the land of amore, wine, and endless pasta?" Abigail pondered, drawing the curtains to reveal a view of Lake Como at midnight, water glittering and the vista as beautiful as it was in the pictures that showed it at daytime.

I wondered idly if there was ever a time when the scenery here wasn't beautiful. We'd only arrived a couple of hours ago, around 11, and had decided it was too late to go out—but not, apparently, too late to go to sleep, because here we were, staying up and talking. It was like sleep-away camp, I mused; if sleep-away camp were set in a charming, three-star bed and breakfast.

"We could go swimming," Sylvia said, righting herself. From my perspective by the window, I could see the blood rush from her face though it remained flushed and ruddy.

"In the lake?" Georgia stood up, clapping her hands. "Now you're talking!"

Abigail frowned. "I'm pretty sure that's illegal."

"No, it's just polluted," I corrected her—though I shuddered at the thought of being dragged out of the lake in a bathing suit, while in a foreign country, by policemen speaking an unknown language. "Swimming in there would be a nightmare. I think most people just…yacht or whatever. They just do rich people things."

"Shopping, eating…we could take the train down to Milan," Sylvia suggested from where she was lying on her front now, scrolling through her phone. "Ooh, do you guys want to take a boat to Bellagio tomorrow?"

"That..." I cupped a hand over my face as I yawned. "Sounds like a great idea. So does going to bed about…now."

My words apparently carried some sort of authority, either to my status as the oldest by a tiny margin or by being the bride, because the girls descended into a flurry of activity. Filling the small dresser with clothes, putting the suitcases in the equally tiny closet, taking turns in the bathroom. Around one o'clock, everyone was sound asleep. Everyone, that was, except me.

As I lay awake, watching the moonlight spilling in through a crack in the drapes that wouldn't close properly, listening to Abigail snoring and Georgia roll over on the mattress with its freaky springs, it hit me. I was getting married in a month and a half. My entire life's trajectory was about to change—although, that wasn't quite right. Every Christian's life trajectory was to serve God and carry out His will. I may have been doing those things differently before this engagement—but ultimately this marriage was God's 'good, pleasing and perfect will' for me. His and not my own. It was less of a shift and more of a continuity. Simply another bend in the path that He had laid out for me, one I hadn't realized but needed to accept, to embrace anyways.

And I had…I certainly had. So, what was this sense of anxiety in my chest that told me something was wrong?

+

"Rise and shine, girls," Georgia exclaimed at exactly nine-thirty.

Sylvia groaned and nearly fell off the bed; I could see her dark hair splaying over the side of the top bunk before she righted herself and climbed down the ladder. She landed groggily on her feet, and I decided that seven hours of sleep was probably enough to get me through what would be a leisurely day of sightseeing and general relaxation. We all dressed in a hurry and emerged looking eerily similar: each of us wore sundresses and sandals, although not without a few differences.

Mine was white lace, collared, short-sleeved, and paired with a pair of chunky-heeled sandals. Abigail had gone the more carefree route, donning a peacock-blue frock with spaghetti straps and a pair of matching flip-flops. Sylvia's was rather ordinary: plain, nautical-stripes and red open-toed pumps. Georgia was wearing in my opinion the most daring outfit, though of course being a model, she could pull off the mash-up of burgundy straps and ruffles that turned out to be not a flamenco dress but one that she had been forced to wear by a designer.

Or, in her words: "I'm getting paid to be photographed by the paparazzi wearing this hot mess, please don't judge me."

None of us judged her, though I did not doubt that a fair amount of passersby did as we left the hotel in search of brunch, giving her strange looks. Or it simply could have been that they recognized her from Vogue Italia. I brushed aside all thoughts of trouble and foreboding in this beautiful weather, with good friends by my side. Surely it was nothing. Nothing more than the typical cold feet experienced by any bride so close to her wedding day—nothing more than a sense that this was too good to be true. That in some way, there had to be a trick; there had to be someone who would pull the rug out from beneath my feet to leave me out in the cold, and utterly alone.

"Want to talk?" Abigail queried, coming up beside me, flip-flops tapping on the cobblestones. Sylvia and Georgia were a few feet ahead of us, linking arms and chattering like best friends. "You've been kinda quiet. I mean—you just seem a little out of it, that's all."

"I'm fine." I made myself smile. "Just tired, is all. I didn't get much sleep last night. It must be the jet lag."

She nodded. "Right, of course! The jetlag. Well, just remember that I'm here if you need anything. Now come on—we're in Italy! Let's have some fun."

I laughed as she dragged us along to a gelato stand, and ordered in, what sounded to my ears, fluent Italian for the four of us. The problem with this was that I had no idea what she had asked for exactly and had to trust that gelato al cioccolato was chocolate ice cream and not some kind of disgusting substance that she had ordered as a prank. This led to a conversation about what were possibly the most revolting ice cream flavours we had ever tried. Georgia had charcoal ice cream as a dare and found it tolerable. Abigail and Sylvia agreed that either garlic or liquorice topped the list, which I half-heartedly took part in.

When the gelato was finished and euros handed over, it was thankfully just one scoop of chocolate, another pistachio, and the third one of lemon. An odd mixture, yet it tasted delicious. Though it wasn't the ice cream that put a cold feeling in my chest, nor was it the chill wind that made me wish for a shrug. No, it was the fact that despite all we had faced, all that Alexander and I had gone through together…that there were greater, more imminent struggles to come.

And my suspicions were confirmed when the phone rang.