Wasn’t it?
Bri remembered that light halo. Remembered how stray hairs from her mother’s hastily swept back braid shone silver in the sun. She thought her mom had looked like an angel.
The memory was real—as real as the foreign stamp on the back of the envelope. But if Bri was old enough to remember, then she must have been at least five years old, maybe six.
Her father had been back for years by then.
She stared at the letter—the one with the smudged initials—until her eyes blurred. T.R. The initials didn’t ring a bell. She closed her eyes and racked her brain for any explanation other than the one she feared, but she came up empty.
Until another memory surfaced. Her father, yelling. A slammed bedroom door. Her mother’s whispered pleas from the hallway into the wood. Mascara smears on her cheeks. Her expression transforming into a forced smile as she caught Bri watching from the bathroom doorway down the hall. She remembered those mascara smudges, just as vividly as she remembered the light halo.
Why hadn’t she remembered until now?
She had to be mistaken. Her parents didn’t fight. Her dad could get tense sometimes, but her mother always worked her soothing magic on him. Besides, that was never personal. It was over work or their tight finances. Of course he’d get stressed out at times, carrying the responsibility of a family and dealing with grief from the loss of his dad. No one was perfect. They’d loved each other fiercely—until the day they died. Together.
So why the sudden memories of foreign mail and smeared makeup?
Bri gathered the letters together and stood, not wanting to look further. She must be projecting her emotional state onto her past. Those memories weren’t real—she was probably just imagining them to explain her fears. Her parents’ love story was one for the books. She refused to let one little smudge change that.
Relieved the unnecessary burden was now behind her, Bri knelt before the trunk and tucked the letters carefully back into place. She probably shouldn’t come up here again for a while. She needed to give her mind a break, get past Casey’s wedding and the fate of the Pastry Puff—and Gerard’s pending departure—and leave history alone for a bit.
Bri squinted into the trunk. To avoid the temptation to pull the letters out again soon, she really should bury them deeper. If they were harder to get to, maybe she wouldn’t bother with them for a while—or at least it’d give her the chance to change her mind if she opened the trunk.
She quickly pulled out a folded patchwork quilt and a handful of books, then two worn shoeboxes. She’d stick the letters in the shoebox for protection, then put everything else on top.
Bri slid off the lid of the shoebox—the one containing her mother’s old handkerchiefs and lace table doilies—and shifted the contents to make room for the stack of bundled letters. A faded, yellow photograph—an old one she’d never noticed before—lay in the bottom of the box.
She picked it up. A man in a brown suit stared back at her, only half smiling. He had dark, slicked-back hair, a strong jawline, and a thin mustache. Her heart rate accelerated, and she licked her dry lips. It was just a picture. Maybe one of her father’s extended family members? An uncle she had never met?
That had to be it. She closed her eyes and turned it over, her heart thrumming desperate with hope. Please . . .
Bri opened her eyes, and a familiar cursive script mocked her.
From Paris, with love
T.R.
Gerard would typically rather face a fire-breathing dragon in a dark cave than a bride on the day of her wedding. He knew better. But regardless, he needed quotes for the feature, and he’d be more likely to get them earlier that morning than right before—or right after—the ceremony.
Besides, Casey had seemed pretty chill thus far. It shouldn’t be that bad.
The early Sunday sun shone on his bare forearms as he knocked on the closed door of the little townhouse Mrs. Beeker had directed him to. He stepped back on the covered porch, nearly knocking over a mini tower of pumpkins, and turned to squint toward the unseasonably blue sky. At least she’d have great weather for the event.
If he ever got married, the sky was bound to start churning black clouds.
A series of thuds sounded against the door, hard and loud. Gerard flinched. What in the world? He knocked again. “Casey?”
Another thud followed an angry wail. “I told you to forget it!”
This felt like one of those defining moments, where he could turn away whistling and pretend like nothing had happened or knock again and possibly get sucked into a bridezilla vortex he could never escape.
He took two steps away, then sighed and knocked again, hard enough this time to bounce the bronze and gold wreath against the door. No answer. Just a steady stream of muffled thuds against the frame. Thump. Thump.
He took a chance and tried the knob. Open. “Casey?” He stepped into the house, halfway shielding his eyes with his hand in case she was in a pre-wedding preparation state of undress.
A red beanbag narrowly missed his head. He ducked.
“I don’t even know you anymore!” Casey appeared in a fuzzy bathrobe around the corner of what seemed to be the kitchen. Her dramatic wedding makeup was already in place but smeared around the eyes like a raccoon. Curlers dotted her dark brown hair. She looked like a grandma from another era. Or maybe an alien.
Gerard held up both hands in defense at her raised fist, loaded with a blue beanbag. “What do you mean anymore? You barely know me at all.”
She blinked. “You’re not Nathan.”
He shook his head in agreement. Thank goodness.
Casey wilted against the
