The Wedding Dress by Rachel Hauck

in the living room. She pressed it into his palm. “If we’re not getting married on June 23, then what’s the point of pretending?”
    “Charlotte, we’re not pretending, we’re waiting.”
    “For what, Tim? For it to feel right? Suddenly? It felt right when you proposed the first time. You can’t cancel a wedding but keep the engagement.” She’d learned that, too, from working with brides and grooms over the past twelve years. First in the bridal shops of others, then her own. Once the wedding is postponed . . . “If we’re not getting married, then we’re not engaged.”
    “I don’t want to lose you.” Tim regarded the ring, slipping it over his pinky to the first knuckle, then reached for Charlotte, pulling her to him. “You swept me off my feet when we first met.”
    “Sometimes we don’t know what we want until we get it. Then”—Charlotte jerked with the first sob—“it becomes complicated and . . . the brides . . . the dresses . . . the details . . .” Charlotte gave up, tucked her elbows into her ribs and, still leaning against Tim’s firm form and sweat-soaked t-shirt, she wept.
    She’d sensed this coming, a shift, a change. This was what drove her to the ridge Saturday morning. The feeling of is this really what I want? It had been coming—if not from Tim, then from herself. But oh, how she hated endings. How she hated good-byes.
    Tim stroked her hair, not saying a word, clearing his throat, throttling the rumble in his chest.
    “I’m sorry, Char.” He cradled and caressed her, rocking slowly side to side, his own tears catching on his whispers. “Shh, it’ll be all right.”
    She wrapped her arms around him and molded against him, his tenderness throttling her sorrow. He might be breaking up with her, but at the moment, he was her best friend, her quiet strength.
    When she stepped out of his arms, wiping her face, she kept her shoulder toward him and faced the hall toward her room. “It’s easier if you just go, Tim.”
    Thank goodness they’d held to their convictions and not slept together. How much more difficult this would’ve been. How cold his side of the bed would’ve been tonight. “You won’t mind seeing yourself out.”
    “Charlotte?”
    “Bye, Tim.” In her room Charlotte shut the door and dove onto her bed, burying her head under the pillows, her chest swelling with a ravenous storm of sobs. She’d survived Mama’s death. She’d survived being raised by grumpy, yet kind ole Gert. She’d survived celebrating Christmases and birthdays alone. How could she not survive this petty little thing? A broken engagement? Oh, she’d survive tonight, all right. Surely she would. As long as she didn’t hear the click of the door closing behind Tim as he left.
     
     

Chapter Six
      Emily
      I n the flickering gaslight Emily poured the letters from the cedar box onto her bed. There were dozens of them, all addressed in Daniel’s smooth, even script.
    Why would Father hide them from her? It was so unlike him. Emily sorted the letters by postmark, from April to August, counting forty in all.
    Her engagement ring caught on her bedcover as she crawled to the center and propped against her pillows.
    Phillip’s ring on her left hand, so rich and exquisite, paled for a moment in comparison to the pile of letters in her right. Words and thoughts from Daniel’s heart, written in his own hand, seemed more rare than any stone carved from coal.
    Emily batted the sleep from her eyes and the weariness from her heart. Such a day. The suffragette meeting, then seeing Phillip in the city, sitting his carriage, warmed by his amorous kisses.
    Then running home and into Daniel. Oh, dear Daniel. The memory of his touch made Emily’s pulse throb in her veins.
    And Phillip’s proposal. Tonight of all nights. She’d expected it soon, maybe at the Woodward end-of-summer lawn party on Labor Day weekend.
    Emily sank into her pillows and closed her eyes. She had half a mind to march down