“Mr. President!” Marie screams, waving her tartan fan.
Behind us, I see Jason ambling on the grass toward Marie, walking with the steady, strong steps of a warrior, Chuckles in his arms.
Shannon climbs into the helicopter and what happens next is so fast it will take me a solid month to reconstruct it properly.
The helicopter begins to lift, Shannon’s train hanging down just a few feet from the open door to the passenger area. Declan bends down to grab it and Marie takes off at a little jog, her high heels making that difficult.
The helicopter lifts five feet. Then ten feet, and stops, hovering for seconds.
“Where are you going, Mr. President?” she screams, her jog turning into a canter I haven’t seen since I learned horsemanship at Girl Scout camp in fourth grade.
I bury my face in Andrew’s chest.
“This is painful to watch!” I shout.
“She deserves it,” Andrew shouts back.
I turn back. It’s like rubbernecking. I know I shouldn’t look, but curiosity gets the better of me. Besides, I’m going to hear about this for the rest of my life. Might as well actually witness it so I can know the truth before it gets wildly distorted.
The helicopter lurches up, about two more feet, as Marie reaches the spot where it just was, her shoes in the deep grooves in the green grass where the landing gear just rested.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” she screams. “WHERE IS THE PRESIDENT?”
Declan gives Marie a handsome, victorious grin and waves like he’s the Prince of Wales. Shannon’s head peeks out behind him and she shouts, “I love you!”
“What?” Marie shouts. “Where is the president? I have a seat for him down here, right next to me!”
And then Shannon answers with one word.
One simple, earth-shattering word.
“ELOPE!” she screams as the helicopter lifts, up, up, up, with Marie staring into the sky, her face a mask of dawning horror.
My heart ripples with Marie’s pain.
Until I look back and see Jessica Coffin, her head bent down with text neck, typing away furiously on her phone, grinning like the Joker.
“WHERE ARE YOU GOING!” Marie shouts, jumping up in the sky as if she could grab the bottom edge of the helicopter. “GET BACK HERE!”
As the chopper gains height and starts to move forward, away to the west, Jason reaches Marie. He watches the helicopter, his hand shielding his eyes, then looks at Marie, who is shaking her fist in the air.
The blades no longer producing overwhelming noise, it’s possible to hear her.
“ELOPE? THEY CAN’T ELOPE! GET THEM BACK HERE, JASON! THEY ARE RUINING MY WEDDING!”
Jason is very clearly trying to reconcile what he just saw with the reality of his wife’s Momzilla tantrum.
“This is better than cheesy reality television,” Andrew whispers.
“Did you know,” my mother says, her voice carrying on the wind as if she were addressing someone near her. I turn around to see her talking to Carol, Terry and James. “Did you know that people who elope are more than twelve times as likely to divorce versus those who marry with a wedding of two hundred or more guests?”
“I eloped,” Carol snaps.
“Elena and I had more than two hundred guests at our wedding and were happily married for more than twenty years,” James says with a wistful sigh.
“I eloped,” my mom admits, giving me a nervous look. “And we know how that turned out.”
I watch the receding helicopter in the sky. Somehow, I don’t think this elopement meets any statistical category, though. Shannon and Declan are their own standard deviation. Or two.
“ANDREW!” Marie’s voice splits the air like a cannonball. I’ve never seen her this angry. Not even that time in high school when we got sent home from high school for rearranging the letters on the school sign. Instead of “Congratulations Warriors Hockey” it said, “Congratulations Hairy Coworkers.”
Andrew’s eyes fly open like he’s a human experimentation victim with lid retractors attached. “What? Why me?”
“YOU NEED TO GET ANTERDEC’S HELICOPTER NOW. NOW. NOW NOW NOW.”
“I’m sorry, Marie. The helicopter is being used right now in central America to help deliver medical supplies for a corporate humanitarian mission.”
“THAT IS NO EXCUSE. WE HAVE MORE IMPORTANT PROBLEMS HERE. CALL IT BACK.”
Marie has one volume right now.
“Honey,” Jason says, trying to soothe her. “We can’t do anything about this. Shannon and Declan decided they want to get away and—”
“DON’T YOU DARE TELL ME THAT! I AM NOT MISSING WATCHING MY DAUGHTER GET MARRIED. I DID NOT SPEND THE LAST YEAR OF MY LIFE RESEARCHING TARTAN THONGS FOR THIS!”
Jason gives Marie’s ass an appraising look. “Tartan thongs?”
Andrew slides his hand on my butt. “Tartan thongs?” he whispers.
“We were forced to match.”
“Why not go commando like we kilt wearers?”
“We tried! Marie wouldn’t let us. Said if we didn’t have balls, we couldn’t go commando.”
“You have balls,” Andrew says. “Bigger than most men’s.”
Can’t say I disagree.
“But not mine,” he adds.
“JASON! CALL THE POLICE AND REPORT A KIDNAPPING!”
“Shannon hasn’t been kidnapped, Marie,” he says with a weary sigh.
“MY WEDDING HAS BEEN KIDNAPPED!”
“Oh, God.” Jason burrows his fingers into his sporran and pulls out a half-used roll of antacids. He carefully peels off the entire remainder of the wrapping and pops all of the pieces into his mouth at once.