Wedding Bell Blunders: A Freshly Baked Cozy Mystery

nice. Can’t you just picture the Christmas tree placed up against those windows,” he said, pointing to the French doors.
“We can’t put it right up against them. We won’t be able to use the French doors if we do that.”
He shrugged. “Why do you want to use the French doors in the wintertime? I can see that we’ll need to use them during the summer to go outside to barbecue, but when it’s snowing, we don’t need to use those doors.”
I shook my head. “No, we’re going to get the biggest Christmas tree we can find, and we’re going to put it in the middle of this room. It will be the centerpiece. We need to be able to use the French doors to go outside and build snowmen when we have grandchildren.” I was looking ahead. My kids weren’t even married yet. Alec had been married once, but he had never had children, so my future grandchildren were also going to be his.
He chuckled. “All right, whatever you say. I just don’t want to be called Grandpa. Let’s go get the rest of the boxes.”
I laughed. “I guess they can call you Papa.”
“We’ll see,” he muttered.
We headed back out into the rain. Alec’s SUV was filled with boxes from my house. We were finally doing it. We were moving into our new house. Or rather, I was moving into our new house. I’m an old-fashioned girl, and I told Alec that I wasn’t going to live with him before marriage, and I meant it.
Packing up my old house was sad. My husband Thaddeus had been gone for a long time now, but every corner of that house reminded me of him. As I was packing things up, the memories overtook me. The things we had done in that house, the things we had said to one another. So many memories. My kids had been born in that house, and now I was leaving it behind. I swallowed back the lump that was forming, along with the memories, and I grabbed two more cardboard boxes and hurried with them inside the house, slipping on the hardwood floor. “Whoa!”
Alec chuckled. “Are you all right?”
“I’m all right,” I said as I regained my footing and headed to the ballroom, placing these boxes with the others.
“You better be careful on these wet floors. We should have brought a throw rug to put in front of the door. I didn’t even think about it.”
I nodded. “I didn’t think about it either. It will be all right. We’ll just be careful.”
“So what do you think? When do I get to move in here?” He looked at me, one eyebrow raised.
I smiled. “After I get moved in.”
I headed back out to the SUV to get more boxes.
“Really? You’re going to let me move in with you?” he asked, following me outside.
I chuckled and shook my head. “No. Or at least, not until we get married.”
He groaned and rolled his eyes. “Okay then, when do we get married?” He picked up a big box that I knew was filled with books, and he grunted. “What did you do, pack all the bricks from the backyard?”
I shook my head. “Don’t be silly. Those are just books.”
He snorted. “Don’t you believe in ebooks?” He hefted the box, groaning, and headed toward the house.
“Of course I believe in ebooks, but I still love my physical books.” I picked up two light boxes and followed behind him. “Don’t you miss the smell of books?”
He nodded. “Sometimes. I miss going into brick and mortar bookstores too. Maybe when we get moved, we should take a drive by the one over in Bangor and spend a couple of hours looking through the stacks.”
“That’s a great idea,” I said. “Especially with this cold, rainy weather, it would be fun to bring some books back here and read in front of the fire.”
He nodded, and we headed into the ballroom and set the boxes down with the others. He straightened up.
“Seriously, Allie, when are we getting married?” he looked at me, eyebrow raised again.
I took a deep breath. And then I looked at the weather outside the French doors. The rain was coming down harder, and it was freezing cold. We had discussed having a beach wedding, and that was what I had in mind. But it was the end of March, and I knew we weren’t going to have real beach weather for a couple more months. If we were lucky, we would have it at the beginning of May, but May weather on the coast of Maine could be tricky. One day you’d have a clear, pretty day, and the next day it would look like it did it today. I turned to him. “I don’t know. I thought we were going to have a beach wedding?”
He shrugged. “Does it really matter? I don’t care if we have a beach wedding, or if we just go down to city hall and get married there.”
“Really? You would get married at city hall?”
He nodded. “Sure. Why not? We’ve been married before, and you said you didn’t want the big white wedding dress and the fancy formal sit-down dinner. So why not go to city hall and get married there?”
I sighed. “No, I don’t need a great big wedding. But I think getting married at city hall is going to be a little disappointing for me.”
He nodded. “I figured as much. So what do you want to do? And why do we have to wait? We don’t need the beach wedding.”
I nodded and then turned and headed back to get more boxes from the SUV. He was right, of course. We didn’t have to have a beach wedding. It was just something that had crossed my mind last summer. Now I wished we had