Our Bridal Shop

Chapter 5 - Freesia

Freesia's mother had once told her an African tale about a girl named Eshe who gathered fruit at the edge of a jungle. The ground had shook and Eshe heard a throbbing, haunting sound coming from inside the forbidden brush. Unable to think of anything but finding the source of the noise, Eshe navigated crowded vines and bushes until she arrived at a clearing where a lion pounded his paws on a drum. Every animal danced. Eshe held a nearby tree to keep from dancing, for she knew she didn't belong and feared the animals may turn on her. When Eshe returned to her village, she told them of a place with the most amazing sounds, a place where animals danced. No one believed Eshe. As punishment for lying, she was banished to the jungle. Go, dance with your animals, they mocked.

In her mother's version of the story, Eshe stole the lion's drum, brought it back to the village, and proved she had not lied by playing the instrument's irresistible notes.

In Freesia's twenty-eight-year-old version, Eshe left behind the villagers who had wronged her and spent the rest of her days trying to let go of that tree.

And she wove badass clothes out of jungle fronds.

Since the moment Stella Irene March showed up on Freesia's doorstep six months ago, materialized from the salty past with a story of how she intended to do right by her, Freesia had flirted with the notion that doing right had something to do with Match Made in Devon.

Now that she was here, with townspeople who put eyes on her everywhere and stuffed their mouths with deep-fried gossip, in a space where the idea of her threatened two women's fragile truths, Freesia wasn't so sure.

Her fingertips skimmed the intricate weave of a gown's silk bodice. She liked the detail, the intent, but nothing else about the garment. Mostly, she hated it because she had hung the heavy thing back on the hangar no less than ten times since she agreed to help Charlotte at the bridal shop. Even Coco Chanel would hate her pearl strands if forced to handle them all day, every day. Freesia didn't belong here. The animals of the bridal jungle believed virginal-white crepe was the textile of love. Freesia held tight to the belief that the material of love should reflect the material of life—colors, frays, accessories picked up as a tourist of the world, culturally-embracing patterns inspired by nature, sometimes messy and chaotic, brilliantly complex in minutiae and extravagantly simple as a whole.

All day, the shop had been sleepy. Comatose, really. A state Freesia believed was business as usual. Alexandra March may have been coarse-grit sandpaper when it came to news of her father's infidelity, but her business instincts were smooth. The shop was dying. As much as Freesia loved clothes, the idea of clothes, the passion in Stella Irene's eyes when she spoke of the place and the crazy-sharp way the woman made her believe there might be something for her in Devon—Freesia would be gone inside one week. Answers, it seemed, were as rare around here as apologies.

Past midday, two young women paused at the display window and breezed into the shop.

"I must have that," said one, pointing at Freesia as if she were for sale.

The excited woman had coppery pixie hair, kind eyes, and the broad features Freesia had come to identify with Mississippi women. She took Freesia's skirt in hand and stood back as if parting a theater curtain to reveal something grand.

Your clothes, Freesia. Not you.

Freesia glanced down to remember what she wore: a bodice of berry-dyed beading with a keyhole neckline that she had crafted alongside a woman in Liberia, ethereal bell sleeves, and a cream-colored Spanish boho fabric with symmetrical, hand-stitched knots that she had picked up in a Pamplona market.

The pixie apologized for the ambush but not the sentiment. "Tell me you have another one on the racks. I've been to a million bridal stores...."

"Million," echoed her friend, her voice nearly a match, who—now that Freesia had a good look at her face—could pass as a twin with a diminutive stud in her nose and a different bottle of color-rinse. Deep burgundy, almost purple.