by Mia March
“Oliver, I’m not—”
“Are you sleeping with him?”
“Oliver!”
“Are you sleeping with him?” he repeated. Slowly. Angrily.
“No.”
“Tell me right now, Kat. Do you want to give me the ring back? I’m asking you for the truth.”
She dropped her head to her knees for a moment, willing her brain, her heart, to tell her how she felt.
“No” was what she said. And she’d have to trust that it was the truth, that deep down, no matter what, she did want to marry Oliver Tate. She just didn’t know.
She saw the relief cross his face. “I don’t want to make life harder for you right now, Kat. I know you’re going through something very painful. I know I have to give you serious leeway. But if you tell me something, I’m going to believe it. Okay? That’s how love and trust work.”
She nodded. “I need to get my mom her iced tea. I’ll come over tonight, okay? We’ll talk more.”
He nodded too and collected her into a hug, and she felt his eyes on her back as she rushed down the hall to the bank of elevators.
The next morning, Kat and Lolly headed into Beautiful Brides, an elegant little shop downtown, for their appointment with the owner, Claire Wignall. Lolly had called when they’d returned from the hospital and told Claire about the photo they’d seen in Coastal Brides, which Claire had in the shop. She didn’t have that exact dress, but she did have two close to it.
Dress up. Make-believe. Fairy tale. Those were the thoughts that hit Kat as she walked into the store. Photographs of real brides in their Beautiful Brides gowns lined one wall. Mannequins in dresses and veils dotted the shop. Claire greeted them and congratulated Kat and oohed and aahed over her ring, then led them to a dressing area with a love seat. On the door to the dressing room, two gowns hung from a hook.
“Lolly, you just sit down right there,” Claire said, gesturing for Lolly to sit on the plush apricot-colored love seat facing the door. “Kat, you go in and try one on and come out when you’re ready. You’ll find a nice pair of satin pumps in your size already in there.”
Lolly smiled and sat. “I can’t wait to see you in a wedding gown.”
Kat smiled back at her mother, but her heart was starting to pound. As she stood there, fingering the plastic overlay of the first dress, she knew with certainty she didn’t want to try it on. Or the second one. Or any one. This wasn’t how you were supposed to feel when you were in a bridal salon for the first time. A few months ago when Lizzie first got engaged, she made Kat watch two back-to-back episodes of Say Yes to the Dress, a reality TV show about a famed bridal salon in New York City. She was supposed to feel the way those brides felt. Excited. Hopeful to find the right gown. This was supposed to be a big, magical moment in her life.
Last night, she’d gone over to Oliver’s house as she’d promised, but instead of pressing her about her feelings, about holding hands with a resident on her mother’s team, he pulled a classic Oliver: kindness. He hadn’t demanded she explain herself. He’d simply opened the door for her, taken her into his arms, and held her tight, which was just what she’d needed: a hug from her best and oldest friend. They’d walked downtown for ice cream and took licks of each other’s sherbet, then they’d gone back to his house and he’d made love to her as passionately as always.
This morning, when Lolly told her about the appointment she’d made at the bridal salon, her mother’s blue eyes glowing, her cheeks more rosy than they’d been yesterday, Kat had felt that same sense of peace over her engagement as she had several times before. It was the antidote to Lolly’s cancer; where the chemo made Lolly weak, Kat’s engagement made her strong.
But now, as she stood in the middle of all this white, all these dresses symbolizing forever, the future, vows, she wasn’t so sure she should be making any decisions about dress length, let alone the rest of her life.
Fake a migraine, she thought. Suddenly feel faint and brace against the door. Just get out of this store.
Except there was her mother, sitting on that apricot love seat, twenty pounds thinner than she’d been in mid-August. Lolly Weller, no romantic, had a look of pure happiness on her pale, gaunt face.
Lolly gasped, and Kat whirled around, hand on the doorknob. “Oh, Kat, look at that veil,” her mother said, getting up slowly, gingerly, and walking over to a bust on an antique table. The veil was short, its headpiece a lovely combination of tiny, white sea stars and rosebuds. “This is so perfect. Kat, do you see the sea stars?”
Her father had collected sea stars. All manner. From heavy silver paperweights to the papier-mâché ones Kat made in elementary school every Father’s Day. “It’s beautiful,” Kat said, remembering the little gold-filigree starfish earrings he’d bought her for “someday, when you get your ears pierced.” Kat had begged her mother to let her get them pierced that day, and Lolly had relented. Kat wore those earrings all the time and had them on now.
Are you trying to tell me something, universe? Kat directed at the ceiling.
Claire nodded at her mother, and Lolly removed the headpiece from the bust and walked over to Kat. Kat tucked her chin down so Lolly could place the veil on her head. The headpiece was actually comfortable instead of tight or scratchy.
Lolly covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh, Kat. Look at you.” She stood behind Kat at the mirror on the wall above the table.
It was pretty. And it did make Kat feel very bridal.
Lolly squeezed Kat’s shoulders. “Go try on the dresses with this.”
“Let me know if you need help,” Claire said. “These two dresses are easy on—and off.”
Kat slipped inside the elegant dressing room, so large it was almost the size of the Bluebird Room at the inn. She hung the two dresses on the high hook, took off the headpiece and put it on the padded bench, then peeled off her shirt and skirt. She stepped into the first white satin dress and reached behind her to zip it up. Pretty. It did look like the one in the picture. Kat put the headpiece back on and examined herself in the three-way mirror. She still felt that this was dress-up, make-believe. That she wasn’t really going to be the bride.
“Kat, do you need help?”
She came out and faced her mother.
“It’s so pretty,” Lolly said.
“Just beautiful,” Clair seconded. “But what do you think, Kat?”
“Well, I do like it,” she said, moving in front of the three-way mirror in the corner of the shop. “But I’m not sure it’s the one.”
“Try the other. And remember, this is your first day, your first five minutes in the store. It may take trying ten, twenty dresses to find the one. You’ll know it the minute you have it on.”
Ten or twenty dresses? Kat didn’t think she could bear to try on two.
Back in the dressing room, she took off Dress #1 and hung it up, then stepped into Dress #2. The moment she looked in the mirror, something shifted inside her.
This was the dress.
She knew it more clearly than she knew anything else lately. It was perfect and beautiful and breathtaking. Her skin seemed luminous. She put the headpiece back on and gasped at herself.
It’s just a pretty dress, she reminded herself. It doesn’t mean anything. The universe isn’t telling you anything. It’s just a dress that happens to make you look like you were meant to wear it, that it was only meant for you.
“Kat, ready?”
She sucked in a breath. The moment her mother saw her in this dress, with this headpiece, she’d burst out crying, Kat knew it. Her mother wasn’t sentimental, but if the dress had moved Kat, had made her gasp, it would affect her mother doubly so.
She opened the door. And wasn’t wrong.
Lolly stood up, her hand over her heart. Both hands flew to cover her face, the tears coming. Her mother loved her, Kat knew, in a w
ay Kat had never before known.
“It’s the one,” Kat said.
“You’ll barely need alterations.” Claire smiled. “I need to take it in a bit at the waist and lengthen the hem just a half inch, but otherwise, it’s as if the dress was made for you.”
“Is it a fortune?” Kat asked.
“The dress of your dreams, whichever it is and no matter its cost, is covered by Anonymous,” Claire said, a twinkle in her eyes. “I’ll tell you, I don’t get a lot of that.”
Oliver. Kat knew it.
Lolly beamed. “Well, then, if you’re sure of it, Kat, we’ll take it.”
Kat looked in the mirror again. Oliver had arranged for the dress of her dreams so that her mother wouldn’t have to worry about the cost. So Kat wouldn’t have to worry about her mother worrying.
Lolly stood next to her, openly admiring her daughter’s reflection. “If the last thing I do is see you walk down the aisle in the backyard of the Three Captains’ to Oliver in this dress, I’ll go a happy person.”
Kat stared at her mother. The last thing I do…
“But if you’re not sure, Kat,” Lolly said, “we can keep looking. I see at least three other gowns on the mannequins that would look stunning on you.”
If you’re not sure, if you’re not sure, if you’re not sure. The words knocked inside Kat’s head until she had to turn away from the mirror. She was only sure of one thing: wanting to make her mother happy for however long she had left.
“I’m sure,” Kat said.
CHAPTER 16
Isabel
“Remember this?” June asked, holding up a photo album.
Isabel rested the album she was looking at on her crisscrossed legs and glanced over. Isabel, June, and their parents smiling with Donald Duck at Walt Disney World when Isabel was seven and June just four. Their father wore a Mickey Mouse hat complete with ears, and their mother looked so pretty in her white cotton sundress, a straw hat on her head, and a Cinderella sticker on her upper arm, plastered there by June.
Isabel and June had come downstairs to the basement of the Three Captains’ to root through the old trunks for their mother’s journals. Together they’d gone through every trunk, but the journals weren’t there. In two of the trunks, they’d found twelve photo albums and had, for the past half hour, been captivated by them. Over the years, Lolly had reminded Isabel of the albums, but Isabel had taken a few favorites in the weeks after her parents’ deaths and always feared looking through the rest, especially as the years passed. Afraid of memories. Of sorrow. Regrets.
An hour ago, when Isabel had come up to the attic bedroom to find a sweater for a guest to borrow, she’d found June sitting on the balcony, staring out at the harbor, her expression so sad that Isabel almost cried. It had been two days since June learned that Charlie’s father had died on the day they were to meet in Central Park, and though she was up and moving around and putting on a good front for Charlie, June was devastated. Isabel had suggested that June help her look for the journals, unsure if it would help June in some way or remind her of more loss, but June had nodded and followed her down into the basement.
Their parents’ possessions, their mother’s favorite dress, their father’s old, wire-rimmed John Lennon eyeglasses, seemed to make June wistful in a healing way. She’d held the glasses up and laughed, lost in a memory she didn’t share, then buried her face in the scarf their father had worn the night he died, a dark blue wool their mother had knitted. She’d cried, and Isabel had pulled her into a hug and June let it all out again, her anguished “Everyone dies. Everyone dies,” over and over, breaking Isabel’s heart.
Just when Isabel had been afraid June would run off, Isabel had noticed the bundled letters from the final year she and June had gone to sleepaway camp when Isabel had been fourteen and June eleven. Isabel had loved every minute of being away from home, even if her counselor and the director had threatened to send her home if she broke one more rule. But June had been terribly homesick. Isabel had pulled out the top letter and started reading it aloud, noticing that June had scooted closer to read it too.
My darling June Bug,
I hear that you’re feeling a little overwhelmed at camp and want to come home. I understand that you’re experiencing lots of new things and that can be tough stuff. But you’re such a smart, strong girl with a huge heart, interested in so many things, and I know if you give camp a chance, you’ll find your place and your friends and you’ll suddenly never want camp to end. Let’s give it one more week, June. If you absolutely hate it then, Dad and I will come get you. But go show Camp Acadia who you are—fun, smart, sensitive, creative, imaginative, a great dancer and a great friend, and strong of body and mind. You can do anything, June.
All my love, Mom
“She really loved us,” June had said, holding the letter against her heart. She folded it and slipped it into her back pocket, then reached for another letter.
She did love us—even me, Isabel had thought. Coming down here—for both of us—was the right thing to do.
June smiled at the Disney World photo and turned the pages, even laughing at one point, a beautiful sound coming from her grieving sister. Isabel glanced over to see a photo of their dad trying to put toddler June on a snowman’s “shoulders” as Isabel, maybe five or six, stuck a carrot in the snowman’s face to make a nose. They looked through the rest of the album together, then June set it down and pulled another letter from the bundle. “This one’s to you, Iz,” she said and began to read aloud.
Dear Isabel,
Dad and I miss you so much, Izzy-biz. The place sure is quiet without you. I know we weren’t getting along too well in the weeks before you left for camp, but I know that when you come home, we’ll spend lots of time together. I’ll even see the new Scream movie.
I heard from your counselor that you were really shaken up about Flop dying. I know he’s been the camp bunny for three years and has lived a good, happy life, surrounded by adoring kids who delighted in touching his soft long ears and sweet fur. Your counselor said one girl was so homesick until she was put in charge of feeding Flop his morning carrots, and just the sight of Flop and his twitching pink nose started making her so happy that she forgot all about wanting to come home. That’s a special bunny, and when we lose something, someone, very special to us, we need to remember the good things, the happy times, and let that stay in our hearts. That’s how I deal with loss. Like when Pappy passed on, remember? You were just five and probably don’t, but I was so sad until I started remembering how special Pappy made me feel, what a great father he was, how glad I was to have had him in my life. I focused on that and my heart felt healed instead of broken.
I hope that helps, Isabel, my brave girl.
All my love, Mom
As tears fell down Isabel’s cheeks, she stared at June in disbelief.
“Read it to me again,” June said.
Isabel read the letter. She’d forgotten all about Flop. And she didn’t remember her grandfather, or his death, at all. Or this letter.
“She’s right,” June said, taking the letter from Isabel and scanning it. “I need to remember how special John made me feel, how lucky I was to have known him, even for that short time.” She looked around the basement at their parents’ things, then up toward the ceiling. “Thank you, Mom.”
Isabel reached over and squeezed June’s hand. “You keep that letter.” Coming down here over the past few days had done Isabel a world of good too. She’d let go of expecting Griffin to call back. The incident, three days ago now, had spooked him away—maybe not necessarily from her, as Kat had suggested last night, but from dating, period. Isabel wasn’t so ready to date herself, so perhaps it was best that Griffin stay in her fantasies, where all sorts of wonderful things happened, such as slow kisses and his hands all over her. Such as bits of conversations that made her
feel all the things she’d stopped feeling in her marriage. Sexy. Interesting. Wanted.
Nothing bad happened in her fantasies. Children didn’t go missing in doghouses. Teenagers didn’t scowl at her. And men she’d just begun allowing herself to like didn’t pull away and make her shrink back inside herself.
That way of thinking had kept Albert Brooks from getting into heaven in Defending Your Life, though.
As they rooted through more letters, Isabel found an entire packet of photocopies of letters that Lolly had sent to Isabel’s, June’s, and Kat’s schools, teachers, and principals over the years.
Dear Ms. Patterson, thank you for alerting me to Isabel’s refusal to participate in English class or turn in essays due on the assigned text. As you know, she lost her parents less than a month ago and is slowly finding her way back to everyday life. Perhaps you could show some understanding and compassion, particularly as the text deals with a happy, intact family. Thank you, Mrs. Lolly Weller.
Isabel gasped. “I had no idea she had my back like that in those days. She was always so no-nonsense. ‘Just do what you’re supposed to and things will work out.’ Remember how she always used to say that? I hated that.”
“Me too. Especially because most of the time it was true. It’s funny—she’s still like that, and still so guarded, even though she’s opening up more, but I guess I find myself appreciating it more. Nothing is sugarcoated, you know?” June scanned another letter in Lolly’s packet. “Listen to this one. ‘Dear Principal Thicket, My daughter, Kat, has indicated on several occasions that two particular girls in her class are teasing her relentlessly by calling her an orphan and making fun of her clothes. Twice, I have brought this to the attention of her teacher and to you. If I hear of this one more time, I’ll be down at the school with News Channel 8 to ask why the school isn’t protecting my child from bullies. Thank you, Mrs. Lolly Weller.’”