As I left the property I was smiling, the coolness of the house and its sorrowful aura not chinking my cheerful demeanor in the slightest. I was already imagining how I was going to display the dress, on a small podium I would have made, and the velvet ropes I would put around it to protect it from curious fingers. Perhaps even a glass cabinet, in time.
I would have been much less chipper if I’d known that I wasn’t going to see Fletcher Davenport or his wife’s dress the following day.
In fact, I wasn’t going to see him ever again.
Chapter 1
When you own a bridal shop, there are things you have to do, things you should do, and things you can do.
Vacuuming the shop on a regular basis definitely falls into the column of things you have to do. No potential bride is going to want to fend off dust bunnies in her quest for the perfect dress or ideal party favors for her guests.
I started right in the center of the room, and then worked my way outwards in a counterclockwise motion, round and round, until I reached the edges.
But all that vacuuming didn’t seem to be enough: the shop looked good, but it still needed something. I had an important new client visiting soon, and I wanted the shop to have just the right atmosphere.
I tapped my chin for a moment.
Aha.
That's it.
From the drawer behind the shop counter, I removed a small bundle of mixed incense sticks. Picking out my favorite jasmine sticks, I placed them in a small bowl of white rocks, lit them, and waited ‘til they infused the air with their calming aroma.
I gave the shop a final inspection. There. It now felt right. The energy was balanced, the floor was clean, the displays were neatly arranged, and I was ready to—
“GOOD morning!” came a loud voice as the door swung open rapidly, sending the bell hung above it into an urgent DING A LING A LING.
Startled, I spun around to be greeted by two very out-of-towners. They weren't just from outside of Sequoia Bay; they were from another planet. Well, New York City. Although technically it's not extra-terrestrial, for us Sequoians it might as well be.
“Good morning,” I said, intending to lead in to some pleasantries and offer some herbal tea, perhaps getting down to real business after twenty or thirty minutes. You know, like civilized people do.
But these New Yorkers didn't operate like that.
“Rick Wellington, and my fiancé Nina Bellamy—you spoke to her on the phone—you've got some dresses for us to see, I believe.”
He was walking toward me, his left hand attached to his fiancée’s who was scurrying a step behind him as he strode my way, his other arm outstretched.
I took his hand to gently shake it. Crunch. Well, almost. His grip was as hard as his big-city manner and my friendly smile shaped itself into something more like a grimace.
When he released his grip, his fiancée offered her own, much daintier hand.
“Oh!” I exclaimed as she squeezed almost as hard as her future husband. Must have learned it from him.
I stepped back from the couple, a little off-kilter. I flexed my hand to try to bring it back to life.
“So, you're staying too, Mr. Wellington?” I asked. “Usually the groom—”
“Rick,” he corrected, “Mr. Wellington's my grandfather—very successful man, very successful—and of course I'm staying. I'm the one paying for it, right?”
I opened my mouth to reply politely but instead I just nodded. His 'style,' if that was the right word, was not exactly what I was used to.
“Right, I'm paying, right?” he said, again, this time to his fiancé.
She nodded and giggled.
“That's the thing, when you've got means, you have to pay for everything,” he explained, loudly. “And I keep close watch, you know—don't want to get ripped off. I couldn't let Nina in here alone. Who knows what you might try and charge her?”
My jaw was clenched shut, my teeth grating against each other as I tried to force my mouth into a smile.
“Please, Rick, don't worry about that. Sequoia Bay is a small and honest town, and everything in my shop has its price clearly marked. No hidden charges or overblown bills here.”
“Good, good. Well then. Let's begin. Bring on the dresses. But skip the crap ones, my time is valuable.”
My shop didn't have any 'crap ones’. Every piece was carefully selected and chosen, and every dress would look phenomenal, if it met the right bride. I wanted to tell him that but it didn't really seem wise. Especially since I was experiencing a slow season for weddings.
Rick and Nina were the only clients who’d booked my wedding services for this whole month. I wasn’t too worried, since I usually get a bit of walk-in business from locals who needed party favors and other party items. But I reminded myself to be polite to Rick and ignore that ‘crap’ comment.
“I'll only show you the ones most suited to Nina's figure.”
“Nice one, isn't it?” said Rick.
"What?"
“Her figure,” he said, reaching around and squeezing her waist. “She'll look good on my arm, won't she?”
I smiled politely at Nina who was already beaming at me, apparently delighted by the ‘compliment.’
“And you’re sure you want to stay for the fitting? A lot of people consider it bad luck for the groom to see the bride in her dress before the big event. There's a café just down—”
“Oh, I don't buy into any of that mumbo jumbo. Superstition, tradition, all that garbage should have been thrown out at the turn of the century. The last one,” he said with a laugh.
“Well, I think some people just like the surprise,” I said.
“Not me. Surprises are disruptive. I like to know everything. Guess what I did at Christmas?”
“Err, what did you do at Christmas?” I actually was mildly curious, the same way one is curious at a car wreck. Obviously he had ruined some aspect of Christmas, but what...
“You tell her,” he said, nudging his future wife in the side with an elbow.
Nina’s face lit up at being asked to speak. “Well, he told me what he wanted for Christmas. It was a gold letter opener from Nordstroms,” she began, rubbing her side. “Anyway, not only did he tell me what he wanted, he chose the exact item, paid for it, and arranged to have it gift wrapped. All I had to do was pick it up!”
“And I told you, you didn't have to pick it up, I could have had it delivered.”
She giggled and shrugged her shoulders. “I wanted to do something for you…”
“I've told you. Don't get fat, that's all you've got to do for me.”
They both laughed while I worked hard at maintaining my smile which surely must have looked more plastic than the cards in Wellington's wallet. I decided not to even offer them tea. I knew it would be declined and I suspect he wouldn't have been impressed by the range of herbals I was going to offer them.
“Well, let's show you some of the dresses I've picked out.”
“Yes. Let's get to it,” said Rick, rubbing his hands together.
I rolled out a clothes rail that I had prepared for Nina.
She had given me all her measurements over the phone when she made her appointment, so I'd been able to prepare a range of suitable options for her. Five perfect dresses, any one of which would make her into a bride worthy of a newspaper article like the one about Fletcher’s wedding half a century earlier.
“Right, let's get through this quickly, dear. We've got lots to do. People to meet, properties to see, and remember my mother is coming in this evening.”
I tilted my head at the pair of them quizzically.
“Properties?” I asked.
Sequoia Bay was a popular choice for destination weddings, and I had assumed that was why this pair of New Yorkers was here. But the thing about a destination wedding is that the happy couple and their guests tend to leave the destination at the end of the festivities.
“Oh, yes. We're moving here, aren't we, dear?”
Nina nodded at me happily. I suspected she'd nod happily at whatever her future-husband said. We're serving puppies for the entree—happy smile—wonderful, dear.
“Oh, goodness. How wonderful.” For them, but for us poor townsfolk...
“Yeah. New York never suited my character. Too brash and fast paced for me,” he said, without a hint of irony.
“Right. Yes, well, it's a much slower pace of life here. I worry that big city folks might find it a little, well, pedestrian,” I said.
“Oh, we'll fit in fine right here. And it's so cheap.”
Cheap is not a word that people tend to use to describe Northern California. Admittedly we were far enough away from Silicon Valley and San Francisco that their ludicrous property prices hadn't quite reached us, but still. Northern California and cheap were not words that often hung out together.
“Cheap?”
“Oh yes. You can't find anything livable for less than three million in New York now, unless you live in the slums. Here, you can get a whole house for that!”
I suspected his idea of ‘the slums’ was somewhat at odds with others’ standards.
“Is that so? Got your eye on anything here?” I asked.
Nina was running her hands over the dresses, testing the fabric of each one, and turning them slightly to examine them.
“We're going to see something this afternoon. Cypress House or something, owned by some old geezer knocking on hell’s door.”
My head flicked up straight and I fixed my eyes on him.
“Do you mean the Cypress Estate, owned by Fletcher Davenport?”
“That's the one. We're putting a bid in when it goes on the market next week.”
“Goodness. I didn't know he was thinking of selling,” I said. That certainly put some things in perspective though. The night before when he was talking about 'saying goodbye', he wasn't just talking about the dress, it seemed.
“Is he really that old?” asked Nina. “Because if he is, perhaps he'll kick the bucket!”
“Then we could get it for a steal, eh? Swoop in and snap it up. Learned that in New York—don’t hang around, you know? They die, I buy.” The chuckle that followed was as lacking in compassion as his words.
I opened and closed my mouth. Then I did it again. Were they really hoping that old Fletcher would drop dead? He was a bit of a curmudgeon, but still...
“Oh, don't look like that. Just being practical!” said Rick.
“Sorry,” I said, even though I wasn't. “People around here don't always talk quite so... honestly,” I said after searching for the right word, and, I think, failing.
“Oh? Thanks for the tip. We'll be on the lookout for the local liars then. That's the problem when you have means like us—people are always trying to rip you off.”
I hoped he wouldn’t go around town telling everyone that I said they were all liars. I really seemed to be putting my foot in it today.
“Right, you, choose three,” said Rick, jabbing his finger into his wife's side again.
She looked up at him with questioning, but still adoring, eyes.
“Life tip: if she brings out five, a couple are just going to be filler. You don't want to try all five of them on. We haven't got all day. Get rid of the two crappiest ones and then you try on the three winners. Remember, the Wellington way!”
“The Wellington way?” I asked.
He nodded his head up and down in a way that was probably supposed to be authoritative, but made him look like a wind-up children's toy.
“The Wellington way! No messing around! Get to it! Make a decision and BAM, follow it through, no regrets, no turning back, come hell or high water, keep pressing on!”
“Oh, how... practical,” I said.
He nodded his head up and down again, accepting it as a compliment, though it was anything but.
Nina carefully studied the row of beautiful, carefully-selected dresses and then, seemingly at random took two of them out of their places in the lineup and hung them up at the end of the rail.
“Good work. We'll make a Wellington out of you yet!” said Rick, patting his wife on the back like she was a football player.
She beamed at me.
“Why don't you try these three on, Nina?” I asked, sad for the two beautiful pieces that had already been relegated to the end of the rail.
“Yes!” she said, with more enthusiasm than I had expected.
I guessed Rick hadn't quite managed to wring all the romance and excitement for her upcoming wedding out of her yet.
“HELLO?”
My head whipped back around to see Rick with his phone pressed up against his ear. He was clearly trying to reach New York through the sheer volume of his voice rather than the use of technology.
“YEAH. JUST DOING THE DRESS NOW. IT'S TAKING FOREVER…”
He held up one finger in our direction and then walked out of the shop into the street. I breathed a silent sigh of relief.
“He's very busy,” explained Nina. “He's a very successful property developer in New York.”
New York, New York, the city they named twice so its inhabitants could keep going on about it. Without Rick in the room, Nina seemed to come to life. Well, a plasticky New Yorker’s kind of life, anyway.
When he was in the room, every move or sound she made seemed to have been carefully considered to most please him. Now she seemed to relax and open up just a bit. I could feel some of her energy radiating out, no longer carefully kept under wraps.
“So, let's try these dresses on,” I said to her. Although I normally like to really take my time with my clients, this time I found myself hoping that Nina would make a decision quickly. Preferably before her intended came back inside.
“Great. Can we start with this one?” she said, her hand resting on the dress in the center. “Though it's perhaps a little too ivory for my skin…”
“Of course. How are you coping with it all? Most brides find it all very stressful at this stage before the wedding.”
She nodded glumly. “It is stressful, isn't it? And you know, because we have so much money, it just makes it worse. Because we can have the best of everything, we pretty much have to, you know?”
“I can imagine…”
“You know, if you're poor, you just have whatever you can afford, I suppose. But when you're wealthy, life is just so much more difficult.”
I nodded in fake understanding.
Not that I agreed with her, but understanding in the sense that I knew she thought her life was difficult. Even when people have everything handed to them on a silver platter, they tend to feel it's just so unfair that the silver platter is so heavy.
“You know, I actually have something that can help.”
“Oh? Do you have some Xanax?” she said, lifting her eyebrows.
“Xanax? Is that an herb?” I asked, perplexed. “Anyway, not that, no. Hold on, I'll show you.”
I hurried behind my counter and opened the drawer. Next to my sage supplies, I had a small drawstring bag, inside of which were half a dozen small rose quartz hearts. I hastily removed one of them and hurried back to her.
“Hold out your hand.”
“Ooh, I'm intrigued,” she said.
When her palm was out flat, I carefully placed the quartz heart into it.
This was something I actually did for all my brides, but I didn't go to any lengths to dispel the notion that I only did it for that one special bride.
“Oh, it's so pretty!” she said.
It was pretty. But it was more than that.
Once a month, on the night of the full moon, I took a small batch of hearts just like that one and placed them in a crystal bowl of rainwater. Under the moonlight, I performed a kind of ritual—a spell, really—to infuse them with calming energy. Although the vast majority of my brides never realized it, my calming crystal hearts were actually one of the reasons their weddings went so smoothly.
“If you're ever feeling stressed, or overwhelmed by it al
l, hold this in your hand and just think: it's all going to be all right. And it will be.”
She closed her fingers over it, and then her eyelids dropped down. I'd seen a hundred brides do the same before her, the involuntary closing of their eyes when they first held the crystal.
She was silent for a moment, and so was the shop. Briefly, all was as it should be.
She flicked her eyes open again. “Goodness, it's like magic!”
I just smiled.
It was in a much calmer, less frantic state that Nina began to try on the three remaining dresses.
“Don't you think I'm too slender for this one?” she asked, gently pinching the fabric as she breathed in and held her breath to give it a touch of slack.
“Maybe…” I said, finishing the sentence in my head with, if you never eat or breathe again.
A few minutes later Nina was frowning as she tried on another dress.
“I think I like this one. How much is it?”
“That one is eighteen hundred, and although it sounds a lot, it's actually a bargain. The fabric—”
“Just eighteen hundred? I was hoping for something a little more, you know, classy…”
I held my breath and counted to three-Mississippi before I replied, willing myself to be polite.
“That is an incredibly classy dress. You look amazing, Nina,” I said, and she really did. “And most dress shops would actually charge a lot more than eighteen hundred, but I'm able to keep my prices down because—”
“RIGHT!” the bell dinged, the door slammed back against the wall, and Rick’s voice hammered us all as he re-entered. “Are we done here? Got one picked out?”
Nina shook her head.
Rick looked her up and down. “What about the one you're wearing? It seems fine.”
“This is only eighteen hundred,” she said.
He winced.
“Are there any other bridal shops here?” he asked me.
“No. Not in Sequoia Bay,” I said, and shut my mouth because I wasn't sure I could control what else would come out if I didn’t stop myself immediately.
“We're looking for something classy, you see. You know, something with a five figure price tag. None of this ‘Made-in-China’ garbage,” he said, waving his hands at the beautiful dress Nina was wearing.
Wedding Bells And Magic Spells Box Set Page 2