Midsummer Nights by Katie Winters

Author:Katie Winters
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Katie Winters

Chapter Thirteen

Joey Gilbert was coming to Mackinac Island. The thought rang through Tracey’s head the moment she awoke like an impossibly loud gong. She staggered to the bathroom and scalded herself beneath a hot shower, trying to make sense of any of this. Emma was pregnant; Joey wanted to return to Tracey’s life; neither father nor daughter knew about the other and existed in two very secret worlds. How could she ever bridge the divide?

It was seven in the morning, a blissful Saturday in July. Sunlight glittered through the separation between the soft drapes in the kitchen. Tracey stood with a mug of coffee, disassociating as she gazed outside. Her confusion was slowly replaced with panic. Although, yes, she and Joey had seen one another briefly at the airport— she wanted to make a lasting impression, the sort that made her ex-lover think, “Damn. I messed up when I left that woman behind.”

It was only human to feel this way.

It was every woman’s heartache to ask, before any main event, “What the heck am I going to wear?”

Emma remained asleep. She looked so peaceful, her face angelic as she dove through dreamland. Tracey closed the door between the hallway and her bedroom, stuffed her feet into her tennis shoes, and headed out the door. For the first time in several weeks, she made her way to her downtown boutique, which she’d basically closed for the month of filming.

Over the years, Tracey had built up an impressive collection at the boutique itself. It was the most sought-after boutique on Mackinac Island, drawing women together from all walks of life to try on dresses, skirts, blouses, hats, and artisan jewelry. It was Tracey’s greatest joy to discuss fashion with the many women who entered the boutique, to ask what their fashion goals were and how they wanted the world to perceive them. It was fascinating to hear their wide range of answers.

Once within the walls of the boutique itself, Tracey filled her lungs with air and immediately felt at peace. Before her was a wide array of hand-selected outfits, all of which had been Tracey-approved. It was the perfect place, then, for Tracey to find something to wear for her reunion with the father of her child.

Over the next hour and a half, Tracey had a mini, one-woman fashion show. She donned turquoise dresses, tan skirts, bulky jewelry, and simple gold bands; she buttoned and unbuttoned blouses, hung and re-hung dresses, and sauntered up and down the boutique in pairs of heels. All the while, her speaker system played music that Emma said: “pumped you up.” Tracey could only laugh at herself. She felt like the main character in a movie all about her life.

“Stranger than fiction,” she muttered to herself as she shifted her body left and right, eyeing her figure in a dark green dress.

This, her gut told her, was “the one.”

Suddenly, a knock rang out from the front door. Tracey turned around to find a group of women, coffees from The Grind in hand.

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