Our Bridal Shop

Chapter 4 - Alex

Alex stood eye to eye with a wreath of human hair. Gray. Curled and pinned like a shampoo set down at the Nearer My Shears To Thee hair salon. As big as a Christmas decoration for the front door.

Seven hundred square feet of unused second-floor retail space and Mama had filled it with a menagerie of artifacts better suited to the wax museum of the bizarre. No wonder she had been on the verge of bankruptcy.

The bones of the space were incredible: natural light streaming in from a three-panel skylight in the roof, stuffy in summer, but in January, welcome; original exposed red brick; sturdy oak railings and dormers, sanded and constructed with craftsmanship and detail that modern-day architecture lacked; a hardwood floor distressed the natural way from a hundred years of foot traffic. With enough white introduced into the space, it would strike the perfect balance between rustic and modern—a sweet spot with southern customers.

At the very least, a good clean-out would get top asking price.

But what to do with the photos? The handwritten notes? The objects? Someone in town must be sentimental enough to get these items back to their owners. Her gaze drifted back to the wreath. Not even the best nana in the world could drum up the nostalgia required to transport that dust-catcher.

Back when the building had been a bar, the owner had spun a tale about how every single bride in his family, dating all the way back to Ireland, had fastened a token of significance to the underpinning of their dresses on their wedding day—a charm, a note, a ribbon, something. Every one of the women, eighteen in all, had claimed the custom brought them good strong marriages because of it. The objects were handed down through the years, eventually stored in the bar's loft for safekeeping, and the superstition became part of the building's history. Subsequently, March family history.

Stella Irene and Elias had heard the tale in the bar that night.

Word spread that brides who purchased their dress here and visited the second floor to read the advice and see the artifacts of the couples who had taken vows before them were guaranteed good strong marriages, the way the Irish women experienced years ago. To date, the Match Made in Devon legend hadn't been refuted. Not once. If any of the unions ever ended in divorce, no one was talking.

Alex looked closer and found Charlotte and Nash's contribution: a red bandana knotted in a circle, a photo, and a story about the day she brought it to him on his tractor in the field along with a glass of sweet tea, and their "secret." Always touch toes at night. Even if you go to bed spittin' mad, it's a reminder that you're there, that you love each other, no matter what. She gravitated down the wall, strangers and relationships that had happened in the twenty years since she'd left.

One wedding photo stopped her. Jonah. His face thinner than it had been during their summers together, his body more fleshed beneath the tuxedo. Beside him, a lithe brunette: hourglass-shaped in creamy white, wavy strands of carefree hair loosened from the up-do, flawless teeth, her mouth opened wide in laughter, everything about her image kind and warm and full of life. An adjacent photo showed the same woman holding a newborn baby.

A pick wedged itself in Alex's ribs, cold and brutal. The pressure expanded to her lungs, her stomach, threatening new icy fissures of grief where she had only just begun to heal. She tried not to look at the offering—the handwritten note in immaculate, bullet-journal-worthy script that ended in the words, Slow dance every chance you get. Life is precious. Alex bruised with the weight of the details, things Mama had not told her that night when she had called at Christmas to relay news of his wife's death. Alex wanted to sit, but for all the objects in the godforsaken shrine to marriage, not one of them was a chair.