by Ashley Clark
Millie closed her eyes. After a moment’s hesitation, she sighed and mustered up as much grace as she could. “Oh, don’t worry yourself, Jane. These things happen.” Millie smiled in a sad sort of way and hung up, replacing the phone on its receiver.
She shook her head, turning once more toward the biscuits. She’d made enough to feed a Sunday school class even though Jane and Stephanie were the only two scheduled for lessons that day.
The boardinghouse was empty for two nights, near empty for more than that. Juliet was in New Orleans; Rosie, in Charleston. And the family heirlooms had been split among them, including Millie’s wedding dress, which Rosie wore in her wedding to Peter’s father, Jack.
Millie was alone. Her joints ached from arthritis, and her heart ached from everything else. She lived among beautiful memories here at the boardinghouse—stories that a steady stream of new customers gave her. She loved that every year, the same smell of magnolias caught on the breeze birthed by water. That the wooden planks on the floor still held familiar grooves made by dancing, and that the view out her bedroom window still brought a new sunrise every morning.
But sometimes it caught up with her. That her dream to own her own dress shop had never actually come true. Every time she’d gotten close to saving enough money, one of her daughters had a need—first the family trips to Charleston while the girls were growing up. Then with Rosie’s wedding; then Juliet’s own store opened. And then, of course, Rosie’s baby and the extended time Millie stayed in Charleston after the tragic death of Rosie’s husband.
Now, both her daughters had long passed the age of needing help. But something unexpected happened in the meantime.
Millie had long passed the age of being able. At some point, in all those years of providing for the two of them, providing for everyone who came through the inn for that matter, Millie had developed stiff joints that made extended dressmaking no longer possible. It’d been years upon years since she quit her seamstress work at the bridal shop downtown. She now had the money, the time, and the resources to start her own store but little interest in finagling a mortgage, and not enough energy to work long hours.
So while it wasn’t entirely true that she’d stopped dreaming about the shop, it was true that somewhere along the way, she’d stopped seeing it as possible.
She would admit that, of course, to no one but herself. When her daughters asked, from time to time, about her long-held dream, Millie simply said she was busy with the boardinghouse and maybe next year.
Offering sewing classes to young women seemed like a nice way to pass along her skills without the rigor of being an independent business owner. But of course, that too had fizzled out before even starting. She couldn’t shake the feelings of isolation and anonymity that had settled into her bones.
Millie sat down at the kitchen table, flour still under her fingernails. She started feeling sorry for herself—but no. No, that wouldn’t do. She stood back up and opened the door to step outside.
The early morning carried with it the gentlest, low-lying fog that blurred the bay into the pier and the rest of the horizon. Enchanted by the surrealist effect, Millie walked out toward the pier. She was startled from her thoughts when a fishing boat pulled out of the fog.
“Mornin’!” the man said, lifting his ballcap from his head to wave it toward Millie. She recognized him then—the fisherman who lived with his family across the water.
“Good morning to you.” Millie nodded, smiling, though she wasn’t entirely sure he could see her through the dense fog.
“How are ya, Mrs. Millie?”
“Not too shabby,” she said, then decided for whatever reason to keep going. “Though this morning’s turned into a bit of a disappointment. I’m going to have to cancel my sewing class before it’s really even begun.”
“Sewing class, you said?” He righted his ball cap backward on his thick head of hair. “Why, my Harper would love that. She’s always cuttin’ up old fabric from sheets and napkins to make little clothes for her dolls. How much for the class, Mrs. Millie?”
Hope warmed Millie’s clenched chest, and for the first time, she saw the scattering of sunbeams glistening through the fog along the water. “Oh, it’s no charge. The class is nonrefundable, and the other student canceled, so Harper could simply take her spot.” Actually, Millie would teach the child for free but didn’t want to offend by straight-up saying so.
“I’ll get these fish inside and tell my wife. Harper will be thrilled. What time?”
“Say . . . ten o’clock?”
“Works for us.” He docked his boat along his pier and carried both his cooler and the invitation inside.
Millie turned from the pier toward the table where she’d laid out the lacy tablecloth her mama had mailed decades ago. She’d found in an old drawer, tucked away for safekeeping.
Looked like she would be using it after all. She would go ahead and set the table, then return to the kitchen to finish the biscuits. After that, she’d prepare the tea and carry her sewing machine outside. Yes, this was all working out.
Millie took the tablecloth by two corners and shook it in the air. Dust floated up, up, up from the fabric as she held tight to both corners—as if they were the beginning and ending marks to a forgotten story, and if Millie just held tightly enough, it would all come unfurled.
As she clutched and the wind caught, the space between the corners became a flag and the fabric settled on the table, waving an announcement to the world that sewing lessons were about to begin.
Millie hurried around the table, tugging and straightening the lace until it laid just so. And then she looked up toward the heavens, happy about this opportunity to teach Harper but still heavy with melancholy.
“Why did my dream never come?” she murmured, straightening the lace further with her wrinkled hands.
Then, through the fog, as muted sunbeams shimmied through the tree limbs, she sensed the reply with startling clarity from the heavens: I’m not done.
Nor, it seemed, was she.
Little Harper sat at Millie’s kitchen table, her shoulders turned toward the window. The storm outside whistled through the closed door beside them.
Millie folded the lace tablecloth into thirds, setting it on the kitchen table and pressing each seam so the fabric would be ready for its next use some other day.
Harper’s mother came beside Millie and took a liking to it. “How beautiful,” she said. “Is it vintage?”
Her eyes met Millie’s. Millie chuckled under her breath. “It’s vintage, all right. It’s old as me.”
The woman held Millie’s gaze. “So lovely. It seems to have a story to tell.”
“That’s because it does have a story.” Millie straightened her cloche and took a deep breath. She hadn’t planned what she was about to say next, and yet, she had the strangest sense it was the right thing to do. “I’d be honored if you’d take it home with you.”
The woman’s eyes widened, and her hands fluttered to her faded blouse. “I couldn’t.”
“You could, and you will.” Millie waved toward the tablecloth. “I’ve loved it many years but rarely get use out of it anymore. It’d make me happy knowing someone still sees value in it.”
Harper’s mother trailed one finger along the lace, as if that one finger was all she dared use to touch such delicate fabric. But Millie knew the lace was stronger than it seemed.
Millie picked up the folded tablecloth and held it out toward her. “Truly.”
The woman reached for the lace as tears welled in the corners of her eyes. “Harper and I will use it for tea parties.”
Millie smiled. She glanced through the windows. Wind swept the rain so it pulled like waves along the sidewalk, rushing closer toward the house and whipping water against the windows.
Elbow against the table, Harper rested her chin on her fist and turned to them. “Why did it have to rain?”
The oven timer buzzed. Millie hurried over, tugging a cat-shaped oven m
itt onto her hand. “We can still do the lesson inside.”
Harper sighed. “Thank you, Mrs. Millie, and I am excited about that, but it’s just not the same.”
Millie held back her smirk as she reached into the oven. She remembered clearly from Juliet’s childhood that Harper’s age was about the time melodrama set in.
Still, she understood the disappointment. Even felt it too. The three of them had scarcely moved her sewing machine back inside before the dark clouds rolled in and the heavens parted. Little Harper had grabbed the lacy tablecloth and run, and it flew like a cape behind her.
The biscuits were ruined. So was the sun tea Millie had brewed yesterday for the occasion.
So instead, they’d set up the sewing machine on the kitchen table and were about to eat cut-and-bake snickerdoodles, with powdered lemonade to drink.
Millie set the cookie sheet on top of the stove. She waved her patterned oven mitt over the cookies to cool them.
“You know, my mama always said you can’t have flowers without some rain.” Millie shimmied each cookie up with her spatula.
She’d caught Harper’s attention. The little girl turned her head. “Guess I never thought of it that way.”
“Sure, because nobody likes plans changing. We want things to happen just the way we dream them, just the way we expect.” Millie held her spatula in the air. “But what I’ve learned in my years is that the same water which brings us Jubilee goes up into the clouds then rains back down. Without the rain, eventually, we wouldn’t have any tide.”
This time, Harper’s mother was the one to turn. Still holding the tablecloth to her chest, she let out a sigh so deep that Millie felt it too.
Millie set the plate of cookies in the center of the table and reached for the ceramic pitcher of lemonade. It may be powdered, but at least it was pretty. She poured three glasses while looking at Juliet’s photo on the fridge, then started to pour a fourth out of habit. Juliet loved lemonade. But Juliet had returned to New Orleans last week, their visit far too short for Millie’s liking.
Millie put the empty glass back inside the cabinet. Harper’s mother helped her with the other three.
Millie sat down in the chair beside Harper and folded her hands on the table. “So, sweetheart, tell me. Why do you want to learn how to sew? Clothes for yourself or even your dolls? Embroidery? Quilting?”
Harper blinked. “You’re going to think it’s silly.”
Millie leaned closer, reaching for the plate so Harper could take a cookie. “Try me.”
Harper took one bite and covered her mouth with her hand. “These are delicious.”
Millie grinned. “Thank you.” She waited until Harper was ready to continue.
“I want to own a dress store someday.” Harper took another bite of her cookie.
Images flashed through Millie’s mind like a picture book blown by the wind. Herself at the ice cream shop. Mama at the train station. Meeting Franklin. And then, of course, the babies.
And with each memory came a different sort of fabric—some soft, others coarse, some floral, others with predictable stripes and patterns. But life had sewn each of them, stitch by stitch, together.
Maybe, in her own way, Millie had gotten her dress store after all. Though nothing was for sale here, she was surrounded by a lifetime of fabrics, literal and otherwise, she had worn for various occasions and in different seasons. Each dress, each sweater, lining her drawers and her closet racks and, more than anything, lining her memories, so that stitch by stitch the one central pattern in it all was redemption. And she wouldn’t trade her unconventional, unexpected dream-come-true for anything.
Not even the dress shop on King Street.
“Dear one,” Millie said, standing to pull fabric from the drawer for their first lesson. “It would be my joy to help you.”
And she meant it: she meant it with every fiber of her being.
FIFTY-THREE
Charleston, Modern Day
Harper watched as the morning sun streamed through the window, casting a shadow of the wedding dress against the wall and an even greater shadow of Millie.
From the shadow, Millie looked taller. As if she possessed the power to achieve anything by simply standing in the path of the sun. Refracting its beams by positioning herself in the here and now, looking at once toward the darkness that might scare others and beyond it, to the sunlight that pierces through clouds.
Harper once read an article about hummingbirds, and how with certain kinds, the sunlight becomes a prism through their wings and the prism becomes a rainbow. All that’s left is the shadow of the little bird in the photo and the rainbow wings that carry it through gardens. Moving from beauty to beauty, of kept promises with each open, living flower. Everlasting hope. Everlasting covenant.
Even dead seeds make roots, and roots underground sprout blooms, and the rain falls, and in due time and in due season the hummingbird returns, looking for nectar and hoping to find a harvest. Carrying her story in her rainbow wings, from generation to generation.
And as Harper watched Millie and that shadow on the wall, she couldn’t shake the feeling she was standing on holy ground.
She breathed in the smell of the place—gardenias and jasmine. Like the prettiest bridal gown turned into a scent. She’d never been able to pinpoint whether the fragrance was perfume, room spray, or candles. But it was distinctly Millie, and now, distinctly hers too.
On the drive back to Charleston, she’d come up with the perfect name and location for the new store.
Second Story.
Instead of fancy gowns you could find any old place, they would specialize in vintage pieces that had been restored, each one coming with a tag that told the piece’s story.
For the past few weeks since she’d returned from her father’s house in the mountains, Harper, Peter, and Millie had been working long hours labeling each garment with the information they knew about the previous owner. A whole set of 1950s cardigans belonged to a woman who lived in a cottage on Edisto. A pair of heels were once worn by the first female student at the College of Charleston. They’d even found some jewelry dating back to the Civil War at an estate sale.
Each purchase offered the customer a chance to be part of a story that had started long ago. That was the enchantment of vintage clothing. The power of stories restored. Harper didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of it before.
Second Story was nearly ready to open but still needed one more addition.
Harper stepped toward a rack at the front of the shop to hang up the dress she’d submitted for the Senior Show months ago. Her fingers lingered over the embroidery. When she looked at it now, she didn’t see failure or even flawed stitching. She did see a hint of Anthropologie, but she would take that with flattery. Funny how the things that seemed like the biggest failures could open up the wildest dreams.
“That dress is stunning. Truly remarkable.” Millie stood in front of the dress with admiration.
“There was a time I thought it was proof my dreams were shattered.”
Millie stepped over toward her wedding gown and held out her hat so the buttons showed as a perfect match. “For a long time, I thought this dress was gone as well.” Millie’s eyes trailed the delicate fabric of the gown. “But God has taught me here in Charleston”—Millie held on to Harper’s gaze—“that our stories, His stories, are never really gone.”
Harper stilled from straightening her dress on the rack.
“When I was a young girl,” Millie said, “I spent so much time afraid of shadows. I imagined them to be the figure of whatever villain seemed larger than me at that point in my life. But as I grew, I realized something.” The sunlight shifted through the window and threw the silhouette of Millie’s wedding dress upon the floor. “No matter how hard we try to avoid them, we’ll spend half our lives living in the shadows. Because the thing of it is, we were never supposed to run.”
Harper moistened her dry lips and shook her head slightly. “I don
’t think I understand.”
Millie took several slow steps closer to the window until she stood in the shadow of the gown. “The secret, my sweet Harper, is we stop fearing shadows when we see the sun that makes them. Instead of cowering, we shift into the sunlight, and the shadows shift as well.”
The truth of it ran in chills down Harper’s arms, seeping down into her heart. She thought of her favorite verse as a child. The “Father of lights.” Every perfect gift coming down from Him above.
Millie reached out, inviting Harper to close the space between them. Harper did, readily taking Millie’s warm grasp into her own.
Millie’s sniffle was the only tell she was about to cry. She raised her chin slightly as her hands trembled. “Let me tell you what the Lord has done in this shadow, Harper.”
So it began. The story of Millie’s life and the story of Millie’s love. Of dreams with disappointing reality, and the splitting of futures that Millie had settled long ago as an inevitable break in her heart.
And all the while, Harper stood transfixed in the shadow of the buttons, in the shadow of the wedding dress, until Millie spoke, and Harper’s gaze lifted.
“I always did say, there’s no sense in beautiful buttons just sitting around.”
“You’re right, Millie.” Harper smiled. “You’re absolutely right.”
“There’s one more thing I want to tell you.” Millie situated her hat on her head, securing it with the pins. “Surely you saw it coming.”
Harper shook her head. She never had the slightest idea what Millie would say next.
Not when Millie turned. Not even when Millie stepped toward the wedding gown. But then Millie reached for it, laid the fabric between her arms, and held it out toward Harper. “The dress is yours.”
Harper’s eyes widened. All the sounds of the street outside faded to a blur, and all she noticed was the flicker of anticipation in Millie’s eyes.
“I couldn’t.”
“Oh, hush. Of course you could, and you will.” Millie nodded once, definitively, as if the matter were settled. Perhaps it was.