Charlotte missed Nash.
Course, she wasn’t about to tell that to Freesia. The woman was feminism in a bottle. Lightning and inspiring most days; the rest of the time, Charlotte couldn’t help wondering if there was a middle ground.
For her part, Freesia had been attentive and engaged. Charlotte assumed it was her mea culpa for pushing back on Alex this morning in the garden. And when Charlotte’s girls came into the shop after school, Freesia went out of her way to get their opinions on her latest gown sketch.
“I like the skirt. It’s flowy and pretty,” said Natalie. “But the braided thing hanging off the shoulder looks like it belongs on a ROTC uniform.”
“Natalie,” Charlotte chided softly.
“She asked for my opinion,” said her oldest daughter by exactly thirteen-and-a-half minutes, her voice bewildered and defensive all at once.
“I did,” said Freesia. “And that’s exactly what I wanted to hear. Don’t ever be afraid to say what you think.”
“Within reason,” added Charlotte. “Your daddy and I raised you to be polite, too.”
One hair shy of an eye roll, Natalie looked from Charlotte to Freesia, then wandered off to set her school bag in the office.
Allison stepped up to get a closer look at the drawing pad. Had Charlotte not given them life, she would have bet the farm the girls came from different galaxies. Natalie was animated and outgoing, always accessorized with jewelry and makeup—far more like Charlotte as a girl. Allison had more than a handful of genes that favored Nash: same brown hair, the gentle waves curtained aside by hair clips to expose broad, warm eyes; the slight indention at her chin; her thoughtfulness before speaking, her pull toward the reserved.
“Who is the bride?” Allison said.
Freesia pulled up a photo on her tablet. “She’s Army Infantry. I saw this photo of her in her dress uniform with the gold shoulder cords and gravitated to it as a reflection of her.”
Allison tilted her head, her attention volleying between the sketch and the photo. “How about a braid at the waistline? Near her face, it’s the first thing people see. I know it’s an important part of her life and all, but she’s so much more than that, right?”
A slow smile stretched Freesia’s lips. Her gaze detoured Allison’s features before she glanced at Charlotte. “That she is.”
Charlotte couldn’t help wondering if they were still talking about the bride.
Natalie rejoined them, took a fast swig from a soda bottle, and added, “Plus, the beading on the back looks like The Joker from Batman.”
This time, Charlotte’s utterance of her firstborn’s name was worthy of a West Point graduation—all sharp cadence and harsh syllables, middle name included.
Natalie giggled. “Kidding.” And to Freesia, “It’s beautiful, Auntie Freesia.”
The first few times Charlotte’s children had called her auntie, Freesia’s countenance shifted—a change of position, a gaze snagged and unsure where to land, a quiet turn inward for a time. Then one day, about six months along, Gabriel had asked permission to call her Auntie Freesia too. Charlotte figured that somewhere along the way to accepting their new normal, Freesia had become desensitized to the term, accustomed to the endearment, such that she gave her blessing right then and there along with a genuine smile.
Not unlike now.
“You’re coming to the Hall tonight, right?” Natalie grabbed Charlotte’s hand and swung it the way she always had when she’d wanted a sweet as a child, the stage at which her twins found themselves day to day ever-wobbling between little girls and young women. “Ali and I need service hours and you always volunteer with us.”
“Shop doesn’t close until well after the event starts,” said Charlotte. “What about your dad?”
“Serve lemonade at a charity bingo filled with shirtless volunteer firefighters?” Clearly a source of amusement for the twins. They melted into giggles, Allison adding, “I’d pay to see that.”
“Every woman of marrying age in a three-county radius will be there,” said Natalie. “Be good for business.”
“You should go,” said Freesia. “There are no appointments in the book. I’ve got things here for the last few hours.”
Charlotte had missed her girls. All the kids, really, but even in the three days away, she saw changes in them: a ring she’d never seen before around Natalie’s pinkie finger—borrowed or from a boy?—a threadbare button on Allison’s sweater that needed attention because they’d never find another with a pearl inlay to match, and a gaping hole in her mom knowledge where she had yet to hear the outcome of Natalie’s debate speech.
“If you’re sure you don’t mind,” Charlotte said to Freesia.
“We could grab dinner at Taffy’s first,” suggested Natalie, her tone dripping hopeful.
Charlotte nodded.
The twins put up a mini-celebration and chattered nearly all the way to the shop entrance about what they would order before Allison paused and turned.
“I know Auntie Alex needs your help with the baby, but we miss you. Dad most of all.” She offered a sad smile then continued out the door with her sister to wait on the bench.
The shop bell had barely silenced when Freesia said, “That girl knows your arrangement has nothing to do with the baby.”
Charlotte gathered her belongings. “Impossible. Nash would never say anything. Allison’s a daddy’s girl. Always been protective of him, the way he is with her.”
“Be careful, Charlotte.” Freesia stood, arms crossed, staring out at the girls beyond the store window. “I spent my entire life taking the blame for a man who left, thinking it was my fault. If my mother hadn’t gotten pregnant, she might have gone back to school like she always talked about, gotten that degree. If I hadn’t existed, she might have crawled out from under the poverty of her life and found happiness. Kids tend to take on what isn’t theirs. Ask Alex.”
Charlotte’s insides slipped, faltered. She lowered her purse to the floor. Sure, it weighed a metric ton like the purses of most mothers, but right now, when her balance seemed called into question, it was a burden. And when she had shed that and it still wasn’t enough, she sat in the armchair and tried to puzzle out the rest.
“What are you saying?”
“Maybe Alex was right.”
“Wha? No. No-no-no-no, you can’t say that.” Charlotte felt ill. Her stand, her voice was her new project, much like the bridal shop, both of which she could not do, would not do, without a strong woman to slip into the void Mama had left behind. “You inspired me to do this. All the places you’ve been and the things you’ve seen. Without you, I couldn’t have done any of this.”
Freesia turned. “Look at me, Charlotte. Sure, I’ve had life experiences and have strong opinions, but I’m alone. I don’t impact others with my choices. I don’t have a husband, children, a family who loves me.”
If Charlotte was a betting woman, she’d have guessed Freesia had the same spin cycle going on inside her composed beauty. It was a rare moment when the woman’s voice didn’t emerge like a tall pine out of an underbrush thicket. And Charlotte certainly wasn’t one to stand by and let any woman, let alone her sister, feel less than deserving. She found her legs again then found Freesia’s hand.
“Why can’t we have both? Why can’t we be that for each other, even if only for a little while, until we each get our footing?”
Freesia pressed her lips together. A smile, maybe. Perhaps just to stop her chin from trembling. Whatever it was, Charlotte would take it.
* * *
Had Charlotte’s mother’s friend, Hazel, not been so persuasive with the sale of bingo cards at the door, Charlotte wouldn’t have forked over a five-dollar bill to ante into the game. Had Frances not offered to play Charlotte’s bingo card for her in close proximity to her good luck trolls and tchotchkes while Charlotte busied herself with the rather demanding task of plying the masses with cooling lemonade after a mouthful of heat from the firefighters’ special recip
e chili, Charlotte may never have known her card won a steady five rounds. And had Bernice, who broke out her special shirt for the Naughty But Nice Charity Bingo Night that read What has 75 balls and keeps the ladies smiling? on the front and Bingo! on the back, not grabbed the Devon Daily photographer’s wrist and insisted on a front-page photo of the jackpot winner that would “sell newspapers like Taffy sells buttermilk pancakes,” Charlotte would not have found herself lying on her side, head propped up on a fist in the arms of a line of shirtless volunteer firefighters from all over southwest Mississippi.
Heavier than a firehose on full blast and curvy enough to require more than a few hands in compromising places, Charlotte raised her voice above the hollering crowd. “Couldn’t we all be standing?”
“Not a chance,” said Chief Dan, the town’s septic tank provider, home inspector, exterminator, and now, junk-trunk expert. “This one’s going on the firehouse wall. Keeps us from having to fundraise for months.”
To his credit, his voice didn’t register strain.
In the charity night’s fifteen-year history, no grand prize winner had ever signed the entire jackpot back over to Devon’s volunteer brigade. On behalf of Match Made in Devon, Charlotte was the first. She had no doubt that Turkey would work his pecking magic in the morning, as he always did, rendering the Strickland morning newspaper unreadable. After a time, Nash had stopped bothering to seek it out and read it anyway. But the stack by the feed store door and the gossip inside? That was another hot blaze of trouble entirely.
As soon as her feet were on solid ground, she threaded the crowd in search of the photographer. Photographer was a bit of a stretch, actually. Elliot Davis was the son of the newspaper owner and he held a camera, in addition to numerous offenses for public indecency and intoxication over his twenty-some-odd years. She found him at the cash bar.
“Any chance I can grab a peek at the photo?” Charlotte strapped on her sweetest smile.
Elliot wasn’t charmed. He let out a huffy breath, lifted the camera from where it rested against his chest, and scrolled back through the night’s photos. When he reached the photo in question, he tipped the screen Charlotte’s direction.
Three thoughts sprang to mind: hussy, oh, now that one holding up my feet is just darling and that she hadn’t seen that much male flesh in one place since the Knights of Columbus had a dunk tank at the Independence Day picnic. Of course, this optical feast required sunglasses for a far, far different reason.
“How about a delete?” she said.
“How about not?”
“I told my husband I’d be working tonight.”
He commandeered his camera back and shoved more pretzels in his mouth than was prudent in a conversation. “You were working it, all right.”
“I’m just not sure it’s the most...professional representation of my business.”
“I get it. You’re worried about the chin-waggers.”
Husbands, really. One in particular.
“Do you know the circulation of the Devon Daily?” Elliot asked.
Charlotte shook her head.
“Three thousand, one hundred sixty, give or take a few geriatrics that bumped off this week. Coverage of sixty-eight miles. Even if all those people don’t read the edition, they damned sure see the front page. Nice little headline about your philanthropic business just about all the free publicity you could ever get around here. It’s a gift,” said Elliot. “Take it.”
Charlotte took a few steps away, thought she’d try again. “No chance of another photo that won’t go down as a footnote of forgiveness in my prayer list?”
“Are you kidding? No one bothers to glance at the top fold of this shit paper anymore. That photo?” Elliot took a swig of his longneck beer and smirked. “They will tomorrow.”
Charlotte cringed. Sure, the photo brought attention to a charitable cause; and sure, she had flexed her business savvy. But even a diamond-beaded wedding gown sold to royalty wouldn’t be worth the publicity if the price was the humiliation of a good man and sixteen years of matrimony.
* * *
The next day, Match Made in Devon was like a debutante at a ball. Or a bachelorette on a bender in Vegas, depending upon your religious bent. Social media had its way with the bridal shop—a heap of good, a snarky spritz of bad, and a comment from a jilted bride in Oregon that had been flat-out ugly. Charlotte tried not to fuss over the fact that her ample derriere in the hands of a blue-collar hunk had covered more ground in twelve hours than she had her entire life. Fussing over how Nash would receive it? That had been a three-alarm fire in her belly all morning.
The Silver Swarm buzzed in for autographs from Charlotte, and the shop was packed with clusters of lookie-loos who had no matrimonial plans in the near millennium but milled about the accessories and upstairs displays and picked up business cards on their way out.
A notable exception was Rebekkah. Charlotte recognized her as a browser from weeks past—sweet, shy, spring wedding date, gave her contact information, made small talk, and left. She had a gorgeous mane of silky chocolate hair, curled up like decorations on a cocoa-ganache cake begging for a taste, even on a full belly—probably why Charlotte remembered her by name. Near the end of the business day, with Freesia at an appointment with her military bride and a few other customers milling around near the clearance racks, Rebekkah had been settled in the bawlin’ and stonewallin’ armchair of honor and confessed why she had driven two hours back to Devon and the dress shop.
The truth had nothing to do with naked pectorals in quadruplicate.
“I tried plenty of other bridal stores,” said Rebekkah, sure to add, “I like to shop around before I make large purchases—nothing on your place,” for Charlotte’s benefit.
Charlotte smiled. “Bless your heart.”
“Mostly in the big cities—the franchise places. They all told me they didn’t carry my size—twelve, maybe fourteen—but that they could order, no problem. Then I was out visiting my mom in Tampa and the woman suggested that I bring a sample-sized friend to try on dresses, like some sort of thin surrogate. I walked right out. Haven’t been in a bridal shop since.”
Near the platform with mirrors where she’d settled, a Devonite named Josephine, sweet thing, never without her mani-pedi and always smelling like some Manhattan socialite up and stumbled on her while carrying a tray of open perfume bottles, reached for Rebekkah’s hand. “Oh, honey. That’s just plain wrong. No one should ever make any women, let alone a bride, feel anything less than the beautiful they are.”
All the gathered women, a little like a lint ball now because more had joined them, nodded their heads like Josephine was leading them to the promised land of women’s truths.
“Then I remembered Charlotte,” said Rebekkah. “How she had two gowns in my size and how she talked up her sister as someone super talented who could custom-make a dress. And I remembered how nice she’d been. And then this morning, I saw that photo on social media. It felt like a sign to come back.”
This garnered many how-nice smiles aimed at Charlotte. Rebekkah looked up at her with her stunning blue eyes and her dark chocolate curls, cheeks flushed from the extra attention and support, and Charlotte thought that the moment was just about the most perfect synchronicity she had ever experienced in life. At a time in her life when so much seemed so blurry, the clarity of why this business meant so much—the celebration of women, the dispelling of myths that a woman must be thin or tan or someone else’s idea of perfect on her wedding day to be stunning, the creation of a safe place for scary life changes to happen—made Match Made in Devon worth every solitary strife.
“I just want to marry my best friend, you know?” said Rebekka.
And in that sweet moment of epiphanies and revelations, Charlotte had another. She had married her best friend. When had they become something else, something less?
What happened next would have made Alex’s toes curl. Instead of focusing on finding a dress, the strangers focused on findin
g out about each other—their commonalities, their trials, their advice, stories about those who were no longer around to share the special day, how weddings amplified just about everything—the good along with the bad. It wasn’t unlike the second floor of the shop, where past customers left keepsakes of their own secrets to a happy marriage, but it was here and now. As the sun dipped and the women forgot their places, their obligations, Charlotte decided the occasion called for a little something special. Not the boxed wine that Alex kept in the back to keep restless mothers-in-law at bay, but a special reserve bottle of single malt scotch that Alex hadn’t nipped into since she’d found out she was pregnant.
“Why ever shouldn’t a bridal shop be a relaxed space?” Josephine raised her glass like a toast. “A place for fun?”
Charlotte’s sentiments exactly.
She found Rebekkah a dress that night—an A-line, empire waist, duchess satin in size fourteen. Stocking larger sizes had been a point of contention between Charlotte and Alex from the beginning. From a business standpoint, it made zero sense. From a humanity standpoint, why would anyone doubt it? Freesia had been the great compromiser, not only because she could design whatever the shop didn’t carry, but she came up with a mathematical solution that made everyone happy: a skew of the three most common real women’s sizes in five of the most flattering cuts.
After new friendships had run their course and the other women had gone home to their families, Charlotte shared her story with Rebekkah, taking her up to the second floor and showing her the keepsake she and Nash had shared.
“Must be so great to come up here and see your perfect love story.”
A cloak of black had settled over the second-floor skylights. In the warm light of the display case, that red bandana under the glass seemed just about the prettiest and most unreachable thing Charlotte had ever seen.
The Butterfly Dream: Match Made In Devon Bridal Shop: Book Two Page 3
