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try on wedding dresses,” Pauline said. “To try them
     on, that was all, to see what else was out there, to see if there was anything that
     suited her better than Beth’s dress—and she wouldn’t go. She wouldn’t even
try.
”
    “I’m sure she looks lovely in Beth’s dress,” Doug said.
    “You know,” Pauline said, “I thought it was a good thing that you were widowed instead
     of divorced. I was
glad
there wasn’t an ex-wife I had to see at family functions or that you were paying
     alimony to. But guess what? Beth is more intrusive than any ex-wife could have been.”
    “Intrusive?” Doug said. “Define intrusive.”
    “She’s everywhere. Especially with this wedding. She is a palpable presence in the
     room. She is an untouchable standard by which the rest of us have to be judged. She
     has taken on sainthood. Saint Beth, the dead mother, whose memory grows more burnished
     every day.”
    “Enough,” Doug said.
    “I just can’t compete,” Pauline said. “I’ll never come first, not with the kids, not
     with you. You are, all of you Carmichaels, obsessed with her.”
    Doug thought that hearing such words might anger him, but he merely found them validating.
     “Listen,” he said. “I don’t think you should come to Nantucket this weekend.”
    “What?”
Pauline said.
    “I guess what I’m really trying to say is that I don’t
want
you to come to Nantucket this weekend. It’s my daughter’s wedding, and I think it
     would be best if I went alone.” Doug heard Pauline inhale, but he didn’t wait around
     for what she was going to say. He left the bedroom, shutting the door behind him.
    Down the stairs, through the kitchen. His cell phone was on the counter. He snatched
     it up and saw the two meager lamb chops sitting in a pool of bloody juices.
    He wasn’t going to eat them. He was going out for pizza.

THE NOTEBOOK, PAGE 6
The Wedding Party
    I assume you will ask Margot to be your Matron of Honor. The two of you have such
     a close relationship, and whereas at times I worried about the large age gap between
     you and the older three, I think that in Margot’s case, it was for the best. She was
     your sister, yes, but she was also a surrogate mother at times, or something between
     a sister and a mother, whatever that role might be called. Remember how she did your
     makeup for the ninth-grade dance? You wanted green eye shadow and she gave you green
     eye shadow, somehow making it look pretty good. And remember how she drove you down
     to William & Mary your sophomore year so that Daddy and I could celebrate our thirtieth
     anniversary on Nantucket? Margot is the most capable woman you or I willever know. And to butcher the old song: Anything I can do, she can do better.
    I assume you will also ask Finn. The two of you have been inseparable since birth.
     I used to call you my “twins.” Not sure that Mary Lou Sullivan appreciated that, but
     the two of you were adorable together. The matching French braids, the playground
     rhymes you used to sing with the hand clapping. Miss Mary Mac Mac Mac, all dressed
     in black, black, black.
    As far as your brothers are concerned, I would ask Kevin to do a reading, and ask
     Nick to serve as an usher, assuming your Intelligent, Sensitive Groom-to-Be doesn’t
     have nine brothers or sixteen guys who served in his platoon who can’t be ignored.
     Kevin has that wonderful orator’s voice. I swear he is the spiritual descendant of
     Lincoln or Daniel Webster. And Nick will charm all the ladies as he escorts them to
     their seats. Obviously.
    The other person who would be terrific as an usher is Drum Sr. Of course if Margot
     is your Matron of Honor, she might need Drum to watch the boys.
    And then there’s your father, but we’ll talk about him later.

MARGOT
    I t felt so good to be back in the house of her childhood summers that Margot forgot
     about everything else for a minute.
    The house was two and a half blocks off Main Street, on the