“Could add a flange,” said Jonah. “Catch them before they sailed off.”
“Then they’re trapped,” said Charlotte.
Bernice chimed in, “Probably take dumps everywhere.”
“How about a slide?” asked Isabel.
Earl perked up. “A fine idea. Tube or corkscrew?”
“Make it out of PVC pipe,” said Jonah. “Like a closed gutter.”
“The ladies down at the church can make it artsy,” said Bernice. “Label it the Honeymoon Highway, in keeping with the shop’s theme and all.”
The more the ideas flowed, the more pronounced the vein at Alex’s forehead became. When everyone started talking over each other about the most appropriate wedding colors to paint the slide, with Beatrice, loudest of all, suggesting an Elvis theme—given that he stopped in Devon once for tacos—Alex raised her arms.
Isabel snapped a photo. A crowd gathered.
“Has everyone here gone insane?”
The chatter died swiftly, not unlike their closest furry neighbors.
“This is a business, not a zoo habitat. No flange, no Elvis, no slide.”
“And no customers if we start a squirrel graveyard at the entrance,” said Charlotte. “Instead of altering the building, just alter the tree. Trim the branches on this side.”
Alex’s idea gained momentum until Isabel informed them that gray squirrels had a jumping distance of ten feet.
“They’re smart,” said Alex. “They’ll figure it out.”
“Eventually,” added Earl.
Alex stormed back inside the shop, muttering crazy-talk about southerners and brain synapses. Charlotte wasn’t exactly sure what a synapse was or why it wasn’t firing, but as smart as Alex was, she had yet to remember the workings of a small town—think small, act big. Right now, Match Made in Devon needed to picket in Washington D.C. for gray squirrel rights if it meant more business.
Charlotte clapped Jonah on the shoulder. “Build that honeymoon highway, sir.” And to the crowd, she added, “Let’s save some squirrels.”
The fur-fueled battle cry went over a little like an announcement of more mulch added to the landscape at the courthouse building, but it dissipated the rank and file of Devon who had wandered over because dead squirrels were the most exciting thing to hit town all week.
Back inside the shop, Charlotte made a call to the taxidermist.
Alex rolled her eyes and moved her work back upstairs.
10
Freesia
Freesia sat on the floor in Charlotte’s old bedroom, the materials to make a five-thousand-dollar bridal gown fanned around her. Most of the materials, thanks to expedited shipping. After she had spent the better part of the first precious day calling around to domestic manufacturers and getting nowhere, she rang up her old roommate, Sinead, who lived in Holland, and asked her to call an ex-boyfriend in Pamplona. For a trip to the local market, apparently the guy’s price was a second-chance date with Sinead. Freesia was lucky Sinead owed her a favor.
Her fingertips skimmed the Spanish cotton-blend. The fabric was luxurious and gauzy, as Freesia had requested, but it lacked the hand-stitched knot pattern that made hers special. She didn’t know those stitches; she would learn. Bell sleeves and a bodice framework already dressed the form in the sewing room. A tulipwood-inlaid platinum bangle and Tibetan-inspired amber and white onyx earrings from online boutiques offered the perfect balance of accessories. Freesia circled back to the one thing she hadn’t been able to reconcile. Beads carved from the mahogany tree in Sarafina’s yard. As rare as stitching a dress from four-leaf clovers.
She tugged the original dress into her lap, scissors in hand. Her hand flexed a few times to get a feel for the plastic grip, the slice of the blades, the courage within. They were just beads. Nothing when measured against her chance to become something meaningful to someone. She cut through the bodice’s end thread and emptied the first row of beads into a coffee mug she had found in the kitchen that read World’s Greatest Dad.
“He used to make root beer floats in that cup,” Alex said from the doorway.
She wore a man’s flannel shirt and a jersey tube skirt that skimmed the top of her bare feet. In one hand she held a carton of ice cream. In the other, a spoon.
“Always had his floats sitting up at the kitchen barstools while he watched the Braves games. Hated root beer by itself, but add vanilla bean ice cream? He could eat his body weight. One of the only things he’d eat toward the end.”
Progress. When Freesia arrived, Alex had spoken possessively of her father. My dad. Now, Elias March was he. Freesia didn’t want to risk this progress between them, but she had come for answers.
“How did he die?”
Alex eyed the bed as if she thought to sit then reconsidered.
“Cancer.” She pressed the spoon against her chest. “He noticed the lump, right here, at his sternum. He didn’t think much about it until he started having shortness of breath and the pressure built there. By the time they found the tumor, pressing against his lungs, he was stage four.”
Freesia didn’t know what to feel. Sadness seemed appropriate, though she had no real connection to the man past an intense wall of betrayal. But in the slow, forgotten trail of the spoon down Alex’s body, the way she barely clasped it to keep it from falling, Freesia sampled grief as sure as if she had taken a nibble from the carton. Going down, cold.
“Thank you for telling me.”
Alex nodded and entered the room. She browsed the bridesmaid dress sketches Freesia had fastened to the wall, the backward spoon held against her tongue. The longer she surveyed in silence, the faster Freesia’s stomach turned.
“The bride didn’t tell me her theme, so I took some liberties.”
Alex lingered at one Freesia had labeled candy mosque.
“There’s a mosque in Morocco with exquisite crown molding. In isolation, each section is nothing more than an arch with gold leaf painted on each side. Taken together, the arches look like candy ribbon with caramel inlay.”
Alex removed the spoon from between her lips. “I’ve never seen anything like it on a dress.” She moved down the line. “And this one?”
“My great-grandmother was a housemaid for a boarding school in North Carolina in the 40s. She told my mother stories about how the young women of privilege would sit on the porches to look out at the ocean and puff on their cigarettes and pretend their soldiers were coming back from the war. Said there was so much hope in that blue space, catching the breeze, that a black-and-white photo didn’t do it justice. I thought a dress just might.”
At the gray-blue column dress Freesia had sketched hours earlier, Alex said, “This one has a different feel. Dramatic.”
“It’s inspired by a children’s story about a king who directed three artists to paint their vision of harmony. The first two painted blue skies, puffy clouds, a beautiful lake. The third painted an angry sky, jagged mountains, a frightening waterfall. But when the king looked closer, he saw a mother bird in her nest. The third artist’s idea of harmony. Amidst chaos, the heart’s calm.”
Alex looked at Freesia then. Her gaze slipped, adrift on some thought, then recovered. “These designs should be seen. You’re talented.”
“Conception, maybe. Construction? Not so much.”
“Construction can be learned, but this…” Alex had ditched her matter-of-fact tone for something roomy, reserved. “Makes me want to know the story behind each design.”
“All women tell a story each time they dress. What you wear depends on what you want to say.”
“What do I want to say right now?”
A verbal challenge to see how far they’d come. Alex’s frown said mistrust, of herself and others. The way she fidgeted—spoon moving but never really eating—said she put a great deal of energy into her personal survival strategy. Of course, neither had the temporariness of garments. Freesia went with the safe bet.
“That you miss your husband because you’re w
earing his shirt.”
A wry smile escaped her. “That’s one story no woman wants to slip into.”
She had let more go than she intended. Freesia saw it in the lines that creased her brows.
“Charlotte is your go-to resource. She learned from the best. Mama could sew anything—costumes, quilts, formals, you name it.”
“I guess clothes weren’t the only thing she had a hand in mending.”
Freesia had often been accused of pushing, pushing, pushing until she reached her desired effect. Her life coach in Istanbul had called it connection repellent, though the exact words were likely lost in translation. Strong-willed was an important trait for setting feet in new soil, immersing yourself in cultures, picking up new languages. In this foreign land of sisterhood, Freesia pushed because no one else would. Not Charlotte. Certainly not Alex.
“I can’t,” said Alex. “I’ve tried. Gone over it and over it, trying to find a new angle. But I can’t look at you and see anything other than what my daddy did to Mama, to us.”
Disappointment penetrated Freesia’s skin, made her ache all over.
“I’m so much more than one act.” Freesia’s words crackled and itched in her throat, her voice insufferable. She stood and swallowed. “And I look at you and see everything that’s been denied me.”
“There’s nothing left, Freesia. Nothing but debt and the walls around us.”
“You know nothing about me if you think I’m all about the money. Family, a history, an identity past that of a bastard child. Hell, even a last name— all those riches you so desperately want to escape.” Everything inside screamed, but Freesia refused to give in. “So you can spare me what the world did to you. The world and I are on good terms. It gave me everything your daddy chose not to.”
Alex’s chin worked in tiny circles. She pressed her lips together, not a drop of sugar left on them. At least not for a bastard like Freesia.
She settled again to do her beadwork. At first grab, she toppled the mug. Mahogany heartwood beads dumped into the carpet fibers.
Alex made a move toward her.
Freesia held up a hand.
Her beads, her fight, her first real say, a necessity best accomplished alone.
11
Alex
Three things happened at the March kitchen table the next night. Alex got her second chance with Aima Solutions, to prove her worth to the whole of her industry. Charlotte showed up like the Pied Piper of Devon, carrying food—”Because, well, food”—leading the casserole-toting posse of Stella Irene’s squad, who aimed to rescue Freesia from the depths of her committed timeframe to complete the bridal dress. And Taffy brought the box that contained Elias and Stella Irene’s artifacts from the second floor of the bridal shop. Whiskey flowed, which was probably the fourth thing. Everyone but Alex soon had enough loose lips to sink friendships. But that wasn’t the way of them. The Silver Swarm would trade the precious time they had left on earth to make each other feel love, no matter how messy love became.
Alex set the timer on her phone for ten minutes—all she could spare for a paper plate and a smorgasbord of artery-clogging southern staples—before she had to put in a call to her IT guy, Duncan. Up half the night, she’d had an epiphany about enhanced productivity at Aima’s warehouses and had filled two journal pages with notes before sleep overcame her. If her software guy could implement her idea along with the impending backup, she could be a contender for VP again, despite the distribution hiccup.
Everyone settled in the family room, plates in hand. Alex chose the raised hearth of the fireplace, not because the lit gas logs offered an inviting heat but because the stone seat was the fastest escape in a room full of women who had honed “visitin’ for a spell” to high art.
The doughy carbs had barely hit her tongue when Taffy brought her box to the room’s center. Her parents’ memories, part of the evening’s public consumption. Alex nearly retreated to another room right then, but Freesia entered with her plate, not one place left to sit, a twitch and too many blinks at her eye.
Alex scooted over.
Freesia settled beside her. She smelled opulent, spicy, a fragrance Alex had come to align with the dirty little lie. In another lifetime, Alex would swim in its sultry, confident notes, allow its perfection to wash over her senses. In this lifetime, Freesia’s scent cloyed.
They hadn’t spoken since the encounter the previous night. When Alex wasn’t revolutionizing blood channels, her thoughts drifted back to one word: choice. Her father—their father—had exercised his choice to have the affair, sure, but he had also chosen to head west out of Georgia, not even a spare last name to give. Did he suspect? When did he know? Did he even think about protection? Before Freesia had opened her eyes to this world, Daddy had been here, around this hearth, with her. Another wayward choice.
Had he burdened Alex with unquenchable notions of perfection because he knew he wasn’t?
Alex plied a forkful of cornbread dressing down her throat as Queen Bee Taffy held court near the coffee table. She asked Charlotte to tell the story of the Evangeline leaf rotting inside the sandwich bag, the first March artifact from the marriage crypt. It could only be for Freesia’s benefit. Everyone here had heard the story a million times before. Ever the performer, Charlotte rose to the occasion.
For a bunch of women who already knew the tale, the rapture was real—likely because they were plied with whiskey and senioritis. Then Charlotte got to the meat of the point. Elias and Stella Irene met beneath the Evangeline oak in St. Martinville, Louisiana, when each stopped on a road trip with their families. Beside the chocolate brown waters of the Bayou Teche, Elias said he saw his future. As much as a boy of twelve could envision. He gave Stella Irene a leaf; she gave him an address where he could write her. Eight years later, he proposed beneath the same live oak.
Taffy rummaged through the remainder of the box: a map with men’s names on it, a cassette that fit into an old video camera with the label vow renewal, and the tassel Alex didn’t recognize.
“Anyone know what this goes to?” asked Taffy.
Bernie fashioned herself a sassier Angela Lansbury, as evidenced by today’s shirt selection: I wish these were brains. She examined the key. “It’s not to a car or cabinet. Too big. Not new either. See how the fingerhold is worn?”
Hazel fondled the tassel. “Looks Victorian. Hand-embroidered.”
“Stella Irene ever say anything?” Bernie looked to Charlotte and Alex.
“I asked her once, not long ago,” said Charlotte. “She said we’d know what it went to when the time was right. I guess the time was never right.”
Freesia stood abruptly, her polite “excuse me” like a puff of air. She clearly needed the escape more than Alex.
Charlotte frowned and looked at Alex. The last thing Alex wanted to do was chase down more truths, more emotion, more anything related to Freesia, but Charlotte gave Alex’s ponytail a good yank when she hesitated to follow her. Her story had already eaten up a good nine out of Alex’s ten spare minutes. The remainder disappeared on the trip upstairs. The entire route, Charlotte muttered about real smarts and how that means “never missing a good chance to hush up” and included a detour to the powder room for a box of tissues. Freesia’s room was quiet but for the occasional sniffle beyond the closed door. Somehow, Charlotte knew.
Charlotte knocked gently, her taps somehow sounding as comforting as a slice of pecan pie and a glass of warm milk—if that was even possible.
The door swung open a few inches. Freesia had made it back to the bed by the time Charlotte and Alex entered. Overnight, sketches that concealed Charlotte’s theater, prom queen, and community service awards had multiplied like rabbits.
“We were being insensitive,” said Charlotte. “Forgive us?”
“Really, Char? You’re opening with that?”
The timer went off in Alex’s pocket. She had changed the tone to birds, a whim she regretted based on the odd looks she was getting from the ot
her women in the room. Teleporting to a place she could actually get some work done shaped into a strong fantasy.
“Talking about Mama and Daddy is bound to be painful for her.”
“We’re in their house, surrounded by their friends. Of course Mama and Daddy are going to come up in conversation. Freesia joined our lives, not the other way around.”
“I can speak for myself,” said Freesia.
“All right then.” Charlotte’s practice at raising children made her adept at navigating emotional waters. Her volume was tiptoe quiet, baby steps.
After a time, Freesia said, “The tassel belonged to my mother.”
The revelation was a paper cut to an already festering wound. More proof of the dysfunctional weave between Stella Irene and the secret that threatened to unravel them all. She wanted to leave but she knew Charlotte wouldn’t ask the right questions.
“And the key?” asked Alex.
Freesia shrugged her shoulders. “Growing up, our house wasn’t much. But I fell asleep every night to the sound of the waves and woke every morning to the sound of gulls. Breezy in the hot summers, quiet in winter. Our house was half-buried in the dirt near the beach, like two buildings the tide had washed together—one blue, one brown, both weathered. I didn’t know it was anything less than perfect until some kids at school made fun of it. Called it the poor man’s projects. The next day, my mother passed an antique store on the boardwalk. Prettiest tassel she’d ever seen in the window, hanging off a glass knob on a fancy wardrobe. Lady told her it was more than the tip money in her pocket but gave it to her anyway. She tied it around the curtain by the door so the breeze would move it around and remind us that ancient pharaohs all the way to the emperor Constantine had clothed themselves in tassels. A sign of riches. We were the queens of our sandy kingdom.”
Alex’s brain jumbled on the timeline. “How did it get here?” Please, God, don’t let Daddy have gone back. Let it just be once.
“Your mother commented on it when she found me. I told her what I just told you. She broke down. Said she’d never heard a more beautiful story. I told her to keep it.”
Our Bridal Shop: Match Made in Devon Bridal Shop Book One Page 9
