Season of Sisters (3 page)

She tossed the used tissue into the commode, then flushed. Lifting her Kate Spade purse from the hook on the door, she exited the stall and crossed to the sink to wash her hands. The lady with the Keds was drying her hands at the next sink.

Their gazes met in the mirror and they shared a smile. The other woman wore her salt-and-pepper hair in a short, flattering bob and her eyes were a summer sky shade of blue. Laugh lines fanned out across her temples, and she looked a little tired. Maggie guessed her to be in her early-to-mid sixties.

Maggie's stare shifted to her own reflection. Her stomach sank and she sighed heavily at the runny-mascara raccoon eyes gazing back at her. She looked beyond tired, at least a decade older than her actual mid-forties and a poor applicator of makeup to boot. "If I don't stop this nonsense, I'll have to go waterproof."

"Pardon me?"

"My mascara. I've been so teary-eyed of late, I might as well just paint my cheeks rather than my lashes. I think it's probably time to switch to waterproof, but I sure do resist it. I hate those oily removers. They make me feel like a fish."

"Oh." The woman's smile turned sympathetic.

Maggie grabbed a rough manila paper towel, dampened one corner, and wiped at the mess beneath her eyes. Attempting to hide her embarrassment, she asked, "Who makes a good waterproof mascara, do you know?"

"As it happens, yes." The other woman's stare flicked over the diamonds on Maggie's hands before she added, "Although I do my cosmetics shopping at Walgreens."

"I'm partial to CVS, myself," Maggie returned, flashing an honest grin. "Though I admit to sneaking into Saks for YSL's Radiant Touch. It works miracles on a girl's wrinkles. Next best thing to going under the knife. I'm Maggie Prescott, by the way. Please, tell me about the mascara."

"It's nice to meet you, Ms. Prescott. My name is Grace Hardeman and the brand is Her Secret. Tears will not smudge it, and they also have a non-oily remover you might like. I'm partial to baby oil, myself. A quick swipe with a cotton swab and I'm done."

Baby oil. Maggie had a vivid flash of memory of the scent of baby oil, and once again, her eyes filled with tears and overflowed. "Call me Maggie, please."

Grace clicked her tongue and tugged a packet of tissues from her purse.

Babies. Maggie missed her babies. They were grown up now. All four of them. Even Scott, her youngest. Off to college. Her boys were not babies any longer, but men. Men.

Like their father.

That dog.

A quick, gasping sob joined the waterworks and Maggie yanked two tissues from the packet Grace offered and buried her head in her hands. "I'm sorry... I don't know why I'm... I just..."

Grace gave Maggie's shoulder a comforting pat. "Don't you worry, I understand. That's your wedding gown in the box on the couch in the ladies' sitting room, isn't it?"

Maggie looked up, trying desperately to blink away her tears. "Yes. How did you...?"

She pointed to the logo on her candy-apple pink tee shirt. "I'm the Pink Sisterhood volunteer stationed at the donations desk. I noticed your box on my way into the lounge."

"Oh." Maggie thought about the heirloom box, the gown and the memories it contained, and bit her tongue to keep from bawling.

Grace's smile was sympathetic. "Don't feel bad; you're in good company. Nine out of ten women who have donated their gowns today have shed a tear or two."

Maggie glanced toward the outer section of the ladies' room lounge where she'd left the heirloom box on a sofa and knew a sudden surge of anger. Ms. Grace Hardeman had a point. Maybe Maggie should keep her wedding dress, hang it on the wall, and use it for a dart board.

With such a vision churning through her mind, Maggie was shocked to hear herself ask, "Would you like to see my gown?"

"I'd love to."

Grace followed her into the front area of the rest room and took a seat in the chair perpendicular to the sofa. Maggie's hands trembled as she removed the lid from the large rectangular box.

She hadn't looked at her wedding gown in years. This morning when she read the newspaper article about the charity wedding gown sale and decided to donate her dress, she'd almost opened the box. But she was still reeling from yesterday's blow to her twenty-five-year marriage. She'd been afraid if she looked at her wedding gown, she might do something really stupid.

Like run after Mike and say everything was all her fault.

Now, though, Maggie felt more in control. Maybe. She believed she could look at the dress without losing it. Then champagne slipper satin and Belgian lace spilled out of the box and she realized she wasn't as strong as she had thought. Her eyes overflowed yet again.

"Poor thing." Grace patted her knee. "Judging by your reaction I think it's better you hang on to your wedding gown. You could always make a cash donation if you want to help Pink Sisterhood."

"Mmm..." Maggie vaguely replied. Lost in her memories, she gently drew the gown from the box and held it up against herself.

"It's exquisite," said Grace.

"It was my mother's. She got married in May of 1941. The dress was made by a dressmaker in lower Manhattan. The lace all came from Belgium and they didn't have enough to finish the gown. Since the war was on, they worried they wouldn't get any more shipments in time to finish the dress. Then Pearl Harbor happened, and the wedding was postponed. Four years later, she got a package from Europe."

Maggie traced the crisscross of lace on the gown's bodice and added, "From my dad. It was yards and yards and yards of Belgian lace."

"What a lovely story." Grace trailed the back of her hand across the soft slipper satin.

"I always thought so. My mother stored her wedding gown in her cedar chest. As a kid I would always sneak into the chest and try it on. I adored it. When Mike asked me to marry him, I never considered wearing anything else. Mama was smaller in the bust than I and the seamstress worked magic to get it to fit."

Grace fluffed out the gown's long satin train and observed, "You must have been a beautiful bride."

"He always told me I was." Maggie stared at her reflection and tried to mesh memory with the reality of today. If she stripped right then and slipped into the gown, the twenty-six buttons up the back would fasten. The seams might be a little snug, but for the most part, the wedding gown would fit.

It would fit the body, but not the woman.

Maggie swallowed a sob. She had changed. Her life had changed. Oh, how she hated change.

Her children were grown and didn't need her. Her husband didn't want her.

She hadn't a clue who she was anymore.

The dark, cold cloud of misery that had hovered in her personal sky for months now descended once again. The fog swallowed her, seeped into her bones, and extinguished the lingering embers of the anger that had burned hot since yesterday afternoon.

Maggie had never felt so cold. So alone. "Oh, spit."

She tried to lift her chin, strained to square her shoulders and straighten her spine. She told herself she needed new wishes, new aspirations, new desires. New dreams.

But she didn't believe it.

The fact was Maggie loved her old life. The life that she'd lost. The one that time and circumstance had wrested away from her. The accursed tears returned as she lowered the wedding gown and made a halfhearted attempt to fold it back into the heirloom box.

"Here, let me help," said Grace, handing Maggie yet another tissue.

"I'm sorry. It must be hormones. I think I'm perimenopausal." Either that or man-a-pausal. Mike-a-pausal.
Oh, I miss him.

How, she wondered, did two people share the same house, the same supper table, the same bed, and still be a continent apart?

Suddenly, she knew a fierce urge to wear her wedding gown one last time. Kicking off her leather clogs, she tugged off her emerald green cotton shirt and white jeans, then stepped into the dress and slipped into the sleeves.

"I'm still donating it," she insisted. "I don't want to keep it. Truly, I don't. I don't have any daughters, any reason to keep it. I was barely twenty when I wore it. Can you imagine that? A baby. But I was so in love."

"I understand." Grace stepped behind her and helped with the buttons. "I was a young bride myself."

Emotion buffeted Maggie as she looked at herself in the mirror. She saw so much more than a forty-plus housewife with an empty nest and a marriage in trouble. She saw her mother, standing behind her as she had on Maggie's wedding day. She'd fastened a pearl necklace around her daughter's neck and wept happy tears.

Tears and weddings. Should have seen the warning in that.

Maggie still thought of her mama every day. She still missed her every day, especially in times of trouble when she needed a shoulder to cry on. Nobody's shoulder was as comforting as a mother's.

Oh, lordy, she needed her mama today.

Seeing herself in this gown again after so many years was like staring into the past. She saw herself as yesterday's bride, the young woman whose heart had overflowed with love, with hope. She saw the woman she used to be, and also, the woman she had wanted to be. In every bead, every button and bit of lace, she saw her dreams, her aspirations, her wishes and desires. She saw her femininity, her sexual allure, her maternal might.

Where had it all gone?

Why was she so empty now?

But even as she asked herself the questions, a welcome distraction burst into the room as a young woman rushed inside. Seconds later, Maggie heard the unmistakable sound of retching.

"Poor thing," she said, just as the outer door swung in once again. This time, however, the person who swept into the ladies' lounge was a man. A handsome, angry man who clutched a velvet ring box in his right fist. "Holly!"

"Go away, Justin."

Once again, Maggie heard the young woman being sick.

"Oh, that's great," muttered Justin. "That's just freaking great." Viciously, he threw the ring box toward the corner. It thwacked against the hunter green wall, then fell, open, onto the gray Berber carpet as he stalked from the rest room.

Maggie's practiced eye identified a two-carat solitaire on a platinum band just as Justin shoved the door open once again. This time, he didn't stop, but marched straight into the inner section of the lounge.

"My oh my." Maggie met Grace Hardeman's wide-eyed gaze. "Wish I had some popcorn. Something tells me we're fixin' to see a show."

Chapter 2

Grace Hardeman considered herself one of the luckiest women around. She had a loving husband, an adoring family, truly caring friends. She and her husband Ben lived in a small, but comfortable home in a nice suburban neighborhood. They were active in their church, local politics, and a weekly readers' group that met downtown at the Fort Worth Public Library.

The only thing Grace was missing, so went the saying, was her health. But she was working on that, watching her diet, exercising, following her doctor's orders. Faith and feminine intuition told her she'd continue to do so for years to come.

In the meantime, she lived her life in keeping with a tenet some friends had taught her:
Today is a gift. That's why it's called the present.
Grace vowed never to waste a minute of this precious gift of life.

Keeping such a vow proved difficult at times. At others, all but impossible. Besides, passing her sixty-fifth birthday gave a woman the security within herself to skirt, if not flaunt, convention. So Grace indulged herself upon occasion, using her vow as an excuse to do things she ordinarily wouldn't do. Like eavesdrop on a private conversation.

She and Maggie drifted closer to the doorway leading to the lavatory portion of the ladies' lounge.

"I said go away, Justin," the young woman snapped. "This is the ladies' room."

"I don't care if it's the damned Oval Office. Holly, what the hell just happened out there?"

"You asked me to marry you."

"Yes. That's not an easy thing for a man to do, you know. I worked myself up to it for weeks. And what was your response? Your face went white, then green, and you dash off to the ladies' room like you're about to lose your lunch. Not exactly a boost to a man's ego. A simple no would have sufficed."

"Justin, this isn't... I'm not... I didn't expect..."

"I love you. And unless you've been lying to me, you love me, too."

From beside her, Grace heard a stifled sob, and she automatically searched her handbag for another tissue to give to Maggie. She heard the commode flush once again, then the sound of running water. From the inner room came the young woman's voice. "Oh, man. I wish I had a toothbrush."

Now Maggie dug into her purse and pulled out a cellophane-wrapped travel toothbrush and a small tube of Crest. She pressed them on Grace and made a shooing motion with her hands. Since tears continued to spill from Maggie's eyes, Grace sighed, shook her head, and walked into the rest room's brightly lit lavatory section.

The young woman was bent over a sink splashing water on her face. The man was leaning against the wall watching her, his arms folded, his expression fixed in a scowl. Grace set the offering beside the sink, then turned without a word, intending to leave the ladies' room entirely.