Little Black Dress with Bonus Material (10 page)

W
hen night fell and Dr. Neville showed up for his rounds, Toni was waiting for him, hoping to have him confirm there was some kind of change—even a subtle one—in her mother's condition. But, like Nurse Liz, he played Debbie Downer, assuring her that, while Evie's latest CT scan showed no bleeding or swelling, Evie was still in a medical coma with no remarkable EEG changes.

“So you think I imagined it, too?” she asked him and got a gentle pat on the arm and sympathetic look in response.

Wrung out physically and emotionally, she said good night to Dr. Neville and the ICU nurses then left the hospital for the Victorian.

Though it was late, Bridget's minivan still sat in the driveway, and Toni parked behind it. As she unlocked the door, it warmed her to think that someone waited for her inside instead of walking into an empty house with nothing but her worries to keep her company.

“Honey, I'm home!” she called out as she dumped her bag on the floor then peeled off her coat and faux-fur-lined boots. She poked her head into the kitchen but no one was there. “Bridge?”

“Up here!”

Toni ascended the stairs in stocking feet and saw the light streaming into the hallway from her mother's room. She found the housekeeper there, stripping the double bed.

“Miss Evelyn should have clean sheets when she comes back. I'd hate to be caught unprepared,” Bridget volunteered, though Toni surmised there was more to it than that. Changing Evie's bed linens surely could've waited until tomorrow or even the day after that. They didn't even know yet when she was coming home.

She smiled to herself, certain that Bridget had hung around to make sure she'd gotten home safely.

“How is your ma, by the way?”

“Her signs are unchanged,” Toni repeated what the neurosurgeon had told her not fifteen minutes before. She left out the part about seeing Evie's eyes move beneath the lids and sensing her mom was in there, thinking or dreaming or something. Even if the medical establishment at Blue Hills Hospital didn't agree with her, Toni was firmly convinced that something was going on inside Evie's head. “So basically there's no news to report.”

“As far as I'm concerned, no news is good news,” Bridget said with a nod before she pointed at the plastic bag that Toni had picked up from the nurses' station. “What's that in your hand?”

“The dress Evie had on when she was admitted.” She held it up so Bridget could see the black fabric stuffed inside the gallon-sized Ziploc. “I'm not sure what I'll do with it, but I couldn't let them pitch it, even though I've been warned that it's sliced up the middle.”

“Let's take a look,” Bridget said, waggling thick-knuckled fingers.

Toni gladly handed over the bag, because she didn't have the heart to peek herself and wasn't sure what she'd do with the ruined dress besides. Her sewing skills were rudimentary. She couldn't do much but tack up ill-behaving bridal trains or replace lost buttons on rented tuxedoes.

Bridget slid the black silk from the bag and laid it out on the bed. She smoothed a hand over the crumpled fabric. “Oh, dear,” she said, clucking tongue against teeth as she drew the jagged edges together. “This is an awful mess, to be sure.”

Toni winced. The dress had been hacked up the front, just as Nurse Liz had described, and without an iota of surgical precision. “Can we duct-tape it?”

“Duct-tape? For heaven's sake.” Bridget snorted. “I'll take it home and figure out a way to tack it together. I'm not bad with a needle, but I'm no miracle worker, so it won't be pretty.”

“If you can fix it, you're a magician,” Toni said and gave her a hug, holding on so tightly it had Bridget flustered. “I'm sure Evie will be thrilled that we rescued it, no matter what it looks like in the end.”

“All right then, I'll see what I can do. Now go on and eat some supper while I finish up here.” The woman shooed her out of the room. “I've made a meat loaf and a green-bean casserole. You just need to warm them up in the oven.”

“Okay, okay.”

Toni obediently headed back downstairs, although having supper wasn't high on her to-do list. She'd drunk enough bad coffee at the hospital to slosh when she walked, plus she'd scarfed down her fair share of vending-machine snacks. She wasn't sure she could stomach anything else so soon. The only thing that sounded good was a cup of hot tea.

She avoided the fridge and Bridget's meat loaf and veggies, digging around in the pantry for the Earl Grey Evie always kept on hand. Their love of it was one of the few traits they shared. After a few noisy minutes of clattering pots and banging drawers while she scrounged together what she needed, she had a kettle boiling on the stovetop and tea leaves spooned into the stainless-steel ball for steeping.

Look at me, Ma,
she mused, feeling virtuous,
I'm doing things the old-fashioned way, slow and steady.

In St. Louis, her life was all about shortcuts. With brides and socialites calling her BlackBerry at all hours, her job kept her too harried to wait for a kettle to whistle. So she heated her brew in the microwave and only ironed shirt collars and cuffs in the winter, because her sweaters and jackets hid the rest. Half the time, lunch and dinner consisted of takeouts, deliveries, or drive-thrus. Like every other modern woman, she rushed about from dawn to dusk. Only when she was sleeping did she lie still.

Evie didn't even own a microwave. She never had. “What's the hurry?” she used to say when Toni had bitched and moaned about being the only high school student not to have one in their house. “You can't wait twenty minutes for a pizza to cook? When I was your age, we understood that the best things take time. With you kids, everything's fast, even the food. So much about life is being patient.”

Like any self-respecting smart-ass teenager, Toni had tossed back: “And what if you miss out on life because you're waiting for a pizza to cook in the oven?”

Evie had rolled her eyes so thoroughly that Toni was surprised they hadn't fallen out of the back of her head.

Toni had applied at the Tastee Freeze partly out of rebellion—because her mother pushed her to work at the winery every summer—and partly because she hadn't much appreciated doing anything slowly.

In college, she'd finished assignments the same day they were due, had group projects done before everyone involved even knew what was going on. When she'd been writing for the society tabloid, she'd scribbled notes in her own shorthand during interviews and then typed up her pieces in one frenetic sitting. Even when she planned events, she worked in a frenzy of activity, talking hands-free on her cell as she drove, returning e-mails while she plotted seating charts, and checking guest lists on her laptop while she watched
Law & Order
reruns with Greg. “Do you have to multitask all the time?” he was always asking. “Can't you just sit for five minutes and do nothing?”

Ha!

Patience was a virtue she could ill afford, not with her schedule. Evie, on the other hand, could endlessly wait without complaint. They were so like the tortoise and the hare, with Toni always sprinting and her mother a firm believer that “slow and steady wins the race.”

As Toni sat quietly at the worn oak table, sipping her tea, she wondered then as she'd wondered so many times before when she'd thought about herself and her mother: how was it possible that they were so different? Shouldn't they have more in common than their love for Jonathan Ashton and Earl Grey?

She had only the dregs of her tea floating at the bottom of the mug when Bridget popped into the kitchen.

“I'm off,” the housekeeper announced as she zipped up her down coat and pulled on her knit hat. “I can drop by after church tomorrow if you'd like,” she added while shoving her fingers into gloves. “I'll make you some lunch, or go to the hospital with you, if you want some company. Will they let me in if I'm not family?”

“You're pretty much the only family I've got at the moment,” Toni responded, thinking how true that actually was. Although she didn't want Bridget to feel obligated to tend to either her or Evie on a Sunday. “Seriously, I'll be fine, and you need a day off after the craziness around here. You're a godsend, Bridge, but even saints need a break now and then.”

“Well, I wouldn't know anything about that, now would I?” The housekeeper grunted as she wound a cabled scarf around her neck. “But I do believe in miracles so that's something.”

“Good,” Toni said. “Because we might need one or two.”

“Oh, I believe we got one already,” Bridget said, her face pinching like she'd swallowed a lemon. “Strangest thing I've ever seen, and I've seen plenty.” She shook her head. “Go on upstairs and take another look at that dress of Miss Evie's, and you'll see what I mean. I've hung it up in her room if it hasn't sprouted wings and flown away.”

Toni didn't ask what that was supposed to mean. Instead, she homed in on the most important question: “So duct tape did the trick? Or did you resort to superglue?”

“Neither,” Bridget replied, shaking her head. “Sometimes you just have to accept the magic that comes into your life and leave it be. So let's both of us be grateful. Now good night. You sleep tight, child.”

“I'll try.”

Bridget waved before heading out.

Once Toni had the door shut and locked, she detected the muffled strains of “Ode to Joy” and realized her phone was ringing. She grabbed her purse from the foyer floor and retrieved her cell in time to answer before it went to voice mail.

“Engagements by Antonia,” she said in a rush and heard Greg's voice on the other end.

“Avoiding me, are you?”

“What? No, of course I'm not,” she said, unnerved by how close to home he'd hit. “I've just been busy—”

“At the hospital, I know, and helping sort through the clutter at your mom's house,” he replied before she could finish. “That's precisely why I decided to do something helpful.”

“Helpful how?” Toni wasn't sure she liked where this was going. Had he begun packing and moving her things into his apartment in the past twenty-four hours because he couldn't bear waiting for her to make up her mind?

“I know I'm not always the most sympathetic guy on the planet, but I don't think it's fair to let you go through this completely alone. Besides”—he paused and cleared his throat—“I miss you. No one's around to bug me about picking up my dirty socks or to talk through all my TV shows, which makes it hard to focus.”

“Aw, how sweet,” she dryly replied and paused at the bottom of the stairwell, setting her hand on the banister. Normally, she enjoyed a little sarcastic banter; but at the moment, all she could think of was taking a bath and hitting the sack. She was beat. “Greg, I appreciate that you're worried about me, but I'm rarely alone. Bridget's been here all day,” she said and started to climb the steps, “and the rest of the time I was at the hospital with Mother.”

“So you could use a breather.” Toni heard some noises on the line and wondered if he were calling from his car. “Maybe my surprise will take your mind off things for a while.”

“What surprise?” Toni stopped midway up the stairs. “You know I'm not big on spontaneity,” she reminded him. “Whatever it is, can you save it till I get home? I'll be in a much better moo—”

“Gotta go!” he interrupted.

“—d,” she finished only to realize how quiet it was on the other end. “Greg? Are you there?”

If he was, he didn't answer.

“Hello?”

Damn it.

Had he hung up on her? And after professing to miss her so terribly. Honestly, she had too much on her plate at the moment to play games, particularly when her feelings about him, about Evie—hell, about everything!—were so confused.

Screw it.

She stuck the cell in her back pocket, made it to the second-floor landing, and meandered up the hallway toward the light that still glowed from Evie's room. The papered walls were lined with framed photographs of her growing up: standing in the vineyards two-fistedly clutching bunches of grapes, eating corn dogs and funnel cakes at July Fourth picnics and the county fair, in cap and gown at her high school graduation, almost always with her father's arm around her; her mother unseen, hidden behind the camera.

“Mom, let me get one of you and Daddy,” Toni would insist.

Evie would shake her head. “I'm not the one who matters,” she'd say.

Toni had figured her mother just didn't like getting her picture taken; but now she wondered if there wasn't more to it than that.

You broke her heart when you left.

But if she'd mattered so much, why had Evie been so afraid to fully embrace her? How could a mother not want to have her child believe that she meant everything, especially when they had only each other?

Toni ended up in the doorway to Evie's bedroom. She paused for a moment, her gaze sweeping across the old-fashioned floral wallpaper, the carved walnut dresser with its marble top, and the large four-poster bed, freshly made. Then she saw an object across the room and did a double-take.

Hanging from her dad's old wooden clothes-butler was her mother's black dress. It gently swayed as if touched by a breeze, and the dark silk glowed like waves beneath moonbeams. Weirder still, it appeared whole and perfect, without a jagged edge in sight.

Which was impossible.

She walked toward it, and a sense of unease traveled through her. Warily, she circled the frock. The silk hung so smoothly, not a crease in evidence. The fabric shimmered, begging her to touch it. When she reached out, skimming the cloth with her fingertips, a tingle of electricity shot through her skin.

It's just static,
she told herself as she lifted the skirt and looked on the inside, sure there must be evidence that Bridget had made stealth repairs. But she could detect nothing unusual, no pins or staples or adhesives.