The Wedding Dress (9 page)

“I’d rather use the money to upgrade the reception food or buy those platinum chains I wanted for the bridesmaids.” Since their engagement, Tim spoke in the plural. Us. We.
They
could afford whatever kind of wedding
they
wanted.

But Charlotte struggled, fighting the idea that Tim and the Roses would pay for all of the wedding.
Her
family must pay what they could. Right? Even if
her
family was . . . Charlotte alone.

Now the conversation stalled. Tim walked to the dining table, sitting with a glance at the invitations, then toward the living room.

“Is that it? Your thousand-dollar trunk?”

“That’s it.” Charlotte reached for his Diet Coke and took a sip. “Think you can do something with it?”

“Maybe.” Tim stared at his uneaten pizza. Sitting back with a sigh, he ran his hands through his matted but thick hair. “Charlotte, I forgot about tonight.”

“Just . . . forgot? Forgot the invitations? Forgot me? What did you forget, Tim?”

“I didn’t forget you.” He got up and tore away a paper towel to use as a napkin. “I forgot we wanted to go over the guest list and address the invitations.”

“And plan the reception. Figure out the rehearsal dinner, the flowers, the cake, the tuxes. You were planning to do that this week too. Pick out your tuxes. But tomorrow’s Thursday already.”

“Yeah, I had tuxes on my calendar, but it kept getting pushed to the next day.”

In that moment Charlotte
knew
. The ping of revelation resonated and swelled in her chest, drawing her mind and soul to its light. “Tim, what’s going on?”

The sound of her own doubt sprang tears from the bottle that Charlotte kept stored in her soul.

“I don’t know.” He shoved his pizza plate away from him, and Charlotte realized that since he came into the loft, he’d barely looked at her face. Reaching down, he took out one of the invitations from the box. “These are pretty, Char.”

“But they>

Tim scooted his chair over to hers. “It’s not that I don’t love you.”

“But you don’t want to get married?” She tucked her hands close to her middle and gentled his ring from her finger. When she set it on the table, those darn tears trickled to the corner of her eyes. Tim stared past her shoulder toward the dark window.

“I thought I did.” He tried to hold her hand but Charlotte withdrew. “Some of the guys from our local motocross club went up with us today. We were talking about the big race in Florida, making plans to go, when one of the guys looked at me and said, ‘Tim, you realize we’re talking about the week after June 23. Aren’t you getting married that day? Won’t you be on your honeymoon?’”

“You forgot your own wedding.” Charlotte ran her hand over the cold chill creeping down her arms. Her gaze landed on the trunk and at the moment, she felt an odd kinship to the battered, rejected box. It felt like her only ally in the loft.

“Charlotte, I’m sorry. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Katherine was all worried I’d hurt
you
.”

“Yeah, Katherine needs to mind her own business.” Tim at last peered at her face. “I love you, I do, Charlotte. I’m just not sure I’m ready to get married. Our relationship kind of knocked me off my feet. We moved so fast.”

“
We
didn’t move fast, Tim,
you
moved fast. Like I was one of your racetracks to conquer.”

“That’s not fair. I moved fast because I fell in love with you.”

“Then what’s changed?”

Tim stood and paced toward the living room. “I’m not sure. I wonder if either of us really wants to get married. We haven’t done anything to get this wedding together. You don’t have a dress. I didn’t put the deposit down on Avondale.”

Charlotte stared at the ring waiting on the table. “So what now?”

“Postpone? Wait.” He gazed at the ring. “Put that back on. We’re still engaged.”

“Is there someone else?” Charlotte swallowed the fresh rise of tears, staring at her folded fingers in her lap. She made no movement for the ring.

“If there was, would I ask you to put the ring back on? There’s no one else except maybe me. My own selfishness. I thought I was ready, but—”

“You’re thirty-two, Tim. You’re a successful Birmingham architect. If you’re not ready, then maybe I’m not the right woman.” The sharp accuracy of her own words pierced her heart.

“Am I the right man? Why have you been dragging your feet? Don’t brides rush out to buy a gown the moment they get the ring? You own a bridal shop. You have access to the newest, best gowns in the world. But—” He paused to assess her with a tender glance. “Tell me you don’t feel like something is out of step with us.”

“I guess . . . yeah, maybe.” A rebel tear slid down her cheek. “I just thought we were busy, but we’d get around to our wedding. I guess if you were really into me, and marrying me, there’d be no way you’d forget our wedding and honeymoon for a chance to go racing with the boys.” Sniffing, she caught a second tear with the back of her hand. “I don’t know much about your gender, being raised by Mama and Gert, but I do know this from working at wedding shops since high school: a man will do anything for the woman he loves and is going to marry. Shop on Super Bowl Sunday. Try on ten tuxes even though the first one was just fine. Desert his friends and hobbies, even move across the country. All for love.” Charlotte picked up the ring and met Tim in the living room. She pressed it into his palm. “If we’re not getting married on June 23, then what’s the point of pretending?”

“Charlotte, we’re not pretending, we’re waiting.”

“For what, Tim? For it to feel right? Suddenly? It felt right when you proposed the first time. You can’t cancel a wedding but keep the engagement.” She’d learned that, too, from working with brides and grooms over the past twelve years. First in the bridal shops of others, then her own. Once the wedding is postponed . . . “If we’re not getting married, then we’re not engaged.”

“I don’t want to lose you.” Tim regarded the ring, slipping it over his pinky to the first knuckle, then reached for Charlotte, pulling her to him. “You swept me off my feet when we first met.”

“Sometimes we don’t know what we want until we get it. Then”—Charlotte jerked with the first sob—“it becomes complicated and . . . the brides . . . the dresses . . . the details . . .” Charlotte gave up, tucked her elbows into her ribs and, still leaning against Tim’s firm form and sweat-soaked t-shirt, she wept.

She’d sensed this coming, a shift, a change.
This
was what drove her to the ridge Saturday morning. The feeling of
is this really what I want?
It had been coming—if not from Tim, then from herself. But oh, how she hated endings. How she hated good-byes.

Tim stroked her hair, not saying a word, clearing his throat, throttling the rumble in his chest.

“I’m sorry, Char.” He cradled and caressed her, rocking slowly side to side, his own tears catching on his whispers. “Shh, it’ll be all right.”

She wrapped her arms around him and molded against him, his tenderness throttling her sorrow. He might be breaking up with her, but at the moment, he was her best friend, her quiet strength.

When she stepped out of his arms, wiping her face, she kept her shoulder toward him and faced the hall toward her room. “It’s easier if you just go, Tim.”

Thank goodness they’d held to their convictions and not slept together. How much more difficult this would’ve been. How cold his side of the bed would’ve been tonight. “You won’t mind seeing yourself out.”

“Charlotte?”

“Bye, Tim.” In her room Charlotte shut the door and dove onto her bed, burying her head under the pillows, her chest swelling with a ravenous storm of sobs. She’d survived Mama’s death. She’d survived being raised by grumpy, yet kind ole Gert. She’d survived celebrating Christmases and birthdays alone. How could she not survive this petty little thing? A broken engagement? Oh, she’d survive tonight, all right. Surely she would. As long as she didn’t hear the
click
of the door closing behind Tim as he left.

Chapter Six

 
Emily

 
I
n the flickering gaslight Emily poured the letters from the cedar box onto her bed. There were dozens of them, all addressed in Daniel’s smooth, even script.

Why would Father hide them from her? It was so unlike him. Emily sorted the letters by postmark, from April to August, counting forty in all.

Her engagement ring caught on her bedcover as she crawled to the center and propped against her pillows.

Phillip’s ring on her left hand, so rich and exquisite, paled for a moment in comparison to the pile of letters in her right. Words and thoughts from Daniel’s heart, written in his own hand, seemed more rare than any stone carved from coal.

Emily batted the sleep from her eyes and the weariness from her heart. Such a day. The suffragette meeting, then seeing Phillip in the city, sitting his carriage, warmed by his amorous kisses.

Then running home and into Daniel. Oh, dear Daniel. The memory of his touch made Emily’s pulse throb in her veins.

And Phillip’s proposal. Tonight of all nights. She’d expected it soon, maybe at the Woodward end-of-summer lawn party on Labor Day weekend.

Emily sank into her pillows and closed her eyes. She had half a mind to march down the hall to Father and Mother’s door and demand Father’s reason for keeping Daniel from her.< F/p>

But she knew better. Father never responded to temper tantrums, especially at one thirty in the morning. He’d only tell her to behave herself, go to bed, and be ready to apologize in the morning, and if he felt the need, he might discuss the issue.

Why concern herself with Father now? She had Daniel’s letters. Emily roused herself and took the first letter from the pile. She filed the remainder in the box.

April 16, 1912

Dearest Emily,

It’s late and I need to get some shut-eye, but I couldn’t go to sleep without writing you.

I said prayers for you, and me, tonight. I’ve only been gone a few days, but I’ve been thinking a lot about you and any future we may have together should the good Lord so smile on me.

Believe me when I say I have you on my mind every day, even though I’m playing ball and seeming to have a good time with the fellas. I miss you terribly, Em.

Playing ball is a lot of work for a few bucks, if you can imagine. Ole Moley works us hard. If we’re not playing, we’re practicing. He’s called for an early practice in the morning before we travel.

Guess I can’t blame the guy. Scully pitched a no-hitter against the Atlanta Crackers tonight. Moley said we must keep the winning fires stoked.

We sleep in run-down motels and even on the ball fields. It rained a week straight and we had to sleep in the jitney. Moley found a nice lady to rent us a room for a hot bath after we’d only washed in a pail for ten days. Don’t have to tell you how ripe we all smelt.

What other news can I share? Sure wish I could hear from you so I could talk about your world a bit. Milton’s girlfriend wrote that she was engaged to another man. Poor worm. He moped around pretty good until we got to the ballpark and several pretties were waiting at the ticket booth. He forgot his old gal right quick.

But don’t worry, Emily, my eyes are only for you. Say, when you write me, can you send along a new photograph? The one I had of you was destroyed when the jitney sank in a mud hole up to the chassis and we had to dig the old girl out. The roads in Tennessee aren’t as good as the slag roads in Birmingham.

But you already know that, since your father financed the limestone mine that makes the slag.

My birthday was yesterday. Did you remember? I hope you sent me a birthday greeting on the wind. I craved my mama’s cake. I remember the last one she made for my sixteenth birthday, right before she died.

I’d say more if I knew what you were doing these days. Say hello to the folks there for me.

Remember the first night we met in the campus library? My buddies were cutting up, not paying any mind to the rules, talking mischief. You shot fire at us with your dark eyes. I said to my roommate as we walked back to our dorm, “I’m going to marry that girl.” I meant it. I’ll spend all my life making you happy. If you want me.

One final note, some of the boys and I attended church on Sunday. The preacher was a bit heavy on the hellfire and brimstone, but it got to Scully. He ran down to the altar when the call was made. For me, I just remembered why I love Him. And you.

All my love and affection,
Daniel

Emily folded the letter back into the envelope, not sure what or how to feel. Schoolboy folderol, most of it. Spend his life making her happy. Goodness. What a childish declaration. Daniel should know better since he’s a grown man.

Stuffing the letter back in the box, Emily slammed the lid shut, her engagement ring pinging against the wood, and shoved the box under her bed, way back, against the wall.

She was engaged. Why, she was practically stepping out on her intended, reading another man’s love letters. How could she be so untrue to Phillip mere hours after accepting his ring?

Emily readied for bed, then sank to her knees, where she said her prayers every night. But instead of closing her eyes, she reached under the mattress for the leather diary where she poured out her heart to Daniel when he first left with the Barons.