Our Bridal Shop

Chapter 1 - Alex

Weddings don't wait for death; you have to get on with the living.

That's what Alexandra March's mother would have said had she not been in the earth beneath her feet. Fat, ambitious blades of grass tangled and clawed from the dirt, dusted with the rarest of phenomenon in lower Mississippi: snow.

Hell had, in fact, frozen over.

Beside her, Alex's sister Charlotte mined her purse for a tissue and settled on one of those congealed bundles that only mothers ignore. Six weeks on and she still unraveled. Alex supposed it was what came from being the youngest, the one who didn't get out of town, the one who dutifully fit brides into their dresses at the family bridal shop, Match Made in Devon, even though that dream had been their mother's happily ever after. Charlotte was also the one who had walked through the front door of their childhood home one week before Christmas—as she had nearly every day for the past thirty-five years—saw Mama's red boots on the linoleum at all the wrong angles and dropped two dozen eggs at once. Heart attack, they said. Alex knew better. Had there been such a thing as functional-grief syndrome, Stella Irene March would have died from it. Maybe it would have taken them all.

"The flowers are beautiful," Alex said.

Daisies dyed artificial purple. A clearance-rack bridesmaid's dress against a landscape of virgin lace. Slipped into the tubular stone appendage Charlotte insisted they add to their parents' tombstone as a flower receptacle. It looks like an erection, Alex had whispered in her sister's ear at the funeral home over their ala carte grief menu, to which Charlotte had promptly pressed a well-aimed heel into the leather toe of Alex's Guiseppe Beneventi boot.

"They're hideous. All they had at the F—F—oooood Saver." Charlotte's thick drawl navigated her grief like a hummingbird landing in molasses. "Said delivery drivers got wind of the snow and turned right back toward Alabama."

Alex put a stiff arm around her sister. At the gesture, Charlotte disintegrated into grand, hiccupping gasps. Wet bubbles of words that required subtitles. Alex pulled her close, rested her cheek against her sister's chilled, blonde strands. Charlotte was dressed in thin layers, a reluctance to accept the cold bite of snow. She had always been like that. Believing in something to make it so. Ill-prepared for what the world outside Devon brought her but always warm, like summer. Unlike Alex, who was nothing but winter inside.

As she held her sister, Alex realized she hadn't touched anyone since the guy from Wooster, Gary—or was it Grady? He'd had a mass of curly brown hair, a doctorate degree and a taste for pretentious music. She thought his penchant for social causes might reach past her numbness, catch her unaware and shine a light in her dormant corners. Mostly, Gary just reminded her of a wheel of Brie, in more ways than one. But this...this felt closer. Less screaming into a blinding whiteout. More the promise of a thaw.

And the reason Alex needed to be back on a plane to Boston.

Alex broke the embrace. Charlotte straightened and returned to herself as silence settled around them.

"We should go," said Alex. "The lawyer is expecting us in fifteen minutes."

Charlotte blew her nose, dabbed at her lashes, and returned the tissue to her purse. "Bless his heart. Clement Grant, Esquire, would be late to his own birthday buffet. Doesn't take but five minutes, anyway. This ain't Boston."

No. Devon, Mississippi, population four thousand, muddy truck and cheese grits capital of the world, home to a man who had convinced the town of his importance by whispering Esquire after his name like some kind of gassy punctuation, most certainly wasn't Boston.

"I still don't see why he insisted on a personal meeting. Hasn't he heard of couriers and video calls?"

Charlotte's expression shifted ever so slightly, a master of southern woman decorum to hide judgment. One favorite but unuttered word from her lips—typical—rushed to mind.