Chapter 1
Iris Greene wondered if there was some sort of Bat-Signal that appeared in the sky whenever she walked into a room. But instead of seeing an image of a winged mammal hovering between the clouds, people saw the words
Eldest Daughter, and they released a collective sigh of relief, knowing that they were in the presence of a proper problem solver.
It would explain why tourists frequently singled Iris out on the busy New York City streets and asked her for directions, or why disgruntled parents at the grocery store felt comfortable asking her to watch their toddlers in line for just one quick minute while they ran to grab that forgotten box of frozen chicken nuggets in aisle seven. It would explain why her boss often requested that she sit in on meetings outside of her purview because she needed Iris to
lend her ear to the matter at hand.
Or in this particular moment, it would explain why, in the middle of her younger sister’s wedding reception, the wedding coordinator had shoved her binder into Iris’s arms, begging Iris to take over, as she sprinted to the restroom, face and neck covered in hives because she hadn’t been told that the pasta salad contained shellfish.
Iris had been leaving the restroom herself, headed back toward the dance floor, and she fumbled to catch hold of the binder before it clattered to the floor. Iris blinked and hardly had a chance to gather her bearings before her great-aunt Portia took the opportunity to approach Iris and corner her in the restroom alcove.
“Can you
please tell them to change the music?” Great-Aunt Portia asked, wincing. She grabbed onto Iris’s elbow. “I don’t understand how anyone can dance to this!”
Iris glanced toward the DJ, who was deep in his mix, spinning an edited version of a rap girl duo’s song. Out on the dance floor, Iris’s younger sister Violet, the blushing bride, danced with her new husband, Xavier. Violet had two rules for her wedding: one, everyone had to come dressed to impress—she was a celebrity stylist, after all. And two, she and Xavier wanted their wedding to feel like a big party. It was why they’d hired a DJ who usually worked at nightclubs in the city.
“It’s not all that bad, is it?” Iris asked, patting her aunt on the shoulder in an attempt to appease her.
Other than Great-Aunt Portia, most people seemed to be enjoying the music. Sprinkled throughout the sea of family and friends were Violet’s famous clients, and Iris spotted her parents laughing with her aunts and uncles by the bar. She located her youngest sister, Lily, and Lily’s boyfriend, Nick, dancing with Iris’s six-year-old daughter, Calla. Nick lifted Calla onto his shoulders and spun her around in a circle. Calla laughed, keeping her hands firmly placed on top of Nick’s head. Iris smiled, eager to return to her daughter. She hated missing moments like this, especially since Calla’s father couldn’t be there to witness them too.
Well, her late husband, Terry, wasn’t there
physically, but Iris liked to think that he was watching over her and Calla, and that his life was continuing on, just elsewhere. She preferred that perspective to thinking that for the past five years, he was ashes in an urn, never progressing beyond twenty-seven years old.
“She said she’s going to ride
what like a rodeo?” Great-Aunt Portia asked, aghast, listening closely to the song’s lyrics.
“I’m sorry, what?” Iris turned to her great-aunt, who continued to complain about the DJ. Great-Aunt Portia might as well have been speaking the slow, garbled language of Charlie Brown’s schoolteacher. Iris could barely hear her aunt as she waited for the quick sting of grief to recede.
Since Terry’s death, she’d learned that grief was like an ocean. Sometimes the tide was high, and her grief built itself into waves that crashed down and knocked her over, surprising her. And other times, like just now, her grief was a low tide. Gentle waves quietly rolled ashore to wash over her feet and brush against her ankles, reminding her that it was still there, even if she wasn’t looking at it directly. These days, the low tide was more of the norm. Her grief was part of her, just like Terry’s memory.
“The music, Iris,” Great-Aunt Portia insisted. “Can you do something about it, please?”
Iris took a moment to gather herself and once she felt steady, she dug in her clutch and retrieved her AirPods and her spare iPhone that could only be used when connected to Wi‑Fi. She usually kept it with her in case Calla needed to be entertained with an educational game. Iris pulled up YouTube and found a channel that played a continuous mix of Luther Vandross hits. She offered the phone and earbuds to her aunt.
“Here,” she said. “I think this should do perfectly.”
Great-Aunt Portia smiled and gratefully accepted her auditory escape from modern-day rap.
One fire doused. Now, onto the next. Iris flipped open the binder and scanned the schedule. It was time to cut the cake. Binder in hand, she walked back into the open area of the banquet hall and set her sights on the waitstaff gathered by the buffet table. She side-skirted the dance floor, double-checking and confirming that Calla was still safe with Lily and Nick, and she wound through the tables and chairs, her sleeveless champagne-colored gown swishing against her curves.
The wedding was being held on the grounds of a vineyard in upstate New York. (Upstate, depending on who you asked. It was only an hour north of New York City.) And the ballroom with its high ceilings and sparkling chandeliers made the entire evening appear elegant and grand. The waitstaff even wore matching bow ties. Before Iris could reach them, the group dispersed, moving throughout the room to gather plates and offer refreshments. One young guy, tall, skinny, and pale with long dark hair, remained lingering by the buffet table.
“Hi,” Iris said, approaching him. She tapped the wedding binder. “I’m the sister of the bride and the interim wedding coordinator, it would seem. It’s time to cut the cake.”
The guy blinked at her. “Oh, um, I’m only a trainee. I just got hired yesterday. I don’t—I mean, I . . .” He pulled nervously at his bow tie and glanced about the room. He returned his attention to Iris, who eyed him with a steady gaze. She continued to tap her fingers against the binder. He gulped and cleared his throat.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Ethan.”
Iris had been told on more than one occasion by her younger sisters that she had a no-nonsense demeanor that many people found “intimidating as fuck.” In Iris’s opinion, whether or not someone felt intimidated by her sounded like a personal problem on their end. But in the interest of time, she decided to throw Ethan a bone.
“Ethan,” she said calmly, “can you please take me to the kitchen so that I can tell someone it’s time to bring out the cake?”
“Yes, yes, absolutely.” Ethan quickly pushed up off the wall and gestured for Iris to follow him out of the ballroom and through the venue, down a winding hall that led to the bustling kitchen.
Servers moved in and out of the kitchen area, and thanks to the seven months she’d spent hostessing at TGI Friday’s during her sophomore year of college, Iris expertly dipped and dodged each moving body. The three-tier wedding cake was placed atop a tray with wheels in the center of the kitchen. The shimmery white icing sparkled under the ceiling lights.
“It’s perfect,” Iris said. “Now we just need the cake knife and we can get this wheeled out to the ballroom.”
Ethan quickly produced a cake cutter and handed it to Iris, beaming, proud to have accomplished a task so quickly.
Iris turned the cutter over in her hands and frowned. “No, there’s a specific cake knife. The word ‘Greene’ is inscribed on it.”
The cake cutter was sterling silver and had been used in her parents’ wedding and her paternal grandparents’ wedding as well. It was a family heirloom . . . an heirloom that Iris hadn’t used in her own wedding. That had been a much different scenario. She and Terry had gotten married at the city hall on Court Street in downtown Brooklyn. She’d been twenty-four years old and eight weeks pregnant. Afterward, the two of them, along with her sisters and their parents, had crowded into a random Italian restaurant down the street and filled their stomachs to the brim with pasta. There had been no cake. Iris hadn’t cared. The day had been perfect in its own way.
“The cake knife,” she repeated. “Where is it?”
Ethan bit his lip and mumbled, “Um.”
Iris glanced around at the other staff in the kitchen, who stared back at her in confused silence. She flipped through the binder, hoping to discover some information regarding where the special cake knife might be stored, but she found nothing.
Okay, she just had to think. There was a solution for every problem. The cake knife had to have come from her parents’ house, which meant that the wedding coordinator most likely had the knife when she brought in the decorations for the centerpieces.
“Do you have a storage room?” she asked.
“Yes!” Ethan said, and he led her back to the ballroom and past the dance floor once more.
“Iris,” her mother, Dahlia, called, catching sight of her as she hurried behind Ethan. “What’s going on? Where’s the coordinator?”
“Everything’s fine, Mom!” Iris waved her hand and affected an easy smile.
To most, using the family cake knife might seem inconsequential. But Dahlia had already been disappointed that Iris, her first daughter to be married, hadn’t used the knife for her own wedding. Making sure that Violet used the knife for her wedding was one small gift that Iris could give their mother. And after everything Violet had gone through with her ex, she deserved a perfect wedding day to start her new life with Xavier, her former high school sweetheart.
Plus, if Iris didn’t find the knife, she and her sisters would never hear the end of it from Dahlia.
Ethan stopped in front of a door right beside the coat check. He turned the knob and revealed a room filled with boxes and decorations. Iris immediately spotted a box of vases that looked just like the ones used for centerpieces on the tables in the ballroom. She crouched by the open box, and there, wrapped in crisp black linen, was the Greene cutting knife.
“Found it,” she said, standing.
Ethan gazed at her, awed. “You’re like Sherlock Holmes or something.”
Iris almost laughed. Compared to what she dealt with at her job and/or family on a normal day, this was light work. She handed the knife to Ethan.
“Can you please clean this and meet me back in the ballroom in three minutes?” she asked.
He saluted her. “Yes, ma’am.”
Ma’am? Jeez. No need to make her feel ancient. She was only thirty-two.
“Three minutes,” she repeated. She held up her hand and wiggled three fingers. “
Three.”
Ethan nodded before hurrying off to the kitchen.
Iris took another deep breath and squared her shoulders. Time for the next task. She reentered the ballroom and made a beeline for the DJ. He wore large headphones and nodded his head so intensely, Iris worried he might throw out his neck. She had to tap his shoulder to get his attention. He startled and turned to her, then the edges of his lips curled into a smile.
“What’s up, beautiful?” he shouted over the music. “A song request for the maid of honor?”
“Co–maid of honor,” she corrected. She and Lily shared the title. “Can you announce that it’s time to cut the cake, please?”
“You said you wanna hear ‘Cake’ by Rihanna?” he asked. “I got you, girl!”
Iris groaned and leaned over to grab the mic before he could change the song. “Hello, friends and family!” She looked toward her radiant sister and her new husband. “Newlyweds, it’s time to cut the cake.”
Violet and Xavier, followed by their guests, herded in the center of the dance floor, just as Ethan and two other servers rolled out the cake. Iris joined the crowd and she thanked Ethan for his help before inspecting the knife for cleanliness and handing it to her sister. In gratitude, Violet gave Iris a loud smacking kiss on the cheek and angled herself toward Xavier.
Iris stepped back, allowing space for the newlyweds to have their moment and photo ops. She found her way to Lily and Nick. Calla was still propped on Nick’s shoulders so that she could see the action.
“Hi, Mom,” Calla said, grinning. “Look, I’m taller than Nick.”
“Hi, baby.” Iris smiled as she reached up and squeezed her daughter’s hand. Calla had been the flower girl during the ceremony, and like Iris and Lily, she wore a champagne-colored dress, but hers was short-sleeved with an empire waist. Iris had blown out Calla’s thick curls this morning and adorned her hair with matching bows. She stepped closer to her daughter and looked at Nick. “You okay holding her like that?”
Nick shrugged. “She weighs almost nothing.” He jiggled his shoulders up and down, causing Calla to shake with him and she burst into laughter.
Nick was basically family now. He and Lily had been dating for three years, after first meeting over email and then somehow ending up neighbors. The kind of love story that could happen only in New York City.
“Where have you been?” Lily asked, poking Iris in the arm. Like Iris, Lily’s eyelids were covered in light gold shimmer. Her curls were pulled back into a French twist. Iris’s hair had been long like that once too. But after Calla was born, she’d cut it short. She’d been growing it out for the last few months, though. Today it was styled in a wavy chin-length bob. “You went to the bathroom and then disappeared.”
Iris sighed, shaking her head. “You wouldn’t believe the journey I’ve been on.”
Their conversation was interrupted by a spattering of applause. Violet and Xavier were feeding each other cake. They pretended like they were going to smash cake in each other’s faces, but instead, Xavier wrapped his arms around Violet and kissed her deeply.
Iris had another flash of her own wedding day. She’d worn a simple white long-sleeved, A‑line dress. Her hair had been longer. Her face had been fuller. They’d gotten married on a Tuesday afternoon, because as NYU Stern School of Business students at the time, they hadn’t had classes that day. The smell of fresh paint and linoleum in the courthouse had made Iris slightly nauseous as they’d waited for their turn to be wed. Terry had handed her a bottle of water and gently rubbed his palm against the small swell of her stomach—a surprise neither of them had anticipated only six months into their relationship. Terry had looked so handsome. His light brown skin was smooth. His chocolate brown eyes sparkling. He’d been average height, so he hadn’t towered over Iris as they’d said
I do.
Copyright © 2025 by Kristina Forest. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
