Blue Heart Blessed

by Susan Meissner

  For He is meek and lowly of heart

  And ye shall find rest,

  And ye shall find rest unto your souls.

  I’ve never really noticed how much this song sounds like a love song. The melody, the waltzing meter, the faultless key it is written in—all of it is a love song heralding the love of all loves. Perfect and endless and too beautiful for words. It pours into my empty heart and I can barely stand it. This is what Father Laurent was trying to remind me of. This is that love he spoke of, the love that completes me and gives me rest unto my soul.

  It’s the love that says I am precious, chosen and worth dying for. The love that all little girls dream of having.

  I’m not aware when I start to weep. I only know that suddenly the room is quiet, the piece is over, I am crying and all eyes are on me. Wendy, Philip, Solomon—they all look at me like I’ve gone mad. Father Laurent’s expression is one of absolute concern. Ramsey is staring at me, too. I cannot describe his expression other than to say it is annoyed amazement.

  I run from the room.

  There is only one place to run to.

  The chapel.

  The store is closed when I burst inside it. L’Raine has gone upstairs, thank goodness. I dash for the chapel door, yank it open and slam it shut. I lean my back against the door and wait for the sounds of pursuit. But only one person in that apartment would think to find me here.

  And Father Laurent does not come.

  I hold my breath and wait but I hear nothing.

  No one is coming.

  I stumble toward the altar and let myself collapse upon it. The tears keep coming. They seem to be coming from everywhere. From every hurting place I’ve ever known.

  They probably sound like tears of despair but this is not what they feel like. They feel like tears of release. Painful, but not unbearable. Agonizing but not entirely unwelcome. And I just let them come. Half of me aches over loving a man who does not love me. Again.

  The other half is in renewed awe at being the beloved of God himself. Again and again and again.

  When at last my sobs have quieted, I just lay there in the peaceful quiet of that lovely, holy room.

  Alone, but not alone.

  Fifty-five

  In my dream, my father is standing over me. I am seated at his piano and he is right behind me. I place my fingers over the keys and press them down, but there is no sound. I press harder. Nothing.

  “I can’t get it to play, Dad!”

  He touches me on the shoulder. “Daisy?”

  I bang my fingers on the keys. There is no sound.

  “It won’t play!”

  “Daisy?”

  Daisy.

  My eyes fly open. There is no piano. My father vanishes. Ramsey is kneeling beside me on the altar. It is his hand on my shoulder, not my dad’s. He was the one saying my name.

  I sit up in one swift movement, every fiber in me at alert. I had been asleep. Why am I in the chapel? What’s going on?

  Then I remember.

  I turn to Ramsey and his eyes no longer resemble cold metal. They have grown soft. He looks as though he may have been crying, too. I reach out my hand to touch his face. And he meets my hand with his.

  Am I still dreaming?

  “Daisy, I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

  Am I awake? I look at my watch on my other hand to get my bearings. I had only been asleep for twenty minutes. It seems like so much longer.

  “I’m so sorry,” Ramsey says.

  I know what he has said. I understand those three words. But my mind seems fuzzy with remnants of sleep. I don’t know why he is apologizing. “What?” I whisper.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  I pull my hand out of his to brush hair away from my face. Confusion is settling over me like a too-thick blanket. I feel less awake, not more.

  “Daisy, I didn’t know.”

  His face is bent close to mine; his eyes are searching for mine. I let my eyes meet his.

  “What? What didn’t you know?” I ask.

  He closes his eyes and sighs like he’s disgusted with himself. “Anything. I didn’t know anything.” He opens them again. “I assumed all the wrong things.”

  “About what?”

  “About you.”

  “I don’t understand.” Truer words were never spoken. I’m absolutely clueless.

  He exhales. “I thought you were seeing Max.”

  Max?

  Max?

  “What do you mean?” I sputter.

  “I thought he was your boyfriend. Liam made it seem like he was and I—”

  “Liam?”

  “Yes, Liam. He made it seem like Max was your boyfriend. And I saw you two going places together. You were at the hospital with Dad together. He went with you and your friend to the lake over the Fourth. And sometimes you’d be at his apartment. I just assumed you were his girlfriend.”

  “But I’m not. Max is like a brother to me. He has a girlfriend.”

  “I know, I know. But that’s what I thought. When you touched me, when Kristen was there on the roof and you reached out and touched me, I… my first thought was, I liked it. I wanted you to touch me like that. I had been wanting it. I wanted it when I first saw you in the airport helping that woman with her bags, and then again when I saw how you cared for my father and then again when you were singing to yourself on the roof. But you were Max’s girlfriend. And I was thinking that you shouldn’t touch a man like that if you are seeing someone else. And then when that other guy showed up to take you out for coffee, all I could think of was Max doesn’t deserve for you to treat him like that. To flirt with me and then to go have coffee with another man. I had it totally wrong.”

  My mouth is open and no words are coming out. His words are buzzing around in my head, pinging like they are electrically charged: I wanted you to touch me like that. I wanted you to touch me like that.

  “Daisy, I didn’t know that other guy was some blind date your mom was trying to set you up with. I didn’t know Max was just a childhood friend. I didn’t know you had been hurt like I had been hurt. That you knew how hard it has been for me to get my life back.”

  He knows about Daniel.

  “Your father told you.”

  “Yes, he told me. After you ran from Solomon’s apartment, he asked me what it was I had done. I told him he should be asking you that. He got angry and told me to come back to his apartment. So I followed back over and I started telling him what you were doing to Max. I told him I hadn’t said anything to him before because he thought so highly of you and I didn’t want him to know what you were doing. That’s when he told me how wrong I was. About everything.”

  I feel my face growing warm. The heat of embarrassment can take the chill right out of air-conditioned air. “He told you everything?”

  Again I sense Ramsey searching to make eye contact but I can’t look at him. “He told me you were engaged last year. That your fiancé broke off your engagement ten days before your wedding. That you opened this store to try and sell your wedding dress. And that you still have it.”

  Yep, that would be about everything.

  “I know why you did what you did on the roof.” His face is still very close to mine. “You knew what I had been through.”

  My eyes are growing misty again. I raise them to meet Ramsey’s gaze. His eyes look glassy, too. “I didn’t want her to think she still had power over you,” I whisper. “I didn’t want you to think she still had power over you.”

  Ramsey takes my hand again. “And that’s exactly what happened, Daisy. When you touched me and I looked up at you, I knew she didn’t anymore. That’s when I knew.”

  Something magical had passed between us. I hadn’t imagined it. “That’s when I knew it, too,” I murmur. “That I didn’t love Daniel anymore.”

  “But I thought you belonged to Max and it about drove me crazy that I was still attracted to you. I kept telling myself it wasn’t right to feel that way about you. Of
all people, I knew that. And when I saw in your eyes that you felt something for me, too, I just got angry. I started thinking of Kristen and how she let herself get swept away. I’m so sorry, Daisy. I had it all wrong.”

  I finally begin to understand. “The moment before Marshall came in the store, you were going to say something to me. What was it?”

  Ramsey shakes his head. “I was going to confront you. I was going to ask you what on earth were you doing, flirting with me when you belonged to Max.”

  “You thought I was being unfaithful to Max.”

  “Yes. I’m so sorry, Daisy. I’ve been a fool.”

  Ramsey still has his hand wrapped around mine. He looks down at our hands. “Daisy, my father told me you’ve been confiding in him about all this. That you told him you . . . you had feelings for me.”

  I swallow. “Yes. I did tell him that.”

  “So, is it too late?”

  He’s stroking my thumb.

  “What?” My voice is uneven and childlike.

  “After all I’ve done to you, is it too late?”

  “Too late for what?”

  He lifts his head to look at me. Tears are pooling in his eyes. “Is too late for me. For us.”

  All I can do is shake my head. No. No. No.

  He looks alarmed, like I am telling him no.

  “It’s not too late,” I whisper.

  Ramsey’s face wrinkles into something like anguish, but I know it’s not the pain of loss that is gripping him. It is the ache of finally having what you thought you never could. A tear spills over onto his cheek. I reach out to catch it and this time he doesn’t stop me.

  Ramsey turns his head to rest his cheek against my open palm. “When I finally understood, I thought for sure I’d lost you.”

  “I’ve been here the whole time.”

  He pulls my hand away and kisses my fingertips. Then he leans over, touches my face, which is wet like his, and kisses me.

  And I finally understand how love can happen to you when you are busy searching for what you think matters most to you.

  Fifty-six

  Dear Harriet,

  I called Vanessa.

  It was late, a little after eight this evening, but I called her and told her she could have my wedding dress. I explained to her why I was suddenly able to sell it to her. She practically cried when I told her.

  She’s coming in the morning to pick it up.

  Ramsey asked me, while we were still sitting on the floor of the chapel, if I thought it was too soon. He said maybe I needed to give it some time. I told him time is all I’ve had for the last year.

  Time isn’t what heals all wounds, Harriet. It’s love that heals.

  And I know now it wasn’t the dress itself that held me prisoner. It was my yearning to be wanted, cherished, and preferred that kept me chained to those simple yards of fabric.

  I suppose you’re thinking it’s too soon for me to know if Ramsey is the only man I will ever love. I’ve only known him such a short time. I can’t believe that he isn’t, but even if you are right, even if it is too soon to know such a thing, I still can’t see the value of hanging onto a dress whose meaning is slipping away like a vapor. Every day since Daniel left me my wedding dress has represented my longing to go backward in time. That gown belongs to a dream that has been remade. I only have eyes for the future.

  Vanessa will look lovely in it.

  I cannot sleep.

  I don’t want this day to end and yet I can’t wait for tomorrow.

  I’m surprised how I feel tonight considering that Ramsey’s kisses linger on my lips and the slippery feel of his tears still tingle on my fingertips.

  I feel very close to heaven. To a place of unqualified holiness and perfection. Does that make sense?

  Dear Daisy,

  The Voice of Reason cannot fully know what faith alone reveals, but I have to say I am reminded of that line from the movie, Les Miserables. You know, that one you like so much: “To love another person is to see the face of God.”

  Enjoy the view,

  Harriet

  Epilogue

  Someday I will have to explain to my children why I married their father after knowing him only four months. When they are young, like Liam was when I married Ramsey, they won’t care. Months can seem like years to a child. But when they start to wonder about the way of love, when they start to look for that one special person they are meant to be with for all their earthly days, then I will tell them that there is no planning it. It is not something you organize and measure by the number of times the sun goes down. Love finds you. Even when you aren’t looking for it. Even if you are looking in the wrong place.

  I will tell them that I married their father on a brilliant October day on the rooftop of the old Finland Hotel in Minneapolis, in a garden that he made the summer I met him. There were only a handful of people there, just the people I loved most in the world. Grandma Chloe and Grandpa Reuben, who were married six months after me, and Grandpa Laurent and Aunt L’Raine, who married three months after that. Shelby and Eric, and Uncle Max the Mad Magician and Bettina were there. And their real uncle, Kellen, and Aunt Laura and Mia. And Wendy and Philip, who were expecting their first child, and Solomon, and Mario and Rosalina. We all stood in the center of the roof where a path in the shape of an infinity knot meets itself. I’ll tell them that their Grandfather Laurent married us and that he could barely get through the ceremony because of the tears that kept blinding him to the words in the little black prayer book he held in his hands. I’ll show them the pictures Max took of their Uncle Kellen giving me away and I’ll tell them their big brother Liam was their Daddy’s best man. Solomon played his violin as I walked toward their Daddy on the stone pathway.

  I’ll tell them I wore a beautiful hundred-year-old dress worn by a woman who had been a mail-order bride back when the West was untamed. I’ll show them the dress and the little blue heart sewn inside, blessed by their grandpa and carried in my pocket for the many weeks I was learning what it meant to truly love someone.

  I’ll tell them I carried a bouquet of daisies, my father’s favorite flower, and how much I wish they could’ve known him.

  They will ask if we can go see the roof garden where I married their papa, and I will say, “Of course.”

  And we will drive from our house on the shore of Lake Superior to the busy Uptown street in Minneapolis where the Finland Hotel is and where Uncle Max and his wife Bettina still live. I’ll show them the beautiful garden where I fell in love with their daddy and where he married me. I’ll take them downstairs to the shop I used to run, and that Bettina runs now, and which is full of wedding dresses. I’ll tell them Bettina sends a box of little blue hearts every month to Grandpa Laurent in Arizona so he can bless them and send them back, and when they ask why he does that, I’ll tell them a heart is the shape of hope. And that blessings come from God alone. A blessed heart is showered with hope and the favor of God. Who doesn’t want that?

  Perhaps someday they will ask me when it was that I fell in love with their father and I will tell them it happened when I really wasn’t looking. When I was searching for something else entirely.

  I’ll tell them how our romance mirrored the love of God for all of us when he plunked his plan of redemption smack-dab in the middle of a world that was only looking to get its census done right.

  I’ll tell them love wasn’t something I fell into; it was something that covered me.

  I’ll tell them one minute my socks were on my feet and the next I was running barefoot.

  And that their daddy was running barefoot right alongside me.

  Discussion Questions

  1. What other options did Daisy have for her wedding dress besides opening a boutique to sell it? Which option would you have chosen?

  2. Why do you think Daisy addresses all her journal entries to an imaginary advisor? Is that one of Daisy’s strengths, weaknesses or merely a quirk?

  3. What is the significance
of the little blue heart? To Daisy? To everyone else?

  4. Why do you think Father Laurent agrees to bless the hearts? Do you think he believes they make a difference?

  5. Were you hoping that something would spark between Daisy and Max? Why or why not?

  6. Which of the tenants in the old Finland Hotel did you identify with the most?

  7. Daisy feels cheated out of having more time with her father. Can you relate? How do you think this longing figures in to her choices before she opened Something Blue. And after?

  8. What kind of significance does the rooftop play in this story? Does this setting detail matter to the story? To you?

  9. At one point, Daisy imagines her father having a conversation with Daniel in which her father says this: “Marriage isn’t about what makes sense, Daniel. It’s about what completes you. If you and Daisy complete each other, then marriage isn’t what makes sense. Marriage is that which seals what is already whole.” Do you agree or disagree?

  10. Father Laurent takes on the obvious father role in Daisy’s life. Do you think Daisy also meets a need in their relationship? How?

  11. Daisy calls the little blue hearts “an emblem of hope.” What are some other emblems of hope? What has been an emblem of hope in your life?

  12. Daisy and Max have a conversation in Chapter 19 where Daisy suggests that special thing that sets true love apart is something akin to magic. Max says this: “No, it’s not magic. Every trick I do is just manipulation and misdirection. I can’t believe that’s what true love is like.” What do you think sets true love apart? Is Max right or wrong?

  13. Father Laurent says this to Daisy in Chapter 26: “. . .You’ve been designed for a deeper love than you are looking for. We all have. The love you find in God and the love he gives you to give away to others is what you’re really after, Daisy. It’s what we all long for. And no one can keep you from having it and having it in abundance. No one but you.” What are your thoughts on this statement?

  14. What is the significance of the wedding dress that Daisy acquires in Chapter 46 now that you know how the book ends?