I stopped. “You do?”
“Yep.”
“For fun, right? You make up your own songs?”
“I do make up my own songs.”
“Ah. Sing me one.”
“I did. I sang you a few.”
I put my fork down, hard as it was to stop eating that scrumptious French toast with powdered sugar. “I am not understanding this.”
“The songs I sang you, I wrote.”
More confusion. “But those songs are sung by huge country stars.”
“I guess they want to sing my words.”
I couldn’t get a grip on this one. “Are you kidding?”
“Nope. I’m not.”
Seeing my shock, he stood up and brought over his laptop. He typed in his name and millions of hits came up, along with photos of him.
Reece O’Brien was a famous country music songwriter.
“You didn’t Google me, did you?” he asked.
Oh. My. Golly. There he was. “No, I didn’t.”
“I Googled you. I love your website, June, the photos of all the wedding dresses, bridesmaids’ dresses, you, Estelle, Leoni, your studio. Can I see it soon? I feel like I’ve been able to take a step into your mind through your studio, but I want to know more, how it works, how you think—”
“Thank you, but—” I ran my hands through my hair. “You’re a country songwriter.”
“Yes.”
“Is that why you’re here? You came to write? I would think you would live in Nashville or L.A.”
“I’m in and out of both cities, and I do go to my ranch. I came here for new scenery, but for the first time in my life I find myself distracted.” He leaned toward me and I caught my breath.
“Want to hear my next song, June?”
“Yes, of course.” I couldn’t quite believe this one, my mind all baffled up. He wrote country songs?
Reece went into the house, came back with his guitar, and strummed.
The song had an upbeat melody, a
come and clap your hands to this one
tune. It was about a woman with blond locks who wore lace and loved tide pools, sunsets, and watching the weather roll over the waves. She believed that getting up early in the morning should be illegal. She had a temper.
His baritone voice rolled over and around me, snug and huggable, then burrowed deep, deep inside.
“What do you think?” he asked, and I could tell he cared. He cared what I thought of his song.
I was so touched, I could hardly get my throat to work. “I think that the woman with blond locks who wears lace and loves sunsets will love it.”
He was silent for a second and we had one of those moments, close, raw, and romantic, where we were the only two people at the beach, the only two people anywhere.
“Good. I want her to love it.”
“She does.” I tried to catch my breath.
“June.” He threaded his fingers between mine. “He loves it, too.”
My soul did a heel-kicking dance, a rush of joy tripped around my body, and tears flooded my eyes.
And there we sat, the sunset a grand artist’s display, our French toast covered in syrup and powdered sugar.
“Are you almost ready, June?” Mr. Schone said, his voice crackling with age over the phone.
I love Mr. Schone, Mrs. Schone, too, although I dreaded his calls. They own the blue cottage that I’ve been renting. They live up the street. I hike up once a week to check on them. I recently brought Mrs. Schone swatches of intricate lace for her tables because she loves them.
“I am so sorry to press you on this one, my dear, but my begonia is not feeling well, and I do need to get her off the coast by winter ...”
His “begonia” was his wife of sixty years. Mrs. Schone needed to move. Her health wasn’t good. She was one of the kindest people I have ever met, but she was weak and frail and they wanted to be near their two daughters who lived down south.
“Mr. Schone, I am so sorry, but I don’t have enough money to buy this house.” Even saying the words aloud, which I’d said to him several times, hurt. I wanted my blue cottage. I loved the creaking staircase, huge windows, the deck outside, and the flat roof over the garage that I sat on underneath a red-and-white–striped umbrella. It was the home of my heart, but I didn’t have near enough money to buy it without the equity from my Portland house. “Please put it up for sale with a realtor. I’ll get it cleaned and organized so you can move.”
“Keep trying, my dear, keep trying. We can wait a few months. You’re who we want to sell the house to. My begonia wants to know that you’ll be in our home, it makes her happy... .”
I wanted to make the begonia happy, too.
I so did. For her, and for me. We hung up after a few minutes.
I hoped they called the realtor. I would lose the house to someone else, but they needed to move. I thought of Mrs. Schone. I would make her a lace wrap for her shoulders. She would feel pretty in that.
“Hi, June,” Morgan said, her NASA helmet on her head. “I’m going to read you some information on spaceships while you sew.”
“Superb. I can always learn more.”
She put down her pen and clipboard. “You know, June, I don’t fit in with the other kids at school.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever fit in, kiddo.” I gave her a hug. “Don’t try to fit in. Be yourself. List ten things you like about yourself. If you force yourself to be someone you’re not, you will be one unhappy caterpillar.”
“Yeah. I know.” She fiddled with her white space gloves. “A lot of the other kids have dads.”
“They do. But you have the coolest mother on the planet.”
“She is pretty cool. Do you think my dad would like me if he saw me again?”
“Definitely. What’s more important is, do you think you would like
him
?”
She didn’t say anything for a minute. “I don’t know. He left us. I’m going to have to think about that.”
“Okay.” I hurt to see Morgan hurt. What hurt the most was seeing her emotional dependence on a father who had skipped out of town, oblivious to the demolition he had brought to her life. He did not deserve her adolation. “Remember that supersmart kids like you can open the door to a world filled with adventure. Like the adventures you’ll have at NASA. Now, tell me about the wings of a space shuttle.”
“It’s incredible,” he said, his voice low. “Incredible.”
Reece the chariot rider sat on a stool in the middle of my yellow studio. My French doors were open, the stars up and twinkling over the crashing waves, the lights of two fishing boats flashing in the distance.
“I am absolutely in awe, June.”
Amidst the lace, flounce, silkiness, and sewing machines he looked steamrollingly masculine. Hard-core man. Sexy and huge. He was a manly man in a woman’s territory, yet in some incongruous way ... he fit in.
“I ... well, I have to be around color.” I thought of the colors in the home I shared with Grayson: Beige. Black. Soul-deadening. “Color helps me to think, and bright and interesting things—whether they’re bird nests or a collection of odd teapots—help me create.”
“I understand. I do.” He nodded, and I knew he
did
understand. We’re both creative; he
got
it.
“You are amazingly talented, June. This whole studio, these dresses ...” He shook his head, indicating the mannequins that were draped with August’s wedding dress and our bridesmaids’ dresses. “Wow. That’s all I can say, wow. How do you make a wedding dress?”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, I want to know.”
“But you’re a ... you’re a man.”
“Yes. Last time I looked.” He ran a hand through that thick blondish hair. “Could have changed on the long walk over from my place to yours, but I think not. Shall I check?”
Whew! Another graphic image! I shut that one out.
“No, no checking.” I took a wobbly breath. “Okay, I’ll make it short, don’t want to bore you right out of your skull.”
“I won’t be bored. Start with what you do when someone calls and wants a wedding dress.”
I told him. I watched him closely for signs of nauseating boredom and acute distress. I watched to make sure his eyes didn’t glaze over and he didn’t fall asleep, his head banging on my work table. None of that occurred. He wanted to know how my ideas sparked to life, how I worked, thought, imagined. The conversation was a huge turn-on.
Grayson hadn’t even wanted to know about my sewing, calling it “June’s 1950s backwards housewife hobby.”
“To launch my company, I sewed straight through for weeks until my eyes were burning, my body a limp noodle from exhaustion. I designed a traditional, exquisite white wedding gown, then three nontraditional, eye-popping sorts of wedding gowns, and August, September, my mom, and I modeled them for a professional fashion photographer. I threw a humongous amount of money at advertising, online and in print, and I was, miraculously, soon in business.”
“But why wedding dresses? You were divorcing at the time.”
“I love the love, the passion for each other, the eternal hope that this couple could get married and stay together, possibly for seventy years. They could have a love like my parents’ love. A love for forever. I want to make a dress for the bride that reflects her, her personality, her new life, and that shining hope.”
“They’re perfect. Like nothing I’ve ever seen before.” He closed one of my bridal scrapbooks. He’d studied every dress.
“On my wedding day I was wearing a regular suit.” I tried to sound offhand, but it hurt.
Still.
I bit my lip.
Why did I say anything at all?
“You were wearing a regular suit?” Reece was aghast, his mouth open, eyes confused.
“Yep. A suit.” I thought of that suit. It wasn’t even my favorite suit. It was my fifth favorite suit. It was beige. I had left it behind when I left Grayson behind.
“
Why?”
“Because we were married at the courthouse.”
He hardly knew what to do with that one, his face frozen in shock. “Why did you get married at the courthouse?”
“Because it was convenient.”
“
Convenient?
What the hell does ‘convenient’ have to do with a wedding?”
“We were busy. We worked a lot. We were married on our lunch hour.”
“On your lunch hour? You’ve got to be kidding.” Reece’s disbelieving, appalled expression was enough to tell me what he thought about that.
“No.” Grayson had been late. He’d hurried up the steps. He was in trial, buried in work, didn’t “have time” for a nice wedding. “And they’re so expensive, June. A fortune. I don’t want to spend all that money. The result is the same, right? We’re married. But this’ll cost almost nothing and we’re done.”
Done.
Yep. We were
done.
I remembered standing in front of the judge. I knew the judge. Grayson had forgotten my flowers.
“You forgot the flowers?” Judge Allery admonished Grayson.
Grayson blushed.
I said it was okay.
Judge Allery was absolutely flabbergasted. “It’s not okay.
No flowers?
”
And yet, that was the least of what we were missing.
“Do you have the ring?” Judge Allery cocked an eyebrow at Grayson, as if he thought there was a distinct possibility that the brick in front of him had forgotten that, too.
“Of course!” Grayson puffed up and displayed our rings. Two thin gold bands. Inexpensive. “I’ll buy you a diamond later, June. I don’t have time now. We’ll shop together,” he’d said. I never had a diamond ring. It wasn’t the diamond I wanted, it was the care and thought behind it and the fact that he had not kept his word that was the problem.
We were married.
It was done.
The judge spoke very slowly during our vows and stared hard at me. He later told me that he knew Grayson, knew me, and hadn’t a clue why I was marrying him. “A pigeon had clearly plucked your brain out of your head without you noticing,” he’d admonished over a shared beer at a bar.
“My parents were appalled,” I told Reece. “So was the rest of our Scottish clan.”
“I bet they were. Weddings are for families. The whole thing is sad, June, and I’m getting all ticked off at your ex again.” He stood up and stalked around the studio, his cheekbones flushed. “A courthouse! At your lunch break? Damn. He didn’t care, did he? He wasn’t thinking of you at all.” He ran a hand in frustration over his hair. “That had to hurt you so much, and yet you make wedding dresses.”
“Late at night, when I was still married to Grayson, I started sketching wedding dresses, dress after dress, with colored pencils. I know it was wedding dress therapy. As the marriage became, for me, more and more sad, I worked out my grief, my loneliness, my anger at him and at myself, through drawing. I lost myself in that marriage, but I’d really been lost for years.