Chapter 14 #3
“Let me know when you get back, and I’ll stay in touch and text you if I find a studio.
” They paid for their drinks then and left the Café Flore together.
“It is funny how we keep running into each other though, isn’t it?
Kismet, or Fate, or whatever. Or just blind luck.
” He grinned at her and gave her back her Beaux-Arts brochure.
“See you in September,” he said, and waved as he walked down the street, and turned to wave at her again, and she waved back and walked away in the bright July sunshine.
It would be nice to see him again, and maybe have dinner sometime.
They had been good friends at Yale. She liked the idea of taking classes in Paris.
She had been happy there before. And she was ready for a change from New York.
She had turned the page after Taylor and was open to a new life.
She realized that she had been spared a marriage that would have been a disaster.
He could even have killed her. As Bill had predicted, Taylor had made a plea bargain with the district attorney, and was going to spend two years in a psychiatric prison hospital, in a program for sex offenders.
It was a prison facility for sex crimes.
She wanted no contact with him. All she wanted now was to work on her art and heal from the experience.
She was feeling better every day, and grateful to be alive.
* * *
The dress Dominique came up with for Violet was pure whimsy.
It was a newer version of the old baby doll dresses, with a white organdie top, a Peter Pan collar, and a big ballerina tulle skirt with an overlay of white lace.
It was all innocence and fantasy, part Barbie doll and part Cinderella, with a big, wide soft floppy hat covered in white tulle and a hint of veil around her face, and a short train behind the dress with a bunch of white violets at the waist. It was as lighthearted and magical as Violet was herself.
Dominique and Bill found a house to rent for the Labor Day weekend, a big old Cape Cod style home on the water with a dozen bedrooms and its own beach, and easy access to the main beach.
There was a big sandy garden, where a minister they found agreed to perform the ceremony, and Dominique organized a barbecue with a brightly decorated taco truck, a hot dog stand, pizza, and an ice cream truck.
It was going to be pure fun, and they would light big paper lanterns that would sail up in the sky as they each made a wish.
It would be as childlike and creative and different as everything Violet loved to do.
And she fell in love with the dress her mother had made for her.
She twirled in it and felt like a fairy princess.
Everything they planned for Violet’s unconventional wedding came together with ease.
Jamie’s parents, brother, and sisters had said they wouldn’t miss it.
Tommy and Marlene and their boys had been counting on it since July.
Felicity was going to be Violet’s maid of honor, and Dominique made a dress for her too, in the palest ballerina pink with a smaller tulle skirt.
Clément and Marie-Aurélie said it was too long a trip, but Jamie and Violet were going to honeymoon in France so they would see each other there.
Dominique was throwing the wedding, and Bill would be there.
He was around all the time, and came to all family events.
Marlene and Felicity were friends now, ever since the unhappy events surrounding her canceled wedding, when Marlene had been so kind to her.
The weather had been beautiful all weekend, and they spent their days on the beach.
On the day of the wedding, all the catering trucks arrived on time.
As the sun set, the ceremony began and was perfect, and Violet looked beautiful in her fantasy dress.
Bill had hired a local band, and everyone danced and ate and had fun, and lit the lanterns and sailed them up into the sky on the beach, over the ocean with a harvest moon overhead.
Every minute of it was perfect. It was a night when dreams came true, and everyone had a good time and was happy.
Violet came over and sat down next to Felicity, who was texting someone with a serious expression.
“Who are you texting?” Felicity seemed like herself again. The summer had been good for her. The nightmare was over and behind her.
“A friend from Yale I ran into in Paris,” she said to Violet, reading the response with a smile. “He’s taking classes at the Beaux-Arts too, and he just saw a studio he thinks I’ll love, near Bonne Mamie.” She smiled at Violet after she read it.
“What kind of friend? A girl or a guy?”
“A guy. We were good friends in school and lost track of each other. We ran into each other twice in the past few months, just by coincidence. That’s all.
Just two artists, two old friends.” Violet didn’t comment but there was a light in her sister’s eye she hadn’t seen for a long time, and she was happy to see back again. For now, that was enough.
Violet and Jamie’s wedding was everything a wedding should be, full of excitement and joy, love, hope for the future, and gratitude for the past and people who loved each other. It was a night that blessed them all.
Bill and Dominique sat watching the others dance and laugh for a few minutes. They had danced all night too. She smiled at him, happy he was there, and that they were finally building a life together.
“If it took my mother and Clément forty years to figure things out, I guess sixteen for us isn’t so bad,” she said, and he laughed.
They had figured it out now, where they were going and where they wanted to go, together.
He kissed her as a falling star flew through the sky overhead.
It was a good omen for the future, for all of them, a blessing, and a promise of more happiness to come.
They lit another lantern together, at the end of the night, and sailed it into the sky. It flew straight up toward the heavens with the wish that it had taken them sixteen years to make, and had finally come true.