Pleating for Mercy (4 page)

The women in the front room must have been straining to overhear us, but they never broke from their conversations. I sighed. If there was going to be fallout, there was nothing I could do about it now.

The mess in my workroom danced before my eyes. I couldn’t even begin to understand how it had happened, but the rickety piece of furniture had definitely gone rogue. It looked like the front right leg of the antique piece had been shot out of a cannon, landing on the opposite side of the room. I added the dent it had left in the wall and repairing the shelf to my list of work to be done.

But in business, the customer is always right. Not always easy to embrace, but I stuck to it. A lawsuit would put me out of business before I ever really started. “I’m so sorry!” I gushed, truly hoping she wasn’t hurt.

Nell’s shoulders relaxed, but her expression was still strained and she bit down on her bottom lip. “I’m fine. No harm, no foul.” She looked like the Tin Man as she carefully moved one limb at a time, reached for her Gucci bag, and began crunching across the button, glass, and ribbon minefield. The smaller chunks of glass crackled under her feet. She glanced over her shoulder at the mess. At least three, maybe four, large mason jars were broken to bits. “If you have a broom, I’ll—”

I waved the offer away. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of it.” While I spoke, I mentally subtracted the hours it would take to painstakingly separate the buttons from the glass debris and clean the room from the hours I had available to make the four dresses for Josie and Nate’s wedding. The clock was ticking.

“I don’t mind—”

“You’re bleeding.” A thin ribbon of red trailed down Nell’s shin. “Let me get you a bandage for that.”

“But—”

“I’ll sweep up,” Karen said, jumping into action.

“Are you sure? I can—”

“No, I got it.” She asked for the broom.

“There’s a little closet next to the refrigerator,” I told her, and she scurried off in the direction I pointed.

“I have a bandage,” Ruthann said, leading Nell to the settee. Her knockoff Prada bag sat on the coffee table. She grabbed it and started rummaging.

“This is ridiculous,” Nell said. “I can help.” She started to get up, but Ruthann gently pushed her back down.

“You’re bleeding! Let Karen take care of it.”

Karen came back with the broom, dustpan, and plastic grocery bags and got straight to work sweeping up the mess of glass and buttons. The ladies in the shop had all gone back to whispering.

My nice little dressmaking boutique suddenly had an aura of mystery about it. All these people milled around, but only a few of them had business here. I wished they’d all leave so I could put the shop back to rights and get to work planning the bridal party’s dresses.

Josie must have felt the same thing. Within a few minutes, Nate left, and she led her mother and another woman to the front door. “We can wait for you,” her mom said in halting English. She and Josie were the same height, but where the younger Sandoval was curvy, the older one was more of an apple shape. Her rounded top half balanced on skinny legs and she looked like she might topple over at any moment. Her smile was cautious, like she wasn’t sure what to make of the grand wedding her daughter was planning.

“It’s okay, Mom,” Josie said, tugging the front door open and sending the bells hanging from the knob into another jingling frenzy. “I’m going back to the store for a while, and then Nell and I are coming back here so Harlow can take our measurements. Nell said she’ll drop me at home later.”

“
Sí
, Nell? You bring Josie home?” Mrs. Sandoval called from the door.

Nell sat on the couch looking pensive, her hand on her bandage. “No problem.”

Mrs. Sandoval nodded.
“Gracias,”
she said as she left.

Karen came out of the workroom frowning and wiping her brow. She held the broom and dustpan in one hand, a loaded plastic grocery bag in the other. Her frown vanished when she saw me. “I found this in the cupboard,” she said, indicating the two-handled bag. “Wasn’t sure what you wanted to do with it all. I can take it out to the garbage—”

“Oh, no. They’re my grandmother’s buttons. I’ll sort through them. After the wedding,” I added with a wink. I slipped my hand through the handle, taking the bag from her. Relief flowed through me. Karen was a pioneer woman. She’d dug in and had gotten to work, simply doing the job that needed to be done. “I can’t thank you enough.”

“No problem,” she said. Watching her walk off to the kitchen to put the broom and dustpan away, I could envision how the dress I’d make for her would swish as she walked.

I quickly set the bag of buttons and glass in the corner behind the couch, then snapped up my sketchbook from the coffee table. Time slipped away as I drew with precise strokes of my fine-tipped pen. Karen’s dress needed to soften the hard edges of her jaw and draw in the thickness of her middle, giving her more of a waist. If it hit just above the knee, it would give the illusion of height. A little flare at the hemline would make it flirty. I could see the completed picture in my head like a snapshot of a finished piece.

I paused at the details of the bodice. Pleats or tucks? Pleats, angled in a V, would work, but I hesitated. My pen hovered over the paper. No. Pleats weren’t right for Karen. Tucks would bring the eye down, making her look slimmer and taller. I added the vertical lines to the sketch.

The back door slammed and Josie appeared right behind Ruthann, two bricks in her hands. I hadn’t even realized they’d gone outside. How long had I been in my creative zone? “I found these on the side of the house,” Josie said. “Maybe they can hold up the shelf? For now anyway.”

“Brilliant!” I closed the sketchbook and went to help her. Ruthann joined us and together we lifted one side of the shelf while Josie slid the bricks under the corner. It wobbled slightly, but was stable enough to work until I could get it fixed properly.

We chatted for a while longer until I felt sure I knew enough about how Josie pictured her dream gown. Time was short. I’d be able to dig out swatches of sample fabrics to show Josie when she and Nell came back.

After they’d all gone, I went back to my sketches. I’d envisioned Ruthann’s bridesmaid dress the moment Josie said she needed dresses for her bridal party. A simple, elegant sheath with darts to give shape to her thin body, cut above the knee, a V neck in the front and a lower V plunging halfway down her back. I’d seen the allure of the wraparound concept she favored, but I kept coming back to the sheath. I filed both away for now, unsure which direction to go.

The other mystery was Nell. Her Gucci purse, her jean shorts and plaid shirt, her diamond earrings and her haphazardly pulled-up hair all puzzled me. I couldn’t put my finger on her style. I wondered if
she
knew her style.

Next to me on the couch was the pile of swatches she’d been looking at. They were all silks and taffetas. On top was a square of plaid cotton, the edges zigzagged with pinking shears. The colors—rust, blue, and offwhite—were masculine. I picked it up, turning it over as if there’d be a message on the back telling me how it had gotten mixed up with the dress fabrics.

Of course there was no such message. Finally, I tossed it into the old embossed tin box sitting in the middle of the coffee table and went back to my designs. I still had time to think on Nell’s dress. I had to start with Josie’s gown anyway, making a pattern and a muslin sample before I could even consider beginning the others.

At first, Josie had said she wanted cap sleeves, but the wedding was in late April and the weather was already turning warm. My instincts told me that she would really prefer strapless, and I started a new sketch, this time with no sleeves. I drew in a very subtle sweetheart neckline and a dropped waist. I added side draping on the skirt. Beaded floral embellishments at the waist. It would have to be lined. Zipper in the back. I jotted notes down next to the final sketch.

On and on I went, replaying everything the four women had said until I felt completely confident that Josie would love what I’d come up with. Only Nell’s comment about Nate breaking Josie’s heart nagged at me. I couldn’t help worrying about why she believed he might.

All the Cassidy women have an affinity for fabrics and trims. It’s in our blood, just as sure as Butch Cassidy’s charm runs through our veins. The attic in the old farmhouse on Mockingbird Lane held stacks of neatly folded fabric that had belonged to the Cassidy women through the generations, dating back to my great-great-great-grandmother and Butch Cassidy’s love, Texana Harlow. The hundred or so mason jars upstairs were filled with buttons, ribbons, and trims, a collection that had been added to by all the Cassidy women. Aside from spending time in the attic, surrounded by the things that bound me to the them all, I felt closest to Meemaw when I was in her kitchen. The distressed pale yellow cabinets, the reused red brick on either side of the deep, white farmhouse sink, the large red-and-white checkerboard-patterned curtain on a pressure rod below the sink, and the copper pots and pans hanging from an exposed beam above the long pine farm table had been her vision. Even though it belonged to me now, it was still hers. It always would be. I stood at the old farm sink, scrubbing the grouted edges, thinking about Josie and the dress I couldn’t wait to start making for her.

The sound of the front door crashing against the wall made me jump. With all the crazy noises, creaks, and moans, it felt like the house could very well be haunted. A feeling of melancholy settled over me. If only it were true and Meemaw really was still here with me.

I snatched one of the embroidered tea towels Nana had given me as a housewarming gift. Happy little goats danced at the bottom of one end. Drying my hands, I hurried into the shop. The French door was wide open. I popped the screen door open and poked my head outside. The front yard with its patches of bluebonnets, lavender, and roses was dappled with pale moonlight. The air outside was still and quiet. It should have been comforting, but instead it felt like a tornado was coming. It made me wonder if I could pull off a wedding gown and three bridesmaid dresses in less than two weeks. I closed the door, breathing out the tension that had gathered inside me as I went back to the kitchen.

A short while later, Mama waltzed in carrying a vase bursting with lavender. For a split second, I thought it was a young Meemaw. Mama looked just like her mother, Coleta, who was a dead ringer for Loretta Mae. There was never a doubt that a Cassidy was a Cassidy—the auburn hair with the trademark blond streak was our genetic signature.

The teakettle whistled. I was bursting with news of my commission, and a thread of worry that I’d bitten off more than I could chew, but I held my tongue. “Where are those from?” I asked, gesturing to the flowers.

She set the vase in the middle of the pine table next to my sketchbook. Adjusting her Longhorns cap and tucking in a wayward strand of hair, she sat down. “I planted lavender, and you know how it goes. Start with one, grow a million and one.”

That’s not how it went for everybody, but that happened to be my mother’s gift. Her thumb was greener than the Jolly Green Giant’s, while mine was the color of an eggplant, more or less. I didn’t have a bit of talent when it came to gardening.

“How’d your day go?” she asked as she arranged the flowers, fixing the few that had torqued during transit.

I beamed, determined to do whatever it took to make the dresses. “I talked to Josie Sandoval today. Do you remember her?”

“Does a ladybug have wings? Of course I remember her. I saw her a few days ago when I was leaving—” She suddenly stopped, regrouped, and finished with “—when I was, er, visiting a friend.”

“Well, she’s getting married and can you believe that the place she bought her dress from went out of business?”

Mama
tsk
ed. “That’s awful.”

“That’s not the worst of it. Her gown and the bridesmaids’ dresses are MIA.”

My mother sucked in a breath. “Very bad luck.”

Tessa Cassidy was a firm believer in superstition. She was forever tossing salt over her left shoulder and crossing herself, even though she wasn’t Catholic. I didn’t know if a missing wedding dress was universally bad luck, but sometimes it was better just to nod than to argue a superstition point.

“Their wedding’s in a few weeks,” she said. Her eyebrows pulled together as she eyed me. “What’s she going to do?”

“Twelve days, actually. Her misfortune is my good luck.” I felt a smidgeon of guilt over being happy about the Bridal Outlet going belly-up, and although Josie was out the deposit on the dresses she’d ordered from the store, I firmly believed it was her absolutely good fortune that I was on the job. “She hired me to make them. Her gown and all the bridesmaid dresses.”

Mama placed her palms flat on the table, interlaced her fingers, and stared me down. “Oh, no, Harlow Jane, you can’t do that.”

“Of course I can. It’s an unbelievable opportunity!” I slid into the ladder-back chair opposite her, pushing the vase of flowers out of the way so I could look her in the eye. “So far, everything I’ve designed and made has been for myself, an assignment, or based on someone else’s vision. If I lay eyes on another Maximilian dress with the artsy collar and the structured shoulders, I’ll scream. Bridal gowns. It’s such a niche market. They may be just the thing to put me on the map.”

But my mother was shaking her head. “Making someone else’s wedding dress means bad luck for your own romance.”

I sat back, folding my arms over my chest. “Mama, I’m not going to turn away this contract because you think it’s bad luck.”

“I don’t want the Harlow and Cassidy names to die out,” she said with a frown.

“So that’s what this is about? Grandchildren?”

“I’m not getting any younger, and your grandmother would sure love some great-grandbabies from you.”