“You want real? Right before your little display in there, I get a call. My mother’s dying and I should help her, but I can barely muster enough concern to feel human. Your real isn’t my real.”
“Don’t be so sure.” He pocketed his hands, took a few steps back, leaned the broadest part of his immaculate shirt and the slight curve of his backside in tailored slacks against the brick of an old savings and loan. “I’m sorry about your mom. I’m sorry for the way I left it, out on that highway. That I left at all. And I’m sorry you saw and heard what you did today.”
Freesia hugged herself, considered his sincerity. “For real, the part about the…” She straightened her index finger, then allowed it to go limp.
He flashed a smile that sent her heart clear to her knees. “Especially that part. I’m sorry you heard that.”
“Is that where Whiskey-bear comes from?”
A deep chuckle knocked around his chest. “God no. I assure you it’s not a commentary on how I handle liquor. Jameson’s a whiskey. Ever had it?”
Freesia shook her head.
“Peyton always said it was like me—vanilla, sweet when I wasn’t salty, one-directional.”
“And what do you think?”
“I think it smells like pencils.”
His easy, self-deprecating smile was nothing like she expected. Jay Scott defied his lineage. He sobered before adding, “I couldn’t be with her anymore. Not like that. Not at all. That night when I drove home, I could still taste you. I didn’t want to let that go.”
This time, her heart slipped all the way to her toes.
“And today was a coincidence? This shop, this town?”
“I don’t believe in coincidence, Freesia. That was a full-on shove into something I should have done long ago.”
He wanted real; she pushed real at him to keep him at arm’s length.
“I don’t trust you. Probably never will.”
“I accept that. As long as you don’t accept responsibility for what happened today.”
Freesia nodded. She glanced toward the mouth of the alley, the late morning sun slanting bold against the buildings and steaming rain from the pavement. “I have to go. I’m a mess.”
His mouth hitched to a smile, and she knew he remembered his words that day, seemingly everything about that day. They were both a straight up, tidy mess.
“Maybe that means our dreams are harder to come by and sweeter when they come.”
She liked that. Far, far more than she should. Her legs carried her backward, toward the sun. Maybe she wanted a last glimpse of Highway Jay, unexpected, a glimpse she thought she’d never get again but had circled back to her all the same. A full-on shove down a road not yet taken.
“Buy some new shoes,” she called, teasing, flippant, in her retreat. “Those are muddy, tight.”
Morning rays stretched across her back, kissed her crown. She was at the corner.
“Find your place, Free. Can’t run forever.”
His nugget of advice did a lazy number on her body. Warmer than the sun. Concentrated on a place between her lungs, slightly off-center, about the size of a balled fist. The place where she held on to plenty but gave little. And possibly, just maybe, a place deserving of her very best.
Freesia lifted her hand. A wave.
He mirrored her.
They shared a moment.
She turned the corner.
New York or Georgia, Freesia couldn’t say. She hadn’t seen the last of him; she knew that. Somehow, in that place deserving of her very best, she knew.
2
Charlotte
About most things in the bridal business, Charlotte and Alex butted heads. There had been the issue as to how to utilize the shop’s valuable second-floor square footage, an argument Charlotte—and nostalgia—had won by turning it into an ever-evolving archive to the stories of wedded bliss. And there had been the row about what dress sizes to stock—Charlotte embracing the God-given curves of the southern woman, Alex bottom lining about bottom lines. In fact, at least a dozen times, the subject of the business’s viability in such a small town had made them both mad as a saltine box full of frogs. But on the subject of brides-to-be getting dumped inside the walls of the matrimonial space that had been carved out of Stella Irene and Elias’s legacy, Charlotte and Alex agreed.
It was bad for business.
So when the two sisters pulled up in front of their childhood home, the home largely occupied by Alex and Baby Maddie now that Freesia had one foot and the rollers of one suitcase out the door to New York, they agreed to get to the bottom of the ugly scene that had happened inside the shop that morning, starting with the one person they determined was the common denominator in all the crazy.
At the backyard’s stone firepit, where Freesia draped herself on an Adirondack and took to staring at the flames hard enough to bend fire, Alex launched preemptively.
“Care to tell us how half of Devon now knows that the son of the only Mississippi billionaire on Forbes Top Fifteen has erectile dysfunction, Mommy issues, and chased you into our back alley today?”
It wasn’t exactly how Charlotte would have greased the wheels. She might have started with something more creative and conspiratorial.
Freesia curled her bare toes against the warmth and pleaded the fifth.
“Peyton Habersham is a cosmetic heiress with the power to run us out of business with one social media post,” said Alex. “Probably already has.”
Charlotte tsked her. “Don’t be dramatic.”
“Says the woman prone to thinking cheese puffs and the remote control are romantic gestures. This isn’t a plot twist in one of your sappy novels, Charlotte. Everything we’ve worked so hard to recover is at stake. She owes us an explanation.”
Night pushed strong against the evening sun. A chorus of songs from the small creatures near the creek crept toward them, not a wink of breeze to stir.
“I know him,” said Freesia.
The March sisters waited for more. When the waiting had them making eye contact, Alex piped up, deadpan. “I couldn’t have guessed by the way he sprinted after you, calling your name.”
Sometimes, Alex could be so like Daddy. Puzzle out something six ways but still couldn’t buy a clue.
“Now hush. Let her finish.”
“There’s no finish, Charlotte. There wasn’t even really a start.”
“He was the man from the highway, wasn’t he?” asked Charlotte.
Freesia nodded.
“What man from the highway?” Alex’s voice was chafed. Freesia rubbing her the wrong way for a year never quite healed, and made all the more stinging by the friendship Charlotte had forged with their half-sister. Most days, catching Alex up on happenings opened Charlotte up to being right in the middle of an angst sandwich smeared with a thick layer of judgment. Charlotte gave her the Nash version of events: just the facts, nothing she didn’t absolutely have to know.
“Hunky guy. Needed help. Ate barbeque.” Charlotte looked to Freesia to get good and filled in on the story beyond that.
“I knew he was in a bad way about something,” Freesia said. “I didn’t know that something would walk into the shop.”
Alex crossed her arms. “That man had zero intent to do what he did until he saw you. We’ve worked hard to market to women who buy into the sanctity of marriage. Pushed the legend about charmed unions to the forefront—”
“You make marriage sound like something you step in on the way out to pasture.”
“Point is, seducing unavailable men doesn’t really align with that narrative.”
Charlotte took to fiddling with the natural folds of her crepe skirt. Alex’s words bumped along the dangerous backcountry road that veered off into past hurts, completely uncalled for. Charlotte was about to say so when Freesia’s voice came, strong, leveling.
“You’d best choose your words carefully, sister.”
Nature had its say in the conversation. The steady pulse of crickets and
frogs reminded Charlotte that the dynamic between Alex and Freesia was like a county loop, meandering for a time but always led back to the same places.
Ever the go-between, Charlotte settled in the adjacent chair. “Does this have anything to do with the phone call?”
Freesia’s gaze shifted back to the fire. “No.”
The pause said it all. Like an antiques dealer who could recognize a patina and judge age or someone like Nash who could diagnose an engine’s problem by sound alone, Charlotte had perfected the art of detecting lies. When coupled with her motherly instincts, it was a potent force.
“When I was ten, there was a boy up the road—Jordan Millhouse. An absolute toot.” She turned to Alex. “Remember him?”
Alex stared back at her, bewildered. “Sure.”
“Every day when I walked home from school, Jordan got it in his head to ambush me with tomatoes from his grandmother’s garden. Bless her heart, she was as blind as a noonday owl and confused to boot. I came home looking like the bad end of a crime scene. And every day, Alex would help me dry my tears, strip down, wash my clothes, and nudge me off into the bath before anyone saw. I wanted to tell Mama and Daddy, but Alex knew that Daddy would talk to Jordan’s Daddy, and that man had a wicked temper. Jordan’d be lashed to blister. Wouldn’t sit for weeks. Alex had something else in mind.”
Alex shifted, her arms no longer crossed.
“That next weekend, the town had a fair with food competition. Best dishes in the county. That year, the dishes were to honor our founder’s heritage—Sicilian. As it turned out, the members of the Boy’s Heritage League, Troop four-oh-seven, had the distinguished honor of being first-round taste judges for all the work they did renovating the town square. Quite the honor. I had never seen Alex more motivated as a volunteer. Most days, you had to break her like a wishbone to get her to see past the book in her hand.”
Alex shook her head, glanced off toward the creek, but as soon as Charlotte continued, she was right back with them.
“Time came for the boys to take their judge’s seats, in front of the mayor and the preacher and about three hundred members of the community. And who comes out to serve but Alex. She set a plate of spaghetti down in front of Jordan and whispered something in his ear. That boy turned pickled green.”
“What did you say?” Freesia asked Alex.
“I told him that I hoped he enjoyed eating the fruits of his labor and that my sister sent her regards.”
“In front of the entire town,” said Charlotte, “He ate sauce made from his grandmother’s smashed tomatoes.”
“Plus a few natural ingredients,” added Alex. “Crickets from our back deck, mostly.”
“From that day on, Jordan ran back inside his grandmother’s house when he saw me coming down the road.”
Charlotte’s giggles misted her eyes. The story had woven its silly magic. Smiles eased frowns. Tempers cooled. Alex’s true nature was brought out and polished up. Sometimes even Alex had trouble remembering it for all the patina of life.
“All this to say that, when confronted with a seemingly insurmountable problem, Alex is a resourceful ally who doesn’t think twice about setting things to rights.”
Freesia’s gaze trickled back to the fire. She rolled her lips inward as if she were waging war inside, tell or be told. An audible, fortifying breath followed.
“My mother is dying. Some illness she refuses to attend to. The phone call was the hospital in St. Simons.”
Charlotte’s disposition grayed. “Oh, honey, I’m sorry.”
Freesia’s response came without hesitation. “I’m not.”
Alex lowered herself to perch on the stone lip of the firepit, her back to them as if she had been dealt the blow.
“Every decision my mother has ever made has been toward one end: to protect secrets. Doesn’t surprise me that I hear she’s terminal from hospital staff.”
“Did they tell you how long she has?” asked Charlotte.
“I didn’t ask.” Freesia pressed fingertips to her temples, started slow circles. “When I was seventeen, early graduation, she went missing, a trip with her boyfriend. Before I got on a flight to Greece, she jumped off the pier, hurt her back. This falls right into line with her cycling back into my life at times when I make decisions to move ahead, leave the past behind for good. In fourteen hours, I’m supposed to be on a plane, bound for New York, but all I can think about is that god-awful shack on the beach where she lives that isn’t fit for scavengers.”
What Charlotte knew of St. Simons Island, Georgia, could fit on one corner tear of paper inside a bottle: that Camille Day had been a waitress—same age as their mother—at a seafood joint near the pier and had stopped Daddy the night he had walked into the sea. That Stella Irene had gone to the beach shack, not fit for scavengers, in the months before she died to make things right.
What Charlotte knew of impending death, however, could fill the Atlantic: saying a mini-goodbye each time she had left her mother’s bedroom, rehearsing words to ensure she picked the right ones, then kicking herself over how they must have sounded, holding hands brittle enough to crumble. In those final stretches, there had been no room for anything but kindness. And no one, not even Camille Day, the woman who had pulled Daddy from the breakers and brought him hot coffee, who started an intimate wave that crashed through their family to this day, not even Camille Day deserved a death alone.
“Well, that’s it then,” Charlotte said.
Freesia had shrunk down against the reclined wood chair, head back. A lazy roll of her neck brought her attention from the fire to Charlotte. “What’s it?”
“She should be here. Her last days.”
Alex shot to her feet. “Daddy’s mistress in Mama’s house? Are you fucking insane?”
Charlotte bristled. The cursing, the crack of Alex’s voice like a twelve-gauge in the night. No matter how many years passed behind them, no matter how savvy Charlotte had proven herself to be in their recovering business, the mending of their relationship, Alex never failed to make Charlotte feel ignorant.
“Wasn’t it Mama who went to see her? She bridged that hurt. Why can’t we?”
“Because my mother’s brand of hurt is unsurpassed. We can barely be in the same room without it all bubbling to the surface. I resigned myself long ago to never seeing its end so long as we were both drawing air. Besides, there’s too much anger under this roof already.”
Freesia didn’t have to look at Alex to make her point.
“You’re forgetting that she’s headed to New York tomorrow, Charlotte.”
“What if she wasn’t? What if today was a sign that there are still things here for her?”
Alex barely missed a beat. “Like an exfoliated six pack and a trust fund?”
Charlotte gave Alex the stink-eye, made sure her words had plenty of muscle. “You know who figured out where you were that night at the Kingsley Ruins, when you found out you were pregnant and were convinced that life had handed you a cruel repeat of the baby you’d lost? Who insisted we leave in a blinding rainstorm to chase after you so that you would know you weren’t alone? That’s what family does, Alex. Freesia is family. And by extension, so is the woman who saw fit to be there for Daddy when he most needed someone.”
All this and Freesia was silent. Not just silent. Teary.
Charlotte said, “I’ll move home for a bit, like I did with the baby—”
“No.”
And that was it. Final. Freesia stood, chin high, never a movement that wasn’t deliberate. Her bare feet whispered against the grass on the way back to the house. At the back door, she paused.
“I’ll need a ride to the airport.”
Charlotte nodded. “Sure, honey.”
Freesia went inside. Across the flames, burning brighter in the darkness, Alex’s expression lit an unnatural hue of disappointment, grief, pain, something Charlotte couldn’t bear to touch lest she get burned. This wasn’t a case of her alligator mouth getting her humm
ingbird heart in trouble. Charlotte had the moral high ground here. It was just a shame that it had land-filled the rocky ground her and Alex had spent the last year traveling.
3
Freesia
Freesia had never spent much time with Alex’s fiancé, Jonah. Had they met under other circumstances, ones that didn’t have anything to do with Alex March, they might have forged a bond over their mutual love of fried catfish, wayback blues, and rainy days that should be spent napping. In Singapore, where Freesia helped migrant women harvest beansprouts at dawn, only to be chased into darkened wood-frame shelters to wait out the monsoon-like afternoon rains, Freesia had cultivated an appreciation for midday peace and meditation that the West didn’t always value. Now, as then, rain turned her inward.
Jonah clicked the windshield wipers to a less frenetic pace.
“Never been to New York, myself. Can’t imagine all the people.”
“The anonymity is nice.”
“Always or right now?” Jonah pulled his gaze from the road, gave her a quick glance. “I heard about your mom. That’s rough. I’ve got a little money saved if it’ll help.”
Had Freesia not been so inside herself, she might have been able to roll off the sentiment as something people said but never really meant. A little like the droplets spidering the windshield, scrambling to fill in the spaces. But his offer pressed her throat, made her seek the view out the side window. For not the first time, she considered how someone so generous of spirit could love someone like Alex.
“Thank you.” Her voice barely registered past the rain.
“You know, I got the chance once to visit my real father. Adoption agency mistakenly forwarded me a document with his address. I swiped it out of the mailbox before anyone saw it. Planned my entire spring break around getting to Missouri to confront him, ask him what kind of sonofabitch leaves a three-year-old barefoot out on a county road.”
The Family Wish (Match Made in Devon Bridal Shop Book 3) Page 4
