The Family Wish (Match Made in Devon Bridal Shop Book 3)

by Danielle Blair

  Jonah had her.

  “But I get the tree.”

  If it was the only artifact of the past she allowed herself, she wanted it to be the oak with their carved initials.: AM + JD

  15

  Charlotte

  Nash always said that someone could ask Charlotte the time and she’d tell ’em how to build a watch. She supposed sitting out in Mama’s garden with Camille was no different. Speech felt necessary where conversation lacked. They all flirted with awkward around Freesia’s mother. Charlotte aimed to make it less so.

  Beneath a wide bonnet, Camille took in the day from an Adirondack. She had barely touched her green tea lemonade.

  “Did you know milkweed played an important role in World War II?” Charlotte waited a pause, then marched on when no response came. Her garden patch had become prolific, necessitating a deadheading of the first round of wilting blooms. “They used them inside flotation vests—Mae West jackets they called them because it gave the men a curvy profile. Called on children all over the country to do their part for the war effort and pull milkweed.”

  Charlotte tried not to linger on where she’d learned the historical tidbit. She didn’t recall the butterfly professor often; doing so stirred her with a sadness, more than anything, that she had lost sight of what Nash and her family and their farm meant to her. She had ended her contact with the forum members that had once drew her into Steven Moreau’s influences, but she still soldiered on and did her part in the Monarch butterflies’ migratory path.

  “I know this was your doin’,” said Camille. “Me being here. Way you move people here and there. Lot like your mother.”

  Charlotte wasn’t sure what to do with Camille’s words so she made the decision to file it in her mind under rare compliments.

  “What was she like as a girl?”

  “It’s impossible to talk about anything that happened in my life from the age of four without Stella Irene being part of the story.”

  “How did you meet?”

  “I always dreaded going home. She found me one day after school, walking at a crawl. Said I’d look real pretty in a dress made out of toilet paper. Couldn’t believe she wasted what would have gotten me whipped at home on a game ’a pretend. Her mother came home, took one look, went out straight to her garden to cut a bouquet. That day forward, I stuck as close to Stellie as I could.”

  Charlotte recalled her maternal grandparents had been active in the Civil Rights Movement, had forever passed on a legacy of colorblindness in a place where it wasn’t always easy. She wanted to know how Elias fit into it all—Charlotte’s parents had known each other since the Evangeline Oak tree in childhood—but she lacked Alex’s directness, Freesia’s bravery. She guessed politeness was the way she moved people from here to there.

  “Did Freesia have anyone like that, growing up?”

  Charlotte wanted it to be so, because she’d had Alex.

  Camille shook her head. “Child was like a lighthouse keeper above the sea. Didn’t want no one.”

  Charlotte felt the urge to shift the tide. She snipped a weed cluster, thought about life preservers. Of late, Freesia had been hers.

  “You’ve raised an extraordinarily beautiful woman. And I’m not talking about how she looks. How she is, well, I can’t say next to anything about how she came to be here or who had a part in it, but I feel Daddy in her.” Charlotte didn’t mean to get all fussy, make a mess over her butterfly garden, but there it was, her choked up, just the same. “He always had in mind everyone’s best, knew what was possible. Had so many answers because he’d been so far, asked so much. And he was strong, but deep down, he was prone to hurts, felt them more than maybe everyone else.”

  A bumblebee floated and landed. Charlotte felt safe in its travels so her gaze adhered to its movements while she composed herself. She didn’t dare look at Camille because her sniffles were either pollen or hurt and Charlotte wasn’t enough of anything to find out which it was for sure. She went back to tending her garden.

  “Free is who she is in spite of me, not because of me,” said Camille. “Always did find her way. Lofty ideas, nothing but direction.”

  “Sounds like a good lighthouse keeper.”

  Camille made a sound close to an agreeable grunt.

  “She’d probably like to hear those things from you.” Charlotte dared a peek, to see how her suggestion rested with Camille. “The good things, not just where things went wrong. When she dreaded going home but did, anyhow.”

  Camille made a sick face. “I liked it better when you were runnin’ your mouth over a weed.”

  Fatigue had set in right along with the grumpies. That was okay. Charlotte had been around Nash with a toothache. World coming to an end, all that. She could handle a little blowback from someone her Daddy once loved enough to let go. If there was one thing true about Stella Irene, it was that she was fierce in her attention—to family, to her community, to the shop. But she was equally vigilant in love. Daddy always had in mind everyone’s best, knew what was possible. Maybe he didn’t want Camille to pay the price for that.

  Charlotte put Camille to bed and sat vigil. A lot like her mother, she supposed. The next letter called to her. She texted Freesia and Alex: Tonight. Trailer. 9pm.

  16

  Stella Irene

  Millie,

  That day by the Bayou Tech was unlike any other. Twice that day, my family, you with us, had returned in the hopes the Evangeline Oak would be abandoned. Guess you never knew that. Or maybe you did. Clusters of white folks with ignorant minds were no match for Mama. But Daddy wanted to give you a vacation from all that, from what was waiting for you at home. We found that window at dusk. But you and I found so much more, didn’t we?

  Elias told people he saw his future that day, but I can’t help thinking he meant you. His parents wouldn’t have approved, of course, but he had wandered far from where they’d stopped for the night, at a site downriver. He saw you first, had never touched someone with hair so wild and spongy, so afraid of everyone and everything, like every stranger you met was your Daddy. That night was stars and fireflies and everything a childhood should be, except that you both were the sun and the earth and I was the moon, coming later, subtly perturbed by the small and complex interactions between you.

  Who could have known Daddy would make friends with Elias’ Daddy over fishing that weekend? Convince him that Devon was a good place to find work, raise a family?

  Eight years later, when Elias proposed to me beneath that same oak tree, he was imagining holding your hand. As sure as I sit here, alone, adrift in a union I wanted more than the life you and I breathed into each other, removed from hate and steeped in love, I am sure of this. But the times would have been merciless. This he knew.

  I wanted goodbye, not gone. I think of you every day, pray for your safety, that you’ll meet with love, not hate in this life, that you’ll find peace where you didn’t here, with your Daddy. But I also pray for your absence. I can no longer be the moon.

  Always,

  Stellie

  17

  Charlotte

  The curtains were the biggest hodgepodge of materials and textures imaginable—from Natalie’s old princess tulle to Alex’s fine penthouse linens to Bernice’s contribution of a chintz imprinted with turtles in various states of lawlessness. Twelve second-floor windows, outfitted in dowel rods shoved through crude pockets—not a hem among them, all to keep out what Earl Frizeal termed tabloid turncoats—strangers with cameras sent to dig up dirt on one of their own.

  More shocking to Freesia than Earl considering her ‘one of their own’ was that anything she was doing was worthy of turncoats from tabloid magazines.

  Frances, while helping Charlotte hang the curtains, had put it to her like this: “You’re as close as cat’s breath to the richest and handsomest man to come out of the state since Elvis Presley. There’s bound to be a hubbub.”

  “I think they’re snapping photos of her dresses,” Charlott
e had said. “They’re magnificent.”

  Four dress forms had starts. Two were nearly complete. In black and grays and oranges, Freesia had made a bold and furiously striking statement, at once jarring and sophisticated. A hand-dye station she had set up in one corner sported a length of silk that captured a gradient from smoky black to sunset orange that looked like a wildfire. In the week since she began sketching again, she had formed an entire collection, but long hours left shadows beneath her eyes. Sleep was something in short supply of late. It seemed the more her mother surrendered to rest, the less Freesia seemed to get.

  When night fell and Frances said her goodbyes to meet the Silver Swarm at Taffy’s for their Wednesday night dinner, Charlotte closed the curtains and clicked on the warm task lighting.

  Freesia continued to stare at the wildfire dress as if waiting to smother an ember sparked to flame. The subject of Jay had the potential to be combustible, but no one else, of late, seemed able to reach through Freesia’s preoccupation.

  “Have you heard from Jay?” asked Charlotte.

  “He stops by. Throws money at my feet.” Freesia’s gaze shifted to Charlotte. “Not literally. Yesterday, I came in here, saw these.”

  She picked up an envelope beside her sewing machine and handed it to Charlotte. On cardstock with silver inlay, handwritten words: Two days. Even real needs a holiday. Will send a car - 10 am Friday. The note was signed J beside a tiny drawing of a palm tree.

  “I don’t know what this means,” said Charlotte.

  “It means he wants me to go away with him. While my mother is dying. Who does that?” Freesia grabbed her bunched-up tape measure and began to roll it into a firm wheel.

  Heavens, the woman was cinched tighter than a tick in spanxs.

  “Someone who cares about how this is affecting you.”

  “I can’t go.”

  “You have the best health staff money can buy at your disposal. And you have us—me, Nash, Alex and Jonah. We’ll all help.”

  Freesia shook her head through all of Charlotte’s convincing, like she wasn’t understanding.

  “I can’t leave her. Not like I did all those times before.”

  Charlotte’s heart shrunk. She dissolved at hearing Freesia’s guilt, so misplaced. She moved close so that Freesia could not exile her to her periphery.

  “All those times before were self-preservation,” said Charlotte. “No shame in that.”

  “And this time?”

  Charlotte glanced at the wildfire dress, such a departure from Freesia’s usual aesthetic. It was dark and moody and atmospheric and dramatic. A movement and revolution in itself. Charlotte couldn’t imagine where Freesia’s imagination had taken her to produce something so scorching.

  “You’re not required to set yourself on fire to keep others warm.”

  Freesia sat, held her stare. The end of the tape measure slid from her hold, rolled across the tabletop, and dropped from sight.

  “I don’t compartmentalize well.”

  “Then don’t.” Charlotte reached across the table to cover Freesia’s hand. “He wants to know this side of you too. Why else would he arrange this space? Make arrangements for Camille? I hate to break it to you, sister, but he is not the boy toy material you had in mind. Far, far too thoughtful. You’ll have no choice but to leave him on holiday.” Charlotte whipped out her most high-falutin’ accent. Even to her own ears, it sounded more like Queen Latifah than the Queen of England, which made her snicker.

  Didn’t do the trick for Freesia. She gave the tape measure another go. Seemed she was bound and determined to stay in her smoky mood.

  Charlotte took the plastic length from her hand and laid it in a circle around the foot of Freesia’s stool. “If everything beyond this circle didn’t exist…well, everything that wasn’t six-foot-four of dreaminess in buttercup tweed…would you go?”

  “No.”

  Though Charlotte was proud of her theatrics, Freesia gave her question little thought. A little like the lightning round on Family Feud.

  “Why not?”

  She seemed to need more coaxing to get to the truth. Charlotte was about to make light—ask if he had halitosis or spoke of his mother too much—but her jokes died in light of a step forward in confidence between them.

  “Because he will leave,” Freesia whispered. “They all do.”

  And there it was. All the holidays when Elias had been home with them, sitting around the fireplace, taking them to the carnival. All the school events, the celebrations, the nights by the light of the fridge when he told Alex what he thought best. All the times he was a father to Alex and Charlotte, had been dearly paid for by Freesia. One could not grow to believe in love without the other having never believed at all. Charlotte’s fanciful ways, her never-ending pursuit of a happily ever after, came at the sacrificial altar of a little girl with the wild and spongy hair of her mother and nothing but hurt from her father. Their father.

  “So it’s best to be the first to go?” said Charlotte.

  “Something like that.”

  Oh, Daddy. How do I make this right?

  The answer didn’t come from letters left behind in a trailer or hollow words about wanting but not deserving. Charlotte believed in love. She had to be the one to make this right.

  “They don’t all leave.” Charlotte told Freesia about the night at the ice cream parlor when she confessed she might go and Nash told her he would wait for her to come back, for as long as it took. She told Freesia about the map on the dashboard that led her straight home, and the note she’d found in the suitcase she had packed under the bed—a hundred dollars and Nash’s words: so you can always find your way home. And lest Freesia believe that Nash was an anomaly, Charlotte reminded her of all the ways Jonah had returned to Alex. “If anyone did the leaving here, it was the March daughters. Maybe there’s something ugly inside us leftover from Daddy. But you…you could have left Devon eighteen months ago and every day since but you didn’t.”

  Charlotte reached for the tape measure on the floor and placed it around Freesia’s neck like a scarf. Her personal circle to keep all the doubt beyond from moving too close. Around this, Charlotte adjusted Freesia’s hair, such a simple gesture she’d done a million times for Alex but for Freesia, one that felt immensely right and long overdue.

  The sewing machine bulb put out enough light in darkness to glisten Freesia’s stare.

  “Maybe Jay is your forever. Maybe he’s not. But you are stronger and braver than anyone I’ve ever met and to not take a chance on love because of what a man might do gives away every bit of that power. For now, be good to you. And a holiday”—this time, Charlotte nailed fancy—“sounds darned good.”

  Charlotte pulled Freesia into a hug. When she felt that strength coming back to her in the form of a squeeze, Charlotte thought it was just about the best hug she’d ever had.

  “If you need a tissue, you can use the turtle curtain,” said Charlotte.

  Inside her embrace, Freesia shook with laughter.

  They parted. Freesia’s smoky mood had cleared out. Charlotte said something about needing to get home to Nash, although it wasn’t really needing so much as wanting. Charlotte had Freesia to thank for that too.

  She picked up her purse and dug for her keys. “Need a ride home?”

  “I think I’ll stay a bit longer,” Freesia said.

  Code for I’ll sleep here. Or maybe not.

  Charlotte nodded and gave her a silent wave.

  Freesia had already turned back to her work.

  From the ground, Charlotte checked the second floor from all sides. The curtains were unsightly but did their job. Not bad for a handful of hodgepodge women who rose to their best when one of them was at her worst. Charlotte hoped the curtains weren’t one more barrier Freesia put between herself and a happiness that was long overdue.

  18

  Freesia

  Jay’s idea of a holiday turned out to be St. Barts, a French West Indies playground for a
fraction of the top one percent who didn’t bat an eye at dropping an entire month’s rent on a meal. Granted, the seafood feast that Jay had arranged at sunset, prepared by a famous culinary artist and served by the light of a hurricane lamp and an ambitious moon at Eden Rock, was rather life-altering—but only in the way that Freesia knew it would never happen again.

  She was an abandoned girl from a beach shack, a girl inside a story who ran from the jungle’s pulse, a seamstress and a goat herder and a hundred other unglamorous jobs she had performed in the most inhospitable places on Earth; she was not exclusive, garish in desires, unapologetic or demanding. She was refreshing. What Jay had told her several times since they had a white-knuckle landing in his private jet on one of the planet’s shortest runways. After the harrowing ordeal, Freesia had checked with the crew upon debarkation to make sure they were all okay. Refreshing, according to Jay.

  The waitstaff at the villa and at the private table overlooking the ocean knew Jay by name, knew his preferences, knew his appetite for privacy. They moved like ghosts—blink and she’d miss the wine refill, the removal of one plated course for another, the silver comb used to brush crumbs from the table.

  “Where is everyone?” Freesia asked.

  The sense that she was missing something was both odd and pervasive. The space the island provided was eerie, as if everyone was in on some grand secret and had taken the last ferry out.

  “There are fourteen villas on sixty acres. I’ve spent entire weeks here and never laid eyes on another guest.”

  She wondered after the wealthy philosophy to chase money, only to spend more trying to remove themselves from those who didn’t have it. Then, over a bite of grilled Anegada lobster, her thoughts slipped to Peyton—had she been here?—then home, then her mother. Here she was with a rare, sweet meat in her belly and garlic butter on her chin while Camille was having a dinner cocktail of meds that likely wouldn’t stay down.