That alone checked any worries she had that she’d been uncivil. She didn’t know him. He didn’t know her. And this notion that he thought they could be friends made her uncomfortable. Friendship wasn’t something that switched on and off like a light switch. Friendships took years to develop, requiring time spent together and secrets shared and trust built. It wasn’t something that happened because a librarian helped you find some books.
Sure, Lindsey had patrons who had become friends, but it had taken months and sometimes years for those relationships to form. Despite what Grady said, she couldn’t shake the feeling that his interest in her was inappropriate at best and downright creepy at worst.
Luckily, she was now off for a long weekend and could put some distance between herself and the awkwardness. She dreaded having Grady show up at the library, as she wasn’t really sure how to treat him. She was leery of being too friendly but didn’t want to be unduly harsh either.
Her weekend started with the arrival of her parents in Briar Creek and a cookout at the house with Sully making his famed barbecue ribs. From there, her parents went to stay on Bell Island with Sully’s parents in a getting-to-know-you parental weekend that she was certain would make the four of them as close as in-laws could be.
And now Lindsey’s mom and Sully’s mom were with her and Beth while they went wedding-dress shopping in New Haven. Lindsey had left her entourage in the lounge outside the dressing room while she tried on gowns. While she appreciated the help, there was a large part of her that would have preferred to be out fishing with her dad, Sully and his father. Still, immersed in all of these very normal pre-wedding events, it made Lindsey feel as if she could put “the Grady Incident,” as she had begun to think of it, behind her.
Being medium in build in both height and shape, Lindsey wasn’t sure what dress would make the most of her average assets. Because the wedding would be in December, she needed to find a dress quickly if there were going to be any alterations required. She wished she was the type of woman who’d had her wedding planned from the day she was five years old. She was not.
Lindsey’s life had been lived in the pages of books. In that regard, she’d been married a thousand times, in every possible ceremony and every possible bridal gown, from outer space to a fantasy wedding where she was a Druid bride, all the way through history to a modern-day wedding where the bride was actually in love with the groom’s brother. Drama! Truly, within the pages of books, she had the wedding thing down. In real life, not so much, as evidenced by the fact that she was in yet another fitting room in yet another bridal salon, trying on yet another mountain of dresses, none of which said, Pick me. Choose me. I am your dress.
“Arms up,” Diane, the petite owner of the shop, ordered.
Lindsey did as she was told, and Diane dropped the silky confection down over her head. As Diane fussed to make it hang just right, Lindsey hesitated to look in the mirror. She was reaching the end of her patience with trying on gowns, and she wanted very badly to feel like this was the one.
“Okay, what do you think?” Diane asked. She spun Lindsey around to face the mirror. Lindsey blinked. Oh. The dress was exquisite. A fitted gown of pale blue was just visible beneath the sheer white lace dress that floated over it. The cut of the gown flattered her figure, and the long sleeved lace was perfect for a winter wedding. All of the details were lovely, but it was how the dress made her feel that did the trick. This was the first dress Lindsey had tried on that made her feel like a bride.
“If winter comes early, the blue beneath the lace will look amazing against a snowy background.” Diane considered Lindsey in the mirror. “Will you wear your hair up or down?”
“Down,” Lindsey said. “But maybe pulled back?”
“Let’s see,” Diane said. She plucked two hair combs from her apron pocket and twisted up half of Lindsey’s hair, fixing it in place with the combs. “Yes, I’d definitely consider a half-up, half-down if I were you.”
She was right. It was only the second dress Lindsey had tried on in this shop, but it was definitely the one that got her vote.
“Come out already,” Beth called into the dressing room. “We’re dying out here.”
This was their third stop of the day, Diane’s Bridal, a tiny dress shop in central New Haven. It was located on the first floor of an old redbrick building that used to be a button factory. The wood floors were polished to a high gloss, and big bay windows looked out onto the street.
Lindsey pushed back the curtain of the dressing room and strode out into the main room, with the full pale blue skirt and lace overlay billowing around her. There was a gasp, and she looked up to see both Sully’s mother, Joan, and her mom, Christine, clasping their hands together and smiling. Beth, being the most exuberant of them all, was bouncing up and down on her feet as if she couldn’t contain her excitement.
“You are stunning! That’s the one!” she declared. She looked at the moms. “Don’t you think? That’s the one?”
The moms looked at each other, and then Lindsey’s mom spoke. “It depends on whether it’s the one Lindsey wants. Is it, dear?”
Lindsey picked up her skirts and climbed the steps to stand on the dais with the three mirrors. She checked her reflection from every angle. She turned around and faced them. “I think we have a winner.”
“Yes!” Joan clapped. “My goodness, Sully is going to keel over when he sees you in that.”
Lindsey laughed. “So long as he bounces right back up again.”
“Oh, honey,” Christine said. “You are going to be such a beautiful bride.”
A tear slid down her cheek, and Lindsey reached forward and hugged her mom. She was shorter than Lindsey, and her blond hair had lightened to white in recent years, but they shared the same hazel eyes, wide smile, stubborn chin and somewhat prominent nose. When she looked at her mom, she could see herself in the future, and it hit her that like her mom had had her dad by her side for most of her life, Lindsey would now have Sully. The thought made her smile.
She looked at her mom with a bit of wonder and said, “I’m getting married.”
Christine laughed and hugged her close. Lindsey knew at that moment that all the things she’d been worried about in regards to the wedding just didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was that at the end of it, Sully would be her husband.
She turned to see Diane standing in the doorway to the fitting room and said, “I’ll take it.”
After a grueling morning of dress shopping, the ladies agreed that only a pizza at New Haven’s Wooster Square would do, so they set out to enjoy a ladies’ lunch, which included a brick oven–baked white clam pie. Heaven.
It struck Lindsey as she and Beth listened to Joan and Christine reflect upon their marriages, both of which were approaching forty-year anniversaries, that while it was true that both Joan and Christine had chosen their mates wisely, there was also a level of stick-to-it-ness that was required for a marriage to survive.
Lindsey knew that her mom had to endure her father’s snoring; truly, he was a champ and hit decibels that other snorers only dreamed of. She hadn’t known until today that her mom had devised a system in which she sandwiched her head in between two pillows to drown out the noise. Joan shared that Sully’s father suffered from an acute case of male refrigerator blindness. Not a day passed that he didn’t stand in front of the open refrigerator and ask her where something was that was usually right in front of him. Beth glanced between the two of them as if taking notes.
Lindsey looked at her and said, “Nothing to report about Aidan?”
Beth glanced around the table with a worried expression. She bit her lip and said, “Well, we have had some discussions . . .”
“About?” Lindsey asked.
“Video games,” Beth said.
Joan and Christine both raised their eyebrows, and Lindsey knew this was likely a generational p
roblem. She’d seen both Sully and Aidan get that glazed look in their eyes when Beth and Aidan came over for dinner and the two men busted out Sully’s gaming console. While she and Beth were happy to take them on in a tournament of Super Smash Bros., Sully and Aidan had the stamina to play Black Ops II into the night for hours.
“Since we found out that I’m pregnant, he gets up in the middle of the night and plays video games,” she said. “He says it relaxes him, but I’m afraid he’s doing it because he’s afraid that once the baby comes, he won’t have any time to himself anymore.” She was quiet for a moment. “We argued about it.”
Joan smiled. She tucked her silver hair behind her ear and reached across the table to pat Beth’s hand. “When I was pregnant, Mike used to go out night fishing. Scared the living daylights out of me, thinking he was going to fall asleep and fall in the water and drown.”
“When I was pregnant with Lindsey and her brother, Jack, John used to get up and graph sentences and study the derivation of words,” Christine said. She looked at Lindsey. “Always the professor of etymology.”
“So this is normal?” Beth asked.
“Absolutely,” Joan said.
“Fatherhood is a big wake-up call for a man,” Christine said. “Even though times have changed and women contribute to the household income just as much, and frequently more, than men, they still have that be-the-provider thing. I think it freaks them out.”
“Oh, phew.” Beth collapsed back into her chair. “I was afraid deep down he was changing his mind about the whole parenting thing.” She gestured at her still-slim belly. “Too late.”
They all laughed, and Lindsey heard the notification chime from her phone. She wondered whether it was Sully reporting in from his fishing trip. Suddenly, she missed him with an intensity that was almost painful.
“Excuse me,” she said. She reached down into her bag and picked up her phone. She thumbed it open and glanced at the text icon. It indicated a new message, so she opened it. The number wasn’t one she recognized, and she assumed it was an advertisement. It wasn’t.
The message read, I liked you in the first dress. Choose that one for me.
CHAPTER
4
A chill ran through her, and Lindsey’s head snapped up from her phone as she scanned the restaurant. Anyone she knew who would text her about her dress would be in her phone. Her brother, Jack, was the only one who would send her a text from an unrecognizable number, because Jack lived an adventurous life by the seat of his pants, but the last she’d heard he was in Boston, behaving himself. Still.
“Mom, did you text Dad or Jack about my dress?” she asked.
“No, I thought you’d want to do that,” she said. She smiled at Lindsey but then frowned. “Are you all right, dear? You look pale.”
“I’m fine.” Lindsey forced herself to smile. She was as far from fine as completely freaked out could possibly be, but she was not about to let her mother know. “I’m just worn out from trying on so many dresses.” She looked at Joan and Beth. They were her only hope for the weirdness not to be so weird. She asked, “You didn’t text anyone about the dress, did you?”
“No,” Joan said. “I don’t want Sully to get a glimpse until the day of your wedding.”
“Nope,” Beth said. Her eyes narrowed as she took in the expression on Lindsey’s face. “Why?”
Lindsey shook her head. “I just got a text about wedding dresses from a number I don’t recognize. It’s probably nothing.”
Joan turned to Christine and said, “Those telemarketers can find you anywhere, I swear.”
“I know,” Christine agreed. “I looked online for a new dishwasher, and the next thing I knew, ads for dishwashers were popping up all over the place.”
“It’s very creepy,” Joan agreed. “And pushy.”
“Excuse me,” Beth said. “I need to use the restroom. Lindsey, don’t you need to go, too?”
“No,” Lindsey said. One look at Beth’s face and she knew she was going to the restroom. “Oh, wait—yeah, I do. Excuse us.”
Together they cut through the restaurant of red and white checked linen tables and empty Chianti bottles hanging from the ceiling. Once they got into the bathroom, Beth turned on her.
“What happened?”
“Noth—”
Beth shook her head. Lindsey sighed and held out her phone. Beth read the text, and her eyes went wide.
“It’s him, isn’t it?” she asked. “That creep, Grady.”
Lindsey shrugged. “I don’t know, but I can’t imagine who else in my life would send something like this.”
Beth handed Lindsey her phone and went over to the sink and started washing her hands. “I feel like I’m contaminated just by reading that. What does that even mean? ‘Choose it for me’? Ish.”
“I have no idea,” Lindsey said. She pocketed her phone and washed her hands, too. “I’m going to take it to Emma and see what she thinks.”
“Good idea,” Beth said. “How about this afternoon?”
“I can’t,” Lindsey said. “Once we get back to Briar Creek, I’m going with Mom and Joan out to Bell Island to join the men for dinner. Sully is picking us up.”
“He’d want you to tell Emma,” Beth said.
“And I will, first thing in the morning,” Lindsey said.
Beth stared at her.
“I promise.”
“Swear on your perfect wedding dress,” Beth said. She took these things very seriously.
Lindsey laughed. “I swear on my perfect wedding dress.”
* * *
• • •
Sully and Heathcliff were waiting for them at the pier when they arrived back in Briar Creek in the midafternoon. The sun shone on Sully’s reddish-brown curls, and his blue eyes crinkled in the corners when he saw her. He opened his arms wide, but Heathcliff ran around him to get to Lindsey first. He launched his furry black body at her, and Lindsey just had time to brace herself as Heathcliff hit her with all thirty-five pounds of wiggling dog. Lindsey bent down and gave him an all-over body rub.
When she straightened back up, Sully was watching them with a grin, and he opened his arms and gave her a solid hug. Back with her boys, it was the best Lindsey had felt since reading the worrisome text.
“Success?” Sully asked.
“And how,” she said. She smiled at him. “Check find a dress off the to-do list.”
“Fantastic,” he said. “We’re one step closer to being wife and husband and dog.”
Lindsey laughed. Being near him made the boogeyman go away; suddenly the creepy text just seemed stupid and silly and not worth ruining her day over.
“All aboard,” Sully called. He led the way to where his water taxi was docked, and he handed each of them into the boat.
The moms, as Lindsey was beginning to think of them, took the bench seat at the back of the boat while she took the seat beside Sully’s. He pushed off the pier and jumped into the boat. He started up the engine, and Lindsey felt herself relax. She was glad they were going to be on the island for the evening; putting some distance between herself and the town might make her feel better.
Heathcliff bounded up onto the bow, his preferred spot, and he wagged and barked at the waves they puttered through. They were in the no-wake zone, so the boat moved slowly, maneuvering around the rocks hidden just below the water’s surface.
They were almost out of sight of the pier when Lindsey felt the hair on the back of her neck prickle. She thought maybe it was the cooler breeze on the water after the hot air inland, but an intuition or instinct compelled her to look back at the dock. Standing at the end of the pier, watching their boat, stood Aaron Grady.
While she stared at him in horror, he raised his arm and waved. Lindsey knew without a doubt that he was the one who had texted. He was watching her, following her, stalking her.
She thought she might throw up.
As if he sensed something was wrong, Sully glanced from Lindsey to where she stared. He frowned. Over the sound of the motor, he shouted, “Is that him? The rose guy?”
Lindsey nodded. Sully’s face went dark, as if he was seriously debating turning the boat around to go confront Grady. Lindsey stepped close to him, not wanting the moms to hear.
“He followed me today,” she said. “He watched me try on dresses.”
“What the he—” he began, but Lindsey interrupted.
“Shh,” she said. “I don’t want to alarm the moms.”
Sully’s features were tight, but he gave her a quick nod. Quietly, he said, “This ends tonight. When we go home, we’re going to talk to Emma on the way.”
“Agreed,” Lindsey said. Then she put her arm around him. She could feel the tension in his bunched-up shoulders. “Hey, relax. It’ll be okay.” His shoulders remained taut. Lindsey wrapped her arms around him while he increased the speed of the boat as if he wanted to get her out of there. “Do I have to hug it out of you?”
At that, she felt the tension in him ease. He steered with one hand while putting his calloused hand over hers as if he could keep her close and protect her.
“That might help,” he said. He turned his head and kissed her quick. “I hate that this guy is doing this. It makes me want to punch something—him.”
“I know,” she said. “But don’t. I need you.”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “You’ve got me, one hundred percent.”
* * *
• • •
Bell Island was one of the largest of the Thumb Islands. It had all the perks, electricity and plumbing, and several families lived on the island year-round, unlike the smaller islands that were mostly summer homes. Sully and his younger sister, Mary, had grown up on the island. Since then, a few of the families had changed, but the island remained the same.
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