The Butterfly Dream: Match Made In Devon Bridal Shop: Book Two

by Blair, Danielle

  Most days, she sported one of Mama’s old aprons like a milk barmaid and shoved an artillery of tools inside that had nothing to do with cooking: pens, cell phone, dry erase markers, tablet, charging cords. From the rocking chair in the nursery, she worked the shop’s spreadsheets and ran reports. Her shower door and mirror had become incubation white boards for logistics ideas. Daddy’s favorite recliner had become a nest for obsessing about parenting, mostly nonfiction from psychologists. Charlotte called it all a bunch of hooey meant to sell books. Motherhood, according to her, was 99 percent womanly instinct and 1 percent know-it-all from someone who’d already “hoed that row.” And it helped if that know-it-all came in a sassy Southern package. Charlotte was her 1 percent package.

  Which left almost no percent for Jonah.

  Alex’s brain tweaked the percents to ninety-eight and one, to squeeze him in.

  The man had forsaken a night out with the guys, a couple of hours to catch up on a kitchen remodel across town, and a tempting proposition to spy on his preteen daughter and her friends on the first night of the fair to help Alex with Maddie.

  Help, Alex supposed, was relative.

  In Maddie’s room, Alex had fashioned the designer boutique of changing stations: themed to the hilt, ergonomic height, everything within reach, a wipes warmer, soft white lighting dialed to perfection at a whisper-quiet touch, and—of course—several layers of safety measures built in. The setup was her port in the storm of new motherhood, a place where she was certain she was doing everything right.

  Jonah, however, insisted on using the germy floor.

  Alex tried to return to Dr. Jo Ellen Bush’s fascinating metaphor—infant as hardware, parent as software—but the diaper change hijacked her mind completely.

  “You do know that carpet was put in during the Reagan administration, right?”

  “Then Maddie’s backside is in good company,” said Jonah.

  Maddie’s blowout was extra of everything. Admirably, the man barely flinched. He was, however, woefully unprepared.

  “You should have taken her to the changing table in her room.”

  “Up an unnecessary flight of stairs while she smells like the latrine at the dirty taco shop in Mission? No thanks.”

  Alex tossed him a nearby wipes container. “She’ll cry. She likes them warm.”

  His brow twisted. “Who wouldn’t? But are you going to be warming her ass her entire life?” Then to Maddie in a coochy-coochy voice. “I’m going to be an independent woman, Mommy.”

  Alex tried. She really tried to go back to reading her paragraph. But in short order, Jonah forgot powder and fastened a fresh diaper loose enough for Alex to smuggle Post-it notes. She set her book aside, picked up Maddie, and repeated the entire diapering process—this time, upstairs, so it would be right.

  When mother and daughter descended the stairs, Jonah had his coat on, keys in his hand.

  Alex’s steps slowed. “Where are you going?”

  “How many diapers would you say I’ve changed in my life?” Jonah asked. His face had that pissy, revved up look. He shrugged. “Rough estimate.”

  Alex actually attempted a calculation for a hot minute before it became too much. “Some.” Truth was, she had no idea about his experience. In Alex’s mind, his dead wife, Katherine, had been a beautiful superwoman with six arms who could probably perform basic math functions when Isabel was two months old.

  “Ball park.”

  This spiked Alex’s blood pressure. “I don’t know. A hundred, maybe.”

  “A hundred,” he repeated, his voice thin, with plenty of space for mocking. He twirled his keys, once, twice, the only sound in the room.

  Alex swayed on the landing, waiting for what, she didn’t know.

  “The first time we found out Katherine had cancer, she was seven months pregnant. Day after Ibby was born, Katherine started treatment. It took all she had in her to save herself that first diagnosis. Not much energy left for diapering.”

  Her first instinct was to back up, climb the steps and retreat to the changing table, pretend their conversation hadn’t just detoured from annoyance to pain. Every single detail Alex learned about Katherine made her more perfect. She wasn’t around to screw up anymore; she would always be a devoted mother, fighting for more of what was denied her. Who could compete with that perfection?

  “God, Jonah, I’m so sorry.” Alex didn’t know there had been a first time and that the first time had not been enough to prevent a second years later.

  His expression was a waterfall, all reckless power, ever-charging over the same path, fallen when she came to mind.

  “I get that this is new for you,” said Jonah. “That there are still things we don’t know about each other from our years apart and you still see me as a sixteen-year-old kid who couldn’t keep his hands to himself, but if this is going to work—if we’re going to work—you have to trust me.”

  “That loose diaper meant she had no shot of sleeping through the night.”

  “I’m not talking about a diaper.” Jonah wiped a hand across his forehead, the place where he nursed headaches more frequently now. “What are we doing here, huh?”

  The question rattled around inside her, all sharp edges and shuffling noise, and produced nothing. Alex swayed.

  “I’ve told you, in as many ways as I know how, that I’m your guy. That I love you, that I’ve always loved you, and we could—we will—have a great life together.” Jonah’s sigh spilled through the quiet. “I’m not your ex-husband. I am not Michael, Alex. Stop trying to project that end onto us.”

  “I need time.”

  His laugh was caustic, bitter. He zipped his coat. “Time’s a bastard, Alex. It’s a comfort—until it’s not. It’s a liar and a thief. And in the end, it always wins. I already told you I’d wait forever, and I meant it. But time? Doesn’t have that kind of patience.”

  Jonah was there one moment, gone the next. Alex barely remembered hearing the sound of the front door locking behind him, sliding down to the landing, cradling Maddie, leaning her head against the wall.

  She barely remembered falling asleep and waking long minutes later, but she felt the loss of time, acutely, as Katherine must have as her days dwindled, as Jonah still felt the void of lost years with her. For them, time ran out; and the wasting of precious days now did nothing to ease Jonah’s hurt. In truth, Alex’s reckless disregard for time, drifting, not making a decision, added to his pain. She just hoped she had it in her to chance imperfection with Jonah before time ran out of patience.

  9

  Charlotte

  Urban legend around Devon was that Crazy Rs got its name from a robbery, back when the building had been a savings and loan in the 1940s. Older townsfolk, less prone to sensationalism, insisted the original bar owner named it to celebrate the history of Devon once being a prominent railhead of the Carrier Lumber and Manufacturing Company. Cecil Milam never divulged the inspiration behind the name for his once-celebrated steakhouse. On this night, Charlotte was fairly certain R stood for renaissance. As in never had she ever run the pool tables with such artistry, hustled with such glory, or felt like it was the revival of a Golden Age long past.

  Nash warned her twice that playing the ditzy blonde opponent to traveling carnies wasn’t a good idea. Everyone in Devon knew Charlotte was a shark, having spent a summer in high school working at the sporting goods store Hazel owned with her husband. God rest him, Lon never met a dollar he didn’t chase. Story was, Lon saved up enough in pool hustles to put down payment on the business when he was twenty-five. When business was slow, he taught Charlotte everything he knew about billiards. Carnies, however, weren’t privy to common town knowledge, and Charlotte already had a stout roll sitting in Nash’s hand.

  Her dress left little room for such a bankroll.

  Charlotte’s goal was to win back something close to what she’d donated at the bingo night. Pay down the vet bill, as Nash had suggested, and work toward setting things to rights b
etween them by proving that she, too, was trying. A carnie named Eiffel had other plans. Winning back his paycheck, saving face with his drunk buddies, and convincing Charlotte to show him her cleavage on each shot when Nash wasn’t looking—not necessarily in that order.

  On occasions such as this, she channeled her inner Bernice.

  If the boy has an IQ of two and it takes three to grunt, it’s his own damned fault.

  Course, Bernice was talking about the time the Gauterot kid hooked a lawnmower engine to a shopping cart and shoved off down Main Street. Not nearly as dangerous as siphoning cash off a human growth hormone. But still.

  “Char,” Nash whispered. More like a hiss, actually.

  She glanced at him, tried to hone in on the telepathy they’d mastered after so many years together. He seemed to be flicking a lighter or a booger off his thumb then doing some sort of shimmy or dance. Charlotte took this to mean he’d changed his mind and wanted to go dancing. Within two turns, she buried the game and walked back close to Nash.

  “Ready to go dancing?” she asked.

  Nash’s expression twisted. “Dancing?” He didn’t really get to elaborate. His gaze tracked behind her shoulder. And up. Way up.

  “Woman leaves me broke, she owes me something.”

  Nash nudged her aside, clear of the encroaching eclipse of the neon beer signs, and stood. True to his name, Eiffel cleared Nash by a good eight inches.

  “She’s a good player, man. Let’s leave it at that.”

  “Goddamned whore’s what she is,” said Eiffel. “Probably wiggled her Grade A ass on every guy’s face here.”

  Charlotte’s chin dropped at whore and resettled at Grade A ass. Mostly, she just witnessed the transformation of Nash’s hand around the wad of bills, loose grip to death grip. She pried the money from his hand and shoved it in the closest depository she had: her bra.

  The vein that popped out on Nash’s neck when he tried to haul too many bags of feed at once made its appearance.

  Neither man broke his stare.

  Eiffel slurped out a suggestive wiggle of his tongue. At the grin on the tail end, Nash launched.

  Charlotte froze. Every movement, every rotation, every single word exchanged, seemed to slow time like one of those flipbook corner drawings she used to sketch into Alex’s journal that made her so livid. Moments passed like pages hung up, sometimes not moving at all, sometimes skipping entire sequences.

  Nash had been a farmer nearly his entire life—bailing hay, building fences, substituting his grip when a vice wasn’t around—but damned if he didn’t accept his fair share of what he dished out. When the first bottle grazed Nash’s cheek and shattered on the floor, patrons came to separate the two. Both men were steaming and cursing and squaring off like round two couldn’t come soon enough.

  Eiffel was shown the finest hospitality Devon had to offer: a swift haul out the front door and a hog-tie until the sheriff showed up. Nash sat out the wait for the cops in the backbar, a wad of paper towels at his lip and an acute inability to look Charlotte in the eye.

  “Guess this means we’re not going dancing.”

  She was aiming for levity. As with other aspects of their lives right now, even her humor seemed off. Nash cut her a dirty look in return.

  He pulled the blood-stained towel away from his lips. “Leaving, Char. Leaving.”

  “And the booger flick?”

  Nash’s brow wrung up like a wet bar rag, then settled into an eye roll. “Tryna to tell you he had a pocketknife.” Again, a wince.

  He snagged a sober Earl Frizeal to take Charlotte home, not another word said. Except a whole host from Earl on the way home. Blow-by-blow on the fight and how “them carneys are all felons, every last one of ’em,” and how she might not want to wear that dress again because it “fits yer curves like a sausage, and there ain’t nothing more tempting to a man than a good sausage.” Even Charlotte’s sense of humor stayed a country mile away from that one.

  That night, she’d been told by a sister, a towering barbarian, and a barber that she looked tempting. The only opinion that counted, however, was sitting in a bar across town, unwilling to speak to her. Charlotte finally knew what the R was for: regret. Crazy regret. What happened when you decided to go all in.

  * * *

  Charlotte awoke from a dream about Eduardo Reyes. She wasn’t sure if Eduardo ever really existed. His story had been part of her youth, sandwiched between fairy tales and stories of Evangeline and Gabriel. As an adult, Eduardo came to her infrequently but with such intensity that Charlotte always took him as a sign. Of what, she could not say.

  Over the years, his appearance had changed, aligning closely with Charlotte’s age. His propensity for colorful bowties relaxed to a crisp white shirt, stark against his tan skin, unbuttoned just-so. Dark hair, once unruly, was now groomed and put in place—an impeccable shadow at his jawline, trim sideburns, curly hair swept back and stacked atop his head. Once, he even had a ponytail, but she told him to cut it. He did.

  Almost always, Eduardo was at the end of his journey south. He had grown-up in Tennessee, impoverished, an orphan by choice. On the darkest day of his life, a day he had convinced himself the world would be better off without him, he’d come across a swarm of monarch butterflies. Their freedom had captivated him. He’d befriended the butterflies, followed them for days, weeks, and they’d led him across the border into Mexico’s countryside. Exhausted from the long migration, many in the swarm landed on a dirt road to rest. A truck rumbled up the dusty trail but did not see the blanket of wings until it was nearly too late. Eduardo rushed over to scatter his friends, to save them, but he was struck. The driver, a young woman, took him home and nursed him back to health. Her name was Hoja, which meant leaf, and Eduardo was certain she was his place to land. They fell in love and planted a shady hillside full of blood flowers so the monarchs always knew home. Sometimes, Charlotte was Hoja; sometimes, she accompanied Eduardo on his journey south. In this dream, on a night she felt so very far apart from Nash, Charlotte had been a butterfly, headed north.

  She made herself tea and landed at the kitchen table, Alex’s laptop close by. Charlotte chewed her lip. Some nights, when she failed to recapture sleep, she snuck downstairs and Googled the places Freesia talked about in her stories or checked her savings account balance against the price tag of a beachy vacation somewhere no one would know her name. Some nights, she would read the monarch migration updates on the daily blog written by the leader of the largest North American research group, Dr. Steven Morneau, his latest round of photos highlighting him more than the insects. The forum icon indicated a direct message.

  Would love to have you with us on the caravan this year. We are always short of volunteers to capture and tag. Shall we pick you up in mid-March? He signed it “Steve.” Charlotte read far too much into that before her eyes skimmed the sender’s signature line. Dr. Steven Morneau, Cornell University, Department of Entomology.

  Fragile wings took flight in her belly.

  She minimized the message screen, pulled up his research website, and clicked through the photo album. Hundreds of photos of his sabbaticals, of little interest to most. But to her, a forbidden fantasy. Mostly in her mind, Steven appeared as a gentleman—draping his coat over muddy patches of earth, brushing loose tendrils of hair from her lashes so the breeze wouldn’t have its way, listening with his eyes and his posture and his mind, fully engaged as she talked through her struggles. But sometimes, after Charlotte’s late-night prowl of the sugared part of the pantry or a particularly well-written love scene midway through her current read, Steven was all scientist: hypothesizing, surveying, experimenting.

  Her very own Eduardo. Minus the Spanish soap opera looks, though if there was a French-Canadian version of a telenovela, Steven would be the lead actor.

  Dr. Steven Morneau knew nothing of Charlotte’s real life. He believed her to be educated, cultured, untethered, rich enough to take liberties with employment and travel. In a word, sh
e had painted herself as Alex in areas where Charlotte came up woefully short. In their private messages, rife with passion about the declining swarms of butterflies and the devastation of drought to the milkweed that nurtured them, neither mentioned a personal life.

  She clicked back to the message, stared at the blinking cursor, sampled different replies.

  Don’t have a sleeping bag. Can we share?

  Delete…delete…delete…

  It would hurt so many people.

  Delete…delete…delete…

  Yes! Excited. Can’t wait.

  Delete...delete…

  One word stared back at her. Yes.

  Charlotte had fantasized about following the butterfly migration since Daddy had brought back that first packet of milkweed seeds. Before Nash. Before Natalie and Allison and Gabe and Tibbs and a million responsibilities staked her to the spot where she’d always been. She remembered Mama’s cigarettes, her words, I came close to me. Closer than I was at just about any other time, and Charlotte wanted so very much to come close, closer to herself than just about any other time.

  Before she could change her mind, Charlotte clicked send.

  10

  Freesia

  “I still don’t understand why we had to come with you.” Natalie plopped on a sofa emblazoned with some exotic animal hair. “The hotel is one subway stop that way.”

  Her snaking, directionless finger did nothing to inspire Freesia’s confidence.

  “That way,” Allison corrected. Opposite direction.

  The Nemeth Foundry and Iron Works of Greenwich Village, 1790—so stated on the iron plate near a non-descript outer door—was the site of Freesia’s first meeting with Jon Yu, philanthropic beast in the fashion industry and benefactor of three misplaced southerners in New York for the weekend. She wasn’t about to allow her worry over the girls’ safety override what was undoubtedly the most important introduction of the trip. Of her career. Entire future. Life, maybe.