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“Skye, it looks fine! Stop messing with it.”
“No, it doesn’t! And if you’re not going to help, go away so I can fix this stupid tie in peace.”
“Okay, wait, let me try again. Perhaps if I center myself and channel—”
“Jane, if you bring up Sabrina Starr one more time while I’m having a crisis, I swear to—”
A knock at the door interrupted them, and Skye heard Ben’s tentative voice outside the room. “Jane? Skye? You ready?”
Skye glared daggers at Jane, daring her to say something. Jane, infuriatingly, raised both hands in mock innocence, her dark eyes twinkling.
Having siblings, Skye decided, had been a mistake.
First, they decide to do something monumentally stupid like getting married. Then, they make matters worse by telling you that No, Skye, a t-shirt isn’t appropriate wedding attire, and Why don’t you and Dad and Ben just get matching suits, then, and Ooh, yes, and we can match the tie colors to our bridesmaid dresses, and really, the whole thing had spun entirely out of Skye’s control. She didn’t even like ties!
But what else was she supposed to do? Wear a dress?
“No,” Skye said. “Go away, we’re still busy.”
There was a brief pause outside the door. “Okay. But can you help me with my tie first? I can’t get the knot right, and Batty says she doesn’t know how either.”
Skye refused to look back over at Jane. “Why don’t you ask Dad?” That had been Skye’s plan, before she had decided that she was a grown adult and didn’t need her father’s help to get dressed.
“I was going to, but he was talking to Rosy so I asked Batty instead, and then I couldn’t find him again.”
Skye finally took pity on him and opened the door. Ben was leaning on the doorpost, suit jacket draped over his arm and tie hanging loose around his neck. He visibly brightened when he saw Skye, grinning and slipping past her into the bedroom. Skye slammed the door shut after him.
Skye had barely turned around before Jane darted forward, fingers straightening Ben’s collar and fiddling with his tie. “Ooh, Ben, that color looks absolutely stunning on you! It brings out the copper tones in your hair perfectly. Like an autumn wood in the evening light, full of russet and—”
“Yeah, we know, his stupid hair looks like a tree,” Skye interrupted, coming up behind Ben and ruffling his curls. He ducked out from under her arm, only to be pulled back in by Jane’s hands on his tie. Skye grinned and did her best to fix the damage she had done to his hair, while Ben yelped and batted her hands away.
“Stop, stop! Geez, I just needed help with my tie, not an entire makeover!”
The tie in question was a soft copper color, designed to match the sash on Lydia’s bridesmaid dress. For the most part, they all had matching ties and sashes to compliment their suits and dresses: copper for Ben and Lydia, rose for Batty and Jeffrey, violet-blue for Jane and Nick. Aquamarine for Skye and her father.
“I’ll do it!” Jane said, twisting her hands in the air with a flourish. “Ben, you stand—just there, perfect—and, okay, if we start with the wide end of the tie flat, and wrap the other end around like this . . .”
Skye left them to it, reclaiming her spot in front of the full-body mirror. She glared at her reflection, resisting the urge to run her fingers through her hair.
The suit itself was fine, Skye supposed, and she certainly wasn’t jealous of the flowing skirts that her sisters were wearing today. The pants and jacket were a light ivory color, and she knew the aquamarine tie brought out her eyes. Or it would, when she finally figured out how to fix the thing. She looked good, she told herself firmly.
So why did she still feel like crawling out of her skin?
There was another knock at the door, and Skye felt her jaw clench. She was about two seconds from kicking the door and yelling at the next person who came to interrupt her perfectly valid wardrobe crisis. For a moment she fantasized about ditching the whole stupid ensemble and changing back into her jeans and t-shirt.
But then her father’s voice said, “May I come in? Rosalind and Tommy are almost ready to begin, but I seem to have lost both my glasses and several children.”
“Yes, you may enter,” Jane said. “Ben and I are ready, but Skye is having a wardrobe crisis.”
“I am not having a—”
“Steady, troops,” said Mr. Penderwick, easing open the door and shutting it softly behind him. He looked slightly frazzled, his dark curls wild around his face. The Penderwick siblings had agreed, in a last-minute emergency MOPS, that Mr. Penderwick was having trouble adjusting to the fact that his daughter was old enough to marry. They were to be gentle with him during this time, Rosalind had sternly instructed them all.
Skye was having trouble with gentle, just now. Out of the corner of her eye she saw that Ben was, indeed, ready to go. Jane had fixed his tie perfectly, and despite his earlier protests, she had somehow wrangled his curls into looking halfway presentable. Jane, of course, had been ready for the past half-hour, fluffing her hair and twirling excitedly in her dress.
Skye turned back to the mirror, gritting her teeth and silently willing everyone to just leave her alone. Give her five minutes to fix her stupid tie and recite prime numbers for a bit to calm down. She could do this.
So caught up in her own musings, Skye was startled when she heard the door slam shut behind her. She turned to find that Jane and Ben had gone, leaving her alone with her father. She looked at him and raised an eyebrow.
“Oh, I sent them back out to Rosalind,” Mr. Penderwick said. “She asked me to direct anyone who’s ready over to her. They’re starting to line everyone up, I believe.”
Skye nodded. Almost out of time, then.
“And it seems you might need a tie assistant, if I’m not mistaken. May I?”
Skye nodded again, suddenly weary of the whole ordeal. Her father stepped closer, unraveling her tie from its loose knot and beginning to fix it properly. Skye was vaguely aware that he was explaining the process of knotting the tie, walking her patiently through each step. Skye didn’t pay an ounce of attention to his words. She just stood there, her shoulders slowly relaxing, letting his soft murmuring wash over her.
“There,” he finally said when he had finished. “What do you think?” Skye blinked and glanced down, feeling the tie with her fingers. Definitely better than any of her own attempts.
“Good. Thank you.”
“Sometimes I think the women who wear dresses have it much easier,” Mr. Penderwick said with a soft laugh. “Somehow, it seems I have to re-learn how to tie these things each time I wear them.”
“Do you think it’s strange?” Skye blurted. The words left her mouth before she could consider what she was saying. “That I don’t . . .” She trailed off, biting her lip hard.
Stupid! She’d never talked about this with her family, not seriously, apart from the occasional whispered confession to Jane as they drifted off to sleep in their shared bedroom. What kind of idiot did she have to be to bring it up now, to her father, on the morning of her sister’s wedding?
She chanced a glance up at her father and found that he was smiling softly down at her, his dark eyes warm. “No,” he said, simply, and Skye felt something tight in her chest ease. “Though strange isn’t always a bad thing. I thought it was strange when my youngest child refused to leave the house without wearing butterfly wings. I thought it was strange when my middle children attended their high school prom in a lab coat and a handmade dress created entirely of materials from the craft store.”
Skye snorted, suddenly grateful that Jane’s sewing abilities had improved since their high school days. She had allowed Jane to tailor her suit for this wedding, something she would have never dared to do several years ago.
Judging by the wry grin on her father’s face, his thoughts had gone in the same direction. But then his expression softened as he adjusted her tie and retrieved her discarded suit jacket, helping her shrug it on over her dress shirt. “But wearing matching suits with you? No, Skye, not strange at all. In fact, I think we both look rather dashing.”
Skye felt her cheeks heat at her father’s compliment, a strange mix of relief and pride rising in her chest. She still hated the suit, of course, but . . . maybe not quite as much, just now.
“And I’ll let you in on a secret.” Her father paused then, considering. “Well, perhaps not much of a secret. But I despise these things, too.” He gave Skye’s tie a final tug, then turned her around so they both faced the mirror.
“What, the suit or the tie?” Skye asked.
Her father laughed, hands warm on her shoulders. “Well, both, if I’m being perfectly honest. They’re far too hot and stuffy, and I feel like I’m being slowly strangled to death by a piece of silk.”
Skye snorted. “I know the feeling.”
“A word of advice, then, if you’re ever forced into formalwear again. If you can get away with it, find a tie that really feels like you. I’ve collected a few floral ties I often break out for such occasions—mind you, they’re not botanically accurate, but they get the job done. It makes the whole ordeal just a little more bearable.”
Skye allowed herself to imagine it for a moment. Defending her dissertation in a slim-fitting black suit, her tie the only spot of color, swirling with the deep blues and purples of nebulae. Not scientifically accurate, as her father said . . . but Skye found herself grinning at the idea nonetheless.
Her father smiled back at her, their eyes meeting in the mirror. “See? Not bad, for an old man—I’ve still got some decent ideas left in me.”
“Oh, Dad, you’re not old!”
“Oh, I beg to differ. My daughter is getting married today, you know.”
Skye rolled her eyes, turning away from the mirror to face him. “And they’re probably about to send Nick to knock down the door and tell us we’re late.”
“My glasses—”
“In your pocket. The secret one, inside the suit.”
Mr. Penderwick patted his chest absently, then pulled out his glasses. “Ah yes, the secret pocket. Every time! Yet another reason these suits are evil.” He adjusted Skye’s tie one last time, then hooked his arm through hers.
“Vincit qui patitur, my dear. And out we go, to face the hordes.”
And out they went, in matching aquamarine.