Little Black Dress with Bonus Material

by Susan McBride

  Mother’s nervous smile flitted off again, and her voice grew softer as she added, “I haven’t always been fair to you, and I’m sorry for that. You’ve never given me a moment of grief, Evelyn Alice, not like she did. And still I wish—”

  “I know,” I said, not letting her finish, because I did know all too well.

  So much had changed with my sister gone, and I still had not grown accustomed to being an only child in any sense. Some days, in odd moments, I would say to myself, “I should ask Anna what to do about this,” or, “Anna would know which earrings I should wear.” I had never been one to make girlfriends easily as I kept much to myself, so my sister had been my best friend, perhaps my only real friend until Jonathan. No matter how different Anna and I had always been or how pale I sometimes felt in her colorful presence, I hadn’t imagined getting married without her standing up for me, or, at the very least, hearing from her. But there was no congratulatory note penned in her flowery hand, no florist’s card with a pot of lilies, not even a telegram.

  Thank goodness I had Jon, as being with him soothed the ache I’d felt at so abruptly losing my sister. As our relationship had progressed, I’d come to count on him in a way I never had anyone else, and I’d begun looking ahead instead of back. I knew that once we wed, we would start our own family. Having a child would change everything. A baby would surely cheer my parents as nothing else could, and it would trigger Anna’s return. The dress had shown me as much, hadn’t it? And I had no reason to doubt it. What I didn’t know was when. I only hoped we wouldn’t have to wait too long for our reunion.

  “You take care of my daughter, you hear me,” my father was saying to Jonathan, and I smiled, seeing him slap my groom heartily on the back in that way men did when they didn’t know how else to communicate. “She’s all I have in the world.”

  “You have my word, sir, I will.”

  I knew my parents were pleased about our union, although they didn’t exactly jump up and down with the same unbridled passion they’d shown after Anna’s engagement to Davis. My marriage to Jon would not reunite eighty acres of Norton grapes with my family. Jon Ashton didn’t have the clout or family name of Davis Cummings. Indeed, he had offered nothing to my father when he’d asked for my hand, only that he would love me and provide for me. My parents had seemed equal parts relieved and surprised by our betrothal. Neither had been the same since Anna’s departure, and I had hoped that having some good news to celebrate would shake the melancholy out of them.

  I worried about the turn their health had taken. They acted less like a pair than two separate beings, each living within the same walls but apart from each other. Mother had kept more and more to herself, claiming migraines and spending hours, sometimes days lying in bed in her darkened room, skipping church, missing meals, and avoiding bridge club with the girls. My father hadn’t holed up so much as buried himself in the business of the winery. I wasn’t sure which was more responsible for the deepened grooves carved into his face: the vineyard, my mother’s depression, or his disappointment in Anna; although I had no such doubts about the sadness in his eyes. My sister had broken his heart—both of their hearts—and nothing I did could begin to repair it.

  “Do you wish she was here?” Jon had asked me the night before when he’d dropped by the house to visit after supper. He had never met Anna but probably felt as though he had with as much as I’d told him about her. I’d shown him the handful of photographs I had of my sister and me, and, seeing my wistfulness, he’d wondered aloud, “Do you think she would have come back if she’d known about the wedding?”

  “Maybe,” I had said, although I had my doubts.

  Was I sad not to have my sister standing up for me, as I would have for her? Yes and no. Somehow, not having Anna there made things less complicated. There would be no distractions, no drama that took away from our special day.

  “Anna’s free to do whatever she wants,” I’d told him, as sure of that as I’d ever been. “She never wanted to be stuck in one place or under anyone’s thumb.”

  Jon had reached for my hands and held them tight. “Where is she now, do you imagine?”

  “Hmm, Cuzco, Peru,” I’d suggested, taking a stab in the dark.

  “What’s in Cuzco, Peru?”

  “She read one of Daddy’s old National Geographics and decided she simply must go see Machu Picchu and climb all those steps. Or else she’s in Venice riding in a gondola.” I had shrugged, conjuring up other names of places my sister had wanted to see. “Or on safari in Kenya. There was so much she wanted to do.”

  “Well, whatever she’s up to, I hope she’s content,” Jon had said, and I could tell he didn’t understand what drove Anna at all, no more than my parents did. “I know I couldn’t stay away for so long without good reason. And I’d be miserable without you.” He had bent his head to kiss the back of my hands.

  While his words and the touch of his lips had made my heart flutter, I’d still felt some primal need to defend my sister. “Anna is . . . different,” I’d futilely explained. “She’s not like you or me. She doesn’t see things the way we do.”

  “That’s for damn sure.”

  “She’s like a bird or a butterfly—”

  Jon had scoffed. “So what are we? River rocks?”

  “I think we are,” I said, which earned me a masculine snort.

  It wasn’t a bad analogy. He and I were rather solid and stable, unyielding, even as life washed over us like water, slowly wearing us down in the process. But I didn’t tell Jon that. I worried he’d find it unflattering.

  So I sighed, giving up.

  Truthfully, it had become harder and harder to put myself in Anna’s shoes, to reason away why she’d done what she’d done. Like Jonathan, I couldn’t fathom being distant from home for so long. Much as I tried, I couldn’t envision the type of life Anna was leading without us, or how she managed to keep living it, considering the fact that Daddy had cut her off (she could only sell Grandma Charlotte’s pearls once, after all). What kept me buoyed was knowing I would eventually be pregnant with the child who would bring Anna home where she belonged.

  “Ahem.”

  I heard a gentle clearing of the throat and turned my head to see the judge peering at Mother and me from below bushy brows.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, are we ready to proceed?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir, I’d like that very much,” Jon replied and ceased the conversation he’d been having with my father.

  In an instant, he was at my side, taking my free hand in his. With the other, I clutched half a dozen pink tulips that I’d plucked from the garden this morning. They still held dew inside the petals and smelled of spring and air and grass.

  “Everyone take their places, please,” the judge said, directing traffic until he had us all where he wanted us. Then he opened the Bible he held to a bookmarked page.

  Jon kept looking at me in a way that made me blush.

  “Evelyn,” my mother whispered, nudging me, and I remembered to pass her my bouquet so Jon could take both of my hands.

  His callused palms pressed firmly into my soft flesh, and I found their roughness a comfort. Maybe Jon didn’t have a college degree and an eloquent vocabulary, like Daddy or Davis Cummings; but he was a strong man, a good man, and one of the few people on earth that I trusted with my whole heart.

  “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to unite Jonathan and Evelyn in matrimony,” Judge Harper began, but I hardly heard the words that came after.

  So many thoughts and feelings surged through my veins that I would have fallen off my pumps if not for Jon’s sturdy grip. Without warning, Anna’s voice played inside my head, telling me good-bye while I pretended to sleep, and then I heard water slapping against the rocks as I fell into the Mississippi while attempting to throw out the black dress. What would I have done if Jon hadn’t been there? How had the black dress known he would save me? Had it realized the chain of events that would need to fall cleanly like domi
noes in order for everything to happen as it did?

  I shivered, and Jon squeezed my hands, drawing me solidly into the present.

  “Evelyn Alice, do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forth, in sickness and in health, so long as you both shall live?”

  “I do,” I said, relieved that I hadn’t missed my cue. It was a wonder I could recall my own name.

  Jon kept the rings in his coat pocket, so our exchange went off without a hitch.

  By the time Judge Harper had told him, “It’s time to kiss your bride, son,” my legs wobbled and my chest felt close to bursting.

  “It would be my pleasure, sir,” Jon said, a laugh in his voice. But his eyes were serious as all get-out when he drew me toward him and whispered, “Hello, Mrs. Ashton.”

  “Hello, Mr. Ashton,” I said, amazed to realize I was his and he was mine.

  Then he kissed me, his mouth firm and soft at once, the caress all too brief, as though he held something back. I closed my eyes as our lips touched, and I thought again of the vision the dress had shown me, the one where Jon and I made love, and I realized soon enough it would happen for real. My pulse thumped so loudly it amazed me that no one else could hear.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Jon breathed against my ear before we drew apart, and I was beyond ready to go.

  “Congratulations,” Daddy told us. He patted Jon on the back again before taking me in his arms and embracing me so tightly I lost my breath for an instant. “Be joyful, String Bean,” he said, and I promised him I would be. I already was.

  We left the courthouse for the Southern Hotel, where we had a room for the night. It was the same place that Anna and I had lunched the day we’d discovered the Gypsy’s shop. Only this time, it would hold a different sort of memory entirely.

  Jon unlocked the door and scooped me into his arms to carry me across its threshold. Once past, he kicked the door shut with his foot and made his way toward the giant four-poster bed. I held on to his neck, my cheek pressed to his shoulder, and I inhaled the smell of him: soap and sweat and something else I couldn’t identify that was uniquely Jonathan.

  “I love you, Evie,” he said when he gently set me down. “I think I have since I first laid eyes on you.”

  “Looking like a drowned rat,” I remarked.

  He smiled and brushed the hair from my face. “You looked like an angel to me.”

  “Oh, Jon, I love you beyond reason,” I whispered as he bent to kiss me and took my breath away with his urgency. I gave in as well, catching my fingers in the curls of hair at his nape, responding hungrily now that no one else was watching. It was just the two of us.

  Soon enough, the hat came off my head and the pins along with it. My white suit slid off my shoulders and hips. Satin shoes and nylons, garters, slip, and brassiere, all fell away until we were naked, my skin so pale against his sun-browned arms and chest. We lay side by side, and his hand traced a path from my shoulder to the curve of my waist, coming to rest on my thigh, and I realized I wasn’t afraid, not a bit, because I’d been anticipating this moment—waiting patiently for it—since the dress had shown me exactly what would transpire on that chilly spring morning when he’d pulled me from the river.

  Chapter 16

  Toni

  Toni didn’t pay much attention to where they were going. It might have been her neck of the woods once, but she hardly knew all of Blue Hills like the back of her hand, not anymore and certainly not after dark.

  Which is why Greg kept the radio off so he could listen to the female voice from the GPS—“Diane,” as Toni had dubbed her, since she sounded so much like Diane Sawyer—guiding them toward their destination. “Turn right in one hundred feet,” Diane would enunciate, and Greg would obediently follow suit, his hands perfectly situated at ten and two on the steering wheel.

  Toni wondered how often those articulate GPS voices led people off cliffs or onto dead-end streets. She’d read once of a couple who’d ended up hopelessly lost in a forest, thanks to less than up-to-date satellite images. She only hoped Diane wouldn’t lure them away from the sparsely lit rural route and onto an abandoned road with a drop-off into the Mississippi River.

  “Turn left in seventy-five feet . . . in fifty feet . . . twenty-five feet,” Diane was saying as Toni stared out the window into the night, barely able to make out the white of the snow that topped the brush and trees.

  “We’re almost there, babe,” Greg assured her, his eyes glued to the gray of asphalt visible in the high beams.

  Toni muttered, “I can’t wait.”

  She huddled in her coat, cold despite the Volvo’s heated seat that warmed her backside. A weird tingling kept running up and down her spine and dancing across her skin. Either it was chills signaling the onset of a flu bug or she was having some kind of allergic reaction to Evie’s dress. Because she’d been fine until she’d changed into it after rolling on an ancient pair of black pantyhose (unearthed from amidst the packs of Peds in her bureau and sealed in the plastic wrapper with a smiley-face Walmart price sticker).

  What if the invisible superglue that Bridget must’ve used to seal the gaping front of the dress had left a dangerous residue? Or perhaps it was a build-up of dry-cleaning fluid that was poisoning her system. The dress did have that lingering scent of lily of the valley. Was that from an eco-unfriendly detergent? Toni had gotten rashes from Tide when she was growing up, and her St. Louis dermatologist had agreed she had very sensitive skin. Why in the world she’d worn the thing in the first place was the biggest mystery of all when everything about it made her uneasy.

  “You’re so quiet. You okay?” Greg asked, sounding worried.

  “I’m fine,” she said, even if she wasn’t, not really.

  Toni considered herself only mildly superstitious and mostly ambivalent on the issue of ghosts and spirits and all things other-worldly. Yet she felt in her gut that the dress was different. Not only had it been resurrected from the dead but it fit Toni as surely as if she’d bought it for herself. She and Evie had never been the same size. The only “clothing” they’d ever shared were the communal windbreakers hanging in the front-hall closet, which had also fit her father. And that made no sense, especially since the dress was constructed of a delicate silk—not stretchy jersey or Lycra.

  “Turn right, fifteen feet . . . ten feet . . . five feet,” Diane enumerated, invading her thoughts, and Greg gave the wheel a hard turn.

  “Shit!” Toni let fly as the tires bumped onto a graveled road, and she flung a hand against the dash to steady herself.

  “Sorry about that,” Greg said, reaching over to pat her thigh, as they meandered down a long and winding drive defined by sporadic ground-level lights and announced by a spot-lit billboard proclaiming:

  HISTORICAL ROLLING HILLS WINERY

  NEWLY RENOVATED RESTAURANT AND B&B

  STRAIGHT AHEAD!

  Toni almost forgot about the prickling of her skin for a moment as she ran the name through her head.

  Rolling Hills, Rolling Hills, Rolling Hills.

  It sounded so generic, so anywhere. Once, she’d recognized every vineyard in the area and its owners. But she’d been gone for twenty-five years, barely popping in for holidays or funerals, and so much had changed in between; kept changing even now.

  “Do you recognize the place?” Greg asked, and she wondered if she’d accidentally spoken out loud.

  “No,” she admitted.

  “There was just a big spread in the Post-Dispatch this weekend about it. Some brothers spent years updating everything.”

  She sighed, telling him exactly what she’d been thinking, “So much has changed since I left.”

  “They apparently brought in a world-class chef to reconfigure their menu,” her boyfriend went on, and Toni tried to act interested.

  “Then I hope the food’s good.”

  “You’ll find something way better than grilled cheese, I’m sure.”

  “We’ll se
e about that.”

  And she finally did see something: lights ahead, enough to illuminate the snowy landscape surrounding a building that looked like a French château, or at least what some architect had imagined a château would look like with a mansard roof, lots of windows, arches, and stone. A man-made reflecting pool stretched out in front with the graveled drive on either side. Toni leaned forward in her seat, squinting at the statue of Neptune or Zeus or some such god who stood in the midst of the stone-rimmed basin. She imagined there would be fountains spitting up lighted plumes around said god’s well-chiseled form if the water hadn’t frozen over.

  “Pretty slick, huh?” Greg remarked in his “I’m impressed” voice, driving slowly, the tires crunching as they turned over the pea-sized gray rocks.

  “Too slick for Blue Hills,” Toni said, not mincing words.

  For God’s sake, this was Missouri, not Provence! If extravagant faux châteaus and fountains were what the wineries in Ste. Genevieve were doing these days, it was no wonder the Morgan family’s vineyard was in bad enough shape that Evie would cry for help. How could their tiny family business keep up with the Joneses, if the Joneses were building enormous palaces with fancy restaurants and bed-and-breakfasts to attract business?

  “It’s way too over the top,” she continued to grouse as Greg pulled the car into an empty parking spot between a silver Lexus SUV and a shiny black Mercedes roadster. “I feel like I’m at a theme park.”

  “C’mon, sweetie, don’t judge a book by its cover. Maybe the inside will impress you,” he replied with surprising diplomacy.

  He got out and hopped around the car before she’d unbuckled her seat belt. Graciously, he opened her door and extended a hand to help her out.

  Toni stared at him, wondering what was up with the Southern gentleman routine. Was he regretting that he’d given her his key instead of a ring? Was that why he’d come all the way from the city to take her to some showy winery for dinner?

  Greg tucked her arm into his as they walked toward the restaurant. He drew her out of the way as an older couple emerged, smiling and laughing, the man’s arm wrapped around the woman snuggled inside an impossibly fuzzy fur coat.