“It always comes down to me, Charlotte. Always.” Alex’s voice was oddly distant, quiet, as if she had long ago accepted the inevitability of the burden.
Freesia thought she would enjoy the balancing of the informational scales but seeing Alex and Charlotte at cross purposes did a number on her insides. She understood none of the old gripes, but if they pulled three directions at the thread that knotted them together, they would remain in place.
“Back down that road is a man named Enzo. I know nothing about him. I don’t even know if he’ll remember Elias or speak the truth about him, but whatever he says has to be a sight better than standing in this parking lot, gathering stares, arguing about things none of us has the power to change.”
Charlotte bowed her head, stared at something in her lap. Freesia hated that about her. She decided right then and there that weakness was a maternal gene in this family.
“Now, I’m going with or without you two,” said Freesia. “Makes no difference to me. I am the same as I have always been—on the outside, looking in, wishing to God Almighty there’d be a place for me in this life. But that place ain’t on no map. Not Petit Laurent and—for sure—not Devon. That place is when I look in the mirror and know everything about how I came to be there. No more holes left to fill.”
She entered the truck cab, driver’s seat, Elias March’s ratty old key chain brushing her knee a now-familiar comfort.
Part of her wished the March sisters would not follow her. The part of her that had always gone it alone, found it more appealing. The other part? Well, it was downright relieved when Alex circled the truck’s rear bumper and slid into the passenger seat. The past wasn’t for the faint of heart; the brave among them would prevail. Charlotte started up her van and waited, headlights bright in the rearview mirror instead of pulling off on the highway north, toward Mississippi, fear and hurt quite possibly making her the bravest of them all.
* * *
Enzo Ricci was a son of a bitch.
Grade A, triple crown, card carrying member of the asshole of the month club for most of his years. He wore dirty clothes that sagged from his frame like old phone wires between posts, sported the bruises of self-abuse—most notably in the hollows beneath his eyes. He’d spent double-digit years incarcerated, and used words like colored and dark because he was of the generation accustomed to noticing such things.
Enzo was also the closest Freesia had ever come to cleansing a wound. And that was saying something. His foulness knew no boundaries.
First thing out of his mouth: “Nothing ever good comes from the mixin’.”
Race.
Second thing out his mouth: “But that man—whoo—he loved that baby, a’fore it was even born. Wanted it so much he come home day he found out, told his wife everything in the hopes she’d find it in here…” he tapped the rat-on-a-skull tattoo above his heart, “…to raise that child, too. Practically begged her.”
Freesia felt the floorboards drift just then. On a humid, paralyzed night, the lake didn’t move the house the way she expected. Almost never. But that time? It was like the natty orange recliner and the stolen street sign in the corner, and the pile of something—animal feces, vomit, something—on the rug slipped, none of it remembering its place.
Enzo dug around in his pocket, pulled out a pack of smokes. “She didn’t much see it that way. Anger inside a woman that’s been done like that? Only force on earth that can fight it she didn’t have much of at the time.”
“Love?” asked Charlotte.
Enzo shook his head and lit a brown cigarette. “Endurance. Like some sort of marathon. I should know. My Mary couldn’t go the distance with me.”
Alex made eye contact with Freesia. Her eyelashes didn’t spread wide, her lips never moved a muscle. Even with the onslaught of noxious smoke, not even a nostril flinched, but somehow Freesia’s read Alex’s thoughts because they were hers: you don’t say.
Enzo Ricci couldn’t have known that baby was the woman sitting across from him. The three had introduced themselves as Elias’s friends, cousins, something. The story shifted between Alex’s explanation and Charlotte’s. The March women were wickedly resourceful and adept at half-truths, when warranted. Enzo didn’t seem to much care.
“Wouldn’ta mattered much, I suppose,” said Enzo, pausing to close the gap in his lips, take a drag. “She was sleepin’ around.”
Alex’s spine straightened. “Elias’s wife?”
Enzo adopted a stink face. “No. My Mary.”
Freesia could have counted, by vertebrae, the return bend of Alex’s poor posture, the lowering of shoulders on a prolonged exhale. Maybe it was just the ebb and flow of the house.
Guy was all over the place. Time for directness.
“How did you know Elias?”
“He volunteered at a halfway house over in Liberty after I got paroled. Sometimes he mentioned the Bible. None of that pushy shit, just stories. Mostly we talked. He told us about times he messed up so we’d feel better about our choices.”
“Did you?” Charlotte said. “Feel better?”
Enzo squeezed her in his stare, took another puff. “Well it wasn’t a fucking purging if that’s what you’re asking.”
Charlotte blinked in rapid succession. She pressed her lips together like an internal decree to never speak again.
Freesia wanted to toss the man overboard. She rededicated herself to getting what she came for and sparing Charlotte any more of Enzo Ricci.
“This woman in Georgia—what did Elias tell you about her?”
“Just that she wouldn’t let him see the child—girl, I think—but she always took the money.”
Freesia’s resolve changed form—hard as granite to liquid. All her life, Freesia had been told that a woman could rely only on herself, ‘couldn’t take nothing from no one.’
“Money?” Freesia asked.
“Every month until that child left home, late teens, I guess. Went off to find herself or some such nonsense. Elias still tried to locate her, even then.”
“Did he—find her?” Charlotte asked, like it was a movie of the week, something that happened to other people, not Freesia’s life.
Stale, fishy air in the room crept close, like breathing the exact same lungful over and over, none of it satisfying.
“Nah. When he got sick, he had to give up lookin’. Never did stop thinkin’ about her, though. In that mind’a his? He was always trying to do right.”
The room floated. It wasn’t just the buoyancy of the ground beneath Freesia. Her entire center of gravity slipped, pressing the houseboat to the water, her heart to her heels, where it could not stay. She excused herself to the porch with a word, maybe just a look. Nothing about her history—near or distant—was registering. She hustled out the open door, past a porch that had succumbed to the elements, past a pile of discarded clothes and scattered lawn chairs blown against the house like metal tumbleweeds, to a patch of weeds, darkness, oxygen that wasn’t tainted by the drag of Enzo’s voice or the acrid odor of sweat and cigarettes.
She followed the night to the water and tried to summon words and phrases and lies her mother told her. But the moon was a ball adrift on the water and a thief to her thoughts. A sense of peace lessened the tension in her neck, the temptation to dive in to the cold murky water, to capture what Elias March had chased into the ocean.
Voices from the boathouse tried to reach her and failed. She settled into the noise of her breath, the cycling heat of her pulse overwhelming her eardrums from the inside.
“Do you believe him?”
Alex’s voice startled her. Freesia wanted to push her away, bodily, with words. She didn’t. Alex was the one person who didn’t shy away from honesty. And right now, Freesia was feeling hella honest.
“He’s drunk, blind, and stupid. Of course I believe him.”
Alex laughed then. Nothing crazy. Mildly appreciative, maybe. Freesia forgot about the water.
“For the longest time—God, until
Charlotte and I were grown—we thought Mama was an only child.”
Freesia wanted stories about Elias, not the woman her mother had wronged. But they had come this far, Alex’s idea on the follow-through. Listening was the least Freesia could do. Anything was better than breathing Enzo’s poison.
“Never had any aunts or uncles.” Alex turned over a broken chair but didn’t sit. “Never did see much of that side, anyway. Then one day, totally ordinary day while Mama was making tea, she let it slip that she had a sister once. Died when she was five or so. Fell from the second-floor window, broke her neck. Back then, they used to put the dead in caskets in the front room of houses to give relatives time to come, pay respects, days on end. Every one of those nights, Mama snuck downstairs and curled up beside her sister.”
Freesia tried not to picture it and failed. She braced herself, against what she didn’t know. One of the many things worse than death.
“One morning, my grandfather came downstairs early. Said he beat the remembering right out of her.”
Freesia’s eyelids slid closed; her breastbone ached.
“All of us lie to protect ourselves from pain,” said Alex. “Doesn’t make us bad people. Smart, maybe, but not bad.”
Behind them, lake water lapped at the house, the dock, her walls. She couldn’t keep doing this to herself, breaking down barriers only to have Alex build them again, with her in charge. Something had happened in that gas station, that parking lot. Alex felt it, too. Freesia was sure. Something that felt a little like friendship.
“My mom told me she never saw Elias again. No contact. Once, she said he was dead. Story always changed. I never really knew the truth until your mother showed up last summer. Maybe one lie in your mother’s life was all she had room for.”
“And maybe one lie in your mother’s life took up all the room.”
Freesia nodded. She didn’t trust herself to speak lest she speak ill of the dead. They stayed that way for a time, in companionable silence, each a prisoner to thoughts neither wanted to share. Charlotte emerged from the house like a siren of the swamp, her voice too loud, tripping over Enzo’s junk, talking to herself, then them, regarding an unlikely story of Enzo and brownies.
“He said they were fudge, but I don’t know any fudge that tastes like that.” By now, she was beside them, breathy, her movements exaggerated. She whispered loud enough to carry down the brackish creeks to Lake Pontchartrain. “I saved some for y’all because I love you so much.”
Freesia remembered the rat-on-the-skull tattoo, it’s eyes an iconic three-leaf shape. For not the first time that night, Alex and Freesia went telepathic.
“Tell me you didn’t eat the whole brownie,” said Alex, a note of sisterly exasperation leaving her words on a sigh.
“I did,” whispered Charlotte, a shout more than a confidence. “I didn’t want him to think us rude, but I gotta tell you, I don’t think he knew what he was doing. I don’t feel so well.”
“Dry throat?” asked Freesia.
Charlotte nodded.
“Racing thoughts?” Alex asked.
“Totally.” Long emphasis on the toe part. “How do y’all know?”
“A bus ride in Jamaica to the Falls,” said Freesia.
“Cambridge professor. Fancied himself quite enlightened. That was before he wanted to spout Shakespeare while going down on co-eds.”
Charlotte’s expression pinched. “I don’t understand.”
“I know.” Alex looped her arms around her little sister.
Freesia added, “C’mon, let’s get outta here.”
“We should say our goodbyes,” said Charlotte. And when they didn’t reroute to the boathouse, she shouted, “Bye!”
All three laughed.
“My mouth tastes like I licked that tree over there—God, isn’t it beautiful? And it’s been here forever and a day. I’m soooo hungry. And I love you.” She was sure to add both at the end.
A warm sensation nestled behind Freesia’s belly. Even if it was hallucinogen-induced love.
“Can we stop and get something to eat on the way home?” asked Charlotte.
“Sure,” Alex said. “Let’s drive out of Deliverance, Louisiana, first.”
18
Alex
The envelope was worse for wear. Repeated folds where it didn’t fit into her journal; bottom right corner stiff from brown gutter water; spots of dried liquid beyond that, probably Bear drool; the corner unfastening of the flap where her fingertips had lifted and considered and lifted again. It was a metaphor for the months since the one in Clement Grant, Esquire’s office, where she learned of Daddy’s betrayal. He hadn’t returned, not like he did in those early days. Probably mad at her for her failures. Believed he had raised her to do better, to go beyond his mistakes, given her head start in life, to be perfect.
Alexandra, it makes you part of the two percent who can think through challenges.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t puzzle through how to open the envelope.
Opening the letter meant getting Daddy’s final word, his attempt to explain choices he should never have to explain to his daughter. What if his final word wasn’t right, wasn’t enough? What if his answers weren’t answers at all? Keeping the envelope sealed meant that unpalatable truths outdistanced her, the carrot of hope that she would be okay still dangled.
Her mouth watered. She needed a drink, but she craved clarity more. Her forearms itched. She fastened her hair into a messy bun then yanked it out again. Clipped her fingernails into the kitchen trash. Tried not to remember that Freesia was in Mama’s sewing room, moving forward with her dreams, her life, while she was inert. Finally, she picked up the wheel of correction tape and embraced what she had set out to do.
Page ten.
She scanned the list like she hadn’t read it every day for nearly thirty years.
Jours Parfaits.
Perfect Days. In painstaking, font-worthy lettering. French because it gave her fifteen-year-old self the illusion of privacy.
July moon, swimming hole
Acceptance letter, Daddy’s tears
podium, stadium, audience after commencement speech
Jonah - ruins
George Street Gate @ Brown, first snowfall, 9 pm
Hancock Tower alcove, April 28, Michael’s kiss
December 11, Holy Cross Cathedral, happily ever after
Stickers and thinly-veiled attempts at art framed the margins. A true work of self. The self she had been then; the self that was now a stranger. She tried to think of something to add. Nothing came to mind. Not. One. Thing.
Except….
Alex picked up the envelope again. Alexandra. A message from the dead had the potential to be perfect. She laid a pristine strip of white correction tape on page ten and pressed its edges. It was almost as if the Hancock Tower and that April morning and Michael and her failing happily ever after never existed.
Almost.
She placed the envelope, still sealed, between page ten and her sketch of the ruins, slipped to the rug and curled into the outstretched limbs of her sleeping Bear. At sunrise, she awoke to find a blanket laid atop them both.
Her eyes welled.
* * *
Alex, Charlotte and Freesia had not saved Match Made in Devon, but they had come as close as humanly possible during The April Experiment to putting it on a break-even track. Embracing technology and underserved brides while purging dated inventory and leveraging the social media attention that a Hollywood bridesmaid sent in their direction, they had crawled out of the mire of crippling debt and inefficiency to build a solid foundation.
Profitable remained to be seen.
Charlotte and Freesia had gone to the house to put final touches on the bridesmaid dresses before the last fitting. Alex believed she was alone. She turned the shop sign to closed and handled end-of-day business, all items tucked neatly into their minimalist places, floors swept, surfaces dusted or polished. Freesia called the renovation country vogue—th
e unexpected intersection of barn and Barneys. Somehow, it worked. A less sterile version of Alex’s white on white vision. Whatever else Alex could say about Freesia, the woman had impeccable style and an acute sense of place.
An hour into cleaning, as darkness elevated with each turn-down of the chandeliers and chill love songs on Charlotte’s adored playlist piped through the speakers, Alex warmed, toes to neck. When that warmth ushered in an odd sensation of ease with the shop, this moment in time, this long-ago town, Alex slipped into a Kirby Ashland series strapless trumpet gown with a bow in precisely the same spot as hers twelve years earlier. She stood before the custom presentation mirror—a series of three hinged Gothic window frames that Jonah had salvaged from a convent chapel in Natchez.
She turned left, right, back, the dress’s bell hem sweeping the platform’s plush carpet. Waist up, she swayed to the gooey ballad. Her eyes were critical to the ways the years had betrayed her. Darkened hair that no longer held luster; skin at the neck that lost recovery when touched, a gradual lacing at the corner of the eyes; breasts that now answered to gravity; a genuine regret she hadn’t taken up running to fight the softening of her waistline. Still, a line of drippy lyrics snuck past her lips, and she believed for that one moment that if Michael saw her again, like this, that he wouldn’t fade from her world, conceal himself beneath correction tape on page ten. It was a thick moment of self-indulgent solitude. Until it wasn’t anymore.
Isabel stepped into the three reflections.
Alex nearly scrambled out of the dress. A cross between a squeal and a lifting-a-small-car exhale swept past her throat. She turned and pressed her palm above her heart. The arrhythmic strikes pounded back.
“Sorry,” said Isabel. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
She wore a pink plaid skirt, Mary Janes, and her ubiquitous camera and neck strap.
Alex went for the speaker, shut off the music. “I thought everyone had gone.”
“Clearly.”
Alex’s cheeks bloomed hot. Dancing and singing and preening like that must have made Alex look like Bernice in the winner’s circle on Naughty-but-Nice Charity Bingo night with the volunteer fire department. The woman’s celebrations were legendary.
Our Bridal Shop: Match Made in Devon Bridal Shop Book One Page 16