Saying Yes to the Mess

by M. Kate Quinn

  “Can I help in any way?” Kit offered.

  “You can take some food with you when you leave. My God, there’s a ton of it.” Angie turned to Rylee. “You doing okay, honey bun?”

  Rylee knew what that simple question inferred. There was no sense, however, in ticking off the ways these last few days had changed everything. “Doing okay. How about you?”

  Angie came over to the island and reached to tuck back a tendril of Rylee’s hair. She paused to let her fingers rest on Rylee’s head. Zen Angie had a tenderness about her. “I’ll tell you, though.” She shook her head. “If I had a dollar for every person who asked me about you taking over Rosie’s Bridals, I’d be rich.” She cast her gaze to the half-eaten pie, plucked a piece of gooey apple, and popped it into her mouth. “Huh,” she said. “Raisins in this one. Delish.” She licked her fingers. “My mother wasn’t the only one who could make a good pie.” She blew out a breath, and that errant lock of hair did a dance in the whoosh. “I didn’t get the pie gene.”

  Nor had Rylee. Her only knack was trouble. “I still haven’t wrapped my brain around the fact that Rosie did this.”

  “You mean die? We all die, honey bun. It was her time.”

  “I know.” A pang of guilt socked her one. Was she on the verge of making the death of her favorite person on earth all about herself? “I was talking about Rosie’s Bridals, though.”

  “Yea.” Angie tilted her head. “That’s something, all right.”

  Kit cleared her throat. “Just want to throw this in, ladies. Rosie left Rylee the sole proprietorship of her bridal shop, one that she loved like a living, breathing relative. This wasn’t some joke, and we all know she was sharp as a tack up until her last breath.”

  “Maybe Kit’s right, honey bun.” Angie shrugged one shoulder. “Rosie wanted you to have the shop for a reason. Meditate on that.”

  “Why didn’t she just leave it to you, Mom? You’re her daughter.”

  “Me? God, no. She left me the condo in New Port Richie.”

  “I know.” She pointed a finger. “How about this? We’ll switch. You take the shop, and I’ll take the condo in Florida.”

  Angie chuckled. She wagged a finger at her daughter. “It’s in an active adult community. You don’t qualify.”

  That was true. There was nothing adult or active about Rylee. And most assuredly, she wasn’t a candidate for owning and operating a business. Sure, she’d worked at the shop over the years, but Rosie, even at eighty-five, had still been at the helm, surrounded by Kit with her capable hands as seamstress and the two top-notch sales consultants. Rylee was a glorified clerk. She was still trying to master opening a box of satin purses or lacy garters without tearing them with the sharp edge of a cutter. She paid the invoices, pushed paper, acted as shipping and receiving. Hardly the qualifications for owning such a business.

  “Do you seriously think I can just go in, turn on the lights, and step into business as usual without Rosie there? Boom. Just like that?”

  Angie’s mouth twisted to one side. “You could sell it and use the money to get a place of your own, maybe.” She flipped her long hair over her shoulder. “Honey bun, you’re welcome, though, to stay here as long as you like, you know, until everything settles down, of course.”

  After everything settles down? It struck Rylee as odd. What did that mean? Rosie was gone, interred just hours ago. Her heart stalled at the thought that things would not settle down at all now that Rosie was dead.

  “What are you going to do about the condo in New Port Richie?” Rylee couldn’t fathom Angie and Sonny living in a planned community with rules to follow. “You thinking of moving there or anything?”

  “Heck, no,” she snorted. “That’s going on the market. We’ve wanted to expand the studio and build a barn, maybe. Get some chickens.”

  “You’re going to raise chickens? Like have a farm?”

  “Maybe. Mostly we want to garden. You know, farm to table.” She smiled with pride. “Fresh eggs every day. It’s our dream.”

  Rylee couldn’t help but allow a smile to take over her mouth. Who was she to question someone else’s dream, scrutinize another’s life? She needed to get one of those of her own.

  Sonny stuck his head in around the door. “Come say goodbye, Ang. The last of them are leaving.”

  She grabbed a box of aluminum foil off the counter. “Not without doling out some of that pie.”

  ****

  Later, Rylee sat in her childhood bedroom. She could not believe she was back here. Again. The poster of New Kids on the Block affixed to the back of the closet door mocked her. Her head was stuffed with cotton with no room for a single clear or, God forbid, productive thought. She fell back onto the pillows and looked up at the hand-crocheted canopy draped over the points of the four posters of the French provincial bed. The lacy intricacies of the canopy were a marvel. A new addition to the room, it was one of her mother’s handiworks, crafted by Angie herself. Zen Angie was a living, breathing Laura Ingalls Wilder these days.

  The white bedroom set had been a tenth birthday present from her mother and stepfather number one, Chuck. Chuck hadn’t lasted nearly as long as this used furniture they’d found at a tag sale, but it was a pretty nice suite of canopy bed and two dressers, one nightstand. Sitting here under a frilly roof, she wondered what was wrong with her. And what the hell had made Rosie think she was ready to take on Rosie’s Bridals?

  She couldn’t get the thought of it out of her head. It sucked to think that her grandmother’s bridal shop could go down in history as a failure caused by Rylee herself. What a legacy. Her cell phone sounded, and she was grateful for the distraction. She slid her finger across the screen and connected the call.

  “Hello, babe.”

  Freddie. Venom rushed hot at the sound of his voice. She didn’t even know why it zipped around in her veins like that. She wasn’t all that mad at him for finding love and moving on. Have at it there, Freddie. But emotions had been building up in her since the moment she’d heard the news about Rosie. She’d yet to cry a tear. Her sinus passages ached, her ears buzzed, her throat squeezed, but her eyes remained dry. Now, at just the sound of Freddie’s ridiculous pet name—she hated pet names—she wanted to reach into the phone and slap the shit out of him. Even just thinking it made her feel better.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “How are you?” His voice was contrite. Good. Who cared?

  Screw you and the horse you rode in on. She was feeling better. “Okay.”

  “I heard about Rosie. I’m sorry, Rylee. I know how much she meant to you.”

  “Yeah, um, thanks,” she said, not wanting to get into a nicey-nice conversation with the guy who just dumped her on her head. She was sure now that she would have dumped him soon anyway, so there was that. “I’m getting ready to hit the sack.”

  “Funerals take a lot out of you, right?”

  She was tired of the conversation, tired of Freddie, tired period. “Well, Freddie, thanks again for calling…”

  “I’m sorry.”

  A stab pricked her heart. They both knew this time he was not talking about her grandmother’s passing. He was talking about his decision. Well, it was her time for decision-making, and she had a whopper of one to contend with.

  “Bye, Freddie.”

  With a swipe of her finger, she ended it.

  ****

  She shook off the snippy edge Freddie’s call invoked and began to think. The phone call had loosened that wad of cotton in her head, giving her brain some room to operate. She looked around. It was time to find a way out of this French provincial bedroom with the mocking eyes of the five members of the boy band staring back at her from the closed door. She’d drawn a heart shape with a Magic Marker around Donnie Walberg’s head. She still liked him, even now, but that was beside the point. Donnie and the boys had to go.

  Rylee tried to picture herself at Rosie’s Bridals, living in the cute-yet-creaky little apartment upstairs, putting her own
stamp on the place that right now had Rosie written all over its fussiness. She tried to conjure an image of herself being all businessy and successful running the store. Accolades from brides whose most important day had met all expectations thanks to her adept skills would pour like water over her life. She’d have to expand, hire more consultants, get an accountant to handle all those zeroes behind the digits of her bank account. She clicked her teeth. Was it possible that this Rylee could become that Rylee?

  The bedside clock, shaped like a soccer ball, a Christmas gift from when she was fifteen, told her it was nine o’clock. The clock was from stepfather number two, Angelo. That was how she marked much of her growing up, categorizing memories by the stepfather. Angelo had been a jerk—a lying cheater, actually—but, boy, did they eat well during his reign. The man had known his way around the kitchen, and his bolognese sauce was her fondest memory of the guy.

  She glanced at the clock again and bounced up off the too-soft mattress and tugged on her shoes. It didn’t matter how late it was. She didn’t care. The whole thing exasperated her—Rosie up and dying on her, even though she’d lived till eighty-five, the five pounds she surely had gained from eating so much damn pie, the uncertainty of everything in her life.

  She had to see it tonight, feel it, maybe even experience a bit of business-type zoom. This was a decision that felt good to make. She was going to Rosie’s Bridals.

  ****

  “Where are you going, Rylee?” Angie loaded the dishwasher. “You missed a good dinner. We had potluck, one of those casseroles in the fridge. Chicken, cheese, broccoli. I’m going to get fat.” Mom smiled as if putting on the pounds wouldn’t be so bad. The old Angie, the one with Chuck who was a weight lifter, had spent much of her time in the pursuit of toned muscles. “Feel that,” she had said, often thrusting her flexed arm at Rylee for her to touch the gentle bulge on her upper arm. “Nice, huh?” Fitness Angie used to say. “Pretty good, huh?”

  Rylee buttoned her down jacket and tied a woolen scarf, one of Mom’s handicrafts, around her neck. “I’m taking a walk.”

  “It’s nine at night in the middle of January. It’s in the teens out there and dark as all get out with no moon. Where are you going at this hour?”

  “I just need some air.” She didn’t want to tell her mother her thoughts. Ideas about Rosie’s Bridals caused a circuit overload in her brain. Instead of brain cells, she had a jumble of Christmas tree lights in her head, the strings all tangled up in each other, the tiny bulbs blinking on and off, good ideas, bad ideas, all winking in succession. But she had to go to the shop, and she had to go tonight. Nobody on this planet, herself included, thought she had it in her to run the place. Rosie’s spirit was there—it had to be—and she’d commune with it, breathe it in, and if she were lucky enough, find some faith.

  Angie dried a plate Sonny had made with his own hands, a fired-ceramic piece in cobalt blue. Her efforts looked like a caress. Mom was like that, now anyway. Back years ago, she had been so consumed with finding Mr. Right after Rylee’s birth father left with the announcement that he had discovered he was gay, that she’d lost herself, let alone the role of mom to the daughter that needed her. Rylee had long accepted that her childhood hadn’t been anything close to the Brady Bunch. And thank God for Rosie. She’d been the mother Rylee needed when Mom was out shopping for a heterosexual mate. And Rylee was never fooled by Rosie’s incessant pleading for her to come give a helping hand at the bridal salon. Rosie could run that place by herself. With her sales associates and with Kit and her helper, Freda, they had it down.

  But Rylee had been so often out of work after she’d quit college she’d pretended along with Rosie that she was needed at the salon. And what started out as Rylee’s answering the phone and unpacking boxes of gloves and tiaras that arrived via UPS turned into Rylee filling in with a sale, and what did she know about fashion or holding the hand of a bride whose nerves were overwrought? But maybe she could be different. The only way she’d know was to go there and see how she felt. Tonight Rylee’s own nerves were as twisted as a new bride who wasn’t so sure she deserved the groom.

  “You’re bringing a notebook with you on your walk?” Angie looked up from her delicate drying of another hand-forged dish. “You’re going to walk and write?”

  “I might get inspired or something. Just want to be prepared.”

  ****

  Rylee breathed in the cold night air, its bite stinging her lungs. She expelled a cloud of vapor. Maybe opting to walk to Rosie’s Bridals rather than take her car wasn’t such a good idea. Her feet crunched along the frozen sidewalk, the icy patches glinting under the streetlamps along the walkway. When she got to Rosie’s shop, she would sit herself down on the gold-leaf-framed settee Rosie had been so proud of—a find from a thrift shop and reupholstered in a surplus of brocade by Rosie herself—take out the notebook full of blank pages, and come up with a list. Pros and cons. Keep or sell. Stay or go.

  She arrived at the storefront and just stood there for a moment and stared at the door, painted a robin’s-egg blue to match the shutters on either side of the display window. Rosie’s Bridals looked lost tonight. Lost and sad.

  She reached into her back pocket and withdrew the key that dangled from a little chain with a pink rubber pom-pom attached to it. She placed it in her open palm. “Oh, Rosie,” she said into the night. She pressed her hand to her chest. “Why in God’s name did you leave this store to me? I can’t even buy my own coffee.”

  After a moment, she inserted the key into the lock and turned. She flipped on the light switch, and the interior of the store came into view under golden light. It was quiet, still, almost like a painting she was looking at rather than a room she was standing in. Where to begin? Where to direct her attention first?

  Her gaze fell to the gilded birdcage on the front desk. In it Rosie had kept a stack of her business cards. Rylee undid the little latch and opened the door. She reached in and grabbed one of the cards. She ran her thumb pad over the text, detecting a hint of rise in the lettering. She tucked the card into her notebook.

  On the back of the chair was Rosie’s favorite cardigan with the patch pockets. It gave off the clean, fresh scent of lavender mixed with the woodsy, earthy tinge of camphor, the oil Rosie had used on her elbows for patches of dry skin. Together the two smells were Rosie, and tonight Rylee held the garment to her face and breathed deeply.

  She shed her jacket and shrugged into the oversized sweater. Feeling its comfort, she pulled it around her body like a hug. Her gaze fell to the bundle of papers on the desktop, a stack of completed contracts to be filed, a job that was typically one of Rylee’s tasks, and suddenly she remembered the circumstances of the contract on top. The bride, Gracie, a nice girl, quiet, kind of timid, a little mousy, if the truth were told, had called to say she’d needed to move up her wedding because of her father’s terrifying cancer diagnosis. Time was running short for Gracie to have her dad there to walk her down the aisle. So she’d come into Rosie’s Bridals and found a sample that fit her like a glove, and she asked, pleaded really, if she could purchase the sample instead of waiting to order her own dress.

  Rosie had a rule about that kind of thing. She didn’t want to sell off her samples because replacements were a pain in the butt to get their hands on and took weeks to arrive, which put a limit on selections. She just didn’t go for it. So Rylee had left her a long note about Gracie’s plight and affixed it to the dress contract. Can she buy the sample? the note asked. Can we help this bride’s dream wedding come true? Can we bend the rules just this once?

  On top of Rylee’s message, Rosie had attached one of her signature sticky notes, a pale pink square of paper bordered by deeper-toned rosebuds. On it Rosie had written the words “Yes! Yes to it all!” She’d put a smiley face at the bottom of the note.

  Rylee lifted off the note and studied the square of paper. This could have been Rosie’s last act as proprietor of the store she loved so much. She slipped the paper in
to one of the sweater’s deep pockets.

  She scanned the room. Everything appeared as if suspended in time. She could almost hear the click-clack of Rosie’s one-inch heels as she walked across the wooden floor, or the infectious ring of her laughter. Her presence was as big as life.

  She went to a row of wedding dresses, each enclosed in a clear plastic zipper bag. Since it was January now, the dresses on the rack were for summer brides. It typically took that many months for a bride to choose a dress, order it, have it tailored, fitted, all that rigmarole. So samples were brought in months in advance of the season they were meant for. Soon enough she would have to start thinking of ordering the fall line. Rylee’s heart did a little flip-flop. The thought daunted her. She’d never done the ordering, not alone anyway.

  With the heat turned so low, she was still chilled despite the heavy sweater. She wished she had a hot cup of coffee, a caramel macchiato. The pirate from Jo-Jo’s in his brown leather jacket came to mind, his disconcerting onyx stare. She fished his business card out from the side pocket of her purse. Darius Wirth. In the upper-left corner of the card was a logo for Living Loud TV. Huh. She wondered what he did for a TV station. She didn’t watch much TV, especially while she’d been dating Freddie and going to all his guitar gigs at night. Now that he was gone, on his way to fame and fortune in LA, maybe she and her television would become friends. She opened her notebook, tugged the cap off her pen with her teeth, and began her to-do list with its first entry. Pay the pirate.

  Before she could think of a next item for her list, there was rapping at the front window.

  Chapter Eight

  By one a.m. Darius was cross eyed. He’d gone through the file of prospective businesses, and out of maybe twenty candidates, none of them fit his need to stay close to home. His father was on borrowed time at The Memory Center, and if Darius was filming the finale up in Schenectady at a maternity shop that needed Wirth More’s assistance or if he was down in Cape May helping build up a mother-daughter peanut-butter maker, God only knew where Pop would end up without his hand in the matter.