Lemon Berry

Look.

My dad is loaded. Like, loaded loaded.

Like leave your wife for a woman who introduces herself as ‘Brandi with an I’, pay the housekeeper to keep her mouth shut, low friends in high places loaded.

That’s not what he did. Not quite. My parents’ marriage ended organically, the result of a woman who was too much like her mother and a man who thought his deadbeat father had a couple of good ideas.

Fine. Whatever. I didn’t really like it. Dad was gone for a while. He came back. Paid for my therapy. I guess we’re good. I’m an only child. And I’m not above having someone try to buy my love.

And her name wasn’t Brandi. It was Sarah. Simple, unassuming, twenty-three years younger, Sarah.

Sarah, despite endless hours on the treadmill, wasn’t very fast. But her extensive time in Pilates made her strong.

Surprisingly strong.

The last thing I remember is a flash of a pearl barrette shoved into a highlighted updo.

Shit, she didn’t even change out of the wedding dress?

Holy crap. Am I back at the venue?

What is it with rich people and getting married on freakin’ farms?

Was my dad in the limo? Maybe he has better luck than I do.

The rope around my wrists starts to burn. As I shift, trying to wriggle free, a bobby pin with a broken tip stabs me in the top of the head. It’d been bothering me all day but I didn’t fidget with it lest her majesty– typical Sarah suddenly turned Bridezilla– would have bitten my head off. I saw what happened to the caterer. The florist. The priest.

Dad lectured me enough for a lifetime. I didn’t need one from a woman barely older than me.

What happens when a caterer, a florist, and a priest walk into a wedding? They get shit on for three hours and then go home.

What happens to the groom’s only daughter when she decides to be civil? She gets kidnapped and wakes up bound and gagged in a barn.

I shake my head violently, releasing my sweat-soaked strands from their prison of hairspray and bobby pins. The sea-foam silk of my dress (the one that Sarah insisted I wear) catches the broken bobby. I contort my spine and grab the pin with a single crooked finger. I stab it into the middle of the knot and wriggle my hands back and forth.

My therapist told me I should take up yoga. Said it would be relaxing, cathartic. I thought she was being figurative when she said a good routine saved her life.

I am nearly free when I hear the barn door squeak. Sarah walks in, freed from her wedding dress and now in a leather bodysuit.

Leather? Really?

Was the murderous younger wife not enough of a cliche?

She goes over her evil plan. My dad, the will. He gives me everything, she gets nothing. He made her sign a pre-nup so this is the only way. Blah Blah Blah.

I knew Sarah was basic, but I wouldn’t have expected her to have such a live-laugh-love energy when it came to homicide. She owns at least three shirts with some variation of “Messy hair, don’t care” and this, this is the woman trying to kill for money?

The door squeaks again. Dad walks into the barn, still in his tuxedo. I push the tulle (who uses tulle to gag someone?) stuffed in my mouth out with my tongue.

“Dad! You have to get me out of here, Sarah is psycho-”

“John, I did it for us. Your daughter, she doesn’t appreciate you, you’ve said this so many times-”

Dad looks at me, looks at Sarah.

“You know, kid. You are kind of ungrateful.”

“You’ve got to be fuc-”

“-And you’d probably give half of it to your mother anyway….”

“You CAN’T be serious-”

“Well, Sarah, my dear. Let’s get this over with.”

Sarah scoffs with incredulity, and throws her perfectly toned arms around my father’s neck. The two kiss deeply. I wriggle violently and finally free myself of the rope tied around my wrists. As my father and evil stepmother begin to play the most gratuitous game of tonsil hockey in existence, I make a break for the door. Sarah, with her freakish prowess, catches me by the arm and pulls me onto the floor of the barn. She climbs on top of me and wraps her hands around my throat, her perfectly painted acrylics digging deeply into my skin. The edges of my vision turn black.

Before I pass out, a loud crash comes from beside me. The vice grip releases from my throat. I cough and slowly prop myself up to see the grill of my mom’s GMC (she kept it in the divorce) protruding through the painted wood. The driver’s door swings open and a pair of sensible pumps clack-clack their way over to me.

“Mom?”

“Honey, are you okay?!”

“Um. Yeah. Are they dead?” I point to Sarah and Dad’s limp bodies, tossed across the room by the force of the vehicle.

“Oh. Hmm. I suppose they are. Jerry! You remember Jerry, don’t you, dear?”

“Jerry, like Dad’s lawyer, Jerry?” At the sound of his name, my father’s lawyer of fifteen years exited from the passenger side of the SUV.

“Hey kiddo! Long time, no see.”

“You saw me three hours ago.”

“Heh, I suppose you’re right. I noticed you left the reception early. We got worried when you didn’t show for dinner."

“Show for dinner…Mom, are you dating Dad’s lawyer?”

“Well, I met Jerry during the divorce proceedings and we hit if off but it was obviously a conflict of interest at the time, and then I ran into him at the Farmer’s Market a couple of months ago and with your father getting remarried-”

“A couple of months ago?”

“Well yes, honey...I wanted to tell you but you understand why I wouldn’t…anyway, after your Dad and Sarah got engaged, Sarah started asking Jerry a lot of questions-”

“Okay. Fine. Whatever. Let’s get out of here.”

“And honestly, sweetie, Jerry is just so sensitive and so passionate-”

“Mom, please-”

“No man has understood my mind and body the way he does-

“MOM, LET’S GO.”

“Well hold your horses, I think we have to call the authorities-”

“Way ahead of you, Tonya. Oh, and if you check the backseat, there should be a takeout box with a few pieces of wedding cake in it. ”

“Oh, Jerry. This is why I love you. Do you want some cake, sweetheart?”

“MOM. WE KILLED TWO PEOPLE.”

“Well, it was an accident! And besides, after the third time Sarah called him, Jerry started recording their calls. Probable cause or something. I saw it on Law and Order. Now, do you want cake or not? It’ll take the police a while to get here.”

“...what flavor is it?”

“Jer, what flav- what? Oh, that does sound nice– must have been Sarah’s idea, your father would never have chosen something like that– Jerry said it’s a lemon berry cake with a whipped frosting. You want to split this piece?”

“I’d rather have a whole piece to myself.”

Jerry cups his hand over his cell phone and calls out from the other side of the barn. “Go ahead and take my piece, kiddo. You’ve earned it.”