Blue Heart Blessed by Susan Meissner Read Free Book Online Page B

that list, I’m on it, too.
    Shelby says I should just keep the dress. She says one day I’ll look at that dress and I won’t think of Daniel. Maybe so, but I will always think of me, and how that dress made me feel when Daniel was my fiancé. And then when he suddenly wasn’t.
    I can’t imagine looking at that dress someday and feeling nothing. If I were to get to that point, I’d surely be a cold person incapable of feeling anything.
    I love that dress. I want to hope that Shelby is right.
    She asked me what Harriet thinks about it. I told her you’d say the dress needs to go. I’m right, aren’t I?
    Shelby had a date tonight with the phys-ed teacher at her school. His name is Eric. She didn’t call it a date, but that’s what it is. She pretended like it was just a casual thing—dinner, maybe a movie. But I could tell she likes this guy, her nervousness as she talked about him gave it all away. I could also tell she very much wanted to protect me from feeling sad that she had a date tonight with a guy who makes her heart flutter and I didn’t. So I pretended like I believed it was just a casual thing.
    She probably knows I was just pretending, but it made it easier for her to climb down off my roof to go home and get beautiful for her non-date.
    I watched The Princess Bride tonight, a lovely way to spend a Friday evening alone in your apartment. I invited Maria Andréa to watch it with me, but she was spending the night with one of her cousins. Max and Liam actually came down and watched the first half but they left after Westley killed the Rodent Of Unusual Size, retreating to Max’s where he supposedly was going to teach Liam how to make a quarter emerge from his belly button.
    Princess Buttercup’s wedding dress is exquisite and gets far too little camera time. Were I not so enamored with the dress I cannot sell, I’d want a dress (and a love) like hers.

    Dear Daisy,
    Of course there’s a list. But what difference does it really make if your name is on it or not? You feel a fool for not having a clue that Daniel wasn’t ready for marriage. But who’s the bigger fool? The one who can’t see her fiancé is going to dump her or the one who sees it and plans the wedding anyway?
    You worry too much about what other people think you should do with that dress. It’s your dress. And you have to live with it or without it. The fact of the matter is, you will live with it. And you will live without it. It is not oxygen to you. It is eight yards of expensive organza. Whatever you are feeling at this moment about Daniel and the wedding you would probably still feel if that dress was long gone. It’s not the dress you need to get over. It’s the guy.
    And the dream.
    Harriet
    P.S. If you will remember, Princess Buttercup did NOT get married in the dress that you think is so exquisite. She never said, “I do.”

Eleven
    T he first wedding I can remember attending is my brother Kellen’s. I was five, he was twenty-three.
    I was the flower girl.
    I wore a dress very similar to the one worn by Laura, the bride. My dress was long and white, and it glistened like moonlight. I had a mini bouquet like Laura’s—a bunchy knot of lilies of the valley—which was attached to a little basket of white rose petals. I don’t remember very much about that day. To me, Laura has always been a Murien, Kellen’s wife, my sister-in-law. I do remember the slippery feel of my long pearly skirt, the hot closeness of the little sanctuary where the wedding was held, and how I saw Kellen cry for the first time.
    He was not weeping, not like L’Raine in the third pew. There was just a sparkly, misty-eyed look in his eyes that made me wonder for a moment if someone was making him marry Laura. My concern was short-lived of course; as Laura walked the aisle toward him that pained look gave way to a smile that made Kellen’s lovely Asian eyes disappear into mere slits.
    It was a huge surprise to learn that you can cry when you’re