The Bride's Curse (2 page)

“Well, it might be worth it. We need to be pretty aggressive with our advertising—and slender with our budget—if this nonsense about the cursed dress keeps going.”

Noelia turned to greet a young woman who was just coming in the door. She offered a lovely warm, motherly smile that usually wowed their customers and asked, “Can I help you, dear?”

“I’m off,” Kelly said. “Just lock up if I’m not back. See you tomorrow.” With a pleasant smile to the newcomer, she dashed out the door.

• • •

The early autumn day was unusually warm and the air carried with it a tang of salt spray from the Atlantic Ocean as it waved softly toward Marina Grove Bay. The small town on the Maine coastline was slowly settling toward winter as the tourist season ended, and Kelly was able to slip into a parking spot right in front of the
Telegraph
offices. They were situated right on the main street and faced the ocean across from the wharf where fishing boats were unloading the catch of the day.

She massaged the long scar above her hairline, a parting gift from a Taliban bomb. It ached when she was tired or stressed, and heaven knew, she was both right now. She took a few moments to try and gather her thoughts. This business with the so-called Cursed Bridal Gown was going to drive her crazy and possibly put her out of business. The worst thing was, she couldn’t shake the thought that perhaps the gown really was cursed. It certainly wasn’t improving her manner, which Noelia frequently told her tended to be a bit abrasive.

“You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar,” her assistant often said. Seemed vinegar was the only thing Kelly traded in at the moment.

Already she had offended the church secretary at St. Christopher’s. The slight, gray-haired woman, Debra Moran, had jokingly said that she’d heard Kelly might need an exorcism for a wedding gown that was the talk of the town. Piqued, Kelly had quite nastily wondered aloud if it was blasphemous to joke about such matters in church, and the secretary had gone about giving her the information she needed regarding the church’s rules on wedding decorations in a tight-lipped, wounded manner.

Her day continued its downhill slide. It seemed everyone she met had an opinion or a smart comment about the cursed dress. Some were serious, most were witty, but none made Kelly feel any better about the weirdness of it all. News traveled fast in a small town. Especially weird news.

Then she had stopped in at the home of Jane Parker and her mother for a consultation on flowers and table favors. The bride-to-be licked her lips nervously as the mother suggested they should get a discount for using Kelly’s services, given all the gossip going around.

“But you don’t really believe in such stupid nonsense, do you?” Kelly had blurted incredulously, causing the bride’s mother to spend the rest of their visit sulkily objecting to every suggestion Kelly made.

Finally, Jane put her foot down and insisted they choose from the flowers Kelly had suggested.

Her mother, a keen gardener, then went on to cast a malicious eye over the list of flowers and deliberately picked the most difficult blooms to find at that time of the year.

The meeting took so long that Jane, noting Kelly casting sly glances at the clock, apologized and asked her to leave the catalogs. “We’ll get everything we want firmed up, and I’ll be in touch by the end of the week,” she promised.

Kelly waited until she was back in her car and out on the road again before she let loose a curse of her own on the heads of everyone who thought the Cursed Bridal Gown was theirs to comment upon.

The
Telegraph
was her last stop of the day, and she reluctantly left the calm of her parked car and sought out the advertising manager, Ken Bertram. Her chat with him turned out to be the best thirty minutes of her day so far. He agreed to give Wedding Bliss prominence in a winter/spring weddings trade feature he was planning; the price he named was reasonable and within budget. He even offered a two-column ad in that week’s paper at a bargain price.

“Once you get the copy in here for the feature next month, I can get the graphics and layout guys to put the page together,” Ken promised.

“I have some great photographs of brides and bridesmaids, as well as of wedding cakes and other stuff that you could probably use, too.” Kelly pulled out a file stuffed with photographs from various wedding paraphernalia companies from her shoulder bag. “I have permission to use these for advertising purposes.”

“That’s great—less work for us.” Ken rubbed his hands together gleefully. Kelly, remembering Noelia’s comments about the guy being lazy, suppressed a grin.

Then he asked if she’d mind waiting a moment.

Kelly held her breath, expecting some smart-ass jokes about the dress, but he merely walked into the outer office and spoke to the newspaper’s secretary and general gofer, Allie McInnis. Moments later, he came back with a smile, shook her hand, and asked if she would call in to the editorial department before she left the building.

Kelly assumed he wanted to have a journalist do a story piece to go with her advertising, which was a welcome surprise. She walked up the steep stairs into the dark, crowded office space where the editorial staff lurked. A small newspaper, the
Telegraph
had a skeleton staff and used a lot of freelance correspondents to fill its pages.

The last straw in her day came when a junior reporter dressed in baggy jeans and a Grateful Dead t-shirt bounced over to Kelly with an earnest puppy expression on his face, notebook clutched in his hand.

“Ms. Andrews? Mr. Bertram said you wanted us to do a story about that cursed wedding dress,” the young man, Ronnie Catelli, said as he introduced himself.

Is that what everyone’s calling it now, too? The Cursed Wedding Dress?
She was so angry she was sure steam would start hissing from her ears. “What do you mean?”

Ronnie reached for the pen that was lodged behind his ear, seeming irritatingly unaware of the death glare she aimed at him. “I hear that the gown has ruined the dreams of several young couples.”

She dragged in a deep breath, counting to ten for patience. Not wanting to sully the innocence of one so young, she limited herself to a snarled “no” and left the building as quickly as she could before she really lost her temper and aimed some well-seasoned military phrases at him.

• • •

Kelly parked her car and opened the newly painted blue front door of her home, breathing in the soothing atmosphere. Even before renovations, the little fisherman’s cottage had held a welcoming feel that called to her. The cottage was only within her price range because it had needed lots of work, but to Kelly it was well worth the hours she had spent scraping and sanding and painting.

She bent to rub the soft gray fur of Sullivan, the house feline, then paused to enjoy the graceful lines of the shallow staircase and breathe deeply of the salt-tanged breeze that filtered in through the slightly open windows. She loved to sit out on the large back verandah and watch the ever-changing moods of the sea. On hot nights, she would sleep with the windows open and a cool sea breeze playing over her as the sea’s song lulled her to sleep.

Kelly had come to Marina Grove lured by happy memories of a long ago childhood family holiday in the small seaside town, still a busy fishing port and tourist destination. Here, where no one knew her or her history, she sought healing from two terrible blows. She still had nightmares about the IED bomb blast that had ended her military career and taken the lives of several of her friends in her unit. The ambush had left her physically and mentally scarred, fighting for her life in a military hospital. Her fiancé’s desertion had hardly caused a ripple in her emotions after that experience, but it still hurt.

Marina Grove hadn’t let her down. As she had regained her physical and emotional health, she followed her dream to open Wedding Bliss, a one-stop wedding planning store to channel all the romantic yearnings of her heart into planning beautiful weddings. For other brides, that is. She doubted she would ever trust her heart to a man again.

Sullivan—a rescued tom cat with a checkered history written large in the scars he carried over his face and body—twined around her legs, alternately purring and reminding her with a soft meow that it was dinner time. She rubbed him behind his ears, producing a long, drawn-out purr of pleasure, then loaded his dish with cat chow and refilled his water bowl.

“It’s nice to meet someone who doesn’t want to lecture me or make jokes at my expense about a silly bridal gown,” she murmured to the cat. Sullivan flicked his tail, dismissing her while he wolfed the food.

Kelly made her favorite late supper—a glass of wine, a cup of milky coffee, and a peanut butter and banana sandwich—and settled down on the verandah to watch the twilight glowing over the ocean and ponder exactly what she was going to do about that dress. The lovely vintage gown that had become the Cursed Bridal Gown.

It was too beautiful to be destroyed or given away. Besides, she’d paid far too much for it at an estate auction in Derry. The jokes and comments were becoming irritating and she just wished people would forget the whole thing. What really irked her was the negative effect it was having on her business’s reputation.

Still, she could understand people having some reservations about a gown that had been returned by three separate brides. With her degree in psychology, she knew people tried to explain things going wrong by finding scapegoats to blame, especially when those failures were very hurtful and seemingly without cause. The idea was that if you could blame something on someone’s behavior or possessions, then if you didn’t behave that way yourself or have the same possessions, you were safe from whatever bad thing had happened to the other person.

But three different couples splitting up after they’d gotten as far as buying a wedding dress? Surely, that must be unusual, especially in a small town like Marina Grove. Given the fact all three brides had purchased that one gown, she could see where the gossip arose.

Kelly had never been superstitious herself and found it hard to believe a gown, especially a truly expensive and beautiful one, could possibly be cursed.

But then, she hadn’t believed restless spirits existed, either, until she saw them for herself. Waking up in a hospital bed, disorientated and confused, she’d been reassured to see several men of her unit standing around her bed. She had heard snatches of questions the men were asking and been overwhelmed with a sense of helplessness before drug-induced sleep had once more claimed her.

It was only later, as she healed, that she realized these men had died in the same ambush that had left her wounded. The doctors were quick to tell her a brain injury had left her with hallucinations that would pass.

Kelly wasn’t at all sure she believed them. But she hoped with all her heart that they were right.

And if she could see the dead, why couldn’t a wedding gown be cursed?

Brett Atwell carried his morning coffee and a stack of old newspapers out to the patio behind his aunt Mary’s Derry mansion. He put both items down on a small table, nodded to his sister who sat on the bench opposite, and then raised his arms above his head to stretch muscles that were still stiff and aching from the long journey home from his last assignment, working with a non-profit group in sub-Saharan Africa.

He loved his job, but there was no feeling in the world like coming home. He sat down, stretching his long legs out in front of him, and sipped at the coffee. He savored the drink, enjoying this ritual of the first day back at home, and then opened the oldest newspaper. All the while he was aware of his sister’s wary eyes on him. Sasha’s behavior was the one irritant in his homecoming.

“So, big bro, are you going to sulk all morning? I told you I had no idea where that damned wedding dress had gotten to.”

He wanted to ignore her, but she was, after all, his closest relative. That didn’t dilute his anger. “Sasha, couldn’t you get your mind off yourself for a little while and see how Aunt Mary feels? Crap, after all these years being almost a recluse, you think it’s okay to shove her off into a nursing home among strangers? Would it have killed you to take care of her for a while till she was over the pneumonia? And I wouldn’t be surprised if you weren’t behind that dress disappearing. Though, for the life of me, I can’t see why. She’s always asking for it, you know.”

“Stupid wedding dress. I don’t know why she’d want to even see it again after what happened, let alone be buried in it. It’s not like she’s going to die yet, anyway.”

Brett shot her a glare then decided to ignore her. He and his sister had very different attitudes toward family. Sasha sniffed, her left hand playing with the belt on her silk robe. Something else that irritated her brother—he was a morning person, up and at ’em by seven at the latest. Sasha came awake and ready to party in the evening.
How could the same parents produce such different offspring?
he wondered as he folded the newspaper over at the coming events page.

“You do know that that paper is eons old, don’t you? All those events are over and done. Why do you waste your time reading old news?”

He sighed. How many times had they had this conversation? “It’s not old news to me, is it? I was away and I like to catch up with what happened while I was gone. Now, are you going to tell me about that wedding dress? Thanks to all the time you left her in that home, Mary thinks she’s really sick and going to die. That’s why the dress is so important to her. She wants to be buried in it.”

“Come on, Brett. I don’t know why you’re so protective of her. Auntie Mary has always been a bit strange. Do you remember how she had us believing she was a witch when we were kids? And she had that spell book that she said had been in the family for ages and ages … ”

He tried to ignore Sasha’s insensitive snort of laughter, although it increased his inward anger. “Give her a break, Kelly. Aunt Mary has always been very good to us, even if she’d been a bit, well, fragile.”

“You’re kidding me, right? The old lady’s as strong as an ox.”