The Butterfly Dream: Match Made In Devon Bridal Shop: Book Two

by Blair, Danielle

  Jonah slung his arms low around her hips and pulled her against him. They were seamless, like their bodies hadn’t missed a step. He dipped his head low, sober, nothing but eye contact.

  “We don’t have to define this—ever, if that’s what it takes for me to be with you.”

  His extraordinary offer shot to the top of her list. That he was willing to remain in the gray sketch lines between committed and marriage, possibly forever, made her not want to put him there one moment longer.

  “What if I want to tutor you on how to define this?” she said.

  “Is it more complex than two plus two?”

  “Until just now it was.” Alex corralled both of his hands together, between them, and raised up on her tiptoes. She kissed his hand where it clasped hers. “Marry me.”

  Alex had seen amazing: five-star resort views in faraway places, a child she thought had been denied her brought into the world, Boston from a place in the clouds, a father who had proven to her that death is nothing but a misplacement of body, not spirit, but Alex had never seen the kind of coming home grin that transformed the face of the first and last man she would ever love.

  Jonah scooped her up, weightless, and peppered her with kisses and words of adoration.

  “Does this mean I’ll need a dress?” he asked. “Because there’s a killer place in town.”

  24

  Charlotte

  Charlotte finished gussying herself up at a quarter ’til seven. The phone had been ringing off the wall since closing time, like everyone in the county needed a swatch of taffeta to carry on with breathing overnight. She clicked off the shop lights and went back into the office to fetch her purse. Took her a good minute to find Rebekkah’s wedding invitation from the litter of others on the bulletin board there, a testament to the power of a good dress-finder. Charlotte knew it was more than that, of course. Stella Irene had loved nothing more than attending a wedding she’d had a bit of a hand in. No marriage happened in a vacuum. Certainly not hers. Certainly not Charlotte’s.

  Alex had proven that.

  After their fuss in the park, Charlotte had floundered between anger and gratefulness. She was no longer the baby sister who had none of the answers and all the common sense God gave a gnat. She was a great mother and friend and sister and a pretty darned good asset around the shop when push came to shove and the world got too much for some who just wanted their happily ever after, same as she. Alex had kept her from losing all that, her identity, but Charlotte still couldn’t find her way back to being good at marriage. She couldn’t help feeling she’d misplaced something along the way. And if the monarch butterflies weren’t the path to finding it, she needed a plan B.

  Go jump out of that woman’s plane in Yazoo City, Charlotte. Make that your worst trip.

  Maybe a good scream at three thousand feet would cure what ailed her. The idea took hold before her adult good sense could catch up. She went to the drawer beneath the cash register, fished out the business card with the graphic of a pin-up girl painted on an old bomber’s tail, gam extended to the sky, an open parachute hooked to the toe of her red pumps.

  Charlotte dialed and spoke to Mae.

  Three days from now?

  Sure.

  At the private air field nearby?

  Sure.

  Say, five-thirty?

  “In the morning?” asked Charlotte.

  “Sure thing, silly,” said Mae. “Less wind, better pictures.”

  Pictures. Huh. She’d never had such a permanent record of her common sense before.

  Charlotte confirmed the place, thanked Mae, and hung up before she changed her mind. One last check in the closest mirror and Charlotte was out the door.

  Or she would have been had Earl Frizeal not come up on her like a lunatic.

  “Lord sakes, woman. Don’t you answer your phone?” he asked. “Carl called. You got a cow in labor.”

  Charlotte’s pulse kicked into double-time beats. “Where’s Nash?”

  “No one’s been able to find him. Vet’s in Marthasville today.”

  Her gut kinked and twisted something fierce. She glanced down at her dress and fancy shoes, hair she’d spent an hour curling after the makeup her girls had talked her into a few weeks back. But there was no choice. Not really. Milkshake needed her. Another mama needed her and this, too, was part of her identity. Leaving meant ignoring that real, essential part of her that nurtured all of God’s creatures—from sexed-up Tibbs to a sourpuss Hazel to a bride-to-be who simply wanted a hug before she took that leap of faith. Far beyond endangered butterflies, Charlotte thrived in the space of being needed.

  “Daddy’s truck was having issues this morning.” As in, it wouldn’t start.

  “We’ll take my car.”

  For an octogenarian, the man could motor. It was common knowledge around Devon that Earl believed stop signs rimmed in white were optional. In a few days, she was set to jump out of a perfectly good airplane. Earl’s driving was as good a test of nerves as any.

  25

  Freesia

  No sooner had Freesia pulled Charlotte’s minivan up to the sidewalk in front of Taffy’s than a crowd of people were pushing them back into their seats, urging them to get on home. All Allison had to hear was Charlotte and birth and she knew her prize-winning 4-H sidekick was in labor. On the 1.4-mile trek to their farm, Allison and Natalie told Freesia how the dairy cow came to be named Milkshake. Turned out Elias was a bit famous for pulling one over on the local kids. When they first got the cow and Elias was at Charlotte’s, helping Nash with whatever needed fixing, he invited some of the kids’ friends over to help with the milking—after he’d squirted chocolate syrup into the bottom of the milk pail. Told them the new cow only produced chocolate milk when a kid milked her. Had them believing it for a few days, too. When it came to naming her, according to Allison, one name fit more than all the rest.

  Freesia found herself smiling and laughing right along with the girls’ shared memory. The mischievous prankster side to her father was new. Until that moment, the recreation of Elias March had been largely from adults. Maybe instead of going through life dictating an identity, a person’s legacy was simply the pieces that others whom they encountered needed them to be. Freesia knew that to be true about Charlotte. Could it be the same for her? New York had gifted her a piece: an aunt. A connection to family that was unexpected, new.

  The moment she parked the van in front of the house, the girls charged inside to change clothes. It hadn’t occurred to her the twins would actually be involved until Allison shouted over her shoulder, “Births around here are a family thing.”

  Family thing. Great. Wasn’t that what vets were for?

  Freesia brought their suitcases inside and placed the van’s keys on the hook inside the door. She didn’t want to be in the way, but going back to the March house seemed wrong. Drifting alone through someone else’s house also seemed wrong.

  She made her way to the barn, expecting to find a small army to bring a calf into the world. Small was exactly what she found, an army of four: Charlotte, the girls and a neighbor she’d seen once named Carl. The moment Charlotte saw Freesia, she mobilized her into action.

  “Those two buckets behind you,” said Charlotte, her voice an odd mixture of loud and even. “Both filled with water, one with that disinfectant in the white bottle. Read the ratio on the back. I can’t remember. Also, there should be a spool of twine somewhere around here. We’ll need something to cut it, too.”

  Natalie leaned close. “Cows spook easily. Pick up on your stress. Slows the birthing.”

  Freesia nodded.

  The twins had gone to work largely without instruction. Natalie assembled tools, Freesia heard Charlotte call out handles and calving chains—which she dropped into her disinfection bucket—while Allison donned plastic sleeves like she was pulling on her Milo Capreses for an evening out. The very same individual who blushed under the eye of a Ranger-turned-supermodel, who begged her mom not to sen
d her to the Big Apple, who squeezed her eyes shut at the prospect of climbing to the Statue of Liberty’s crown was preparing to bring life into this world, a sort of Fearless Allison that put Fearless Freesia to shame.

  Freesia hustled the chores Charlotte asked of her, in large response to the note of stress cresting her half sister’s exaggerated calm voice. Something was wrong with the calf’s position and Charlotte’s hands were too big. She coaxed Allison through the reach in while Freesia looked away and tried to forget the airport food she’d plied her stomach with preflight before it made a repeat appearance.

  “I need you to take the twine and tie the tail to the cow’s neck.”

  Freesia realized Charlotte was talking to her. “Is that even possible?”

  “Gets it up and out of the way,” said Charlotte, not answering her question.

  The maternity pen was tight with a thousand-pound cow and four humans in various stages of interference with the process. Charlotte’s neighbor was engaged with restraining the cow near the head, at the ready should labor pains cause her to toss her weight around.

  Where the hell was Nash?

  “Calf’s still on its back,” said Allison.

  Charlotte had her hand splayed near the cow’s cervix. “Time the contraction, Carl. One’s starting now.” Then to Allison, “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. Ears on the bottom, chin on top.”

  Charlotte pinched her eyes closed. “Natalie, try Doctor Sachse again.”

  Natalie finished drying the tools, pulled her cell from her pocket, and dialed.

  Freesia tied the twine to the tail and passed the spool to Carl. He maneuvered it around the harness and handed it back to her to knot. When she finished, she stroked the smooth brown hairs behind the animal’s ears. Milkshake blinked her enormous eyelashes. Carl flashed Freesia a brief smile then repositioned himself on his knees.

  Freesia backed away, out of the maternity pen to the one beside it.

  “What about the front hooves?” asked Charlotte. “Time, Carl?”

  “They’re there,” said Allison.

  “Anything, Natalie?”

  Natalie shook her head and left another voicemail.

  “Two minutes, ten seconds,” said Carl.

  Natalie added the contraction time to the end of her message and a “please hurry” before hanging up.

  Charlotte’s brows crunched together.

  Freesia guessed: no time to wait for the vet.

  “We’ll have to turn it,” Charlotte said to Allison. “Gloves may tear. Want me to do it?”

  Allison gave it a half second of thought. “No. I can do it.”

  Natalie helped her roll up her t-shirt sleeves and assisted her with disinfection and lubricant all the way to her shoulders.

  Freesia turned away, pressed her lips to the sleeve of her shoulder until her stomach stopped kicking at the thought.

  Charlotte talked Allison through the repositioning like she was instructing her on navigating a truck onto the road for the first time: calm, even, explicit directions and clarifying questions. Inside, Freesia rioted from worry. She didn’t have to be a bovine expert to know that birthing in the animal kingdom risked both mother and baby. After the chocolate milk story, the image she’d crafted of her dead father bonding with the animal—much as she had from that brief but warm touch—Freesia was emotionally invested, holding her breath, on the brink of tears, unable to watch, unwilling to look away.

  “I think I got it,” Allison said, her words rushed, pitched.

  “We can’t think, baby. We gotta know.”

  “Yeah-yeah-yeah, we got it.” Allison squealed enough so that Milkshake lifted her neck, grew reckless.

  Carl issued a low, coaxing, bone-deep sound. Milkshake blinked and laid her head back down on the fresh hay.

  Freesia let out a breath. Her lungs squeezed as if she’d been holding air for some time. She sat on a milking chair and listened, took in words like water sac and umbilical cord and respiration, riding the emotional tide of one problem after another, all the while Charlotte’s motherly voice of barely-controlled peace reigning supreme. For fifteen more minutes, Freesia danced with oxygen, wanting to do something useful but knowing she was zero help except for gathering soap and fresh towels near the barn sink for the vet’s arrival.

  After a time, tires against dirt curled inside her awareness, gave her a purpose. She ran out of the barn, poised to brief the vet on his way in. At the sight of a strange truck, tension she’d stored in her neck and shoulders dissipated. He parked abruptly, popped out, and reached for his bag in the truck’s bed. They made hasty introductions on their speed-walk to the barn. Freesia rattled off the most recent things she’d heard—shoulders and ribs and forty-five-degree angles and something about tucking the front legs under the calf’s body—while he soaped up.

  He gave her a polite smile, a bit of a that’s good, hush up now grin just as Nash’s engine roared to a stop outside, truck door slammed, and his six-foot-two frame darkened the barn door in record time.

  “Char?” he called. “Doc’s here.”

  Dr. Sachse, Freesia and Nash rounded the corner of the maternity pen in time to witness Charlotte clearing the calf’s nose and mouth while Allison rubbed its chest briskly. The calf bleated out a lungful. Milkshake mooed her hello.

  Every human female in the barn engaged in weeping laughter. Every female but one. Charlotte stood from the mess of sheets and hay, silent, amidst accolades and the relaying of events and the delighted sprinkles of chatter from her girls. Freesia noticed for the first time what she was wearing: a beautiful halter mid-length dress in champagne-colored chiffon, awash in birth fluids. Apparently, others did too, for the barn noise quieted.

  Nash froze, his mouth open.

  Charlotte skewered him with her gaze. She was an open wound. Blue and black eye makeup that once adorned her eyes had drizzled down her cheeks. Her chin jutted, strong but trembling. When she spoke, her voice came out dry, leaden, as removed from Charlotte as Freesia had ever heard.

  “I’m taking a shower.”

  26

  Charlotte

  Charlotte managed to strip to her skivvies before Nash entered the bedroom. Her strapless bra had traveled south and ringed her mid-section like a flotation device. Goop still covered her legs from where she’d peeled off her stockings on the back porch. And the dress? No matter that it had been a shop freebee because of a chiffon snag that Charlotte was able to work out with a bit of love and stitch sorcery, that it had been the mood lifter she needed after the whole butterfly fiasco, that it made her skin look like peaches and cream. The dress met its unceremonious end inside a metal garbage can.

  Nash sat on the mattress, vacant, like he’d been kicked in the head by a one-ton animal and was trying to remember his name. His collar was mussed. One pantleg snagged high atop his work boot. A colossal impossibility, but it appeared as if he’d had a worse day than she.

  Charlotte wanted him to leave. She was mourning her dress, reveling in pride at all her daughters had done to help save the calf and Milkshake, wondering about the wedding she’d missed and what Rebekkah must think, and tired of the fruitless encounters with Nash that led nowhere. Still, she pressed him for a response. He owed her that for the ruined dress.

  “Where were you today? Carl said people had been looking for you since morning.”

  He didn’t answer.

  Perfect.

  She stalked over to her dresser, hated the sight of everything in her bra and panties drawer. They were the costumes and frays and stains of someone else, someone who no longer existed. She chose a mismatch because they were clean. And because Nash disliked her resourceful mishmash of patterns: polka dots on the left cup; pink camo on the right; worn yellow grandmamma cross-stitch briefs with a hole near the elastic that he once called her little effort bottoms. If she’d have been one for revolutionary protests, donning these suckers would have been a good start.

  “I was in Marthasville,”
he said.

  She slammed the drawer, daring herself to ask, to care.

  “Why were you in Marthasville?” She did nothing to hide the dull edge in her tone.

  “I went to find Steven Morneau.”

  Charlotte’s breath caught. Her heart lurched and slid as low as her breasts in the strapless medieval torture device. He knew. How had he known? Steven’s name on Nash’s lips seemed another impossibility. In the mirror’s reflection over the dresser, she made eye contact.

  “Heard a few folks talking in town. Said some butterfly scientist was hanging around the bridal shop this morning.”

  Charlotte swallowed the thickness in her throat. “I was with you this morning.”

  “Yeah.” He sounded unconvinced.

  “I’ve never met him. We’ve only exchanged emails. Alex sent him away.”

  Nash gave a slow nod. “What did he want?”

  They were too far down the road to pretend. She didn’t have it in her, anyway.

  “He wanted me to go away with him. Follow the migration patterns.”

  Nash’s chin jutted; his lips squeezed to a tight seam. He hung his head. “And if you hadn’t been with me this morning?”

  “Honesty game?”

  She wasn’t sure why she asked. Maybe to give herself time to scavenge out an answer. She wanted him to know she was trying, that she’d never stopped wanting to fix what had gone wrong between them. Nash glanced up. His verge-of-panic expression bloomed a hot ache in her chest. By reviving their game, she’d inadvertently braced him for the worst.

  “I don’t know.”

  Her truth. As close as she could come. She wasn’t fearless. Not like Freesia.

  Nash exhaled, visibly, audibly, massively.

  She sat on the bed, her weight depressing noisy springs and elevating his frame beside her. Their elbows bumped. He shifted away, gave her inches that felt like feet. How had they come to this? A wave of grief crashed into her, threatened tears, but she had displayed measures of strength all day. This moment was not the time to show weakness.