“Dad sent me in here to get his toolbelt he left in the office. He’s waiting out front.”
Alex glanced at the street. Jonah was parked wrong-way, driver’s side to the curb, elbow propped on his open window, ball cap pulled low. Not nearly low enough to hide a grin that engaged every muscle in his expression. Same smile he would get when he teased her, which had always been mercilessly and often with a side of admiration and a butterfly touch that more than made up for it. His smile was journal-worthy. Her lesser answering one? There wasn’t enough ink in her red marker pen to adequately capture the hue around the smile. Her diaphragm, still in spasm mode from the startle, kicked against her inhale.
“No pictures,” Alex said. “We don’t need to remember the moment you caught me singing Connor Kelly.”
Isabel giggled. “All right. Is that what your wedding dress looked like?”
“Yes.”
“You look like the Caladrius. From Roman mythology.”
“I hope she wasn’t the one who sewed so well that she was turned into a spider.”
Another laugh, this one like metal trinkets clinking in a secret pocket. Alex found it nearly as delightful to elicit as one from her father.
“No. Caladrius was a beautiful white bird who lived at the king’s palace. She landed on people and absorbed their sadness. When she took flight again, she spread the sadness in the clouds so that she would have room for more. Probably a white sparrow, which is why they came to be good luck when they landed near you.”
A bird. Of course. Her words—beautiful and good and luck beat wings around the greater message. Sadness. Was hers that obvious, even to a child? Still, she wanted Isabel to know that it was okay to feel empowered by compliments, not find a myriad of ways to dispute them.
“Thank you.”
“We’re grilling burgers for dinner. Do you and Bear want to come?”
That she included Bear in her invitation brought her youth to mind. Alex wanted to say yes. She glanced at Jonah, who had exited his truck to lean his backside against the door, arms and ankles crossed, waiting. Dimples still tugged at his expression.
Alex’s hands burrowed into the lush fabric skirt. She grabbed two big hunks of charmeuse, to step, to move, where she didn’t know; she felt ridiculous.
“I’m not sure how much company we would be. Bear isn’t feeling well.”
“I know,” Isabel said, with authority on the topic. She was in Devon, after all. “Dad makes the best burgers. Better than Miz Taffy’s. Always cheers me up.”
Alex thought to ask, but they were in Devon, after all. The child’s heartbreak had been up for public consumption for some time. There was positively no way she could say no when she had called them both out for sadness.
“If there’s one thing Bear can’t refuse, it’s a grilled burger.” Though she doubted he would keep much down. The rural vet in Devon had given her the common-sense advice on Bear’s advanced dilated cardiomyopathy that the city vet wouldn’t: the special organic diets and three-times daily medications were for her, not for Bear. “Stop chasing more time and enjoy what time you have left together.”
In more of a celebratory whisper than speech, Isabel mouthed “Yes” and sprang toward the door, one minute an ancient soul, the next, the essence of an eight-year-old. “We’ll wait for you to change.”
Isabel lifted the camera to her face. The shutter advanced. Her smile was sheepish.
“For luck. It isn’t every day that a girl sees a Caladrius.”
* * *
In Jonah’s kitchen, over a fried onion string, bacon, tangy secret sauce burger and oven-crisp fries, Alex and Isabel had a high-finance meeting. The eight-year-old’s color photo catalogue of goods and her sales calculations, in scented markers on graph paper, was more engaging than the messy, dry data her clients usually offered. Isabel lamented that the lunch lady had not purchased a bracelet, despite expressing interest.
“If you don’t know your ideal customer, no one else will,” said Alex. “When you’re weaving a bracelet, whom do you picture wearing it?”
“Girls at school. But most of them have bought from me and a girl can only wear so many bracelets.”
Alex made eye contact with Jonah across the table. He took an ambitious bite to hide his smirk.
“So, keeping in mind that your ideal customers are girls your age, in school, what’s the best way to expand?” asked Alex.
“Get girls in other schools to wear them. But I can’t sell to other schools.”
“Why not? What about Saint Sebastian Academy?”
Jonah said, “Megan goes there.” For Alex’s benefit, he added, “Swim team.”
“Why would Megan sell my bracelets?” Isabel asked.
“She might sell them if she was a good friend,” said Alex, “but that interest won’t sustain unless it benefits Megan, as well.”
“Like a free bracelet?” Isabel asked.
Alex chewed through the potential red flags. “Might interest her in the short term, but once she has the free bracelet, she’ll be less motivated to sell.”
“So how do you keep motivation high in Megan to keep helping you?” Jonah prompted.
“If she gets something from every sale?”
“Right,” said Alex. “Offer her an incentive. Maybe a small amount for each bracelet sold, but you can also take it a step further. If she recruits other girls and they sell bracelets for an even greater incentive, then you have a people pipeline.”
Isabel’s eyes alighted. “Sadie Sparks doesn’t have a people pipeline.”
Alex tempered her smile. “Competition is healthy. It forces you to try new things and always do your best, but it shouldn’t make you lose sight of why you started your business.”
“The birds,” Isabel said. “I almost have enough to adopt the Great Horned Owl for one year.”
She picked up her camera and clicked through digital photos from the sanctuary until she landed on the majestic bird and leaned close for Alex to see.
“Then I suggest you put a picture of the Great Horned Owl somewhere you’ll see it every day. As a healthy reminder not to focus on Sadie Sparks.”
“The binder I use right before recess?”
“Sounds like a great spot.”
“You’re really smart, Miss Alex. Your boss shouldn’ta fired you.”
That verbal dart hit bullseye to her chest, punctured Alex’s next breath.
“Ibby, apologize.” Jonah’s voice was stern, low. “That’s not polite.”
“I’m sorry.”
The girl’s wounded apology was as spirit-crippling as what she had said. Like wiggling the sharp metal point before extracting it from its mark. Isabel had spoken the truth, and it was Devon, after all. Alex was certain the entire town knew by now.
“It’s okay,” Alex said, too brightly. “Part of business.”
Isabel’s truth didn’t stop there. “You should just help people. Like you’re helping me. We can both be CEOs.”
The idea wiggled and settled into the empty cracks she had once filled with noisy commutes, power suits, team members who blurred lines and mistook enthusiasm for the job once contracts were signed. She’d given serious thought to consulting but an avalanche of successes had eclipsed the impulse to strike out on her own. She found that the idea, so childlike, so deceptively simple, did not leave her as an impulse this time but lingered.
Across the table, Jonah’s smile seconded the motion Isabel made. He looked at Alex as if she were capable of anything.
She was. He simply didn’t know it.
Alex pushed the dark thought aside.
They finished a dessert of banana pudding over talk of a possible PR campaign to coincide with International Bird Day, also April Fool’s Day. The spirited discussion netted three hard and fast realizations. Advice in the Wall-Street-oriented business book Isabel lugged around was worth about the same as the dollop of ketchup smeared on the chapter entitled “Aces in Their Places!.” Sadie Sparks, t
he playground’s necklace hawker and marketing savage, was fast becoming a challenging nemesis to Isabel’s sweet demeanor. Mastering the art of grilling quarter-pound ground short ribs was far from Jonah’s only talent on display that evening. He also whipped up the perfect cocktail of supportive words and prompting questions to empower his daughter.
Jonah was a superb father, everything denied to their unborn child simply because she had been selfish, because a baby hadn’t been part of her plan. On the cusp of Isabel’s most recent question—something about Jonah and a practical joke out at the ruins when he was young—an advanced ache settled low across Alex’s stomach. In seconds, she lived an alternate path. Maybe a son, how Jonah might have supported him, empowered him; or another daughter, maybe nothing like Isabel, maybe the same because they were his. Birthdays in the backyard of his mother’s place; fixing things with his hands and ingenuity; a high-school graduation; first heartbreak pep talks, not one let that boy alone in sight.
Her meal threatened a revisit, not the first time this had happened this week, also not the weakest among the instances.
Isabel chattered on, but Jonah....
He knew. Lines at his brow trenched; his eyes sharpened, as attentive on Alex as they had just been on Isabel. He knew something was wrong. Her stomach. All of it. He must have known. She felt her mistake like it was inked on her face and he was reading it again for the hundredth time. A line of sweat erupted above her lips. Her mouth watered.
Alex dashed to the bathroom, lifted the commode seat, lost every bit of her meal. A month ago, it was sashimi and knocking a canvas to the floor with her bare ass and believing her world had righted itself. This week, she was on her knees, hugging porcelain and talking distribution strategies with an eight-year-old. Not just any eight-year-old. Jonah’s eight-year-old with a woman named Katherine who, in death, would always remain perfect. And not just any kind of perfect, but the kind of perfect she would never attain.
She splashed cold water on her face and rinsed her mouth with a capful of mouthwash she found near the sink. Her reflection was waxy, her skin blanched an unnatural shade. Alex was losing the energy required to be anything but what she was—flawed. That Jonah and Isabel didn’t seem to mind brought her to the brink of something; she couldn’t say what.
When she opened the bathroom door, Jonah was there with a glass of water. The look on his face rivaled that of a doting lover. In that glimpse, she loved him all over again.
Unequivocally.
If he knew why she was sick, he wouldn’t be standing there, offering her something to wash it away. Some betrayals are a boulder cast into a pond, ripples spreading to everyone and everything around, life at the edges overflowing, never quite trickling back to the source. Her father had known this. Spent every last day gathering droplets before they evaporated, failing. Not her. Jonah and Isabel were too perfect for her sickness.
“I should go,” Alex whispered.
Jonah shook his head. “Still running.”
* * *
Alex stayed to make a point, even though her brain felt like a distribution hub in the world’s largest shipping business—calculated packages of thought zipping along conveyor belts long ago established, a thousand different destinations. Her belly was on a perpetual spin cycle, and she wanted nothing more than to strip nude and sit at the bottom of a hot shower until her fingers swelled into rivulets and time recessed. She stayed after Jonah’s dinner to prove that she was capable of more than running away, though if she were honest, she barely believed it herself.
After clearing the table, Isabel settled in the living room with Bear, her bracelet-making materials spread on the rug. Alex helped Jonah with dishes. The domesticity of it was novel. When she and Michael were together and career-focused, he always had someone ninja in after they left for work to put the apartment back to showroom-tidy, not one wrinkle on the sheets or a crumb in the kitchen. Same with the dog sitter. He liked the help out of sight. No awkward conversations between those who did the work with those who paid for it. Jonah filled his tiny yellow kitchen and lumbered through tasks on auto-pilot, which gave him plenty of head space for conversation and every new variable in the daily routine. Namely her.
She told him about Rhode Island. Taking road trips along the eastern shore of Narragansett Bay, a group of them claiming a spot of sand until sunset, then staying awake all night until nothing short of a West Side eggs Benedict breakfast would do. Or circling the Newport mansions, barefoot in their lavish grasses, pretending to belong. He asked about her abroad time—Dublin and a global startup in Paris; she wanted to know about Phoenix and California, where he told her about his stint as a cabinet refinisher and how he was an extra in an action movie once—by accident. The conversational rules seemed bound by silent agreement: no Michael, no Katherine, nothing but safe attempts to justify their time apart as necessary, maturing, life. No running necessary.
A hot shower called to her. Alex hadn’t felt herself for days. With the stress of job loss, moving, the shop, still no word from Michael, and Bear, she was a prime candidate for the kind of cliff dive her father had made when he’d driven east. But in the living room, inside the dim glow of warm, pooled lights, Isabel and Bear had fallen asleep atop each other. Bear snored. It had been days since his pain allowed him that level of peace. Dragging him home seemed cruel.
Jonah paused in the doorway behind her, looking down at the carnage: floss thread of every color fanned like wheel spokes around them, cash box spilled out from counting, Crayola ledgers and the distinct scent of uncapped grape markers, a throw pillow strategically propped under Bear’s head.
“Huh. Must have been the burgers.”
“‘Better than Taffy’s,’” Alex whispered. “Direct quote from Isabel.”
“I know one person who might disagree.”
Alex didn’t have to turn around to know his teasing smirk had caught up with his voice. Jonah swiped Isabel’s camera off the kitchen counter, selected a low light setting from the menu, and snapped a photo of the slumbering pals.
“He’s due for his medicine at ten.” She wasn’t sure if she was saying it as an excuse to leave or a reason to stay.
“Let’s let them sleep until then.” Jonah nodded toward the back patio.
Alex followed without protest, without thought to anything past Bear’s comfort.
The backyard of Jonah’s childhood was the same as she remembered. Curved hedges lined the property that sloped back to a grove of sweetbay magnolias and red dragon maples, far enough away for the privacy of young lovers. Her chest burned from the memories. Rocking chairs that had seen better days sat shrouded at the porch’s south end under what was left of the old wisteria vine, and the porch swing opposite looked weathered enough to snap free of the rusty chains. Overgrowth and decay were phantoms of the women who’d once nurtured the land—first, Jonah’s adoptive mother, then Katherine, if the crude garden stakes labeled with a child’s hand were any indication. Alex thought to ask who’d taken care of the place in the years between the two women, while Jonah had sought the one thing that would make him feel settled, but the question would have breached unspoken boundaries.
“Can I get you anything? Dry toast? Juice?”
He had grown into nurturing. What came from looking after that one thing that had settled him, currently curled up on the rug with Bear. Fatherhood suited him.
“I’m good. Thanks.”
Alex sat on the porch swing. Jonah moved a rocking chair from the other end to settle close. Close enough for her to dive beneath his citrus-woodsy scent. Close enough for reckless flashbacks to streak her imagination: sitting on his lap in the night air, his hands firm at her hips, guiding her atop him; a walk in the grove, her backside against a low-hanging branch, thighs welcoming. She slicked in response, a warm flood between her legs. Alex crossed her arms to fight the pressure mounting at her nipples. For so long, sex had been a self-destructive symptom of holding on, an acceptance that it was all she would ge
t, all she deserved, an inoculation to failure. She could not—would not—taint her memories with Jonah to that end.
“I would have shared,” said Alex, patting the seat next to her, her words already betraying her intent.
“Easier to dodge the line of fire over here.”
His smile was easy, devastating; his humor injected ease, and this time, a welcome distance.
“You’re never going to let me forget that, are you?”
“Or the dance moves in the wedding dress.”
“It’s been a banner night for embarrassment.”
“For other things, too.” His eyes slid from hers, to the union of his hands, to the inside light stealing the porch’s shadows as if it reminded him of what lay beyond the bay window, the fat plantation shutters. “Ibby adores you.”
“She’s great. So smart.”
“Like you,” Jonah said. “The older Ibby gets, the more I understand your father.”
“The affair part or the burying-secrets-until-death part?” Alex intended it as sarcasm but it came out more caustic, more toxic than intended. Like she was responsible for the care and feeding of a bitter beast until it died. Or she died.
“He made mistakes. No different than the rest of us. But he saw something special in you. That you could go out into the world and solve problems and make things better for so many. I want the same for Ibby. I don’t want some guy with no future coming along and challenging that.”
Is that how Jonah saw himself?
“You don’t give yourself enough credit,” said Alex. “I fix numbers on a ledger. The pursuit of the almighty bottom line.”
“You fix corporations and jobs that impact the economy of entire towns. And you fixed Match Made in Devon, which is important to Charlotte and the four thousand others here who’ll benefit from the business.”
Our Bridal Shop: Match Made in Devon Bridal Shop Book One Page 17