by Ashley Clark
“You sew?” he asked.
“I do.” There was something in her eyes, though, something akin to a haze.
“What aren’t you telling me?” He didn’t mean to prod, but her reaction left him curious.
“The buttons are my mama’s.”
She didn’t say any more.
He knew the feeling. Didn’t matter why she’d left home. The feeling was the same. Part of your heart, hollowed out.
“A gift.” He nodded his understanding. Slid his hand into his own pocket and showed her the penny. “I always travel with my uncle’s old coin for the same reason.”
This seemed to open that invisible door between them.
“I want to own a dress shop,” Millie blurted out. She looked him straight in the eye, the haze lifting as dawn pierced the fog.
He tugged at the back of his cap.
“You realize you’re a woman, and a single one to boot.”
“I do.” She spoke the two words with the ease that comes from steady determination.
“So be it, then.”
“You really think so?”
Franklin shifted slightly closer, getting her full attention. “Listen, Red. I’m of the mind that anybody can do anything if they work hard enough.”
“Anybody?” She didn’t so much as blink. “Women, and Blacks, and . . . well, you do mean anybody?”
“I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t.” He brushed a piece of hair behind her ear. He didn’t mean to reach out. It was an instinct, but it held a mighty grasp over him. And from the looks of it, her as well. She seemed to like him fine enough, at least.
“Look, why don’t you let me help? A buddy of mine stayed at a boardinghouse in Fairhope once. Has views of Mobile Bay, and the people were real generous to him. We can go together, and I’ll stay long enough to get you settled.” Or longer, if she’d let him. He’d been growing weary from riding the rails, and she was the sort of woman he would gladly settle down with if the Lord allowed. “It’s as good a place as any to get work, and I can send some money back to my mother.”
“You would do that?” Her shoulders relaxed with her relief, and he was quite satisfied.
“I’d be happy to.” He brushed a smear of rust from his trousers. He had the truck to thank for that.
“So we . . . what? Pretend we happened to arrive at the same time?” Millie straightened her collar as the truck began to rumble down a dirt road with huge oak trees on either side of the path.
“I think it’d be best if we give the appearance of being together. More sympathetic that way rather than two total strangers showin’ up all at once.”
“And I guess we aren’t strangers, exactly.” She looked into his eyes. “Not anymore, at least.”
Franklin bit down on his bottom lip and adjusted his suspenders. Mercy, how he was already attracted to this woman. “No, Red, I guess we aren’t.”
FOURTEEN
Fairhope, Modern Day
Harper followed Millie through a hallway of open doors, each leading to another charming room with patterned wallpaper, eclectic light fixtures, and handmade quilts. Together they took the stairs toward Harper’s favorite room of all—a loft with cathedral ceilings and windows overlooking Mobile Bay. The space looked like an English teacup had exploded, scattering the queen’s rose garden all over the walls. And could there be a greater compliment than that? Harper liked to imagine if the room could speak, it would sound like Hugh Grant.
Harper trailed her hand along the stairwell. “Why are we going upstairs? What do you mean, another houseguest?” And when was Millie going to explain about the dress?
Millie reached the loft and turned to watch Harper take the last few steps. “I see your patience hasn’t improved since you were a child and wanted first dibs on my sequined fabric.”
Harper stood beside Millie and crossed her arms. “I was a lot more dedicated to my craft than any of those other kids.”
“You keep that dedication, sweetheart.” Millie thwacked Harper on the shoulder. The strength in her hands caught Harper off guard every time.
A clattering sound came from the closed door of the loft. Harper frowned. That was the only vacant room in the inn for the next few nights. “Millie, tell me you did not adopt that baby goat your friend told you about and put him inside the boardinghouse.”
“First of all, I will have you know his name is Hank. And second, it’s my inn, and I’ll do as I like.” Millie put both hands on her hips like a defiant teen.
“You had the new maid put the thing up here until you can get a shelter set up outside, didn’t you? I already told you yesterday that was a bad idea . . .” Harper turned the door handle, ready to expose the baby goat adoption in progress.
But what she saw instead of Hank was a woman with silky blond hair, earth-toned makeup, and outstretched arms. Her laughter floated through the room and down the stairwell.
“Tada!” Lucy yelled. “You two were cracking me up, and I had the hardest time keeping quiet.”
Harper’s jaw dropped. “Lucy! What are you doing here?” Harper pulled her best friend into a tight hug. The smell of Lucy’s coconut shampoo took Harper right back to their apartment in Savannah, but she determined not to let her mind wander. That chapter in her life was done now.
“I’m surprising you!” Lucy’s grin was wide. She glanced over toward Millie. “Please tell me that whole baby goat thing is an option because I’m all over it,” Lucy snapped, and her eyes widened with a new idea. “We could make goat’s milk soap for the inn!”
“What a charming idea.” Millie shook her pointed finger toward Lucy and looked at Harper. “I like her. You keep good friends.”
“We all know we are not making our own goat’s milk soap. And even if any of us did know how, do you really think one goat is going to provide enough milk to supply the entire boardinghouse? Imagine how tiny those soaps would have to be. Maybe we could mold them into miniature goats. Miniature goats are a thing, right?” Harper laughed freely—her joy, as joy is prone to doing, had snuck up on her. Even though she hadn’t been at the boardinghouse long, her heart was finding healing here. Her dreams might be another story, but maybe that too would come in time.
Then a thought occurred. “Wait a second.” She turned toward Lucy. “Did you just call me from upstairs?”
Lucy beamed, clearly proud of herself. “Sure did. I’m surprised you didn’t hear the echo.” She’d been too busy drooling over that picture of Peter to notice anything else . . .
Harper pivoted on her polka-dot heels toward Millie. “So this is how you got the dress? Lucy brought it.”
“You’ve been reading a lot of Sherlock Holmes lately, haven’t you?” Millie moved to stand beside Lucy. “Jokes aside, you’ve got a great friend here, Harper. Lucy tracked me down through your dad yesterday and called the boardinghouse.”
Harper shook her head. “I don’t understand. How did you know about my dress?”
“You’re kidding, right?” Lucy raised one perfectly plucked eyebrow. “Harper, you’re pretty predictable.”
Relief washed over her in unexpected waves. Despite her rash choice to leave the dress behind, she was covered by her sweet friend’s understanding. And as much as she hated to admit it—as adamant as she’d been that selling the dress had been the right decision—Lucy was right. That dress was still important, even if it represented the end of a youthful dream.
When the shock had worn off, Lucy reached for Harper and engulfed her in another hug. “Just be glad no one had bought that thing yet. The store owner told me multiple people tried it on.”
“Really?” Well, that was flattering. And surprising.
“Really.” Lucy responded as if this information should be obvious. “I’ve been telling you all along, Harper, that it’s a beautiful piece. Why do you think I went looking for it before driving down here? I knew someday you would think back and see what the sting of disappointment has blinded you to now. You have a gift.” Lucy simply s
miled.
She said it with so much conviction, Harper almost believed her. But of course Lucy would say that. Lucy was an eternal optimist who saw beauty in everything.
Still, Harper was thankful for a friend who valued her dreams.
Millie straightened her red cloche. “I’m going to check on the guests downstairs and give you two a chance to catch up.”
Thank you, Harper mouthed, and she knew Millie would understand she meant for hiding my best friend and letting her stay here. She had no doubt Millie was charging Lucy less than the regular rate, if anything at all.
Lucy waved Harper into the room and started toward the cushioned window seat with a giddy skip. The reality that her friend had searched for the dress and driven all this way sunk deep into her heart, like a seed planted into rich soil. And the comfort she found in that resonated deeply, despite the ache of her recent disappointment.
“Catch me up on what I missed since I left Savannah.”
Lucy took a seat and hugged a floral pillow to her chest. “Things are going well. I had dinner with Declan, who, as it turns out, is not the one for me.”
Harper sat on the other side of the window seat and chuckled. “Sorry to hear that.”
“But he did tell me more about that guy you met, Peter.”
Harper sat up straighter. “Go on . . .”
“Apparently, there are some buttons or a satchel or—I don’t know, I wasn’t following all of it—but the point is, Peter found something he believes once belonged to his mother. Clues.”
“About the missing box he was looking for?” The framed image of him dressed like he was ready to attend a charity dinner—looking good enough to model for a charity calendar—flashed through Harper’s mind. She cleared her throat.
“Yeah. Declan said he’s doing historian things to figure it out.”
“Historian things?” Harper reached for the handmade wooden train that Millie kept on the windowsill. She took it by the engine car and trailed it back and forth. No telling who made this thing or the little hands that once played with it.
“He’s a historian and does walking tours—did he mention it to you when y’all talked back in Charleston?” Lucy must’ve had an eyelash in her eye because she swiped at her lashes. “I think he uses his history specialization to flip and rent out old houses. He also rescues old stuff and calls it something clever . . . architectural salvage? Is that a real thing?”
Harper looked through the windows as three pelicans flew over the bay. The pelicans dipped down, one by one, scooping water from the bay into their large beaks until a fish jumped. Harper looked away from the window and met her friend’s questioning gaze. “Sounds like a real thing to me.”
Only problem was, Harper couldn’t go there and tell Peter what happened at the Senior Show. Their conversation in Charleston had enchanted her—filled her with longing and flutters of excitement for what could happen next—but that dream was gone now, and she had no reason to rent the shop from him.
She turned her attention back to the window just in the nick of time to see one of the pelicans grab a fish that was a little too big for its bill. At first, the pelican tried to flop the fish into the air and try again, but the fish just kept getting stuck. Finally, the poor little pelican gave up and set the fish back into the water.
Harper felt for him. Because she understood as well as anybody how it felt to have a dream that had simply and unceremoniously gotten stuck.
FIFTEEN
Fairhope, 1946
Franklin reached for Millie’s hand to help her from the bed of the truck. She tried to maintain as much dignity as she could while crawling out of the thing, but Lord knew that was good near impossible.
A chorus of some kind of bug—like a cricket, only louder—grew with a timber Millie had never known back in Charleston. “What is that?” she asked Franklin.
“Dog-day cicadas. They come out every five years or so. Make a beautiful racket, though they’ll scare the wits out of you if you ever see ’em up close.”
Millie liked to think she wasn’t particularly fussy, but she knew a little about cicadas, how they hid underground until the time was right years upon years later, and she had no desire to see one up close. As far as she was concerned, they could hum their song from the branches of the oaks.
Once Millie’s feet hit the gravel, she straightened her dress and her hat. Absentmindedly, she slipped her hands into her pockets to check for the buttons.
The driver leaned out the open window of the truck. “Need any help?”
“No, sir.” Franklin walked over toward him and shook the man’s hand. “Thank you again.”
“You kids take care of yourselves. And congratulations.” He waved once and then drove off.
“Congratulations?” Millie murmured to herself, frowning.
Franklin carried her carpetbag toward the front door. “Look at us, Red.” He shrugged. “The guy thinks we’re hitched.”
Millie’s eyes widened. To keep Franklin from noticing her fluster, she turned her head toward the boardinghouse. But the view just behind it nearly knocked her senseless. Sunlight glittered over Mobile Bay, and large oaks with sprawling limbs stretched toward the water and the heavens all at one time. Who could blame them?
“My, my.” She breathed the sweet air deeply. Gardenias, if she wasn’t mistaken. She once had a gardenia bush back at home, and sometimes when it was blooming, she’d crack open her bedroom window to get whiffs of the smell all night, then wake up sweaty because gardenias always bloomed in May, except every so often, when a deep-summer flower would bloom well past its season.
Funny how memories could be.
“Beautiful place, isn’t it?” Franklin started up the stairs of the wide porch, fitted for somebody living an entirely different type of life than Millie. But it sure was stunning. Had she said that already?
Millie took her time climbing the steps, allowing her hand to fall softly and graze the wooden porch rail. For a fleeting moment, she felt as if she were royalty, and the steps were air.
“It’s like a dream.” She stood beside Franklin. He opened the screen door, but before he could knock, a June bug buzzed past them, having escaped the space between doors.
Millie shrieked. “Is it a cicada?”
Franklin folded his lips, no doubt hiding a grin. “What am I going to do with you? Nothin’ but a harmless June bug.”
“It buzzed at me.” She pretended to play coy but couldn’t contain her giggles. Truthfully, with its loud warning sound, she’d thought the bug a much more menacing creature than it turned out to be.
Millie heard shuffling from the other side of the door. Franklin must have heard it too, because they both went rigid, waiting.
An older woman opened the door and smiled. She was plain, really, but still beautiful, and had a kindness in her eyes, a gentleness in the slight bend of her sloped shoulders, as if she had spent many a night with a needle and thread and a candle for company.
“May I help you?”
Franklin spoke up. “We just came in on the train from Charleston, ma’am.”
The woman waved her hand. “First things first, I never let anyone call me ma’am. Makes me feel like an old woman. Understood?”
Franklin nodded. “Yes . . . yes.”
She took a closer look at them. “Why don’t you two come inside, and let’s get you comfortable.”
Several minutes later, they were seated on the velvet settee beneath the entryway chandelier, across the way from a large radio. Seemed to be the sitting room, from what Millie could tell, and she supposed this was where they served tea and that sort of thing. She hoped the rest of the place wasn’t nearly so fancy, or she would be a nervous wreck.
“We haven’t much money but heard this is a generous place for folks who are down on their luck.” Franklin wrung his hands and took a visible breath. In that moment, in that expression, he looked as if he belonged somewhere on King Street rather than as a hobo riding the rail
s. Millie saw it in him and knew, somehow and against all logic, he could become whatever he wanted to be.
The innkeeper watched them, her gaze moving from Franklin to Millie, then back again. Millie froze under the scrutiny, her hands in her pockets with the buttons, not quite sure what to do with herself.
“Why, you two don’t look much older than children.” The woman hesitated. “You do honest work?”
They both nodded. Honest? Yes. What kind of work would still have to be determined. But it seemed as good an opportunity as any for the time being.
“Let me explain my situation.” The slender woman raised her delicate shoulders. “My husband has recently passed, and I could use some help around the place. We have many tenants, but some folks can’t afford to pay much.” She straightened the little cat-shaped pin at her collar. “And I can’t afford to send them away, not knowin’ if they’ll have food or shelter. Especially the grief-stricken young women who’ve lost husbands to the war. Seems everybody knows somebody like that nowadays. Anyhow, what I mean to say is if you two will agree to work daily—and it will be honest work—you can stay in a room free of charge for a while. I’ve only one room left.”
“Oh, but we’re not—” Millie started to point between herself and Franklin, but his glare stunned her clear into silence.
“We would be most grateful,” he said.
The woman reached out her hand. “I’m Eloise Stevens, by the way. For better or worse, I own this establishment.” She looked up to the ceiling then down to the wooden floors. “But the boardinghouse has been good to me. It really has. You’ll get room and board and a little stipend. Not much, but enough to start a meager savings or to send back home if you’ve got somebody there in need.”
Franklin and Millie took turns shaking Mrs. Stevens’s hand and followed her toward the hallway. She reached for a key hanging from a tall rack.
