Chapter 3 #2
There must have been a wardrobe malfunction at some point, however, for Grace had never seen the beautiful dress Lily was wearing now.
It had a sleeveless white bodice, its high waist circled by a wide, yellow satin ribbon tied in a big bow at the back.
It had a puffy yellow skirt with a voluminous white petticoat beneath it and a sheer, white overskirt adorned with white flower appliqués.
Completing the look, Lily wore a multi-colored tiara made of pipe cleaners and pony beads. She’d made it in a pre-school craft project a few weeks back, and it hadn’t left her head except to sleep and to bathe for the past two weeks.
As always, Lily clutched one of her stuffed seals. She was never without one, which was why Grace made sure to have two identical ones at all times so she could surreptitiously abscond with one and wash it now and then.
Tessa smiled fondly at Lily and murmured, “You look just like Heaven’s littlest angel.”
Grace had to smile because it was true. But she’d looked just like Lily at the same age and, to this day, she still hated to be told she looked like an angel.
Just because she and her daughter both had very fair coloring with pale blond hair and light blue eyes, that didn’t necessarily make them match angels.
In her mind, angels came in as many sizes and shapes and colors as humans.
Just because she and Lily matched Raphaelite painters’ versions of the heavenly beings didn’t give her and Lily the corner on the angelic looks market.
Tessa said a shade guiltily, “I was going through some of Makayla’s old clothes and I ran across this dress. I thought it would go perfectly with Princess Lily’s blond hair.”
“It goes puhh-fect with my hair!” Lily exclaimed. “Watch it spin, Mama.” She twirled until she staggered dizzily and the full skirt flared out even more.
“Wow! That’s awesome!” Grace exclaimed. “But don’t fall over.”
“I won’t. Coach Donna says I have great balance.”
Donna Simmons was a coach at the local gymnastics academy and taught Lily’s three times weekly gymnastics classes. It was one of the few activities that tired out Lily enough to keep her from being wild all the time.
Grace mouthed a silent thank-you to Tessa, who smiled back just tiredly enough to let Grace know Tessa had forgotten how ragged the non-stop energy of a four-year-old could run an adult.
“Did you eat lunch nicely for Aunt Tessa, Lily?”
“Uh huh.”
“She had three crackers and one bite of cheese,” Tessa retorted.
“Tattletale,” Lily pouted.
Tessa added, “She did, however, eat an entire bag of pretzels and several apple slices in the car on the way here. So I’m calling it a win for Auntie Tess.”
“Indeed it is,” Grace agreed. Lily was in a picky eating phase at the moment and barely sitting still long enough to eat anything. Grace had called Hank Steele, who was a doctor, to ask him about it, and he’d assured her that Lily wouldn’t starve. She would eat when she got good and hungry.
Grace said gratefully to Tessa, “Thanks for giving me the afternoon to work. The McAllister wedding guest list went up by a hundred people this week, and the wedding’s this weekend.”
Tessa rolled her eyes. “Unfortunately, I’m fully aware.
We were notified last Saturday—exactly one week before the wedding, mind you—that the bride was adding another bridesmaid to the wedding party.
Charlotte and her assistant had to stop everything and sew an emergency gown for her.
And we were already up to our eyeballs in dress orders from New York. ”
They shared looks of commiseration.
In a complete change of subject, Lily declared indignantly, “Lo-wetta was rude to me, Mommy.”
“How was Aunt Tessa’s donkey rude to you, Sweetie?”
“She wouldn’t let me ride her.” Lily’s lower lip stuck out so cutely it was almost painful to look at.
Grace replied, “She’s not a riding donkey, Honey.”
Tessa offered, “I told her that.”
In the face of solidarity against her by the adults, Lily huffed and headed for the kitchen, where Mary was sure to sneak her a cookie.
Sensing she hadn’t heard the whole story, Grace asked Tessa, “What did Lily say when you told her she couldn’t ride Loretta?”
“She said she would’ve liked to have been informed of that before she agreed to visit the farm.”
Grace closed her eyes briefly, then chuckled in spite of her daughter’s high and mighty words.
Lily emerged from the kitchen triumphantly holding a chocolate chip cookie. She already had a smear of chocolate around her mouth. Grace grabbed a napkin from the pile beside the cash register, quickly unfolded it, and tucked it into the neck of Lily’s new dress to protect it.
“Miss Mary said I look like an angel, and angels eat all the cookies they want,” Lily announced.
“Did you say thank you?” Grace replied.
“Nuh uhh.”
“Why don’t you go back and say thank you now?”
“But I don’t have wings. Angels have wings.”
“It was a nice compliment, and you should always thank people when they compliment you,” Grace insisted without raising her voice.
“Why?”
“Because they’ll stop complimenting you if you’re not polite.”
“Oh.” A pause. Lily turned around and headed back into the kitchen.
“What do you want to bet she comes out with a second cookie?” Tessa murmured.
“I wouldn’t bet a plug nickel against you,” Grace replied, grinning.
Sure enough, Lily came out a minute later with a fresh cookie in hand. Grace just shook her head.
“Why won’t Lo-wetta let me ride her, Aunt Tessa?”
“Because she was a working donkey, not a riding donkey, before she retired and came to live with me.”
“What’s a working donkey?”
“A donkey with a job.”
“What’s Lo-wetta’s job?”
Under her breath to Grace, Tessa muttered, “Oh, Lord. I’d forgotten the endless questions four-year-olds ask. Louder, she answered Lily, “Her job is to stand around looking like a donkey.”
“That isn’t a job.”
“Could you stand around and look like a donkey?” Tessa challenged.
Lily considered this. She settled the matter internally, the way she settled most matters, by simply moving on. “I want another cookie.”
“You’ve had enough cookies,” Grace responded.
“Two more cookies.”
“No.”
“Two and I won’t ask for a brownie.”
“That isn’t how negotiation works,” Grace declared, biting back a smile.
“It is at preschool.”
Tessa laughed. “Grace, Girlfriend, quit while you’re still losing.”
She held her ground, though, and when she threatened to take away Lily’s second cookie, Lily ate it without any further complaint. Grace never failed to be amazed at how early and well children understood the basic principles of capitalism.
Tessa accepted a cup of coffee and sipped it beside the work table in the kitchen while Grace finished prepping the next morning’s bread dough. They talked about everything and nothing, the way folks in Cobbler Cove did when they were spending casual time together.
They covered the weather and the latest news .
. . technically gossip . . . from around town, went over how their kids were.
Then Grace got Tessa talking about Dillon.
She didn’t have to make any more conversation for a while as Tessa gushed about her fiancé and how wonderful he was with her eleven-year-old daughter, Makayla.
At least Tessa was willing to talk with her about her new man.
The other WoWS women went all quiet and careful these days when the topic of love and marriage come up around her.
Grace was the only one of the WoWS ladies not to have found love with someone new since the fire that took their husbands’ lives going on five years ago, now.
Sometimes that seemed so far in the past she could hardly remember a time when it hadn’t happened.
Other times it felt as if the fire had happened last week.
Those were the times when her emotions felt raw and exposed and agonizingly painful.
Granted, she experienced those awful moments less and less with time’s passage, but the episodes of agonizing grief weren’t gone entirely.
Maybe they never would disappear altogether.
She was okay with that. Grief was just the heart’s way of loving someone after they left this world. Thankfully, she’d come to embrace her memories of Liam and the lifetime they’d spent together. She felt luckier than the other widows because she and Liam had loved each other since the first grade.
Granted, their childish love hadn’t matured into a romantic relationship for many years, but they’d been inseparable almost as long as she could remember.
She had so many memories of him that she never lacked for something to think about.
Every square inch of Cobbler Cove had some memory of him attached to it.
Sometimes the entire town felt to Grace like a living memorial to him. He always felt close by her, here.
Grace made all the right sounds of approval and excitement as Tessa told her about Makayla being asked to fiddle at a big concert at the Founder’s Day celebration in Apple Pie Creek next month, and how she was going to open for a major country music star.
She really was pleased for her honorary niece.
Makayla was an insanely talented violinist who’d discovered fiddling recently and taken to it like a fish to water.
But the familiar, oft repeated act of kneading soft biscuit dough, cutting it into little balls, rolling each one in butter, and placing three balls into each compartment of the muffin tins soothed Grace into an almost trance-like state of contentment.
This kitchen prep table and the work table at the far end of the long room where she arranged flowers where her happy places.
She smiled as she worked and enjoyed listening to Tessa tell her about new plan she and Charlotte had come up with to grow their wedding dress company fast enough to keep up with the orders for gowns starting to pour in.