I could not have said anything worse.
He paled, he teared up, he hugged my trembling, lonely body close. The door shut, so quietly, behind him.
He left the next morning and took all the sunshine in my life with him.
Mr. Schone called again the next day.
“Put it up for sale, Mr. Schone. Please. I am so sorry. I will not be able to buy the house.”
“It’s definite then, dear?”
“It’s definite. Did Mrs. Schone like the lace shawl I made her?”
“She adores it. We’ll wait a little longer, June, I think your ship will come in.”
“I hope so, Mr. Schone, I hope so.”
I did not see any ship on my horizon at all. Only drowned seaweed.
I slumped quickly into emotional darkness. We were buried in work; I worked fourteen hours a day and walked for one hour on the beach where I continued my search for whole black butterfly shells. I never found any. I made Morgan and Leoni matching lace skirts and Estelle a lace shirt.
I dreamed of Reece running toward me and I was running away and he was swallowed by a wave.
As the weeks turned into months, he never left my thoughts. My mind was a morass of liquid, seeping pain.
And it seemed to get worse.
The
Couture Fashion
magazine article came out with a huge photo spread of my wedding dresses. “June’s Lace and Flounces,” was written, banner style, across the top. The article was about two thousand words, detailing my journey from being an unhappy lawyer in Portland to a happy wedding dress designer at the beach. There were photos of Estelle, Leoni, and me, and photos of my studio.
Virginia Bescotti, the reporter with the red-rimmed eyeglasses and the smacking gum, wrote exquisitely about each of twelve dresses. She had picked some of my favorites.
“If you insist on wearing a personal work of art for your wedding dress, June is your gal,” Virginia wrote. “She will be the premiere wedding gown designer in this country ...”
I was, overnight, overflowing with work, requests for interviews, and asked to be a guest on a couple of television shows. I would soon be able to buy the house. I would be able to give Leoni and Estelle a raise. We would have to hire a boatload of people. I had made it. I had made the business of my dreams.
I was so, so unutterably miserable. Loneliness sank into my bones.
“I’m not scared to be an astronaut,” Morgan told us on a sunny day at the beach, the kite flyers out, along with three surfers and a bunch of kids. She pushed the black visor of her NASA helmet up. “I can do it. I know I can.”
“I know you can, too,” I told her.
“You’re going to be the first person to Mars, you gutsy, fire-breathing girl,” Estelle told her.
“Morgan,” Leoni said, “tell Miss June and Miss Estelle your good news.”
“I’m going to,” Morgan said. “I was waiting until June stopped crying.”
I wiped the tears off my cheeks. “Honey, I’m fine. Tell us the good news!” I smiled at her. I hadn’t even known she knew I was quietly crying.
“Here goes, space astronaut friends,” Morgan said, digging in her backpack. “It’s not a letter from my dad, you probably thought it was.”
We didn’t say anything. I refuse to offer false hope to anyone, even a child. It’s dishonest and wrong and only prolongs the harsh truth.
“Look what I got in the mail!” Morgan held up a large, white envelope. “Yep.” She smiled. “NASA wrote me a letter and sent me a whole bunch of astronaut stuff.”
“Wow!” I was quite impressed.
“Well, I’ll be double damned,” Estelle said. “Double or triple.”
“They liked my pictures of the inside of the next shuttle and a new astronaut suit,” Morgan read. She tilted her chin up, proud as can be. “Yessiree, I’m going to be Morgan Halls, astronaut, for the United States of America.” She gave a toothy grin to the three of us as we applauded. “You three are going to be proud of me.”
“We sure are, sugar.” I hugged her close. “But we’re already proud of you.”
She took off her helmet. “This is what I get now. I’m different. I’m always gonna be different, but the kids at school don’t bug me so much anymore. I think it’s because they know I don’t care. I know I’m not a freakoid, I’m just Morgan. And,” she put her little fists in the air, “I won the spelling bee! I spelled ‘aeronautics’!”
“What are you doing here?”
I wasn’t even angry. I was exhausted to the bone, as if I was ill. My heart had cracked and I was so lonely I thought it would eat me alive and spit me out.
“I came to see you.”
“Why, Grayson?”
“Can I come in?”
“No. You may not.” I crossed my arms, sickened that I even had to look at him. I was in front of my garage, and I wasn’t moving. His Porsche was in front of the house and I wanted to bomb it.
“I want to see where you’re living, where June’s Lace and Flounces is.”
“I’m not going to show you it.”
He stared off into the distance, at the ocean, before those cold eyes swung back to me. Only this time, in their depths, I could see something else. Was it ...
pain
? “You would rather shut down a company that you built from scratch rather than have me involved in any part of it, is that right?”
“That’s right. June’s Lace does not involve you.”
He pondered that. “Who was the man at August’s wedding who punched me, June?”
His face was tight and pinched. He resembled a muskrat chewing a lemon. I wondered how I ever could have been attracted to him in the first place. “It’s no one to you, Grayson.” Tears ripped along my eyes.
“It’s someone to me. You’re involved with him, we’re still married—”
“I could have been divorced from you long ago, but you ...” I clenched my teeth tight. “All these months, all this misery, all this stress, all this money, out the door because you wouldn’t let me go, you wouldn’t sign the papers, you fought. And now,” I took a deep, deep breath. I wondered if I was going to lose my mind, my grief over losing Reece about knocking me to my knees. I put a hand out and leaned against my blue cottage so I wouldn’t fall over. “How much longer are you going to wait this out? To fight it? We are over. You win. I give up.” I hated giving up. That’s what I’d done in my marriage, but I couldn’t fight any longer. Many things in life are much more important than money. Sanity, for one.
“Who is he?”
“He’s who I want to be with. He’s who I want to marry. He’s the man that I love. I am so in love with him I can hardly think straight. Now, get off my property before I call the police.” I turned and forced myself to wobble into the house, slammed my door, and reached for my phone to call the police.
Before I could dial, a blue folder slid under the door.
I heard Grayson’s voice, broken. “Good-bye, June. I’m sorry.”
There was a pause.
“I am sorry, June.”
And there it was: my divorce. Signed, sealed, and shoved under the door.
He had also signed off on June’s Lace and Flounces; he would make no claim to my business now or in the future. Inside was a check that would equal my half of the house.
For once in his life, Grayson had done the right thing.
I banged up the stairs and threw my arms in the air. “We’re in business, ladies!”
“Yadala-hoo-hoo,” Estelle said. “Being such a spry chicken myself, I love working twelve hours a day.”
“I’m so happy!” Leoni said. “You should see the order that came in while you were outside. It’s a zoologist getting married to a zookeeper! Animals all around.”
“Cool,” Morgan said to me, taking her helmet off. “Your business is almost as cool as being an astronaut.”
Four Things I’m Worried About
1.
I am worried that I have lost Reece forever.
2.
I am worried that I will never be happy without Reece.
3.
I am worried that I will be too emotionally whipped up and scared to try again with Reece.
4.
Morgan. Still. I will give her more jobs to do and take her to tea.
I played online Scrabble for an hour that night. I spelled these words: “cattle,” “love,” “mine.”
I lost.
Again.
I ate a chocolate doughnut with sprinkles. Okay. I had two.
C
HAPTER
11
“That’s a pretty song,” Leoni murmured the next morning. She turned the radio up.
I listened with half an ear. I hadn’t slept all night, my mind whirling. My divorce would be official soon. I could go to Reece if I had the guts. Would he still want me? Had I ruined things forever? Had he found someone else?
I heard the country singer croon about holding the hand of the woman he loved, in front of a bonfire at the beach, neither teenagers anymore, but they had wisdom and grace, and knew enough to know their love was enough to sail them around the moon.
Leoni’s mouth gaped. “Didn’t you have bonfires with Reece?”
My mouth gaped, too. “Nah, it’s not about me.”
“Check it out, June.”
I darted to my computer with Leoni and Estelle breathing down my neck and clicked on the singer’s website.
“Look, look,” Leoni said. She pointed to a song and I clicked on it.
“Bonfire Beaches” written by Reece O’Brien.
She scrolled down. “Look, June.”
Two other songs, written by Reece O’Brien.
We read the lyrics.
One was about a woman who sewed wedding dresses she would never wear, in blues and pinks and greens, she lived over a mountain in a house by the sea.
The other was about a runaway woman by the name of June, who ran as fast as she could away from love. He chased her, he could never catch up.
“You need to get your butt to eastern Oregon and hunt down that rancher singer,” Estelle said. “You’ve found yourself, haven’t you, and without using a slew of philosophical mumbo-jumbo junk words, you
know
June.”
I did. I knew June again. And I knew that Reece was right for me. We were an
us
.
“I wouldn’t turn down love, June,” Leoni said. “This is the right kind of love from the right kind of man.” She got teary and sniffled. “You’ve been so miserable since he left.”
“It’s like working with a jar full of depression, with two pinches of misery thrown in,” Estelle said. “Socked in the gut, hit in the groin.”
“Love, love, love,” Leoni said. “Oh, it’s all about love. Go get it, June. It’s here. Don’t lose it.”
I ran for my suitcase.
The drive to eastern Oregon, from the beach, was going to be a long one. I drove for two hours, through the winding mountains, back onto a flat road, towering pine trees on either side, small towns ... then I received a call and pulled off to the side of the road to answer it. I am so glad I did.
“June.”
Oh, how that voice tingled me all over. “Reece.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m ...” Oh, how embarrassing. But still. I had nothing to lose. My pride would shortly be in shreds. “I’m driving to your place in eastern Oregon. I thought I’d try a little rodeoing.”
I heard him laugh.
“What? What’s so funny?” I felt a fog, a black and clingy fog, start to lift from my heart.
“You’re going to my home in eastern Oregon?”
“Yes, Reece. I have to talk to you, to apologize, I am so sorry.”
“Babe, I understand, I do.”
“You do?”
“Yes. June,” he said. “Come on home.”
“What?”
“Come on home. I’m already at your beach house.”
We met near the tide pools where we’d met the first time, when he’d yanked my tumbling body out of the wet claws of the ocean.
This was my favorite part of the beach. It was almost always deserted. The white-gold light was different here, as if it was specially made for only this corner of the Earth. The rays flowed down from the sun in columns. They sparkled, they shimmered, they glowed. I had spent a lot of time crying in that corner of the beach, a lot of time thinking, reflecting. Sometimes I brought my sketchbook, my colored pencils, my pens, and I wrote and I thought.
Today, though, I brought none of it. He was waiting when I arrived, standing tall, and smiling, the orange-and-red sunset framing him, his smile broad and welcoming.
When he held out his arms, I flew straight on in.
“I love you, Reece.”
“I love you, June. From the first day I met you until forever, I will love you.”
He laughed, and I laughed, our laughter floating around the waves, over the rocks, up to the sky where the sun was a dollop of gold and the sky was shooting flames of purple.
“Look at that cloud, June.”
I tilted my head up. “Oh, my gosh,” I breathed.
“It’s a butterfly,” Reece said.
Yep. It was. A cloud shaped like a butterfly.
I figured it was a sign to kiss that man silly. So I did.