likeness, free to be wonderfully made in the image of Christ. Let’s not speak of it again.
Hush now,
Dana
If only it could be this simple with Dahlia.
Not that the three years of pushing and pulling and praying that had led up to those two e-mails had been easy. Whatever the case, I felt lighter. A weight I hadn’t known I was carrying lifted from my heart, though I still felt a little weepy.
I clicked off my Web browser and spun in the chair, staring at the door, where women prowled outside waiting to get in.
I smiled, now intimate with the morning rhythms of Leverhill’s Mothers of the Brides. Coffee across the street at The Bean Counter, which now occupied Adrian’s old space, and then shopping on my shelves and chatting with friends, old and new. It was hard to believe I owned all the units on this side of the street.
In an uncharacteristic move, I spun my chair around and slipped off my shoes. I walked from the computer at the back of the store to the front where Adrian was on a ladder, lighting the sconces, and Dahlia was counting off the register. Once on the carpet, I dragged my feet through the teal shag one toe at a time. They both stared at me in disbelief.
I was just as surprised, but the simple act of forgiving Rochelle had opened something up in me, the vulnerable part of me that I’d been trying to guard for so long. The seed of who I am. Though I hadn’t realized it, protecting this part of myself had kept others from wounding it, but it had also kept me from accessing it. As a holy stillness settled over the room, I saw Dahlia as God might see her, a little girl with a handful of daisies, walking through the house trying to give them away. Everyone she offered them to declined. Each already had a rose. My rose.
It was an obscure memory, like film on top of a pot of tea, forming then fading, but it was real. Yellow roses. For Mama, Daddy, Jordan and me.
“What about me?” she’d said, crying through her words.
“They’re all gone, but you can have mine if you want it.”
And she’d taken it, both then and now.
“Are you all right?” Adrian was down the ladder and at my side.
He looked like a boy to me again, with a cropped afro and a pocket calculator in his Levi’s. “Want to hang?” I could hear him say, as he so often did back then.
“No. I’m going to ride. You can’t stay up under me all the time. Go and find somebody who’ll be with you all the time. A new friend.”
And he did. He’d married her, in fact.
“I’m fine,” I said, allowing the tears to flow freely down my face, blurring the past into the present. I opened my mouth to try and explain, but a scent strong enough to awake my numb nose and smooth enough to soothe my broken heart penetrated my senses.
A Jesus breeze. I sat down on the floor and rolled onto my stomach.
Adrian pitched onto his knees beside me. “What is it?” he asked, though his eyes told me he knew that God was working, healing.
My fingers closed around his. He kissed them all together, even his own, then cleared his throat as though he’d forgotten himself. Dahlia didn’t say a word.
I took both our hands and pointed upwards toward the candle above us. “What is that?”
He dropped back onto his heels. Though he knew I loved his candles, I rarely spoke of them and hadn’t commented on a scent since I’d been there. “Island Wedding,” he said, lowering his head closer to mine. “My pineapple with a splash of your jasmine.”
A fat, crazy laugh escaped my lips. Dahlia froze at the sound of my joy. Our happiness seemed to accuse her, assault her. I kept laughing and sniffing until she braved a giggle herself.
“Island Wedding, huh?” What a man, this guy. Though jasmine was my favorite, it wasn’t a great seller. Too sweet. I didn’t make much of it except for myself and I hadn’t been doing much for myself of late.
“A little bit of both of us,” I said, drinking in the words.
Adrian nodded. He looked so pleased that I was pleased. I hadn’t seen him smile like that in a while. “I didn’t plan on it. Just started mixing something for myself and you fell into it.” He shrugged and kissed my