This time, Charlotte had been the one to empty it.
Her stomach clenched back up on itself, a protective move after the sensation of being all over the place. She knew this to be true—that staying would put something back inside that trunk more valuable than their renewed intimacy, more affirming than the friendship they proved still existed, even if it was just this once, but staying also meant that he expected her to put back and put back and put back, the way she always had. Charlotte couldn’t go back to that voiceless place. She wouldn’t.
“I have to go.” Her words came out trampled, defeated, but she pushed them out and there was nowhere left to go but the place where she’d discovered that voice in the first place. The shop.
Charlotte fetched her clothes, her phone, her keys. She might have showered at the house, but she felt like a visitor who had overstayed her welcome. At Daddy’s truck, Tibbs stopped and dropped and danced. Even such a display wasn’t enough to hold her. She wondered if anything would ever hold her again or if she had worked her way out of ever feeling satisfied.
20
Alex
Alex juggled Maddie in her left hand and her keyring in her right. She’d barely had time to brush her teeth and restock the diaper bag after Charlotte’s harried phone call. She couldn’t be certain her conscious brain had registered pulling a brush through her hair and her blouse already had evidence of Maddie’s early-morning feeding, but she was opening Match Made in Devon with a few seconds to spare.
And one customer already waiting on the bench.
He was thirty-ish, dressed in khakis and a military-style cotton jacket, ordinary in most ways. At her approach, he went out of his way to assist.
“I might be of better use with the key. Never had much practice holding babies.” He commandeered the key ring. “Which one?”
“Square bronze one. Next to the white pouf.”
He studied the ring—and the pom-pom—as if he hadn’t had much practice holding anything that furry. The pom-pom was her bit of excess to remember a privileged life that had passed her by when she parted ways with Michael. Maybe to remember how far she’d come. Michael had thought nothing of dropping three hundred dollars on a fox fur keychain, mostly to allay his guilt. She really should get rid of it.
They entered the shop and left the chilled morning behind. Alex begged for a moment to get settled. She pulled out the bouncy chair they stored in the office for just such an occasion and strapped Maddie in on the floor near the register. The man hid his hands in his pockets and roamed the inventory as if he’d just stumbled on an alternate reality of white poufs and had forgotten how to look casual. It might have been amusing, had Charlotte not sharpened Alex’s mood with a breakneck gallop into her day.
“You don’t strike me as a person who needs a wedding gown,” Alex said.
“I might say the same for you,” he quipped back, his eyes drifting to Maddie, happily preoccupied with the footie part of her pajamas. For a complete stranger, his comment was remarkably astute, given her current mental state. Also, remarkably antiquated—the whole first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes a baby notion. His smile was bashful, closed-lipped, as if it rarely made an appearance or he meant to hide imperfect teeth. He was young and odd, and Alex couldn’t begin to guess what he wanted.
“I’m here to see Charlotte Strickland.”
From time to time, Charlotte had given local artisans permission to add accessory displays at the checkout—handcrafted bracelets, leather and silver wearables for groomsmen and fathers of the bride. “I handle most of the stocking and special orders. Something I can help you with?”
“I’m here as a friend. Passing through. Well, within twenty miles or so. Seemed a shame not to stop by.”
Alex slowed her fiddling—turning on lights, booting up the computer, the starting rituals for a place of business—and turned to him. She replayed his words—his slight take on the syllables that told him he didn’t court the language the way they did in the south, his ‘or so’ a strong indication he valued precision. In fact, if Alex were to stake Maddie’s newly-minted college fund on his approximate geography of origin, she’d head north. Way north. Wrinkled cotton. Boyish haircut. Boots that look like they’d trudged through Mississippi red clay. When piled up against the fact that Charlotte had no friends Alex didn’t know because they were all Devonites, the evidence was overwhelming. Or underwhelming, as it were.
He was Charlotte’s Dr. Flutter, fantasy professor. And he was so not what Alex expected, given Charlotte’s affinity for Evangeline’s Gabriel, the entire Marvel Comics Universe of men, and any upright male with an accent. In some backwoods, testosterone-driven, jacked-up truck kind of way, Alex would even put Nash in that category, minus Charlotte’s affinity for foreign languages—though Nash was native to a place called Mostly Grunts in a land known as Largely Silent.
Dr. Flutter? He looked as if he’d take one good look at Charlotte’s romance novel collection and her penchant for deep-frying all things and her tendency to snort when she lost control of her laughter and fly right on by.
The realization settled like a weighted pit, down low, where secrets were kept. If she pretended Charlotte wasn’t around, to put him off, he’d simply seek her out elsewhere. In a town like Devon, he’d find her faster than the Silver Swarm could launch into a full-on dissertation of the current day’s body ailments. If Alex embraced honesty, he could be on his way before Charlotte stepped out of the shower she had dubbed a crisis, non-negotiable and something about hay. Alex hadn’t asked.
“Charlotte is my little sister. I’m overprotective.” As if to prove her point, Alex’s gaze returned to Maddie again and again. No one had told her that a general paranoia about everything would come in along with her milk supply. She reminded herself that the odd guy had been extremely helpful with the key and had devoted his life to protecting fragile creatures.
“I get it. I have four siblings, myself. And I’ve only ever met Charlotte online.”
He reached for a sequined garter, displayed on a reclaimed barn ladder leaned against the wall, and turned it around with his fingertips, as if puzzling its purpose or the juxtaposition between tattered and bling. Eventually, he gave up. For someone who fiddled with insects all day, the faux pearl-and-diamond regalia must have seemed an entirely new species to catalog in his travel journal.
“I was hoping she might change her mind and come with us on our research trip north. Her knowledge of the history of monarchs through this region would be invaluable.”
Alex warred between being a good hostess and injecting direct, no-bullshit talk into the situation to get him on his way. As it turned out, Southern manners ran deeper than she cared to admit.
“Would you like something to drink? Coffee?” After a bit of thought, Alex added, “Whiskey?”
“This early? In a bridal shop?”
He gave her a sideways glance, a bit of a crook to his brow and a wink to his eye, and Alex saw it. A charm that surpassed his awkwardness. She wondered how he had translated it into his emails. Or maybe Charlotte had simply been lonely. Alex knew how lonely felt.
“You’d be surprised how effectively it soothes the nerves,” said Alex. “And the contagious self-loathing.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, should I ever walk down the aisle.” Dr. Flutter—she couldn’t remember his real name—chuckled, his delivery admirably dry.
“You’re not married?”
“To my work, I suppose.”
Alex caught sight of herself in one of the thousand and two mirrors in the place. She glanced off, unable to look at herself at what she was about to do.
“Charlotte is married. Has been for the better part of two decades. She’s in a vulnerable place right now, and I intend to see to it that she doesn’t make a mistake she’ll regret.”
Dr. Flutter’s gaze descended, sought out a place to land, as if his thoughts had taken flight all at once and he longed to net them back. His face colored. He mi
ght have done with some whiskey after all. “I see.”
His tone was flat, vague, the slightest bit rumpled, as if his Cornell-trained mind couldn’t sort how marriage and mistakes had anything to do with butterflies.
Oh, Charlotte.
Alex’s heart slipped lower in her chest. She took a few steps in the quiet, watched Maddie blink at the sparkly chandelier overhead, decided the insinuation of an affair was already suspended on the air like a stink bomb and the best way to dissipate it was to clear things for the poor man.
“You may not have had any intention beyond research, but Charlotte? Along with her ability to connect with people and her genuine spirit, her rampant imagination is one of her greatest attributes. It’s also one of her greatest downfalls.”
He opened his mouth to speak, then changed his mind several times before he uttered, “This is quite awkward.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No. No, don’t be,” he said. “I appreciate your candor.”
“Good luck in your research.” Alex hoped the send-off was just that. Preferably before Charlotte showed up.
His smile was sad, the effect not quite reaching his eyes, hands buried in his pockets again. He nodded a goodbye, then thought better of it.
“Might I trouble you to leave a flier? Perhaps in the town square or a park bulletin board or with a local educator? We’re in desperate need of ambassador scientists to test our new smart phone app. They have only to scan a monarch with their camera to report sightings back to the database in real time.”
It was the most animated Alex had seen him. Charlotte must have drifted inside his tunnel vision for monarchs and mistakenly believed some of his fondness had been aimed at her.
Alex gave a weak smile. “Sure.”
“Thank you.”
From inside his jacket, he produced a marigold-colored flier. Eye-catching. Appropriate, yet not. Great mind, she supposed, but a little lacking on common sense. Or maybe he simply didn’t understand the ministrations of small towns. He came toward Alex tentatively, as if she meant to swat him away. The Charlotte inside Alex’s head called him a silly Yank, said that in the south, the swat came once the person was out of earshot. Manners, and all.
She took the flier and read his name—Steven Morneau. Alex aligned it to her memory of the night Charlotte had lay on the cloud rug and hatched an indiscretion in her mind.
He nodded another goodbye and migrated out into the morning air, past the storefront windows. Once, his attention flittered back inside the store, but his awkward gait led him on until he disappeared.
No sign of Charlotte.
Alex exhaled, eyes closed, and crumpled the flier into a tight wad. On her way back to Maddie, she tossed it in the trash.
21
Charlotte
Charlotte was of the mind that no one should make untoward comments toward a woman in a bridal gown. But this was no ordinary bridal gown. In fact, it wasn’t a bridal gown at all.
It was a lime green, carpetbagger princess, organza sweat-shopped, ordered-online nightmare with crooked hems and absolutely no internal structure.
“The stain of your tears makes the color a sight better,” said Hazel, who likely thought a place to conceal a weapon also would have made the dress a sight better.
Charlotte shot her a ‘hush up’ look.
Devon’s resident soft-spoken sweetheart, Frances, added to the discussion. “You are adorable. And such a great smile. No one will be paying attention to the dress, dear.”
“Looks like a gelatin salad without the mold,” said Taffy.
Bernice, in her Why So Salty? t-shirt, complete with an overturned salt shaker graphic, suggested they get Earl Frizeal’s grandson to unleash a computer virus on the offending site. “Kid’s a damned genius.”
None of this commiseration helped, of course, but there was something about a gathering of women, united in anger, that made the unfortunate happenings in life easier to stomach. Another unfortunate issue? The wedding was in six days.
Charlotte took the sobbing bride-to-be’s left hand and raised it so her engagement ring held a prominent place inside the ring of sisterhood.
“See this diamond?” said Charlotte. “Toughest on earth. Nothing can break the love you feel for…” She hesitated until the sweet thing named Wendy offered up her fiancé’s name.
“Vlad.”
Not a name Charlotte expected in Mississippi, or in the western hemisphere for that matter, but she packaged up a smile and went with it.
“Vlad,” she repeated. “This dress and a dozen other details that I promise you will not go as planned on your wedding journey cannot sever the bond of love you two have for each other.”
“But there’s no money left in the budget,” said Wendy. “They told me ‘all sales final’ because it was custom.”
“Custom tommyrot,” said Taffy.
The Silver Swarm nodded in collusion, as if they were all familiar with the term.
Wendy continued, half hiccup, half blub. “I paid five hundred dollars to look like a mermaid piñata.”
Charlotte cut Bernice a warning look. Give the old girl a few word associations like Vlad the Impaler and piñata and her dirty mind was set to loose lips.
Bernice’s drawn-on brows went full-on cartoonish but she held her tongue.
Frances fetched the tissues.
The sisterhood formulated a plan: hit Match Made in Devon’s clearance rack and set the alterations squad into high gear. With Freesia still in New York, Charlotte had reservations about unleashing the Silver Swarm on Wendy, but Frances could ever be counted on to bring the logic. “Where do you think Stella Irene learned her sewing skills, dear?”
Wendy reveled in the attention. With a quick inquiry to Frances about where she’d put the box and the packaging slip for the online dress, Charlotte set them loose to find something workable while she set her mind to getting back Wendy’s five hundred dollars or, at the very least, ensuring that no other woman befell the same disaster on her wedding day.
Jonah breezed into the shop with Maddie’s stroller. Alex’s vacant stare alighted. The baby chariot signified the hour of the morning when Jonah put down his toolbox and cut lumber and strapped on his listening ear and baby sling. Most days, the three went to Taffy’s for coffee with a side of breastmilk. Charlotte couldn’t fathom Nash stopping his farm chores to wipe a bottom unless it was his own. Fact was, he never had, but she simply couldn’t push Alex past love and old hurts to appreciate Jonah enough to put a ring on it.
Her sister’s issue with love? Easy peasy lemon squeezy from where Charlotte stood. Hers with Nash? Not so much.
While Alex fetched her bag from the back office, Jonah approached, Maddie riding shotgun on his broad shoulder. “You doin’ okay, Charlotte?”
His inquiry wasn’t a run-of-the-mill hey there. Charlotte had been fishing often enough to know live bait and a strong reel could catch the most unsuspecting among them, fish or woman. She’d be pleased as pie to have Jonah for a brother-in-law, but right now he was a card-carrying member of the Nash club.
“Looking forward to better days, Jonah. How about you?”
Jonah gave her a lopsided smile and looked up at Alex. “Me too.”
It struck Charlotte how very similar their situations were: both longed for what wasn’t; both loved someone who was as hardheaded as an antique bedpost; and both were in a crawl that stunk to high heck.
Charlotte gave them both a wave out the door. After another attempt to text Natalie and Allison went unanswered, Charlotte plucked the mermaid piñata’s box from the trash can and hunted around for a shipping receipt. The box was empty. The only thing in the morning trash was a pretty marmalade-orange sheet of paper. She reached in and uncrumpled the page.
A large graphic of a butterfly captured her eye first.
The name Steven Morneau captured her second, third, and tenth.
A flight of something exciting, something beautiful inside her chest molted to s
omething ugly. Charlotte lowered herself behind the counter as she’d done a million times before, in the old system of card files, in the old days of Mama when family loved without meddling, this time to hide. And when her legs refused to hold her, she found the floor, pulled her pretty peach scarf to her slack lips to muffle her cries and absorb the tears that squeezed loose from her eyes.
On a map, Devon, Mississippi didn’t amount to much. The town’s founding fathers had believed otherwise. Masons, funded by Southern families who had protected their interests during the Civil War, went to setting bricks formed out of the red clay into precision formation, and iconic columns from cast stone. Their objective was to build the most ostentatious excuse for a courthouse, one to rival nearby Marthasville who had been settled by rival families, thereby cementing Devon as the undisputable county seat. If a feature could be put on a building and counted on to draw oohs and aahs, Devon’s courthouse had it: neo-classical architecture, a cupola, clock tower, second-floor veranda, metal domes, and a golden eagle holding a lantern at the crown. Wrapped up inside a magical landscape of sixty-foot magnolia trees, local artisan-painted park benches that drew tourists, grass that stayed green year-round, and a square frame of meticulous and charming storefronts, the town square could always be counted on to be a fat slice of peace.
Except when Charlotte caught up to Alex.
Charlotte had meant to sink down to the brushed pine floor of the bridal shop, maybe see if Jonah had left a loose board she could crawl beneath. That was about the time Bernice came around, saw the mess Charlotte had become, and whisked her out the door while Alex’s name spewed off her lips like she’d taken in a spoonful of arsenic.
“Go find her,” Bernice had ordered. “Don’t come back until you appreciate the family you still got left. Some of us ain’t so lucky.”
Charlotte had rarely seen Bernice so cross. A black-and-white photo of her beloved Navy sailor, Paul, was immortalized in a display case on the upstairs floor along with a vinyl record of Bing Crosby’s “Swinging on a Star.” She’d lost a husband to the sea, a baby to pneumonia, and a grown son to drug addiction. Bernice reminded Charlotte that she’d do well to remember all she had.
The Butterfly Dream (Match Made in Devon Bridal Shop Book 2) Page 15