“Perfect. I bet they put those awesome guardrails up so you didn’t get gutter balls.”
She nodded. “Jason Figsworth got a strike.”
“Well, since he’s stuck with that name, he deserved it.”
Nolie giggled.
“All right, Figsworth,” she joked. “What you need for wobbly letters is the same thing you need for a wobbly bowling ball. Guard rails.”
Invested, Nolie leaned in and watched Tessa’s pen.
“I still do this when I have to write something important,” Tessa said, making her dots just the very way Artie had taught her. “Let’s spell out something. Give me a word.”
“Figsworth,” she said with another chuckle.
Tessa smiled, already liking her sense of humor. “Start with an F. Make one, two, three, four, five dots.”
“Then you follow them?” Nolie asked, instantly getting it.
Tessa tapped her nose with the pencil. “Ding-ding-ding. We have a smarty-pants in the building.” She flipped the pencil and offered it to Nolie. “Now you do it for me.”
As she guided Nolie through a simple trick—using dots to create a letter guideline—the little girl relaxed, the tension in her fingers easing.
From a few feet away, Crista watched quietly, her expression unreadable, but certainly not hostile.
Eli’s phone rang and he walked back to his office, so Lacey and Vivien came over to sit at the table with them, which Tessa appreciated so it was less like a show.
“You wouldn’t believe this bridal salon we went to today,” Lacey said to Vivien. “And we had a great meeting.”
As Lacey told them the highlights of meeting with Akari Tanaka at Lumière, Tessa quietly showed Nolie the dot system for writing her name.
Eventually, Crista sat, too, listening to Lacey tell them all about the grand opening they had to plan, but keeping one sharp eye on her daughter.
“So what are you going to do for this event?” Vivien asked.
“That’s the million-dollar question,” Tessa admitted. “Well, probably not a million, since she already warned us about the budget. We’ll do something that makes a splash. And it has to be on April twenty-sixth.”
“That’s the day of my recital,” Nolie chimed in. “But I’m not going. I’ll be here.”
“Oh. Are you sad?” Tessa asked.
“I brought my dress,” she said. “It’s pink. We are doingDance of the FlowersfromThe Nutcracker. But my teacher made itDance of the Flower Girls. And we were all going to wear flower girl dresses!”
Tessa gasped, an idea sparking like a flame in her brain.
“Dance of the Flower Girls?” she repeated slowly, as if testing the words out loud.
Nolie nodded enthusiastically. “We all carry flowers and come down an aisle like we’re at a wedding, but we twirl.” She hopped up from her chair and turned in a little circle, her arms delicately lifted like a ballerina. “Like this.”
Tessa’s eyes widened as a vision clicked into place.
A fashion show. A dancing, moving, twirling fashion show made up completely of the wedding party, flower girls, and, of course, brides.
Tessa’s pulse quickened as the idea took shape. “You…” She pointed playfully at Nolie with the chewed-up pencil. “Are a genius!”
Her eyes flashed. “I am?”
“Yes!” Tessa turned toward Lacey, grabbing her arm. “Let’s hold a live, elegant fashion show, wedding themed, of course, and the runway is the aisle. And they can dance, just like Figsworth the Flower Girl!”
