Leaving her no time to lament her lack of a proper bikini line grooming, engine idling, the driver popped out of the door and rounded the bumper.
She couldn’t say who she expected. Hugh from the auto repair shop was a good bet. Was always driving some klunker. Bernice or Frances bringing her something to cover her full moon would have been nice. She would not have turned away Aquaman, either. Another familiar face came into view and flashed her a smile that upended her common sense.
Steven Morneau, professor of etymology, Cornell University, wavy brown hair and preppy sweater tie, savior to the monarchs, shorter than she’d imagined but more than making up for it in his swagger, rather reminiscent of a March calendar guy emerging from his chrysalis—only not wet. Not yet, at least.
Charlotte crossed her legs. Tightly.
So much better than Hugh.
Steven clasped her hands and gave her kisses at both cheeks. Upper cheeks.
“Charlotte, so great to see you,” he said, much like an old friend.
God almighty, he had an accent. She’d never known any man with speech that didn’t sound like an out-of-tune banjo played on a bumpy road. Men with accents should come with a disclaimer for those with delicate heart conditions. Her non-worldly ways couldn’t really place it to one geographical area, but it sounded musical and clipped and unintentionally sexy. He might as well have been from an equatorial place called Indiana Jonestown—Last Crusade era, of course.
He reached for the suitcase at her ankles. The other hand ran a stroke down his neck tie, Windsor knot to waistband, to keep it wrangled. His flashy socks peeked out from below his chinos. Butterflies.
“Little on the nose, dontcha think?”
Steven straightened. He stood close, a cartographer to her features, before his gaze found hers. Maybe the natives in his homeland walked around in a perpetual state of impending kisses. Loin cloths, too. “When I find a passion, I go for it.”
So much better than Aquaman.
He gave the van’s panel door a mighty shove open to toss in her suitcase. The back of the van was empty but for a figure—a man, rather large—sprawled out on the shag carpet, which looked a lot like a cloud and was so very white. The man rolled over at the disturbance, broke wind, and continued snoring.
Nash.
Charlotte gasped, her hands steepled over her nose and mouth.
Steven, ever a man of the wilderness, sallied forth to place her suitcase beside her sleeping husband.
“We can’t take him,” said Charlotte.
“He’ll never know. Sleeps like the dead, that one.”
Steven ushered her into the passenger seat. The vinyl seats did a number on her bare backside. A little like wrapping Jell-o in cellophane. She crossed her legs, but it was all so exposed, naked. They careened down the road, gravel spitting at the van’s undercarriage, Nash log-rolling in the back, while Steven lectured on the miraculous GPS navigation system that Danaus plexippus had in their antennae.
The van grew hot, close. Charlotte couldn’t breathe. She wanted out, but the old van had no handle inside the passenger door. She glanced over her shoulder. Nash sat cross-legged, awake, his attention squarely on her. He reached for her. In his hand, a red bandana.
Charlotte awoke in bed, Mama and Daddy’s spare room, hair still wet from the shower she’d taken on the backside of her sprint through the fields. She caught long pulls of oxygen to calm her heart, this time not from the smooth lilt of the foreign accent of the man in her dreams, but from the intersection of her paths caught inside the fantastical world of Alex’s infidelities. And why the heck weren’t her dreams ever the kind like women talked about in those magazines that Walter kept behind the counter at the five-and-dime? Awake, Charlotte could think of a million ways butterflies were exotic. Give her a dream with good potential, she was sure to turn it into a lactose intolerant nightmare.
She roamed the house, reread texts from her girls, along with photos of them in dresses Natalie assured her they did not purchase. And when the night stretched and Charlotte still couldn’t find sleep, she pulled on her mudder boots and coat and drove Daddy’s truck to see Tibbs.
Charlotte pictured Nash coming out as he had before, proclaiming he couldn’t sleep, slinging his forearms over the cross boards, his temple leaned up against the fence post like he always did. So very at home on this land. He’d tell her Tibbs missed her. She’d ask if he was the only one. Nash would blush in the moonlight and say something like he used to when they were kids. “I’d stay awake all night just to be the first one to kiss you and see you smile” or “you make goodbyes so hard, so stay.” They’d talk without interrupting, without distraction, without judgment, hours maybe. Then she’d realize Daddy’s truck engine was acting up again and Nash would slide her the keys to his truck. “To get back safe,” he’d say. And Charlotte would drive back inside his space, his scent rising from every surface, having forgotten all about the dream she’d just had. At least the parts that left her feeling sick to her stomach.
But Nash didn’t come out.
Their ideal week to fix things was nearing an end. The caravan would be through soon. Daddy’s truck started just fine.
Charlotte was on her own.
* * *
A box of cupcakes, however messy in the end, deserved an equally creative attempt. With Freesia still in New York with the twins, and Alex still heavily into early mothering, Charlotte called in reinforcements. Assembled around a booth in Taffy’s Diner before the sun was up, each member of the Silver Swarm had received her assignment: Nash’s steering wheel; a tassel around Milkshake’s neck, letters inside the changeable road sign at the feed store, and, lastly, a plate of his favorite pancakes at Taffy’s, with a blueberry and whipped cream message—8 p.m. Charlotte had deployed them all, clues in hand, Bernice—in her red Cupid’s Wingwoman shirt—making the loudest rally cry, not of love but her aching joints.
Nash had proven to be terrible at the dating thing. Movies, pool halls, ice cream, all unimaginative, none of it reminiscent of the way they had been all those years ago. Once upon a time, Nash had been the crazy kid who had the old-timers scratching their heads and the old women nudging their husbands with sharp elbows. He used to borrow riding lawn mowers from whoever listened to his lovestruck pleas, then carve out messages in the back acreage for Charlotte to see from her second-floor bedroom. On occasion, he’d also been known to streak or deliberately miss his school bus stop. The traveling carnival offered the perfect stroll down memory lane. If they couldn’t reconnect after a night remembering who they had been, she feared they never would again.
Charlotte pulled her gaze from the midway and checked the time on her phone. Ten minutes after eight. No sign of Nash.
The toppling tower ride would have been easier on her heart. Double shoot.
On this last night of the fair, nearly everyone in town had shown up. Lines were five and six families deep. A bell at the top of the strong-man anvil challenge clanged with regularity. The soundtrack of thrill-seeking riders struck a chord of nostalgia inside Charlotte, sadder than she expected. She fought back the notion that it all seemed to be ending.
She waved hello to some couples she didn’t know, not really. Couples who had come through the bridal shop and were just starting on a journey they believed would last. She’d been one of them, once. Maybe Alex had been right. Maybe the second-floor tribute to marriage set couples up with unrealistic expectations. Despite the decades of wisdom, lovingly preserved, maybe the secret to a lasting marriage didn’t exist and everyone was just trying to get through, hurting each other as little as possible.
“Excuse me, ma’am. Are you Charlotte?” A boy no more than sixteen approached her, holding the hand of a similar-aged girl.
“Yes.”
“I have a message from your husband,” said the boy. “He said to tell you not to give up on him.”
Tower ride, toppled. “I’m sorry?”
“That you’d be waiting and you might l
eave.”
“He stopped to help us change a flat tire and got grease on his clothes,” added the girl. “Then he said tonight was special, and he was going home to change.”
Charlotte pictured Nash taking the time to teach the boy, let him make his mistakes, rather than doing the chore for him. That was Nash’s way. Teach a man to fish, and all that. Lost minutes no longer seemed lost to Charlotte.
“How did you find me?”
This time, the girl answered. “He said to look for the pretty blonde woman waiting by the carousel.”
Charlotte smiled. Her insides had stepped off the thrill ride of uncertainty, found equilibrium, and binged on a sugar-dusted funnel cake of a compliment along the way.
She wished them a good night and watched as the crowd braided them down the midway. The perfection of the moment settled, as full circle as the tilt-a-whirl. Twenty years earlier, a flat tire and Nash’s inability to change it had led to a very long night of firsts in a stranger’s cornfield.
For years, that flat tire had been her go-to when life ushered in discouragements and disappointments. The long, stranded night had passed in a rush of pleasure and connections so deep she never wanted it to end. Nash had told her the story about an old man who’d asked a boy to go out into the cornfield and pick the best ear, but there was one rule: he couldn’t turn around and backtrack to ones he had passed. At each selection, the boy had wondered if there was a bigger and better ear down the row. The boy returned empty-handed and sad because he knew he had passed up the best. This was love, the old man explained. Always looking for better with the chance you may pass up the best. The man sent the boy out again with the same rule. Fearful of the same mistake, the boy returned with a respectable ear of corn. This was marriage, the old man explained. You pick a good one and have faith and trust that the ear is the best in the field. That old man had been Granddaddy Strickland; the boy had been Nash. Charlotte hadn’t thought about that night, that story, in a long time. She had missed living inside that memory.
The night that settled over the midway was temperate—not too cool, not yet the lukewarm stickiness of spring. Calliope music from the carousel dallied back through her awareness. Toothsome horses and mythical beasts loaded their passengers, clearing a space in the crowd. Beyond the roaming barker talking up the oddities show set to start in ten minutes and a cluster of boys proudly raising their game haul of giant stuffed iguanas, Charlotte caught sight of Nash at a distance.
Legs planted wide, like he’d just evacuated the swinging sea boat ride, eyes searching, Charlotte agreed that he had, most certainly, changed. It was as if he had harvested the land of every birthday and Christmas item of clothing for the past few years that she had tried to get him wear instead of his dingy jeans or coveralls: the blue sweater that matched his eyes, goin-to-church khakis, his navy canvas jacket with the military cut to it, and damned if that wasn’t a button-down shirt, loose collar, loose hem, under the sweater. Buttoned up with a five o’clock shadow and a dedicated stare of concentration, he was just about the hardest-trying and spruced-up beau imaginable.
His gaze snagged hers. Worried lines at his eyes relaxed into pure relief. He threaded through the crowd, but came up short, as if he didn’t know how to greet her anymore. They shared a limbo somewhere between blind date and able to finish each other’s sentences.
“You got my message?” Nash said.
She nodded. “You had a good excuse this time.”
“Couldn’t let a flat tire ruin a first date.”
“Not all flat tires ruin dates,” teased Charlotte.
His cheeks pinkened. She reasoned it away as the rush from the parking lot. Nash never blushed.
“I thought you might not come,” she said.
“Are you kidding? You had the feed store whipped into a frenzy by the time I got there. Walter would have put the pitchforks on sale tomorrow if I didn’t show.”
He gave her a half-smile that started a lazy crazy curl in her stomach.
“Besides, this place is the best,” Nash said. “I wish it wasn’t the last night.”
“Maybe that’s what makes it so great. It’s gone before boredom sets in.”
His lips tightened. The smile, usually so free, soured. Thirty rides, a handful of nights to empty wallets, is what she had meant. But in the parallel world they occupied, where everything magnified tenfold, she couldn’t think of a way to crawl back boredom and gone without making it about them. If there was a one-legged competition around, she’d be queen at kicking her own butt.
At Nash’s shoulder, a carnie in orange stripes and a Groucho Marx moustache held a walkie-talkie to his lip fur. “Where am I going to get a performance artist on such short notice?”
Nash nodded his chin toward the guy. One of those everyday moments she heard his thoughts inside her head: go for it.
Charlotte shook her head.
“Come on. You’d be great.” Nash turned to Groucho. “What does a performance artist do?”
“Puts on a costume. Interacts with the crowd. You interested?”
“Not me.” Nash hiked a thumb at Charlotte. “Her. Natural actress. Dramatic as hell.”
Charlotte gave him a playful shove.
“How long?” asked Nash.
“One hour,” said Groucho. “All the tickets you want afterward.”
That lit Nash up brighter than the Sea King at nightfall. If there was one thing that reached her husband’s heart faster than homemade comeback sauce, it was the word free, spoken or implied.
“Kid pulled me aside and told me he only had enough for a tire or the carnival, not both. Gave him my last forty bucks.”
“Sucker.”
Nash wagged his brows. Adorable had he not been talking her into something. Again with the mind meld: You’ve got this, Char.
“Will anyone know it’s me?” asked Charlotte.
“Nope. Get as crazy as you want. Just no groping, lewd gestures, spitting or talking.”
“She’s out,” Nash said.
This time, Charlotte amped up her shove. Nash was a wall. He didn’t go far.
He caught himself on a stumble. His laughter was far more pronounced.
And contagious.
“All the tickets we want?” Charlotte asked.
“Place is yours, but I gotta know now. Otherwise, I gotta call one of my guys back from some shithole in town. Crazy Q’s.
“R’s”
“Somethin’.” Groucho looked ultra-groucho at the prospect.
Charlotte supposed she owed Nash. He had handed her the red bandana in her dream. And it was the first time he had smiled since she’d put her foot in her mouth. If nothing else, it spoke to the boredom that wasn’t quite gone. Not yet, anyway. Not if she had anything to say about it.
“I’ll do it.”
16
Freesia
The Gallery II show in lower Manhattan was a foreign land, a developed and sovereign nation ruled by the rich, the beautiful, the youthful—or those trying to be.
The three travelers from Mississippi expected a place where they recessed into the textured walls, the vast glossy tiles, the intermittent statues in various masculine poses of adventure and virility. But Jon, who clearly had a love affair with the warmer color spectrum, had sent dresses to their hotel from his Unbroken line and every option made a statement that screamed all about me or I’m a chair cushion in Bali. The fashion show highlighted the most recent men’s collection from a Dutch designer, Maarten Kloet, and featured a buzzy model named Lachlan Davis, a former Army Ranger-turned-model with a prosthetic limb. In a room filled with grays and blacks and crisp whites, the three travelers quickly became the visual volcanos in the room.
The fact that the twins insisted on wearing their boots was merely another added spotlight.
“Really?” Freesia had said, moments before they strode out of their hotel room to meet the car Jon sent.
Natalie did a foot flourish with a back kick. “They’re Milo Capres
e boots.”
“Please tell me he’s not some seasonal plowboy who helps your dad out during harvest.”
Natalie contorted her features like Freesia had suggested Milo Caprese was a cult leader from a revivalist camp on Pluto.
“Everyone at home has a pair. Took us two years of birthdays and Christmases to save up for them,” said Allison. “We’re making a statement.”
What the twins had intended to be a commentary on their identities, their foundation, a visual reminder for Jon Yu to apologize, took on a life of its own once they reached the gallery. Attendees asked questions about the boots and photographers asked permission to snap photos. The girls dropped Milo’s name more than their own. The attention made them the belles of the largely-male ball.
After a short runway show, more style than substance in Freesia’s mind, Jon greeted her and reached for her portfolio. “Let’s find a place to sit. These Berlutis are killing me.”
Freesia scanned the massive space. Apparently, chairs in Tribeca were an endangered species. They’d have to roam for a bit to find a place to settle. “I should tell the girls.”
“Last I saw, they were helping Kloet’s people sort and tag the clothes. They’ll be fine.”
Freesia felt mildly nauseous at the prospect of separating from her nieces. But they wouldn’t be far—or long. A few minutes couldn’t hurt. She texted them that she’d be back in thirty minutes, not to return to their hotel.
Near the elevators in the building’s atrium, Jon and Freesia settled on an upholstered bench. He placed her portfolio between them. As he sifted through her sketches, he displayed an impressive array of body language: cupped hand at the back of his tilting neck; shifting his crossed legs right over left, then left over right; pinching his gaze and making cricket-like noises with his incisors. Freesia rearranged her insides trying to decipher him. At great length, he straightened, cast the sketches aside rather dramatically and made eye contact.
“We’ve bonded, correct? All that such-and-such earlier. We’re at a place of honesty?”
The Butterfly Dream: Match Made In Devon Bridal Shop: Book Two Page 11
