by Ashley Clark
“Hello!” Still watching him, she pulled the needle the rest of the way through the fabric. “Did you know Fitzgerald thought The Great Gatsby was pretty much a failure?”
Peter ran his hand through his hair. He wore a grey polo that brought out the amber flecks in his blue-green eyes, even under his glasses. “Well, that’s depressing.”
Harper used the needle to collect another bead from her open palm. “I know, right?”
Peter took a few steps closer and leaned over the back of the couch to see what she was working on. “Suddenly, your Fitzgerald comment makes a lot more sense.”
Harper shook her head slightly, moistened her lips, and looked down to find the exact spot she should pierce the fabric. “Some people consider it the best American novel.”
“Personally, I’ve always been a Longfellow fan, but—”
“I mean, can you imagine it?” Harper set the dress down in her lap. “I’m sorry. Did I interrupt you?”
One corner of his lips rose in a uniquely Peter way. Was he flirting?
No, that was ridiculous. Peter didn’t flirt. Peter didn’t need to.
He cleared his throat. “Millie wants you to know her muffins are ready.” He came to stand at the opposite side of the sofa. “Apparently, I’m a message boy.”
Harper smirked.
“Cool dress.” Peter gestured toward the golden gown in her lap. “You’re fixing it?”
“Yeah, for the expo.” Harper dropped several spare beads from her palm onto the little table with the candle. “I was actually entertaining the idea of wearing it.”
“I’m sure you’d look beautiful.”
She glanced up at him. He didn’t fidget or pause. Just looked back at her, like he had the confidence of Cary Grant. Like this flattery was the most natural dynamic in the world, and he hadn’t been a sheepish historian just hours ago.
Her heart fluttered under his attention, as a dress with layers and layers of tulle floats with every spin. She felt remarkably comfortable around him for having known him such a short time.
A comfort that, perhaps, came from the utter impossibility of anything romantic forming between them. After all, he was Millie’s grandson, and she was keeping Millie’s secret. No telling for how long or if that time was even coming, but a promise was a promise.
“So, the uh . . .” He tapped his foot against the wood floor, the laces shaking rhythmically as a Billie Holiday song started streaming. “The muffins.”
“The muffins.” Harper nodded, a slow grin growing. “Message received.”
He turned from the sofa to leave.
“I’ll just be a minute.”
“Hey, if you’re comfortable with the prospect of me and Millie eating all of them, suit yourself.”
Harper laughed. “I’ll take my chances.”
But instead of leaving, Peter took one step closer, and the world around her seemed to still with his gaze, so directly in tune with her own. He hesitated at the edge of the sofa. “Can I ask you something?”
Anything. So long as it doesn’t have to do with your grandmother.
THIRTY-TWO
Charleston, Modern Day
Peter started to sit on the velvet sofa beside Harper, then noticed her plush tomato full of straight pins and gripped the armrest to stop himself from getting stabbed. She should’ve warned him she was in the habit of keeping sharp objects scattered around when she made dress repairs.
She pointed toward the tomato. “You can move that.”
His eyes widened as he used two fingers to move the pincushion closer toward her. “Any more sitting hazards you need to tell me about first?”
She situated the gown in her lap and laughed. He continued to study her eyes, and she wondered what he saw there. Did he see the fear?
Peter crossed his arms in a way that communicated he was anything but closed off. “Forgive me if this is too forward, but why the sudden interest in tragic literary figures?”
Harper sighed so deeply, her shoulders fell with relief. He hadn’t mentioned Millie. Still, she had a feeling he was going to ask more. He had a way of seeing into her as no one else ever had.
She jabbed her needle into the plush tomato and set it all down on the dress in her lap. Where did she even begin?
Peter waited.
Harper ran her tongue along her teeth, trying to find the words. She shifted toward him. “Okay, I guess it all started when I was fourteen.”
“Can’t say I expected that, but please continue.”
Harper looked away from him, toward the window and the busy world outside. “I had recently lost my mother, and my aunt and cousins came to visit—probably to provide a distraction. We drove over to the beach in Gulf Shores, and one of my cousins and I took my daddy’s kayak out on the water. She was around eight or nine at the time, and my fourteen-year-old self didn’t think we needed life jackets. My aunt and my other cousin thought we were safe because they were on the beach the whole time.”
Peter stretched one of his arms along the back of the sofa. “Oh man.”
“Yeah,” Harper nodded. “You see where this is going. A wave hit, the kayak started to flip, and my cousin fell out. I jumped to save her and threw her back in the kayak. But then the tide . . .” Harper cleared her throat.
“You got sucked under.”
The panic that had gripped her underwater returned in that moment. Harper’s next breaths were shallow as she remembered the strong pull. “Rip current.” She looked up at him. “You have to realize, I was a certified swim instructor at that point. I taught children’s swimming classes. I knew all the right things to do in my mind, but I guess the fear took over.” She shook her head. “My impulse was to fight the water, but I wasn’t strong enough. The harder I tried, the farther the tide carried me away from shore. My cousin was screaming and crying and flailing around from the kayak, trying to get my aunt’s attention, but it happened so fast. They were sunbathing and making sandcastles and had no idea.”
Peter swallowed. He didn’t move an inch from where he sat. “Harper, what happened? How did you make it out without drowning?”
“Well, I fought for a long time, exhausting myself.” Harper mindlessly twirled the ends of her hair around her finger. “Then I finally did the only thing I could do. What I should’ve done from the start.” She thought of the waves sweeping over her, spinning her so she didn’t know which way was up and which way was down, and her heart sank with the memory of hopeless disorientation. “I swam parallel to the shore until I got out of the rip current. I stopped trying to push against the tide and instead let it carry me.”
Peter stared back at her. “Wow.”
Harper picked up her needle from the pincushion and started back to work on the dress in her lap. “That was the first time I realized that sometimes, the harder we fight for something, the further we get carried by it until ultimately”—she shook her head—“it drowns us.”
Peter lowered his arm from the back of the sofa. “I don’t mean to sound like I’ve got all the answers because Lord knows I don’t. I mean, you lived it, and you sure know more about dressmaking than I do.” He leaned forward. “But Harper, have you ever considered whether fear—rather than your dream—is what you’re holding onto?”
Harper pulled the thread through the fabric until the stitch was tight. “What do you mean?”
“Just that sometimes, we all hold tighter and tighter to the very things that are drowning us. We think we’re keeping ourselves safe, but we’re not. We’re just trying to control the stuff that scares us rather than to feel the fear and move on.”
Harper hesitated, her needle poised for the next stitch. “That’s always been hard for me.” She wouldn’t have considered herself a particularly fearful person in the past, but maybe Peter was right. Maybe she’d all but convinced herself the store would be another failure as Savannah was a failure because it was easier on some level to fear failure than to risk dreaming again.
“It’s
hard for everyone, Harper.” He stood, glancing toward the stairs. “How about if I bring one of Millie’s muffins down?” Peter walked over toward the stairwell.
“That’d be great. And tell Millie I’ll be up there soon for another one.” Harper picked up a handful of beads to finish out a row of beadwork before taking a break. But first, she allowed herself another glance at him.
He hesitated on the second step, turning his shoulders. “Harper?”
“Yes?”
“You and Millie . . .” He cleared his throat and rested his fingers along the handrail. “You’re not going to be F. Scott Fitzgerald.”
“Or John Keats?”
“Or Emily Dickinson,” he added.
Harper smiled. She did love Emily Dickinson. She watched him over the slope of the velvet sofa. His words were a balm to her broken heart. So light, so pure, they swept her hope up from the floor and into the sunshine.
“But how do you know?” She felt as though he would have an answer, as though she could trust him.
“Because sometimes faith comes before the bridge to the other side.”
Harper had just hung up with the new-business-permit people and was hanging twinkle lights from the window display when a postwoman pushed a trolley full of large boxes toward the front door. Harper hesitated mid-string. Strange. She wasn’t expecting any deliveries.
The woman peeked through the window at Harper and waved, then pointed toward the front door. Harper nodded, set down the lights, and hurried over.
The postwoman smiled. “Lovely window display you’ve got there. Are you turning this into a dress shop?”
“We sure are. And thank you.” Harper slid her hands into the pockets of her dress.
“Forgive me for being nosy, but will you sell vintage pieces like the one in the window?”
“In the window?” Harper turned to check the display and realized the woman was referring to Millie’s dress. “Oh no, I’m sorry to say that one isn’t for sale. Belongs to the owner. But we will have many lovely gowns.”
The postwoman began unloading the boxes from the trolley. “I appreciate it, but I’m looking for something that’s true vintage. You just can’t replicate a piece with a story.”
Harper helped push the boxes inside the door. “Sure can’t, can you?” She was just about to verify the woman had the correct address when Millie came slowly ambling down the stairs, holding a Tupperware container with muffins.
Uh oh. Harper was going to be in trouble for never coming when Millie sent Peter after her earlier. But she needed to get this work done on the shop.
Millie took one glance down at the pile of boxes and brushed a curl of her hair back into place. “Oh lovely. I see the packages have arrived.”
“Are you Millicent?” The postwoman held out a tablet for Millie’s signature. “I just need you to verify these have been delivered.”
Millie handed the Tupperware to Harper and reached for the tablet stylus. “Not a problem. Thank you, ma’am.”
“Y’all have a nice afternoon.” The postwoman offered a dainty salute before pushing the empty trolley away.
Still holding the Tupperware, Harper looked down at the stack of boxes at her feet. “Um, Millie?”
“Hmm?” Millie walked over toward Harper’s sewing supplies and rifled through them until she found a pair of scissors.
“Did you order a lifetime supply of tea or something?”
Millie chuckled. She opened the scissors and went to work on the tape along the top of the boxes. “See for yourself.”
Harper started to rip the boxes open, then realized they were postmarked from Paris. “You know someone in Paris?” The woman would never cease to surprise her.
“So many questions, dear. Just open the box and see.”
Harper loosened the flaps of the first box, then unwrapped the protective plastic surrounding the contents. Inside the box were neatly folded, silk gowns.
Harper gasped. She reached for one of the delicate dresses and held it up for inspection. “Absolutely stunning.”
Millie tilted her head. “They are, aren’t they? I have a . . . friend . . . in Paris who offered to send a few things to get us started, but I didn’t know what she would be mailing. These certainly exceed expectations.”
“Indeed.” Harper’s mind spun. Paris? Silk dresses? What was happening?
Millie started over toward the window display and stood straight in front of her wedding gown. Her smile held the light of the sun.
Harper set the Parisian dress back down inside the box and joined her. “Everything okay?”
“Yes. Absolutely. I just never imagined I’d be standing on this side of the window.” Millie shook her head. “That means nothing to you. Forgive me for rambling.”
“It really is something, Millie.” Harper watched Millie, even as Millie watched the gown. “Your wedding dress, I mean.”
“Thank you, dear.” Millie brushed the fabric with her fingertips. “I agree.”
Harper wanted to know more, so she decided to try asking. “Tell me. Were you head over heels in love? Was your wedding day a dream?”
Millie smiled, still staring toward the window and lost in memory. “I wasn’t in love with him yet, no. That came later. Times were different then, right after the war, and even though the desperation from the Depression had faded, the impression it left on all of us was still fresh as ever. Franklin and I knew we could help each other through a marriage of friendship. I was very young, you see, as was he.”
Millie turned to her. “Though looking back, I see that I fell in love with him far sooner than I realized at the time. It was the little things that captivated me. The way he sat so tall in a boat or the way he laced his shoes.”
Harper’s heart swelled just imagining the two of them.
Millie shook her head as if coming out of a reverie. “I’m sorry—what was your other question? Oh yes. It was magical.”
She whistled low, and her eyes glimmered. She held Harper’s gaze, and slowly, she spoke the memory. “Sometimes life gives us those moments. Like the very first flutter of a butterfly’s wings. Moments that are so profound and so purely beautiful, you try to capture them so you can come back to them later.”
Millie touched the French address scrawled across the boxes as if it were something precious. “But no matter how hard you try to scoop up every detail of the thing, it’s never quite the same because a memory isn’t living and breathing.” She met Harper’s gaze. “Sometimes life is just magic.”
Magic. Harper knew the feeling with the familiarity of a best friend’s voice. But she and magic had parted ways in a department chair’s hallway back in Savannah. She’d grown up from the naïve girl who believed naïve things about dreams, and it was for the better, really.
Harper chipped at the grey nail polish on her fingernails. Millie spoke about the passion that had been missing from Harper’s own life, and she wanted it for herself—to love someone that deeply. The only person she knew who had that kind of passion was . . .
Peter.
Harper turned her attention back to Millie.
“You can imagine what seeing that gown again means to me. So, thank you, sweet girl.” Millie squeezed her hand. “Thank you for finding me, thank you for bringing me here, thank you for everything.”
The sentiment startled Harper in its transparency. All she could do was squeeze Millie’s hand in return. She should be the one thanking Millie, for letting her know the dress’s history. And more importantly, for letting her share part of Millie’s story.
In that moment, everything that had happened in Savannah was worth it. All the tears and self-doubt and loathing and extra pounds from Leopold’s ice cream.
Because without it, without it all, she never would have found Millie, Peter, or their story.
Or for that matter, all she was beginning to discover about her own.
THIRTY-THREE
Fairhope, 1952
The air was thick with hum
idity and the smells of birth as Millie came in and out of consciousness. Clemence roused her by the arm and waved salts beneath her nose, bringing her back to a fragmented reality.
But the pain of childbirth had no comparison to the searing fire ripping through her heart as Millie remembered what had just happened.
“Mrs. Millie, you gave me a scare there. I very nearly fetched the doctor.”
Millie tried to turn toward Clemence from the bed, but pain pierced her empty womb. “You didn’t call him?”
Clemence shook her head. “No, ma’am.” Gently, she set both babies into the crooks of Millie’s arms.
But the babies looked different. One had thin blond hair and the other, tightly curled locks like Mama’s, with a head full of them to show.
Two tiny, angelic faces stared back at her, and Millie’s innocence broke into a thousand pieces at the sight—for the time when the three of them had shared one body was now over, and never again would she be able to shelter them from the rest of the world.
Two different hearts, two different futures.
Clemence cleared her throat and stared at Millie.
“What’s the matter?” Millie asked.
“Forgive me for bein’ forward, but Mrs. Millie . . . one looks like Franklin, and the other . . . well, that hair. Her complexion’s bound to deepen in the next day or so. Who does she look like, Mrs. Millie? You tell me.”
But Millie didn’t say anything.
Clemence shuffled her weight between her feet and straightened her cotton day dress. “You know you must choose one child, don’t you?
Millie looked up and met her eyes. The proposition was a dagger to her lungs, and every ounce of oxygen, every ounce of breath, rushed from her body. She was a body with no soul, skin with no heart. For to choose between two daughters was to choose a grief that would hollow one-half of her for the rest of her life.
And Millie knew—oh, how she knew—that Clemence was right. Racial violence was rife through Alabama, just like it’d been in South Carolina. Violence not unlike her own father’s murder years prior or the harassment she and Mama had experienced from the likes of Harry and his family.