Page 78 of The Wallflower Manifesto
“How did what happen?” Millie asked, momentarily revisiting that night at Abe’s townhouse, her color steadily rising.
“The proposal, you silly chit,” her mother laughed.
“Oh! Oh, it wasn’t anything grand,” Millie said, deflating with a pulse of relief. “It was the opposite, really. A friendly exchange.”
“A … a friendly exchange?” her mother repeated, clearly confused. “He didn’t get down on one knee? Didn’t make a grand speech?”
Millie coughed to cover up her urge to laugh. “He turned to me one morning and he said ‘we’re getting married, aren’t we?’ like he wasn’t sure if we had penciled it in yet or not.”
Lacey looked rapt. “Yes? And you said?”
Millie felt herself coloring. “I said ‘Yes, probably,’ and he gave a curt nod, and that was that.”
A breeze rattled the door to the gardening hutch, providing a bit of percussion to the beat of silent disbelief that hung in the air after that statement.
“Millie,” said her mother seriously, “do not ever tell your sister that story. She will melt into a puddle on the spot.”
“I wouldn’t,” Millie assured her.
And then they laughed together at how silly it all was.
It felt, for perhaps the first time in Millie’s life, like her mother was something equal to her, rather than towering above. Like they were something more akin to friends than guardian and ward.
She stood up, stretching, and walked over to the sideboard where her mother kept the towels to fetch one for the dirt still clinging to Lacey’s arms. There, on the sideboard, was the usual collection of things: gardening pamphlets, scandal sheets, an old dime novel Lacey read every year. But also, there, amidst the stack, Millie saw something that made her heart stop.
“The Wallflower Manifesto?” she read carefully from the cover, this one of a different binding than Millie had seen before. She turned to toss her mother the old towel, attempting to keep her face placid and neutral.
Lacey caught the towel mid-arc, looking completely devoid of any suspicion whatsoever. She blinked, running the cloth over her dirty forearms, and said, “Oh, yes. It’s all the rage right now. Haven’t you read it?”
“I skimmed it,” Millie replied thinly.
“It’s very good, dear. You ought to give it a proper read. I’d love to talk about it with someone who doesn’t get the vapors every time it’s brought up.”
“Oh?” Millie asked, feeling her way back to the couch as quickly as possible to restore a steady foundation under her body. “Who’s doing that?”
“Your father,” she sighed. “And the neighbors. Everyone’s so quick to be bowled over. I heard a widow wrote it, you know. But I don’t think that’s true.”
“You don’t?” Millie heard herself squeak.
“No, definitely not,” said Lacey Yardley, shaking out the towel and tossing it onto the arm of the couch. “A matron wrote this. Someone like me. I know it in my bones.”
“You’re probably right,” Millie managed to say.
“You can have my copy if you’d like to read it,” Lacey told her. “And make that boy of yours read it too. It ought to be required before a wedding.”
“I have a copy,” Millie said weakly. “And he has.”
“Has he?” She looked delighted.
Millie drew in a stabilizing breath, looking around as though a distraction might be found somewhere in the hutch.
“Well, what else have I missed?” her mother asked. “Tell me everything. Shall I go put some tea on?”
Millie blinked, knowing she shouldn’t, but unable to resist. “Actually,” she said conspiratorially as she stood to follow her mother into the house, “do you remember the Fletchers’ housekeeper, Mrs. Knox?”
“Of course, dear. I’ve known her as long as I’ve known Percy, which is practically as long as I've known your father.”
“Well,” said Millie, stepping over the threshold into her childhood home. “You won’t believe what happened.”
