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

by Danielle Blair

  “We never saw it that way.” Hazel dredged a French fry through her hard-won ketchup puddle and took a bite. “Just a bump in the road. All marriages have ’em.”

  The booth slipped into a momentary tent revival of nods and “Amen”s and “Yessir”s and from Bernice, a gangster throwdown of “Preach.” For a moment, Alex thought Frances might whip out her favorite go-to: Jesus wept.

  Alex subverted an eye roll. They wanted to talk bumps, she knew bumps. She and Michael had bulldozed a mountain range into their marriage. “I think that’s why the bridal shop became so important. She needed to reassure herself things weren’t over. Maybe put up a united front should her lover ever come clean.”

  “And who might this lover be?” Bernice sounded dubious.

  “I don’t know about y’all, but this isn’t right,” said Taffy. “Speaking ill of the dead—our Stella Irene—talking about lovers and dirty trailers. We should be ashamed.”

  Frances made a sign of the cross.

  Hazel weighed in with the aplomb of age and righteousness. “Even if something happened—and that, little missy, is a big fat if—their relationship is not your business. Just because a couple has children doesn’t give those kids a right to be involved. You and Charlotte joined their lives, not the other way around. Best not forget that.”

  “They lost the right to privacy the moment Daddy had an illegitimate daughter. This is our generation, our sister. We have a right to know.”

  “So focus on loving her, not digging up the whys you can’t change, destroying lives in the process.” Taffy stood, her voice forced, broken. “Did you know that Earl’s wife has him sleeping on the sofa now? That God-fearing Christian man had nothing to do with anything. Lost his capacity to even think below the belt after what happened to him in the army. You have to stop this—you and Charlotte. Ain’t no good come of it.”

  She said her piece, stormed off. Had Alex been way off base, emotions wouldn’t have run nearly as high. She was surer than ever her mother had strayed, but she was trapped in a platoon of the most dedicated friends a woman could ever have. No answers would come from this group.

  Alex pushed her plate aside and gathered Maddie in her arms. She was hoping for a clean getaway but Maddie had another agenda entirely. Her backside smelled like the west winds past the latrines at fair time. Alex sighed and excused them to the ladies’ room.

  Mid-diaper change, Hazel came into the restroom. She clenched her hands awkwardly and made a bad joke about how Maddie’s poop could be weaponized under the right combat circumstances. When Alex didn’t laugh, she tried again.

  “Stella Irene and I weren’t the closest. Bernice’s Hiram had eyes on her for a time, long ago. I thought she acted flirty, around him. Disrespectful to Bernice. Especially when there was drinking involved.”

  “Did they…?”

  Hazel shook her head. “Bernice would have told me.”

  Alex finished dressing Maddie. Without words exchanged, Hazel took the baby in her arms so Alex could wash and pack up. She bounced Maddie, spoke sweet, like Alex never knew she could.

  “You regret not having children?”

  “I regret not trusting men with my heart. A little too independent, a little too feminist, I guess, for my own good. Makes for some lonesome days when you get old.”

  Hazel had brought the gray of the conversation right along with her. Alex pushed out a smile and accepted Maddie back into her arms.

  “I can’t help you with much,” said Hazel. “But I do remember Stella Irene telling us about a letter that came for Elias all the way from Georgia a few years after they opened the shop. Told us she opened it and that it was the first thing she burned in that firepit Elias had made her. Wanted to know if we’d have done the same.”

  “Did she tell you what was in the letter?”

  The old woman hesitated.

  “Hazel—”

  “I can’t say if she had an affair. I don’t know. But I do know that she knew about that baby girl all those years back. I can’t rightly say if Elias knew.”

  Frances shuffled her way into the ladies’ room then, severing all talk of the past. Hazel recycled her joke about Maddie’s stink in an attempt to lighten the atmosphere.

  Alex and Maddie returned to the diner, said their goodbyes. On their way out, Taffy gave her a scowl from the kitchen.

  She buckled Maddie into her car seat and sat behind the wheel for a time. Daddy did not come to sit in the passenger seat beside her. Instead, her imagination rerouted the past. What if Daddy had known about Freesia? Would he have gone back? Helped Camille raise his daughter? Told Alex and Charlotte they had a sister? Was there no end to the lengths Mama would go to preserve their perfect union?

  The only thing Alex knew for sure was she had to tell Freesia. This bit of the puzzle didn’t change much for the March sisters, but for a little girl who grew up not knowing her real father—not unlike Maddie—the realization that abandonment had not been Elias’s choice had the potential to shift her half-sister’s universe into light. As close an act of love as Alex could muster.

  25

  Stella Irene

  Millie,

  I sent him to you. A map of Georgia on his truck seat, the coast of St. Simons Island circled, your address written in the margin. He might go anywhere, but I know he’ll find you.

  Elias was not himself when he left. He didn’t kiss the girls or say goodbye to them, just took off down the road like the end scene in a movie. I told him it didn’t matter that he lied about his job, pretending to be in sales when he was really traveling with the carnies that come through here each year. He didn’t want me or the girls to be ashamed.

  But tonight, the shame was mine. When he opened that door…well, I knew in that moment you were his better love. If he returns to me, I will spend the rest of my days proving otherwise.

  I won’t justify what I did, what I have been doing. After the baby was lost, we were lost. He found comfort at the bottom of a bottle, and I found it in the arms of another. So, too, should he.

  Dearest Millie, I know you love him. Be good to him. You always were his sun.

  In sorrow,

  Stellie

  26

  Freesia

  Alex lowered the letter to her lap.

  Freesia’s sewing room above the repair shop fell silent but for Charlotte’s sniffles.

  They could not have known, but Charlotte wouldn’t have made it through reading the letter aloud. As the one who held tightest to the illusion of Stella Irene and Elias’s perfect marriage—mystifying, given Freesia’s existence—Charlotte was breaking.

  By extension, so too was Freesia’s heart.

  She scooted her stool closer to Charlotte, put an arm around her, absorbed her body as she leaned in for support.

  “She sent him to her,” Charlotte said, her words wobbly with grief. “After years trying to keep them apart. What kind of woman does that?”

  “A guilty woman, trying to even the scorecard,” said Alex, blunt as usual.

  “All this time, I thought Daddy had been the one to break their vows.”

  And that made it okay? Why did the man get a free pass? Freesia held her tongue. It was Charlotte’s way—sheltered, conservative, shaped around tired stories where happiness could only be found when loved by a man.

  “He did. They both made mistakes.”

  Once again, the universe proved that Freesia and Alex had more in common than either acknowledged.

  “But Mama, all that advice she used to give, like she was an expert…”

  “Guess she knew better than anyone,” said Freesia.

  Inside Freesia’s arms, Charlotte coiled like a spring. She straightened, slipped away, paced, her voice brash and childlike in fresh anger.

  “And when Nash and I were having problems, I held firm to the idea that if Mama could withstand the trials of marriage, I could do the same. But she couldn’t. She was weak and I was stupid.” Charlotte pulled a fresh tissue fro
m her bag, fussed with it just so before she daubed her eyes.

  Alex left the letter on the table, took Charlotte’s hand.

  “Now you listen to me, Evangeline. That’s not what this is about—”

  “You were right, Alex. We are a family of cheaters.”

  “We’re not. You’ve proven that.”

  “If they can’t do it…”

  “Then they raised someone who can. Someone who believes in happily ever after and fighting for love.”

  Freesia had never witnessed Charlotte angry at the world. Even in her darkest hour with Nash, she had still been…well, Charlotte. And she had never witnessed Alex so supportive. Charlotte had once told Freesia how Alex fetched a carousel horse blanket and wrapped them up nightly on the balcony, waiting for the return of their father they weren’t sure would come. Freesia couldn’t see then what she saw now—a role reversal. Her, still on the outside.

  “Maybe their legacy wasn’t meant to be their marriage or the bridal shop but us,” Alex glanced at Freesia, held her gaze. “The three of us. Maybe that’s what Mama realized in the end. Why she went to Georgia and set us up to the task of running the shop, together.”

  Freesia felt Alex’s sentiment in her chest, like latent embers had taken hold and finally produced substantial warmth.

  Charlotte, so quick to smile, even heavyhearted, began a chain reaction. Of late, Freesia’s emotions seemed pore-level, prone to surfacing at the slightest change in direction. Alex returned to the table, revisited the letter.

  “Why was this one not with the others?” asked Alex. “Why with her sewing stuff?”

  Freesia shrugged. “Maybe they’re all over the house and we found this one because we moved the contents of a room.”

  “Paper is different too. The others were stationery. This is a yellow legal pad.” Alex flipped and rotated the letter, studied its angles.

  “I don’t want to know anymore,” Charlotte said, her voice defeated.

  “We’re close. I can feel it.”

  “Close to what, Alex? Knowing who Mama had sex with? I don’t want to know anymore. It’ll change the memories, maybe even destroy another family. Nash was right. Truth isn’t always what’s best.”

  “That’s not entirely true.” Alex fixed her attention squarely on Freesia. “I found out something else…”

  Freesia took the opportunity to look away, gather herself, breathe through the unease coiling in her abdomen. No lies, what she had wanted. But that didn’t mean she could handle much more in the way of truths.

  “Maddie and I had dinner with Mama’s friends a few nights ago. I asked them about her infidelity. Didn’t go over well, but Hazel told me in private that a year or so into the bridal shop, a letter came from Georgia.”

  Freesia flashed back to her mother’s bedside. I wrote him a letter.

  A truth from Camille’s lips. A show of good faith that things could be different.

  Freesia felt struck, incapable of movement, all but her lungs.

  Alex continued, her words soft, contrite. “Mama burned it before Daddy saw it.”

  The coil in Freesia’s stomach twisted, wrenched. The room’s low light took flight against the wood floor. Freesia buried her face in her hands. Cold fingertips, like ice cubes, rimmed the heat building at her hairline, pore-level.

  “Then he never knew about you.” The awe in Charlotte’s tone sharpened. “And if he had known, he’d have done the right thing.”

  Freesia glanced up. Charlotte went after the messenger.

  “All those senseless years, wasted. I’m beyond sick. How is this best?”

  Freesia answered for Alex. “Because he couldn’t abandon what he didn’t know.”

  Truth. Unequivocal, irrefutable, truth. They existed in it for a time, the three of them. The room settled. Lights slowed and returned to place. Freesia waged an internal battle between relief and anger. Kitty came to mind. Her intent to protect her family above all. A proper mother. Stella Irene, Charlotte, even Alex with Maddie, no different.

  Charlotte spoke first. “I’m sorry, Freesia. Mama isn’t here to say it, so I’ll say it for her. I’m sorry. You didn’t have Daddy’s love because Mama made selfish choices.”

  Selfish? Nah. Not even close.

  “That’s just it,” said Freesia. “If it had been to even a score, there wouldn’t have been a map, an address, all but permission, lying right there on the truck seat beside him. Stella Irene sent him to my mother out of love. Love for him and love for her. You asked ‘what kind of woman does that’? A woman who loved them both more than she loved herself.”

  “I couldn’t have done it.” After a time, Alex asked Charlotte, “You?”

  Charlotte shook her head.

  “What if there’s more?” Alex said.

  “More hurt?”

  “More truths. If we hadn’t pushed for the whole story, Freesia would never know the kind of man Daddy was. I say we make the decision to finish this, all the way. Together.”

  “What’s left?” Freesia asked.

  “We ask all the questions. We talk to the only other person who was there that night, in the trailer. We find out why this letter is different than the rest.” Alex carried the letter to the sewing machine, held it beneath the task bulb and needle. “There are indentions, right here at the top, like someone pressed hard on the page before. I need a pencil.”

  Freesia reached inside a nearby drawer and handed Alex a sharpened charcoal she used for sketches. She exchanged glances with Charlotte while Alex shaded the page. Charlotte still looked sick.

  “De-port…de-posit…depo-si-tion. Deposition. Mackey. Then a number nine and an a.”

  “Wasn’t Mackey a judge?” Charlotte said.

  Alex’s expression brightened. “He was Jonah’s judge, back when he was arrested in high school. Nine-a…nine in the morning.”

  “The letter was clearly written right after Elias left. Jonah would have been arrested years later,” said Freesia. “Fifteen, maybe more.”

  “How long was Mackey on the bench?” Alex asked Charlotte.

  “Twenty years, at least. Enough to be elected mayor.”

  “And who else would write a deposition reminder but a lawyer?” Alex flicked the letter at the table. “Grant was lying. Fucking bastard.”

  Charlotte chided Alex weakly, more out of reflex for the curse than any real place of bother.

  Alex drummed her fingers against her crossed arms, restless, puzzling. “Something still feels wrong here.”

  “Aside from Mama having an affair with Clement Grant, esquire?”

  Charlotte never missed the whisper, not even in light of a face—among other things—to attach to Alex’s described memory.

  “Why would Mama ask him to handle their estate?” Alex said.

  “You think she continued to see him?” Freesia asked. “All these years?”

  Alex shook her head. “No. No, I think she poured herself into the shop, advanced this narrative that they were okay again, trying to make Daddy happy, trying to make us happy. Like she said in the letter, spending the rest of her days ‘proving otherwise.’ There must be an attorney in Marthasville. Why Grant?”

  “We have to get him to admit it. Explain,” Charlotte said.

  “Good luck with that.” Alex smirked. “I could barely get him to part with his pork dumplings.”

  Charlotte blew her nose with renewed purpose. “I may not know a lawyer’s briefs from the briefs that come through my laundry pile each week, but I am an expert on getting people to fess up. My youngest will pee on the porch and swear it’s raining. Clement Grant is no different from any other male when it comes to cracking a fib.”

  Freesia eased. Charlotte was…well, Charlotte again. And Freesia knew she was wanted. Not just back then, had Elias known about her, but now. Freesia was sure that her half-sisters possessed the thing inside Elias that made him love, that Camille loved about him, because she was beginning to feel it too. Not on the inside, but no lo
nger on the outside.

  The three of us.

  From the moment Jay climbed into Elias’s Ford, he was roguishly suspicious. Freesia had done her best to secure a tarp over the small picnic backpack and two bikes laid flat in the pickup truck’s bed, but at highway speeds, the wind offered a peek from time to time. During those peeks, when Jay turned his curiosity behind him, Freesia reached across the bench seat and positioned his chin forward. For nearly thirty miles, their fetching game of peek-a-boo melted into giggles and kisses on her palm, fingers, the soft stretch of skin over her pulse, rather like Jay chasing intermittent dapples of sunlight with his lips—quick and warm. And for Freesia’s part—intentionally successful.

  As accustomed as he was to making most decisions, Freesia imagined that surprises were seldom for Jay. But when she’d asked him if he would suspend his bike repair one more Sunday morning and meet her at Harlan’s old shop at sunrise, he relished the secrecy. For once, someone else being in charge. By the time they reached the turnoff to Sweetgum Trace, a lesser-known bike trail that had been converted from miles of remote train tracks no longer in use—and not a car in sight to trigger fears—the light in Jay’s eyes rivaled the dawn.

  He glanced at the trailhead, with all its signage, a few cyclists walking past the car, and the surprise was up.

  Jay’s expression crashed. His chest rose and fell more rapidly. He wouldn’t look at her.

  She pressed a gentle hand to his chin, this time to urge him to look at her.

  “Last week, when you played that song for my mother, you gave her back something she’d been missing for a long time. A remembered joy. Inner peace. Sometimes the pain gets so much, we forget there was ever anything else. It’s past time for you to remember too.”

  “I can’t.”

  “If Jack was anything like you—and I suspect he was because he helped shape you into the man you are today—he wouldn’t stand for someone laying things down, giving up, in his name. What would he say?”