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their windows, and the air was crisp, with a cidery tang.
    “Yes,” said Nicki. “Well. About that.”
    My heart sank along with my blood sugar. “Your room’s not ready?”
    “Not at the moment,” said Nicki, piling the pillows underneath her head.
    “But you do have a room?”
    Mom sat on the cream-colored armchair. When she flipped the cooler open, the sulfurous reek of hard-boiled eggs filled the room. “Who wants a snack?”
    “Nobody’s hungry,” I said. “Nicki, what’s going on? I sent you the information months ago! You were supposed to call and give them David’s last name . . .”
    “I got busy,” my sister snapped.
    “You can’t stay here!”
    She stared at me, brown eyes wide underneath meticulous eyebrows and layers of mascara. “Well, duh. I’m not planning on crashing your wedding night.” She bounded off the bed, bent over the larger of her two suitcases, and started unzipping. “It would just be for tonight.”
    “Uh-uh. No way. Not happening.” I looked at my mother desperately. She fiddled with her cooler, then took off her loose green linen jacket and hung it over the chair at the desk. “Do something!”
    “Seriously,” said Nicki, opening her suitcase and extractingher bridesmaid’s dress, which appeared to have gotten radically shorter and much more low-cut since we’d picked it out together a few months before. “Open a window. Light a match. Anything.”
    I followed my sister into the marble foyer of the suite. “You can’t stay here. I’m the bride. I’m supposed to be alone the night before my wedding.”
    “No,” said Nicki, smoothing an invisible wrinkle on her skirt before giving it a final shake and hanging it in the closet. “That’s not true. I checked the etiquette book. You’re not supposed to see your husband the night before the wedding. It didn’t say anything at all about siblings.”
    “Siblings?” I said faintly. Just then Jon, broad-shouldered and crew-cut, in camouflague pants and a black T-shirt, came barreling through the door. He dropped his army-issue duffel bag beside Nicki’s luggage and swept the room with a practiced gaze before pointing at the couch.
    “That had best be a pullout.”
    “If it’s not, we’ll get a rollaway,” said Nicki.
    I held my hands over my ears. “No. No. No, no, no, no . . .”
    “Rock, paper, scissors,” said my sister.
    “Forget it,” said Jon. “You cheat.”
    “Mom!” I screamed.
    My mother was at the window with her back to us and her hands in her pockets. “Yes, dear?” she asked mildly.
    “Get them a room!”
    “Well, Josie, I would if I could, but the hotel’s sold out.”
    “Well . . . well, then they can sleep with you.”
    “Ew,” said Nicki, at the exact same time as Jon said, “Negative.”
    My mother’s serene smile widened. “They can’t share our room. Leon’s coming down tonight.”
    “Jesus Christ,” I muttered, edging back to the foyer, where I could fart in peace. Or so I thought.
    “I heard that!” Nicki cackled.
    “I’m not staying with Mother and her boy toy,” Jon said.
    “He’s an old soul,” said Nicki.
    “Says who?” asked Jon.
    “Says Leon,” said Nicki. “He told me all about it over seitan crumble tacos Friday night.”
    “Could you guys please . . .” I began.
    “ All about it,” Nicki repeated, with a Cheshire-cat grin on her face. My mother began to look faintly perturbed.
    The couch in the living room was a spindly-legged affair with a striped white satin cover and a pair of fussy tassled pillows. Jon stacked the pillows on the floor and poked around in the cooler. “Rations,” he said approvingly, and inserted an entire hard-boiled egg into his mouth.
    “I don’t believe this,” I muttered. I locked the bathroom door behind me, fumbled through my purse, pulled out my cell phone, and speed-dialed David. But even as I was pouring out my tale of woe and desperately searching for a match, I knew with unalterable certainty that I