“Anything can happen if you let it.”
~ P. L. Travers
Cecelia’s cell phone rang unusually early. She was enjoying her quiet summer morning ritual, sitting at the kitchen table, watching the sun rise over the trees, listening to the cardinals sing in the bush below the open window, and savoring the peaceful silence of her morning cup of coffee. She picked up the phone and glanced at the name displayed across the screen. ‘Must have a question about the shop,’ she thought and hit the accept icon.
“Good morning, Lilia,” she answered and sipped her coffee.
“...no way I can come in today...taken right from under us... what don’t they understand about deposit... invitations... yes, Momma... I know...”
“Lilia, hello? What’s wrong?” Cecelia asked and put down her cup.
“It’s awful, just awful!”
“Lilia, you’re scaring me. Is everyone okay?” she demanded and heard rustling on the other end of the line.
“Cecelia, listen, Lilia won’t be able to open the shop on time,” Cordelia said into the phone. “She got a call this morning from that fancy-shmancy wedding place. They double booked poor Hadley’s day, so now we’re out of a place. It’s Scramble Central over here.”
“Aunt Cordelia, tell Lilia not to worry about the store. Just tell me exactly what you need help with,” Cecelia reassured her but heard more rustling sounds.
“Cecelia,” Lilia returned to the phone, “we need to find a new place to hold this reception that is open on the exact date we have engraved and embroidered on anything not nailed down around here.”
“Just breathe, Lilia. Let me take care of opening the shop, and I’ll get a list of potential places.”
“Okay,” Lilia hesitantly agreed and disconnected the line to take care of a now-panicked bride.
Cecelia placed her phone on the table in front of her and picked up her mug again. She looked out the window in time to see her cardinals fly away for the day. Sighing into her cup, she nudged Bentley off her feet, where he contently napped. “Well, so much for all is well in the world, right, buddy?” Deciding to take her cup with her, she headed to the bedroom to prepare for the day ahead.
A few weeks had passed since Flora’s pizzelle lesson, and Cecelia caught herself getting excited about each new task. But today’s lesson would have to wait, Cecelia thought to herself as she slipped her moonstone ring onto her finger. She knocked on Ernie’s door but only heard his fan, realizing he was still out for the count. She walked downstairs to leave a note of her whereabouts. Having already texted Kevin, she entered the kitchen, mindlessly looking for the whiteboard marker.
“What’cha dressed for already?”
Caught off guard, she jumped but saw a shock of wiry, wild hair behind the kitchen counter.
“What are you doing up so early?” she asked Zelda.
“Bentley snuck down and tried to take over my bed. Where are you headed so early?”
“The bookstore,” Cecelia replied, quickly filling her daughter in on the phone call.
“That stinks.”
“That it does.”
“Now what?”
“Now, we help them find a new place.”
“Okay. Have fun today!” Zelda called out as Cecelia made her way to the entryway.
“Don’t get into any trouble,” Cecelia yelled back to Zelda and rushed out the door.
Zelda finished making her peanut butter, mayonnaise, and pickle bagel, looked over at Bentley, and said, “Of course, we won’t, right?” and smirked a most mischievous grin.
Cecelia wrestled with the shop’s key until she finally heard the familiar click of the lock. She pushed open the door and listened to the gentle chime of the bells hung above the threshold.
“Hello, old friend,” she whispered into the darkened space.
She deeply inhaled and breathed in the smell of paper, ink, and tea. Turning on the overhead lights, she smiled at the sight of the walls of books, just waiting for the right people to come by and notice them. She flipped the sign in the window to say open and walked behind the counter. No sooner had she turned the computer on than she heard the bells dance again, announcing her first visitor of the day. She looked up and saw Reveena arrive for the morning story hour group.
“Oh, hello, dearie! What are you doing here this fine morning?”
“Well,” Cecelia said, “Lilia called with a bit of a wedding emergency,” and she filled Reveena in on Lilia’s frantic phone call.
“The poor girl,” Reveena sighed as she put her handbag behind the counter. “I’m sure we’ll figure something out,” she added.
“Wait, we? But Miss Reveena...” Cecelia started, but the ringing of the door’s chimes announced the children’s arrival.
“What was that, dear?” the little old lady asked while slyly following her group to the back of the store.
“Never mind,” Cecelia smiled to herself.
She then turned her attention to the world wide web and began a search of local event centers.
“Did you find a place?” Reveena soon asked.
Cecelia jumped. She was so entrenched in a haze of chapels, centers, and halls.
“Oh, I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“That’s okay, Miss Reveena. I lost track of time,” Cecelia replied, watching the kids leave the store.
“No luck, hmm?”
“None.”
“Well, you just haven’t asked the right person yet.” Reveena retrieved her bag from behind the counter and gave Cecelia a quick peck on her cheek. “No worries, dear. We’ll figure this out.”
“Oh, Miss Reveena. Thank you,” Cecelia gushed.
She waved off Cecelia’s words and headed out the door.
Cecelia closed up shop soon after Reveena left, so she hung a handwritten sign in the window, turned the lights off, and closed the door behind her. She stood on the sidewalk and turned the key in the door’s lock as Flora stepped out of the bicycle shop. She, too, locked the front door.
“Oh, Cecelia!” Flora looked surprised to see her. “Closing early too?” she asked.
“Yes, Miss Flora. There’s been a...”
“Oh yes, I heard. Poor Hadley!” Flora innocently interrupted.
Cecelia then realized that, of course, Flora would have already heard the news since the paperwork was in the process of making Jack the Squeaky Wheel’s new owner.
“I was just getting ready to walk over to Jack’s to see if I could help,” Flora added and finished locking up the storefront.
“Can I drive you over there?” Cecelia offered, “Maybe we can think of something.”
“Oh, let’s hope so.”
Reveena walked into her kitchen. On her way home from Sunny’s, she had taken a detour to feed the chickens. It gave her a quiet moment to reflect on the latest dip in life’s roller coaster. One lesson she had not taught Zelda yet was that, as much as you tried, there was one thing you could not control—other people. Mistakes were expected along the way; it just depends on how you handled the aftermath that will show your true strength.
“Ah, Reginald. These women will soon realize they need only to listen to that quiet, meek voice in the room,” she had said to the bird, gently pecking at her shoe.
She now stood in the kitchen, expecting to see her sister at the table, but she wasn’t there.
“Hello? Raina? I’m back,” she called out.
“Hello! I’m back here,” came a voice from the bedroom.
Reveena followed Raina’s voice and saw that her sister was busy packing up her carpet bag.
Raina looked up and noticed the confused look on her sister’s face. She said, “Don’t look so glum. I’ve loved my American visit, but our job is done. We accomplished what we needed to do. It’s time for me to get back.” she looked at her sister again. “It is, isn’t it?”
“Well, maybe not quite yet, my dear.”
Cecelia parked in Lilia’s driveway and noticed that all seemed well enough at the Howard household. Cecelia and Flora noted there were no stray fabric samples or boxes of favors thrown onto the front lawn so they might have found an alternative place since this morning. But as Cecelia opened the front door, it was evident that no such spot had been secured.
“...and another thing! If you think...” Jack bellowed into the kitchen phone while Lilia sat on the living room couch surrounded by stacks of bridal magazines, local business directories, and her laptop.
“Hello,” Cecelia cautiously sang out, knocking on the door. Flora stood safely behind her.
“Hey there,” Lilia waved them in with one hand, holding a catering pamphlet in the other. A pencil precariously poked out from behind her ear.
“Hey there, yourself. How’s the hunt coming along?” Cecelia casually asked.
Lilia stared at her cousin but said nothing.
“Okay, then. Where’s Hadley?” Cecelia ventured another question.
“She’s upstairs in her old room. Momma’s up there with her. Oh, I told her we should have just stuck with having everything here in the backyard, but no, she wanted to invite more than ten people.” Lilia babbled while flipping through the well-worn directory.
“What can we do to help?” Cecelia offered.
Lilia flipped through the directory and said, “If you could conjure up a building big enough to hold all of us that’s guaranteed not to be full of other people, that’d be great.”
Cecelia and Flora could only look at each other, lost for any clever comeback to such a desperate remark. A hastily hung-up wall phone echoed into the living room before Jack appeared in the doorway.
“No luck there either,” he announced. “Oh, hello, ladies. Come to calm us down, did you?” he attempted to smile with the light-hearted comment but then turned his attention back to his wife. “I’ve got to tell Hadley the gazebo, parks, and even the riverbank are all taken up with other groups and events.”
“Good luck, mister,” Lilia warned Jack before he climbed the stairs to meet his impending doom.
“She had to pick the busiest weekend around here,” Lilia muttered and picked up the catering brochure again.
Cecelia felt awkward standing in the middle of the room but was unsure of her next move. She looked over at the quiet, reflective woman standing next to her and could see the wheels of her mind spinning, trying to come up with some solution.
She looked back at Lilia and opened her mouth to reassure her when a soft voice said, “I think I have the perfect spot.”
Lilia and Cecelia both realized the voice came from Flora.
“Miss Flora, we appreciate your help. But we’ve checked everywhere, even into the city,” Lilia said, but her curiosity won. “Where, though?”
“The train station,” Flora stated.
Lilia and Cecelia continued to look at Flora but said nothing. A few seconds passed before Cecelia observed, “Miss Flora, that train station has been boarded up for years. They’ve only just started the basic renovations. Construction crews just started appearing the other day.”
Not sure what plans the town had for it, Patrick had mentioned in passing that the council agreed to renovate it rather than tear down a historically integral part of Castor’s past. In fact, they had tasked him with finding old photos of the station in its heyday in the town’s archives. The construction work supervisor had only recently given the all-clear, determining it structurally sound enough to be safe for people inside its main terminal space.
Cecelia furrowed her brow, thinking of the actual possibility of such an idea. Lilia, in the meantime, returned her attention to the well-worn business directory. Flora stood next to Cecelia, confident of her suggestion.
“But even if they allow us to use the building, how would we feed everyone?” Cecelia wondered out loud to no one in particular.
The sound of jagged sobs above them interrupted her thoughts. Lilia looked up towards the ceiling, her bottom lip turning downward.
Cecelia turned to Flora. “What do you have in mind?”
And with that, Operation Save the Wedding kicked into action.