Page 92 of Free to Believe
“No?” Standing, my baby sister strides to where I’ve hurled my sketchbook in anger. “You’re a month out from Fashion Week, Em. Is anything new in production? Since the last stuff you sent to Ali?”
I bow my head in shame.
“Are you going to let a broken heart ruin your chance of a lifetime, or are you going to use those emotions to yell ‘fuck you’ to everyone who dared to tell you couldn’t do this, weren’t good enough, or aren’t loved enough?” she taunts me.
Chest heaving, I shove to my feet and I stride over to my desk where I keep my private journal locked up. Blindly grabbing it, I fling it at her. “You try designing wedding gowns when these are the images seared in your mind, Holly. You try believing in the magic of love when everything about you says everyone you love will die if you even dare to hope for it, when everything you believe tells you you’ll never fucking deserve it. Then when I feel it for the first time, it’s ripped from my heart. It bled my soul. Being in love stole everything from me. Even my ability to create. I’ll never get it back!” I scream.
Holly looks down at the book in her hands. This book has never been seen by anyone in my family. It was something I used to show Jake my world, my life. It was the only voice I had to talk about my past. She flips it back to the beginning, studying each picture. With each turn of the page, I can read her expressions as clearly as if I was telling her the story myself. I can tell when she’s seeing Aunt Dee versus my father. There’s heartbreak when she’s looking at a young Cassidy versus the judge who granted us emancipation. Shock and then tenderness at the images of Ali, Corinna, and herself as we first found them, and then on their graduation days. Memories locked in my head over the years, transposed permanently into that book. My ex-fiancé in anger and then the image of him in bed with another woman. My first impression of Jenna at the coffee shop. When Holly turned to the page I captured of Jake after the first time we slept together, her face takes on the same pain I’m feeling. Then when she sees the one I did of him yelling at me, telling my love essentially killed everyone who it touched, she hisses.
I expect empathy. Instead, her face hardens with anger.
“Are you going to let them steal your voice?” Closing the book, she hands it back to me.
“What?” Shakily, I lean over to accept it.
“That book isn’t just about capturing images in your brain, Em. That book is about capturing the emotions you can’t let out using the words that were stolen from you as a child. Are you going to let Jake be the final person to take away your voice? You worked too hard to get it back.” I sway in place as her words penetrate. My knees almost buckle under the impact. I grip the edge of my desk tightly.
Holly comes up to me and brushes her lips against my forehead. “Speak up, Em. Speak now. If this is your only shot to use your words, what do you want to say?”
I choke out the words. “I want to tell my father I hope he’s rotting in hell. I want to rub the judge’s face in it—the one who didn’t believe that three kids could make a life together on their own. I want to kill the bastards who took my sisters hostage.” I take a deep breath.
Holly urges me. “Go on.”
“I want to slam my head against a wall for being weak and accepting Bryan’s proposal. I was giving in and settling. He made me feel trapped, and I hate that. And as for Jake?” This one is the hardest, but I plow on letting my emotions carry me. “I’d want him to know I’ll survive. No, better yet. I want him to look back with regret because I…I’m gone, and I will live this life.” I dash away the falling tears.
“All of that, Em. Now here.” Holly shoves my sketchbook at me. “Harness all of that power and draw the designs we’ve been waiting for. The designs your soul’s screaming for.”
Snagging it from her hand, I begin frantically looking around for the charcoals I flung around the room earlier. Spying one at my feet, I grab it and touch it to my page.
The familiar tingle begins in my head, my hands, and my heart. First, I draw the outline of a face and the long, lean body of the model type I want. Tapping into the long-buried pain, I begin to place patches of lines over the spots to indicate intricate detail where I was held back by the intruders from getting to my mother and father when I was a young girl. The banded arms held me over the chest and up one shoulder when the other came at a slant from the opposite side banding down over my hips. I can see it in my mind’s eye already. Sleeveless, sheer underlay, it will be screamingly provocative.
When the masked monsters made it so I couldn’t speak, this dress will finally give me the chance to scream.
I look up only when I feel the hand on my shoulder. “You have three days,” Holly murmurs. Bending, she drops a kiss on the top of my head. With that last piece of news, she leaves me in my studio with something I didn’t have an hour ago.
An ability to talk one of the few ways I know how.
* * *
“I didn’t thinkit was possible for you to outdo yourself, Emily, but these designs?” Alison lets out a low whistle. She’s scanning the final designs into her computer so she can submit them for expedited copyright. “You’re going to blow the roof off of the place.”
“If they get completed in time.” Now that I’ve finally completed the designs, I know the difficulty in executing them up to my standards. “I’ve left a hell of a burden on the people who build my samples because I couldn’t get my head on straight.”
“Do you need to go with another company? Multiple companies? To hell with the cost.” Alison’s fierce reply astounds me and then melts another small place in my frozen heart. Normally a huge penny-pincher when it comes to the bottom line, the fact she’s willing to throw profit out the window tells me she’s just been waiting for the moment to intercede.
Because that’s what the family that loves you does.
“Let me call them,” I offer. Pushing the sketches around, I pull out one in particular and hold it up. Alison’s breath catches. “I’ll be doing this one myself.”
“Sweet Jesus, Em. That will take you hundreds of hours,” Alison breathes reverently.
“About two hundred,” I estimate. “But if I take this one off the table, I think I can keep everything else at our predicted cost and on schedule.” Frowning, I warn, “I just won’t be able to take any appointments since I’ll be working on this dress day and night in the studio.”
Taking the paper from me, Ali declares, “If you can make this dress come to life in four weeks, we’ll divide your appointments between us or have interns take them. This dress is…” Her voice trails off.
Swallowing hard, I try to give the words to what this dress is to me. “It’s everything, Ali,” I whisper. “It’s the storm, the passion, the anchor, the wreckage, and the rescue.”
Coming out from around her desk, Ali carefully takes the drawing from my hands before she pulls me into a hard embrace. “We’ll get you through this,” she vows.
