Our Bridal Shop

Chapter 21 - Alex

She selected the ruins because they were perfect. Elias March believed the greatest architecture was that of the mind. Said so on more than one occasion. Alex believed the mind could be a cold place, imperfect and unreliable. She far preferred the symmetry, the power, the absolute command of Greek revival—both of a time and timeless. And of course, she had been deflowered here. Daddy would have hated that about Kingsley. It's why she'd chosen it to read her father's final words. Leveraged the game a bit.

The storm was his chess move. An answer. Her fortune, to bring out the imperfections in everyone and everything. Michael and Jonah couldn't run away fast enough. A long line of lovers who were what she desired for a time but who monstered out flaws in the light of day. One sister who filled her peg at home at the expense of dreams she never dared and another who had practically inflicted self-harm on her quest for answers Alex refused to give. And a faithful companion who couldn't hold on for her, no matter how much she loved him.

Then there was her. Always making the wrong choices. Recycling shortcomings as if they wouldn't repeat the next season. She ran the day she found out she carried Jonah's child, no more than a child herself. And she ran on this day, the day she found out she carried Michael's child. This time, she hadn't fallen.

Not yet.

The sign was new: Danger. Unstable Ruins. Crude under-bricks showed through in some of the concrete's bare spots. Still, she had climbed the stairs, what was left of them. That was before the rain. The columns stood guard as she sat, pressed her back to one ornate pedestal, and opened the letter.

Daddy sat beside her. He wore a mechanic's jumpsuit, smeared with grease, the name Elias in script embroidered on a front patch. A traveling circus mechanic. The first time he hadn't appeared as a salesman in a blue button-down and tie.

"I like it here." He surveyed the grounds from their high perch. "Never did bring your mother."

"You didn't love her enough. She watched the trailer after you left. You should have stayed."

Alex didn't normally speak to him that way, not even in death. But they were at the top ledge of the grand staircase to nowhere, the heavens starting their pour. Didn't really seem the time for dancing around truths.

"I should have. For all the puzzles we solved, I never got that one right."

She pulled her raincoat hood over her head, low across her brow to retreat into shadow. The rain drenched Daddy immensely yet not at all.

"Charlotte and I were on the balcony for nights on end, under that stupid carousel blanket you gave her because she thought the horses were magical, waiting for you to come back. She asked me to tell her Evangeline's story at least a hundred times. I changed the ending. Didn't have the heart to tell that after a lifetime apart, Gabriel died in Evangeline's arms, and it was too late."

"Our story ended differently. It wasn't too late."

He had stayed away for so long. Alex had so much to ask but the storm, the watershed moment, wouldn't last.

"Why did you drive to Georgia?"

"Georgia was the answer in the newspaper crossword I held that day. Something about Stone Mountain...I don't recall now. Seemed like a sign."

"And the sea?"

"I drove until the roads ended."

"And that restaurant?"

"Only light in a storm."

Alex recalled Charlotte being afraid of the dark, insisting on flashlights those sixteen nights on the balcony. "No, Daddy. Not the only light."