by Reid, Penny
I tried to discern her mood through her voice. She sounded excited, but it could have been irritated or agitated.
“Yes, this is me. I am her.”
“Oh! You should have said so. How are you? Tell me everything.”
“Oh, well, if you want to know, I’m well. Except Quinn’s sister is just not being reasonable. I think she doesn’t realize what a gift she has in her family. All she needs to do is apologize and mean it so everyone can move on. I also think Quinn isn’t giving himself enough credit and speaks of himself in disparaging terms that are completely unfair. He’s a good person. I just wish he’d realize it. Then there’s my sister. I just got finished visiting her in jail. She’s being charged with breaking and entering my in-laws’ house, and she had a gun. I’m not really sure how to feel about her right now. They have her on some medication which I think might be helping, but….”
“Janie, whoa, slow down…!” I heard Niki laughing on the other end. “I meant, tell me everything about the dress problem. You said you need a completely amazing wedding dress, and I think I heard something about Marie Antoinette in there somewhere. What’s wrong with your dress?”
“It’s very sensible and plain and, I thought it was what I wanted, but it’s just all wrong.” My eyes flickered to the back of Stan’s head. He seemed to be very dedicated to keeping his eyes on the road this afternoon.
“Oh, girl. No woman should ever wear something sensible on her wedding day. That’s not allowed. It’s the one day you get to dress like a princess and blow the knickers off your prince.”
“I didn’t think I wanted that when I picked out the dress, but now…I feel completely ridiculous admitting this, but—I totally completely want to blow the knickers off my prince.” My brain was at war with…my brain. My heart and my body were ambivalent. It was all brain-on-brain brawling. “It doesn’t make any sense!”
“It’s tradition, girl. You can’t half-ass tradition.”
“What can I do? I’m in Boston. The place where I got my dress has nothing off the rack in my size, at least they didn’t the last time I tried dresses on. Either they’re too big or too short. You might remember that I’m very tall.”
Niki was silent for a moment. I heard her shift her phone to the other ear, and then I heard nails clicking on a keyboard in the background. “Did you say the wedding is in five days?”
“It’s Saturday. So, technically it’s more like four and a quarter days.”
More silence. More keyboard clicking.
Then, “Ah, ha! I can help you! Have you ever heard of Donovan Charles?”
The name sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it. “I think so….”
“He’s a fashion designer, a big deal—or he will be very soon. His haute couture shop is in Boston, and I know for a fact that he has several wedding dresses in house. Some are from his latest collection, and they’re fab-bu-licious.”
“Fabulicious?”
“Yes, definitely. He might not sell one to you, but he’ll let you borrow it for a day. I’m sure of it. Let me call him. I’ll do it now.”
I opened my mouth to ask her whether she thought they would fit, or to thank her, or some other thought that hadn’t quite materialized, but she clicked off.
Several moments passed during which I held the phone to my ear. I was still caught in the forward inertia of our conversation; my mind hadn’t yet adjusted to the fact that she’d hung up or that she’d readily agreed to help me. But just as I was lowering it to my lap, it buzzed.
She’d texted me and, if I interpreted it correctly, it meant:
Donovan Charles was willing to help.
He was sending over some dresses to my hotel on Thursday morning at 11:00 a.m.
I needed to text her back with the hotel address.
Niki was amazing and wonderful.
Quinn had great taste in slamps.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Quinn was banned from the hotel room on Thursday starting at 9:00 a.m. and for the next eight hours. I didn’t know how much time I needed to try on the dresses or if they would arrive promptly at 11:00 a.m.
I needed to be finished in time for dinner. We would all be congregating at a nearby restaurant around 6:30 p.m. It would be the first time Quinn and my father would meet.
I wasn’t nervous.
Weirded out was the most accurate description for what I was.
I hadn’t seen my dad in years. I didn’t know what to expect when Quinn and his parents met him. It all just felt very Twilight Zone-ish.
Add to this the fact that Quinn didn’t know he was banned from the hotel room, but Dan knew Quinn was banned and promised to keep it a secret. Furthermore, Dan promised me that he would keep Quinn out of the way for as long as possible.
I didn’t tell Dan the reason I needed Quinn out of the way. I didn’t tell anyone about the dress mess. This was for a few reasons.
First, I couldn’t be certain that I was going to like any of Donovan Charles’s wedding gowns. I’d looked him up online, and he seemed to love feminine fits reminiscent of the 1940s. This was good; I liked this style; this was encouraging. But I couldn’t find any pictures of his wedding dresses.
Secondly, even if I did like them, I had no idea if they would fit.
And, last, I still hadn’t come to terms with my desire to blow Quinn’s knickers off with a stunning wedding dress. I wasn’t the princess- gown-wearing ribbons-and-bows girly type.
At least…I didn’t think I was.
But Jem’s advice kept rattling around in my brain.
I decided not to dwell on this contradiction too much as it hinted heavily of an identity crisis.
Therefore, since I’d told no one, I was alone and waiting when I heard a knock on the door Wednesday at 11:00 a.m. sharp. I didn’t think twice as I ran to the door and pulled it open. I’m sure my face, at least initially, was a mixture of excited expectation.
Desmond, Quinn’s dad, stood in the doorway.
I was startled by his unexpected appearance and tried to rein in my surprise.
“Oh! Desmond…hi.”
“Hi.”
“I, um…hi. What’s going on?” I glanced down the hall behind him and saw Stan just outside my door.
“Can I come in?” Desmond asked.
“Oh, yes…yes, of course. I’m sorry.” I moved out of the way, gestured that he should enter. I thought about telling Stan to intercept the dresses, but I decided against it. If I re-routed the dresses, it would feel dishonest, like I was trying to hide something. Quinn’s dad wasn’t a talker and wouldn’t likely stay very long. My mind was reeling as I tried to remember whether he’d said he would stop by this morning. Had Katherine sent him to pick up something for the wedding? I had nothing.
With very little time to contemplate the best course of action, I merely shut the door and followed Desmond to the sitting area.
He walked to the coffee table and set a bag on top of it, and scanned the room. “Place is nice.”
“Yes. It’s a nice hotel. I like that they have large bathtubs.”
He gave me a very small smile. “Katherine likes big tubs too.”
“They’re excellent places to think.”
He narrowed his eyes at me in a way that reminded me of how Quinn looked right before he was about to tease me. “Do a lot of thinking, do ya?”
I nodded, because I did think a lot, but I said nothing else.
I wanted to tell him about brain usage and related myths, but decided against it. Quinn may have appreciated my random bouts of information, but I didn’t want to force his family to sit through it.
“What?” He gave me a sideways look. “Did I say something wrong?”
I shook my head. “No. Not at all. I do a lot of thinking. You are correct.”
His mouth tugged to the side and he hooked his thumbs in the belt loops of his pants. “You look like you want to say something else.”
I shook my head, rolled my lips between my teeth.
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He grinned. “Come on. Out with it.”
I’m sure my expression betrayed how difficult it was for me to keep from spewing the random information all over him, because my voice was tight when I admitted, “It’s weird. I’m weird. And I don’t want to bore you.”
“Tell me.”
I considered him for a split second, then let it out, “Okay, fine. You shouldn’t believe the myth that humans only use ten percent of their brain. Most people don’t consider the fact that the brain is only three percent of a human’s weight—on average—yet uses twenty percent of the energy.”
He lifted a single eyebrow. “Really? I’ve heard that, about people only using ten percent of their brain. It’s not true?”
“No. Not true. Some people attribute the durability of the misconception to Einstein; he said something along those lines when people asked him why he was so intelligent. I think he was just trying to make them feel better about their own stupidity and limitations—like, if they could tap into more of their brain then they would be able to understand higher-level concepts. The fact is, we use almost every part of our brain every day, maybe just not all at once. You get the brain you get, and Einstein was both blessed and cursed.”
“So there is no hope for stupid people?”
I paused, considered how best to answer this overly simplistic question. I was about to respond with a rephrasing of the question that would hopefully break the issue into several silos defining the types of stupidity and how one might rise above each.
However, before I could, another knock sounded on the door to the suite. I flinched, turned, bolted to the door and opened it.
Standing in the hall was a woman—a very, very stylish woman—dressed in a black business suit with red piping. Her clothes were stunning. Her black hair was pulled into a tight bun, and she wore matching black stilettos with a red triangle at the toe.
“Janie Morris?” She asked, lifting a markedly perfect eyebrow.
I nodded. “Yes. I am her—she. She is me.”
“Oh yes. You are quite lovely.” She smiled; her eyes moved up and down my body and came back to my face. “It’s too bad about the freckles. Photographers hate freckles.”
I could only blink at this statement.
She didn’t wait for me to invite her in. Instead, she turned and said to Stan, “You there, please help me with this.” She gestured to a garment rack on which were hung five large garment bags. Then she turned back to me, linked our arms together, and pulled me into the suite.
“Niki is absolutely fantastic. We love her. Adorable. So when she called and explained the situation, Donovan simply had to help. She promised us that you were stunning; of course she was right. But, no matter either way, we would have helped—of course. However, you can imagine how convenient it is for us that we’ll be able to shoot the wedding.”
“Shoot the wedding?”
“Yes. Is this the groom?” She stopped in front of Desmond, eyeing him up and down.
“What? No. No, this is my father-in-law.”
“Oh.” She smiled at him.
He frowned at her.
Then the woman turned to me. “That’s excellent news, assuming your groom looks like his father. Well done. Now where will we do this? I’ll need light, lots of light.”
“Uh….” I glanced at Desmond. He was watching me, and his face was devoid of expression. I closed my eyes, sighed, and lifted my hand to the bedroom. “In there. I can try them on in there. The room has a large window.”
“Fabulous!” She said, air kissed both my cheeks then turned back to Stan. He was loitering by the door with the portable garment rack. “You, darling, come with me. Just bring it in here.”
I watched her disappear into the bedroom with Stan close behind, and I listened as she called out instructions on where everything should be placed.
Hesitantly I turned back to Desmond. His expression was inscrutable. I felt the deluge of my explanation pressing against my throat, and I couldn’t hold it back.
“Quinn saw me in my wedding dress, and it was terrible—not Quinn, the dress. It isn’t actually terrible, but it’s made from very practical synthetic fibers. Really, it’s lovely, but Quinn had no reaction. None. And I was disappointed so I….”
“You called for more dresses?”
“No. I visited my sister in prison and asked for advice, if you can believe that. They have her on medication. I looked it up, a neurotoxin derived from snake venom. It seems to be working for her.”
“And your sister…helped you find a dress?”
“No, she said that I should stop worrying about what I think I should want and just do what I actually want. I agree with her in some respects. But I believe, as an overall life philosophy, that it can’t be adapted to one hundred percent of situations.”
He nodded. “I agree, with her and with your application of her advice.”
I smiled at this statement, feeling better for some reason that he’d given me his blessing. “Thank you. That means a lot to me. I just…I just want to be beautiful for Quinn. I want to look my best.”
His eyes moved between mine, and I got the sense that he wanted to say something. At length, he exhaled a large breath and said, “Can I give you some advice?”
“Oh, yes. Yes, please do. I could use some advice.” My head was bobbing up and down because I really, really wanted someone to give me advice. My whole life I’d been advice-bereft, except for the ladies in my knitting group. I loved advice. It was like free data.
“I’ll tell you what I told Shelly when she was going through a hard time in middle school.” He returned my smile with a small one of his own. “Be beautiful for yourself, Janie. And only if you want to. If a man is worthy of you, he’ll see more beauty in who you are than in what you look like.”
I thought about this, saw an enormous amount of wisdom in his words, and subsequently started to cry.
This only made him smile wider. Then he pulled me into his arms and gave me a hug.
“Why are you crying?” he asked softly. I could tell he was still smiling.
“I don’t know,” came my watery reply. I shrugged, but pressed my face closer to his chest, my hands gripping the back of his shirt. “I guess because that was such a good dad thing to say, like how they show dads in TV shows and movies and in great books, and it felt nice.”
“Didn’t your dad ever give you advice?”
“He likes to forward me funny emails every month or so.”
“Not even when you were a teenager?”
I shook my head. “He told me to ask my therapist.”
I felt Desmond’s chest rise and fall, his arms squeeze tighter just before his hands moved to my arms. He set me a little distance away so he could look into my eyes.
His gaze was impossibly kind as he said, “Then, daughter dear, call me Dad.”
I burst into a new bout of tears. This made him laugh. He brought me forward and hugged me again. He let me hug him for a long time. He even hugged like I thought a dad would hug, all soothing and wise and a little awkward because he was so big; like he didn’t want to crush me with his ginormous Boston police detective arms, so he held me carefully.
“All right, that’s enough,” he said at length, setting me away again. “That crazy woman in there will be back any minute, and I have something for you.”
I wiped my eyes with the back of my hands and sniffed. “You don’t have to give me anything.”
He reached for the bag he’d brought and took out a small wooden box. The outside was carved with what looked like Celtic symbols.
“I want to,” he said, handing the box to me.
I twisted my mouth to the side and gingerly opened the little treasure box. Inside was a yellow-gold Claddagh ring. I gasped, my eyes lifting to his.
He wasn’t exactly smiling, as his mouth was flat. But when I saw the crinkling around his eyes, I knew that for him, this was probably a smile.
“It was my mother’s ring
, and her mother’s before that. Quinn should have used it when he proposed, that’s the order of things, the tradition in my family. I’m not asking you to replace your engagement ring. I’d just like it if you wore it and carried on the tradition when the time comes, with your son.”
“Of course.” My chin wobbled.
His smile was plainly visible as he said, “Don’t cry.”
I shook my head. “I’m not crying. I just have something in my eye.”
“That’s the spirit.”
“Darling!” The woman in black poked her head out of the door. “Everything is ready, and I’m bursting to get started! Tell your daddy-in-law to wait here. We need an audience for our fashion show.”
I nodded, plucked the ring from its home, and slid it onto my right hand middle finger. It fit perfectly.
I whispered to him, “You don’t have to stay. This will be boring for you.”
Desmond shifted on his feet, glanced at the door, then studied me for a short moment. Abruptly, he turned and sat in a nearby chair. “Nah, I’ll stay until after lunch.” He swallowed, and I noted he looked resigned. “What am I going to do instead? All I had planned was a pastrami sandwich.”
I gave him a closed-lipped smile and tried not to cry or laugh at how uncomfortable he looked. But I decided to accept this gift he was offering me. I crossed to the room service menu and plucked it from the table.
“Here.” I handed him the folder. “We’ll multi-task. Order two pastrami sandwiches.”
* * *
Desmond stayed and helped me pick out my wedding dress.
To his credit, and perhaps even our mutual astonishment, he was a tough critic and voiced his opinion when I came out in each of the seven options. Of course, his opinion was curt, blunt, and less than ten words. This was glorious for me, because where I would have been polite, he spoke up and insulted some of the more ridiculous elements of the gowns.
Ramona, the woman in the black suit, pretended to be offended, but I could tell she was enjoying the challenge.
