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Elise’s cheeks now burned more-or-less all the time, it seemed like.
“It’s okay?”
“It’s more than okay,” Anna said. “You look amazing. Do you have plans?”
“Kind of,” Elise said.I’m going to go alone to the Grand Hotel to listen to music.
“If you have plans, wear that dress. Heck, wear it every day for the rest of your life, just in case something magical happens,” the boutique owner said.
Elise paid for the dress and thanked the woman for her goodwill. She then turned and wished Anna good luck. “You’re going to make such a beautiful bride,” she told her.
Anna laughed. “At forty-one, I never imagined I would hear that.”
“You’re never too old for anything,” Elise said, remembering that her daughter had tried to tell her she was too old to run away. “Enjoy every second.” She certainly was.
Elise donned the dress later that night and headed back toward the street, in the other direction, toward the Grand Hotel. Before she left, Connell whistled, teasing her.
“Where are you off to all dressed up?”
“I’m going to the Grand,” she said.
“Oh! For the concert series,” he said. “Good idea. Have you been up that way yet?”
“No. First time.”
“You’re in for a treat.”
When Elise first spotted the Grand Hotel from the far right side, her heart dropped into her stomach. It didn’t look like anything she had ever seen before in California. It was formidable and stark white, a place where important decisions were made or important things were said, where dramatic affairs happened, where people fell in gut-wrenching levels of love. Elise wondered what little twenty-four-year-old Allison Darby had thought of the place.
Staff members waited on either side of the concert-style seating. A younger boy asked Elise if she wanted to sit upfront. She shook her head, sheepishly. “I prefer the back,” she told him.
“Are you sure?”
“I think the sound will be just as good. Maybe better,” Elise replied.
Truthfully, she didn’t want to be seen as that strange, middle-aged woman, front and center, and completely alone.
As she waited for the concert to begin, she dug through her purse and brought out the diary again. After a brief glance around—as though the librarian was after her! Ha—she turned the page to the photograph of Dean Swartz. Her heart thudded with what seemed a lot like love.
She didn’t know this man at all. But there he was, in all of Bradley’s glory.
How could she not love him if her mother had loved him so?
And gosh. What had her mother thought of Brad’s looks? She must have seen only Dean.
Behind the photograph was another entry from her mother.
Dean told me to wait up for him. He was done with set work around eleven or so—give or take. I know in the world of cinema, it’s always give, give, give. He didn’t arrive to my hotel room until just after midnight. I didn’t care. The moon was full, and I was ready: dressed in that little dress I bought in Santa Monica, a million years ago.
Maybe I’ll never go back to California.
We walked out beneath the moonlight. He didn’t want to talk for a good long while. I didn’t know why, but I didn’t want to interrupt his thoughts. I held his hand and followed until we reached the edge of the water. We took off our shoes and dug our toes in the sand and allowed the moonlight to stream over us. I asked if he wanted to go skinny dipping, but he said no. Not tonight. He just wanted to hold me, he said. And I wanted to demand more of him. I always want so much more. He says this is because I’m a California girl; I’m hungrier than the other girls he’s met in his life. I tell him I’m just impatient, and why shouldn’t I be? Impatience is one of my greatest gifts. I fight for what I want. I don’t always get it, though.
I don’t even know if I’ll get him.
Oh, but kissing him beneath the moonlight. It’s pure poetry, isn’t it?
That night, he walked me back to my hotel room. It’s strange, walking through these old hallways and imagining all these other lives. I suppose it’s especially strange since that’s the theme of the film itself. We want so desperately to imagine these other lives. We want to feel what it felt like to be someone back then.
