Season of Sisters (5 page)

"You want me to pretend you're a male priest while you're wearing a wedding gown?"

"Sugar, this is the Church of the Makeup Mirror. We're very liberal." After a moment's pause, she reached over and squeezed Holly's hand. "Besides, it might help you to talk about it. Talking helps me."

"Who would have guessed?" The glint of amusement in Grace's eyes defused her dry tone.

Holly looked down at her feet and made a vain attempt to change the subject. "Oh, dear. I've scuffed the toes of my shoes something awful. Maybe I'll make a run by the mall this afternoon and buy a new pair. I have an extra fifty dollars in my bank account from tutoring an undergraduate calculus student last week."

Maggie studied her hot pink nail tips. "Well, now. A girl can never do too much shoe shopping."

"That's right. Thank goodness I'm about through buying textbooks. Can you believe what a racket that is? Tell me how they justify charging almost two hundred dollars for a single book. How much does a professor earn for writing a textbook anyway?"

"Sweetheart," Grace said, patting Holly's knee. "We'll leave you alone if you truly don't want to talk about it, but I agree with Maggie. I know firsthand that it helps to have a friend with whom to talk over one's troubles."

"You have troubles, too?"

Grace pursed her lips, considered explaining, but settled for saying, "I'm living with them."

"We all have troubles," Maggie added. "Actually, I wouldn't mind sharing mine with a girlfriend right about now."

"Go ahead," Holly said.

"You first."

Holly grimaced and nibbled at her lower lip. A full two minutes passed before she opened her mouth. Words tumbled out like kittens. "I can't marry Justin and I can't tell him why because he'll argue with me and cajole me and try to make me out to be an irrational fool. I'm not irrational. I have my reasons for feeling like I do. Excellent reasons. And as for my feelings, well, they are my feelings and I own them and... and... and... Oh, I can't think."

She threaded her fingers into her dark curls and exclaimed, "He's going to date Jenna Larson and marry her and have two-point-three blond-haired, blue-eyed children who play the piano and go to Montessori school and eat artichokes for lunch."

"Oh, sugar."

"But at least he'll have children. He'll have a wife. A family of his own. That's important to Justin. Justin and Jenna. Justin and Jenna and Jeremy and Janet and... how do you name a third of a kid?"

Tears were once again running down her face. Out of tissues and with the toilet paper beyond her reach, Grace wiped the wetness away with her fingers. "Sweetheart, why can't you marry him?"

"I'm so pathetic." Holly swallowed a nervous giggle, then slowly looked up and met first Maggie's gaze and then Grace's. Swaying, she said, "I think I'm going to faint."

Grace frowned. "Do you think we should get a doctor?"

"Either that or take off her bra. That always makes me feel better."

Holly shoved to her feet. "Oh, no. I need to... I'm going to... "

"Let's get her to the stall, Grace."

They made it just in time. With Maggie Prescott, dressed in a vintage wedding gown, tenderly supporting her shoulders, Holly lost what little was left in her stomach. Again.

"Sugar? Are you in a family way?"

"No, I'm not. I can't let that happen." Staggering out of the stall, Holly headed for a sink. "I'd love it. I love children. That's why I decided to teach. I teach math. Pre-algebra." She lifted sad, soul-weary eyes and met Grace's gaze. "I still have twenty-seven items on my list."

"What list?" Grace asked, worried by the look.

"My Life List. Not a bucket list. Goals I want to achieve. I was going to mark one off today, but I blew that. No sex in the storeroom for me now. And I'm afraid I'll run out of time. I wanted to be deliciously wicked today. That's number twenty-one: I will do something deliciously wicked. Oh, God, I don't want to die."

"Die?" Maggie exclaimed. "Sugar, are you sick?"

"No. I'm healthy as a horse. I bungee jump and ski dangerous mountains. I clean out my closets once a year. I plan to skydive and scuba and get politically involved by the next election."

"I hope that's not local politics you're talking about," Maggie warned with a smile. "Then I'd think you do have a death wish."

"No, it's the opposite. I have a no
death
wish. Not for ten or twenty or fifty years."

"That sounds like a plan to me." Maggie glanced at Grace, the arch of her brows asking what to do next.

Holly made use of the toothbrush once again, brushing with fast, angry strokes. "I'm so mad at him," she said, through a froth of bubbles. She rinsed, then wiped her mouth with a brown paper towel which she crushed into a ball and threw into the trash can with a hook shot.

"He was supposed to be safe. He said he wasn't looking to get married. I took a chance on him." Her look of despair offset her tone of outrage. "Now he's ruined everything by proposing."

She walked into the lounge and flopped back against the sofa, letting her head rest against the cushion. Her gaze fixed on the painting of pink magnolias. "He did it in honor of my mother, you know. That's why he proposed here, today."

"Your mother?"

"It's all about my mom." Tears filled weary eyes yet again. Her voice cracked. "Everything. My relationship with my dad, with my friends, with men. Especially with men." She grimaced. "She died when I was twelve years old."

"Oh, honey." Grace sat beside her on the left.

"I miss her so much."

"Sure you do." Maggie sat on her right, patted Holly's knee. "Girls never stop needing their mamas."

"My dad is still lost without her, even after all these years. I promised myself I wouldn't do that to a man or child."

Maggie leaned away, angled her head, and stared at Holly. "Do what?"

"I'd never seen Daddy cry before. In the hospital room, afterward, he sobbed. He held her hand and cried so hard it scared me. Finally the nurses made us leave. On the way home, I promised myself I'd never break a man's heart like that."

"And that's the reason why you won't marry Justin?"

"Part of it."

"What's the rest?"

Holly opened her mouth, then shut it abruptly. "Never mind. It doesn't matter. I'm not going to marry him. That's the bottom line. There is nothing anyone can do or say to change my mind."

Grace and Maggie shared a skeptical look. Maggie drawled. "Sugar? Just a small piece of advice. You've used that 'C' word a few times here today."

" 'C' word?" Holly looked almost haggard.

"Change. I've lived a bit longer than you—not all that long, mind you—and I've learned a thing or two about change during that time. Sugar, one thing you can count on, change is gonna happen. Life is just a big old square dance. Just as soon as you think you're getting the swing of it, it's allemande left and do-si-do. Sometimes it's hard to stay on your feet."

Holly sighed heavily. She closed her eyes and let her head fell back against the sofa. "What is your point, Maggie?"

"My point is that it's easier to keep your balance if you let your knees bend. Bend a little, Holly. Be flexible."

Grace smiled her encouragement. "It's good advice, Holly. That way, when the dance ends, you'll still be standing strong. Believe me, standing strong is very important to a woman."

Chapter 3

It took Holly a good twenty minutes, but she eventually pulled herself together. After she washed her face and touched up the little bit of makeup she wore, Grace suggested they all adjourn to the hotel restaurant to indulge themselves in a slice of the Greystone's famous triple chocolate cake.

As they walked toward the restaurant just off the main lobby, a Pink Sisterhood volunteer flagged down Grace. "We're getting awfully busy," the harried woman said. "Could you please take another turn at the table? People are stacked up waiting for tax receipts."

Minutes later, Grace chatted sympathetically with a woman donating a wedding gown in memory of her best friend, and Maggie had pitched in to work the floor helping brides find sizes and styles among the rows and rows of gown-filled racks.

Holly dawdled in the doorway. When she realized her two new acquaintances probably wouldn't be breaking for chocolate cake anytime soon, she decided to wave a good-bye just as soon as she caught their notice. She needed time alone to lick the emotional wound she'd suffered when Justin walked out in anger.

She'd have made it safely away had she not spied the wedding gown lying on the ground, its pristine white satin train now sullied by a dirty footprint. When she stopped to hang it up, a volunteer snagged her and guilted her into helping. Half an hour later as she hung yet another wedding gown on a clothes rack, she tried to figure out just how she'd gone from potential sex in the storage room, to bawling in the bathroom, to dressing-room duty at a charity wedding gown sale. This world of white dresses and bubbling brides was absolutely the last place Holly wanted to be.

Thinking about marriage made her teeth hurt.

"That's what I get for falling for a chocolate bribe," she grumbled through set teeth.

The sense of self-preservation that had kept her hanging back from the hustle and bustle of the ballroom fell in the wake of Grace's tentative request for help clearing the dressing room of stacks of discarded gowns. Knowing better but prodded by her conscience, she grabbed a handful of hangers and dived in.

Working with the wedding gowns proved just as bad as she had feared. Being adrift in this sea of satin and lace took an emotional toll on her psyche. In a perfect world, Holly would be shopping for her own wedding gown right now. But this was far from a perfect world. Holly had learned that hard lesson young. Today had simply reinforced the fact. Four hours after leaving the ladies' room, Holly was still immersed in wedding dresses and a pity party.

From overheard remarks, she had gathered that the Pink Sisterhood Foundation transported the gowns from sale to sale, city to city, by way of a truck and gooseneck trailer donated by an oncologist from Arizona. In order to make the loading and unloading go as smoothly as possible, a rushed woman in a pink tee had said, it helped to have all the gowns hanging in the same direction on the racks.

Holly worked her way through the dresses turning hangers, hooking trains up off the floor, and wistfully mooning over the beauty of some of the gowns. All the while, she tried desperately, and in vain, to put Justin out of her mind.

He wanted to marry her. Have a family with her.

He'd brought her here today to buy a wedding gown in tribute to her mother.

Did a finer man exist on this earth? Holly blinked rapidly, willing away another bout of stupid tears. Fighting herself.

"Oh, spit," Maggie said as she stopped beside Holly and tugged a froth of satin and lace from the rack. "Look at this. It's a size twenty and it was hidden in with the sixes. I'll bet that nasty-spirited girl from Piano stuck it here so no one else would see it. Oh, I'd like to wring her neck."

Holly remembered the bride-to-be to whom Maggie referred. She'd been a loud, obnoxious, demanding woman with an equally loud, obnoxious, and demanding mother.

"This gown would have been perfect for that sweet Sarah Jones I tried to help about an hour ago," Maggie continued. "Look, Holly. Isn't it beautiful? A classic style. The bride who wears this dress will be drop dead gorgeous."

Holly eyed Maggie's trim body and liked her all the more for thinking a size twenty woman could be "drop-dead gorgeous." She smiled. "It's a lovely dress."

Maggie hung the gown on the end of the rack, folded her arms and studied it, then nodded decisively. "I don't care if I have to buy it myself, that Plano girl isn't getting this dress. Sarah Jones mentioned her wedding was going to be at First Methodist. I wonder if I could get her address from the church. It's worth a try, don't you think?"

Holly didn't respond. She couldn't. The candlelight silk gown she'd just lifted from the floor to replace on its empty hanger was a close duplicate of the one her mother wore in the photo her father kept on his night-stand.

Oh, wow. If she didn't do something quick the tears were going to start all over again.

"Now that's a pretty one," Maggie said, stroking a hand across the fabric. "Old-fashioned. Reminds me of a lace-trimmed valentine."

A sudden fierce need to share replaced Holly's desire to cry. "My mom wore a wedding gown similar to this."

"Did she?" Maggie gave the dress a closer look. "Do you still have it?"

"No. I don't think so, anyway. I haven't seen it. Daddy didn't keep many of her things."

"Oh, sugar." Maggie reached over and gave her a hug.

The emotion clogging her throat told Holly to change the subject quick or she'd be back in the ladies' lounge bawling again. She gestured toward another gown and attempted to redirect the conversation. "Look, that one is lovely, too. Although I still think your gown is the prettiest one I've seen here today. And I must have looked at a thousand gowns by now."