by Ashley Clark
Harper shifted toward him. “Oh?”
Nerves turned Peter’s stomach. Why had he waited so long to admit the state of this building? Why had he been so scared she and Millie would bolt?
“It’s not exactly convenient.”
Harper crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m listening.”
How should he put this?
“The building needs some maintenance on account of its age.” He swept his shoe along the floor. “Nothing to worry about, but I’ve got a couple companies scheduled to come next week.”
Okay, so he’d made it sound like the repairs were something a half hour trip to Lowe’s could fix. But did that really matter, so long as she knew the repairmen were coming?
Harper ran her hand over her forehead. “But we’re supposed to open next week.” Her gaze moved through the store. “Everything is nearly set.”
Peter realized he’d been holding his breath. Slowly, he sighed. “I know. And I’m sorry about that.”
“Can’t you hold off for a little while, until business gets settled?”
Not unless you want to be evicted.
“I can’t put it off any longer.”
Harper hesitated. “Do what you need to do, then. We don’t want the walls collapsing in on us.” She laughed as if this part were a joke.
“No, we wouldn’t want that.”
Harper reached out and touched his elbow. “Wait. The walls aren’t actually in danger of falling down?”
Her touch stirred him more than he cared to admit. “Far as I’m aware, the walls are structurally sound.” In fact, they might be the only thing that is.
“Well, that’s a relief.” Harper pulled a small utility knife from the pocket of her red skirt and cut through the packaging tape on the boxes. He liked a woman who came prepared. “I was thinking that I’ve never asked about your first architectural salvage project. When did you know that’s what you wanted to do with your life?”
Peter removed his glasses and rubbed a fingerprint from the lenses with the hem of his shirt. He knew the answer instantly—it needed no consideration.
“I started college as a pre-law major. Then my mother died.”
Harper looked up from the boxes. Sad lines of understanding framed her gentle eyes.
Peter nodded. A wave of nostalgia tugged him back to the memory he was recalling. “Long story short, my stepfather has always made me work for his approval, but he took that to the extreme after my mother’s passing. I remember, I was at Millie’s boardinghouse, actually, sitting out on her pier when it hit me. I wanted to change my major to history.”
Harper suddenly covered her mouth with her hands.
Did he miss something? “Is my change of major really that surprising?”
“No, that’s not it.” She laughed softly. “It’s just that . . .” She looked straight into his eyes as if she could see clear through him. “Well, I remember you.”
Remembered him? But what could she mean?
Peter blinked. “I don’t understand.” Had they met at some point prior to the engagement party? She did say she grew up in Fairhope.
“I used to live across the bay from the inn. One night, I was sitting outside having dinner with my dad, and I remember seeing this guy around my age who was standing out on Millie’s pier.” Harper took a half step closer. “I asked my dad about you.”
Peter’s next breath caught in his lungs. “What did he say?”
“He told me about your mother and that you’d come to stay with Millie because of something that happened with your stepfather.” She brushed her hair behind her ears, never breaking eye contact with him. “It’s strange to say out loud, but I felt this connection with you because of what I’d just gone through with my own mother. I prayed for you.” She shook her head. “I never imagined we would meet someday.”
Peter rested his hand on her shoulder. He wanted so badly to pull her closer but hesitated. He wasn’t even sure if she cared for him as he’d come to care for her. But the thought of her company that night—along with the fog that settled over the water—overwhelmed him, to say the least. The evening was still so clear in his memory. “Thank you.”
Harper broke eye contact, then slid a row of bracelets up and down her arm. “So you told me why you changed your major, but what about the old houses?”
Peter let his hand fall from her shoulder. “My stepfather and I were on bad terms ever since he gave away my mother’s things. Then he pretty much disowned what little relationship we had left when I told him I was leaving the lawyer plan to pursue history.”
“Yikes.”
“Yeah, but transitioning to a boxed-mac-and-cheese kind of lifestyle was easier than I’d expected. Because for the first time in my life, I felt like I could breathe. Just not financially.” He raked his hand through his hair. It still felt like a punch in the gut to think about. “My mother had inherited a home, and then she passed away and that house went to me. Thing is, when I moved in—thinking I might learn more about my mother or find those missing heirlooms inside—I discovered the place had long been neglected. Nothing there to help me understand why my mother had inherited it.”
Harper frowned. “What did you do? Did you consider selling?”
Peter rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. “Of course I considered it, and back then I really could’ve used the money. But in a different way, I couldn’t afford to sell it. It was a link to my mother that I would’ve lost. And if I sold it, a property developer probably would’ve bought and demolished it to build something new.”
He met her eyes. “That’s when I realized if I wasn’t going to sell history, I needed to start saving it.” This time, he didn’t look away. “Thankfully, Charleston’s booming tourist industry has been favorable to my rental investments. I realized I could make a vocation out of all that before I was forced to sell the house.”
Harper fidgeted with her pearl necklace, tugging it this way and that. “Peter, can I ask you something?”
Anything.
“Sure.”
“You have trouble letting go, don’t you?”
Peter rubbed his jawline with his hand. “I think that’s a fair assessment.”
“You came into my life at a good time, I guess, because the truth is”— she took two steps toward him, and his pulse raced as she neared even more—“I was about to give up.”
Peter nodded. He knew that about her. And he also knew Harper wasn’t typically the type to quit when things got hard. Just look at her now, with Millie.
She shook her head, clearly troubled by the tug of dreams and disappointments. “For so long, I thought owning a dress store was what I wanted to do with my life. I planned it all out. Practiced stitching for hours, got into SCAD, even had internships and odd jobs. But the thing is, Peter, and this is the real kicker—time after time after time, I have come up short.” She searched his eyes as if he should have the answers, as if he should understand. “Do you know what it’s like to have this dream that you breathe for, this dream you’re so passionate about, and then life keeps saying you’re not ready or you’re not enough?”
He had a feeling he’d better not answer that.
She inched up taller on her fancy shoes. “Sometimes I feel like I walk around with two selves. The outside of me lives in the real world. But the inside of me is itching to sketch dresses late into the night. The inside of me flickers with this impossible dream, and I can’t put the candle out. At different points in my life, I’ve tried to fully commit one way or another. I’ve given up hope on my dream, as you’ve seen firsthand, or I’ve given up on boring, old, regular life. But I cannot—I cannot—seem to reconcile what to do with these two halves, which one should win my future.” She settled back down on her heels. “What do you think, Peter, as someone who doesn’t give up quickly?”
He thought a long while. “Well, you obviously need money to eat, so there’s that.” Although he would gladly ditch their rent payment if it meant she and
Millie would stick around.
“Yeah.” Harper straightened the dresses on the rack so there was plenty of space to see each one of them. As she did, her shoes sent tiny dust bunnies scuttling across the floor.
“But you also can’t ignore the thing that keeps your soul alive, because I believe God puts that sort of stuff in us for a reason. That He speaks to us through it. God is faithful, and when He calls you to something, He will also give you the means, even if it doesn’t look as expected.”
“You sound like my dad.”
Was that a compliment? Peter rested his hand on her shoulder. He meant it as a gesture of comfort, but in an instant, his mind went back to the expo—to that ridiculous, trendy suit and the moment he almost kissed her. He swallowed and shook his head before the memory showed in his eyes. “It’s a hard spot you’re in, for sure. But I guess my advice would be that if you sense this push and pull within yourself, the problem isn’t that you need to choose a side.”
Harper stared at him. “It’s not?”
“The problem is, something about your story hasn’t been told yet. The something that connects the two halves.”
“Very profound of you, Peter.” She tightened her ponytail as she leaned down to gather another dress from the box.
“Well, to be fair, there’s something I haven’t told you.” Peter watched as she stood with the dress in her arms, gazing boldly back into his eyes and waiting. “The house in Radcliffeborough?”
“Yes?” Harper hung the dress on the rack and gently trailed her fingers along the fabric.
“It once was Millie’s.”
FORTY-TWO
Fairhope, 1963
Millie was wiping the rim of her favorite mixing bowl with a damp dish towel and setting both back on the counter when she heard Juliet call out from the living room.
“I’m coming.” Millie hurried over. A few seconds was all it took to reach her daughter, but in those few seconds, boardinghouse guests had already crowded around, looking toward the television.
Walter Cronkite was talking. And some journalist named Patterson.
Millie parted the small group of guests to take Juliet’s shoulders firmly between her own two hands. Her gaze scanned her daughter but came up with no visible blood, scrapes, or bruises. Only a fixed stare at the television set.
What was going on? Juliet had sounded so concerned.
With Millie’s touch upon her shoulders, Juliet’s rigid posture softened. She turned toward Millie and rested in her mother’s arms, still saying nothing. Millie held her tightly. And it was only then Millie registered the nightly news must be why the crowd had gathered. Snippets from Cronkite and Patterson’s exchange filtered through the haze of worry blurring Millie’s mind.
We stand in the bitter smoke and hold a shoe. If our South is ever to be what we wish it to be, we will plant a flower of nobler resolve for the South now upon these four small graves that we dug.
“Mercy, what’s happened?” Millie asked.
One of the women staying at the boardinghouse explained there’d been a bombing at the church on Sixteenth Street where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested last spring. Four little girls getting ready for church had been killed. Maybe more injured, as rubble fell in every direction—brought destruction and hate and death—blowing a stained-glass depiction of Jesus into shards so that what once served as an image of love had been weaponized.
Dear God, Millie thought. What have they done?
With Juliet still in her arms, Millie managed a nod toward the woman explaining the scene, then looked back up at the television as Cronkite took over the coverage. She held onto Juliet even tighter.
“That girl I met downtown last month . . .” Juliet choked. She looked up at Millie, and Millie knew exactly what she meant even before her daughter said more. “The one I’ve been writing letters back and forth with. She lives in Birmingham. That’s her church they just showed. What if she was . . .” Juliet froze. “What if she is . . .”
Many responses passed through Millie’s mind.
I’m sure your friend is fine, she wanted to say. I’m sure she wasn’t one of those little girls they found amid the rubble, dead. I’m sure she ran out of the sanctuary so fast that she never saw it fill with smoke, never saw the dust settle like ash, never even heard the cries.
But the fact was, Millie wasn’t sure of any of that. Millie wasn’t even sure what she was doing, raising Juliet as though they were white when in reality Juliet probably identified with her pen pal in more ways than one.
And in one fell swoop, Millie remembered the girl’s most recent letter to Juliet. She’d invited them all to come visit for a long weekend. No doubt, that included Sunday service. Sunday school and pretty hats and hair bows and the whole nine yards.
Maybe even getting ready in the bathroom.
Suddenly, Millie felt as though all the air was gone from the room. She looked down at her daughter’s hair, pinned behind Juliet’s ears with a curl, and she closed her eyes and breathed in the feeling of her living, breathing daughter as the little girl cried against her mama.
In that moment, all the fear came back with a roar. And as Millie acknowledged she had, indeed, made so many decisions from a place of anxiety, something unexpected happened.
The fear got worse.
She saw Juliet’s face in that church. She saw the lace of Juliet’s dress bouncing as the little girl ran with the others through the door. She saw Juliet stand from a pew to shake someone’s hand, then fall to the floor with the rest of the congregation as the dynamite exploded.
And with sickening clarity, Millie’s stomach turned.
It could’ve been her daughter.
After all, it’d already been her father.
Millie closed her eyes. There was no need to trouble the child with her own fears. Millie would pretend, if she had to.
“Mama?” Juliet was murmuring, and Millie opened her eyes to find her daughter looking up, watching. “Mama, you okay? You look like you’re gonna be sick.”
Millie hesitated. “You don’t worry about me.” She brushed her daughter’s cheek with her thumb. “But how about you and I go to your room for a little while and talk about what’s happened?”
Juliet nodded. Millie took her by the hand and led them down the hall. They sat beside each other on the quilt of faded fabrics that covered Juliet’s bed, each with one arm holding on to the other.
“Mama, I’m scared.” Juliet looked straight into Millie’s eyes.
Millie looked back. “Keep doing what we talked about, and you don’t have any reason to be frightened, sweetheart.”
Juliet bit her bottom lip and looked up at Millie with eyes as wide as a little child’s. “There’s something I haven’t told you.”
Millie’s heart stopped. The image of Harry ripping her sleeve in that soda fountain flashed through her mind.
“Last month, when that big family with all the kids was staying here . . .” Juliet fiddled with the threads of the quilt. “They were playing games outside, and I thought I’d ask if they wanted any lemonade, being hospitable and all.”
Millie waited for a long time. “Go on.”
Juliet shook her head. “Well, the oldest boy asked me why a colored girl was living with white parents. I didn’t tell him about passing or any of that. I told him like you and Daddy said I should, that my grandfather is Italian—but he didn’t believe me. He just started laughing and called me something awful.”
Millie rubbed her face with both hands.
Why didn’t you tell me before now? But then she thought of how she hadn’t told her own mother about Harry until she had to.
Juliet searched Millie’s eyes once more, still holding onto the fabric between her fingers. “He said if I ever have a brother or sister like he’s got, then they’d probably be white, and everybody would see what he already knew—that either my mother had something to hide or my daddy wasn’t really my father.”
Millie groaned. She
wanted to reach her arm across the inn, across the bay, across the state line until she could grasp that ignorant boy where he thought he lived so securely and pick him up by the collar. She would give him a what-for until he regretted the day he ever met her daughter.
But that wouldn’t change anything, would it?
“He told me that colored people don’t belong beside white people, and that I shouldn’t live here because someday, someone would find out, and they would hurt me or they would hurt you, or they would light the house on fire. I tried not to think about the whole thing, but when I saw the news . . . well, was he right? It could have been me, couldn’t it, Mama?”
Yes.
No.
Maybe.
Colored people don’t belong beside white people.
These words, their echo, shook Millie to her core. Because all people belonged side by side, and she should be allowed to say so. And her own kind of fire kindled in her soul—of grief, namely—to think that in separating Juliet and Rosie to keep them both safe, maybe she had played into this wrong, evil ideology of segregation, however unintentionally.
But what else could she have done?
Juliet waited for an answer.
Millie waited for one as well.
Hours later, Millie sat in that room again—this time, alone with her thoughts.
Only she wasn’t alone, exactly. Because after the conversation with Juliet earlier, she kept hearing another echo in her mind. Aunt Bea, years prior, saying, “You’re Gullah, girl,” as though Millie had forgotten, as though she didn’t care about that anymore. As though she didn’t remember at every waking moment the half of her heritage that screamed to be shared with the world.
She was trying to make sense of everything that happened this afternoon, and why her heart always seemed to trip over the same old worries.
And it occurred to Millie in that moment the reason for all the fear she’d carried. The load that’d grown from year to year to year as the girls grew taller, like old blankets shoved into the closet one upon the other.