Better Unwed Than Dead Read Free

choose something strapless and streamlined. She
imagined walking down the aisle to Nick. The visualization felt
good, and for a moment she felt a soaring joy. And then she
remembered the yellowed newspaper clippings detailing the Lake Erie
salt mine collapse that had claimed her father’s life just two
weeks before her birth. She imagined what sort of newspaper
clipping would detail Nick’s untimely death, and slammed the door
on the line of thought before panic took hold. Julia made up her
mind. She would just refuse to ever set a date, thereby keeping the
Nick alive and in her arms.
    WHEN Julia awoke the next morning she found
herself alone in bed, though she was usually the first one up.
Slipping through the house, following the scent of freshly brewed
coffee, she found Nick in his study hunched over the computer, brow
furrowed with concentration. “What are you doing?”
    Nick glanced up. "Huh? Oh, it’s nothing, just
a research project. Maybe something I'll use for a lesson plan next
year."
    Julia accepted that readily, not noticing
when Nick tilted the monitor away from her. He was always looking
for new ways to freshen up his classroom. She showered and dressed
in the comfortable khaki slacks, white blouse and tennis shoes she
always wore to the shop and then headed out the door, leaving Nick
to his project.
    An hour later the telephone rang in her shop.
Julia stepped away from the shelves of Great Lakes themed ceramics
she'd been dusting and picked up the phone. "Peninsula Gifts, how
can I help you?"
    "Hon, where's the picture of your grandma in
the wedding dress?"
    "It's in the blue photo album on the shelf in
the hall closet. Why?"
    "Just wanted to have a look at it...I have to
go. Love you."
    Julia looked at the receiver and frowned. She
didn't know what Nick was up to, but it couldn't be good. Three
hours later he breezed into the shop and strode up to the counter
with a steely-eyed determination that had the few customers milling
around eyeing him warily. Julia saw one alarmed woman duck around
the corner and reach for her cell phone, no doubt expecting a hold
up.
    "Julia, I'm leaving."
    The woman relaxed but then shot Julia an
embarrassed, sympathetic smile and shuffled out the door, not
wanting to witness an awkward breakup scene.
    "Leaving?" Hearing, but not believing it, she
refused to meet Nick's eyes and instead focused on rolling a
porcelain seagull ornament in bubble wrap.
    "Not you, Marblehead."
    Now she was really confused, but at least the
floor was back under her feet. "Marblehead? You're not going to
leave me, but you won't live with me or in the same town with me
anymore?"
    Nick exhaled and leaned across the counter,
tenderly tucking Julia’s hair behind her ear. "I know how important
that dress is to you. I think it's ridiculous that you won't marry
me--"
    "Or anyone."
    "Yeah, okay, or anyone, in anything but that
dress and I think a therapist could help you over your
superstition, but--"
    "It's not a superstition!" Julia snapped,
stepping away from his caressing hand and then looking around the
shop as her last remaining customer shooed a toddler out the door.
She took a deep breath and said calmly, "Look at what happened to
my great-grandfather. Grandma never even met the man. He was dead
before she was born. Just like with me with my dad."
    "How did the earlier deaths even get
associated with that dress?"
    "They, I...well, it's detailed in a family
diary. I don't know exactly. I think mom packed it away somewhere.
In might be in her trunk at the nursing home."
    "You see? You don't even have a basis for
your fears, or your mother’s. You've let this hysteria run away
with your imagination."
    Julia bit her lip with indecision, wondering
if perhaps what he was saying was true. But if it wasn’t, the
consequences, oh my... "It's too big of a risk." Even as she said
it, she couldn’t help but admire the ring on her finger. "I'm
sorry, Nick. I know that maybe, just maybe, the curse really is