Little Black Dress with Bonus Material (22 page)

“Ah.” Toni didn't need to ask “what kind of help?” She figured that one out for herself. So instead she asked, “What happened to her after that?”

“Mr. Evans took her to St. Louis to a hospital,” Bridget said and her chin began to tremble. “It was the only way to be sure she didn't harm herself. She was there for quite a while.”

“The City Sanitarium,” Toni said quietly.

Bridget blinked, her tangled brows arching. “However did you know that, child? Surely your mother didn't tell you? She wouldn't have.”

“She didn't.” Toni zealously dug through the hatbox and found the postcard with the drawing of the domed city building. “Take a look at the back,” she urged, where the childlike scribble declared
I AM HERE
.

But Bridget wouldn't touch it.

Toni set it on the bed. “Did Anna write that?”

“I guess she did.”

“Did you ever see her again?” Toni asked, not willing to let it go; she felt so close to getting what she needed.

“Not for years and years.” The housekeeper sighed, her eyes on the postcard. “Mr. Evans, he kept me and my ma away from your family for a long while after. He thought it best not to have any reminders of the nightmare Miss Anna caused. I was told not to visit Anna in the hospital, and I wasn't invited to the house again until I saw your ma at Mr. Evans' funeral with you holding her hand. I begged her to please take me back. My own ma had gone by then, and she and Miss Anna were the only family I had.”

Tears slipped down weathered cheeks, spilling onto her embroidered sweatshirt, and Toni reached across the bed to grasp her trembling fingers.

“But she did bring you back,” Toni said, remembering Bridget with her faded carrot-colored curls and anxious smile, standing in the kitchen with Evie when Toni had come in, fresh off the bus from school.

There you are,
her mother had said, beckoning her forward.
I want you to meet someone, Antonia, a very wonderful lady named Bridget who's going to help us with the house and the cooking.

Toni had walked straight up to Bridget and asked,
Will you bake me Toll House cookies?
Which had gotten her a pair of laughs.

She has spunk, this one,
Bridget had remarked, although it had not seemed to please Evie at all.

“Mother wasn't mad at you,” Toni said softly.

“I think she was very afraid.” Bridget brushed at her tears with her free hand and nodded. “She made me promise never to speak of Miss Anna again, especially to you. And I didn't, not in all the years you were growing up.” She sniffled and plucked a tissue from her pants pocket, soundly blowing her nose before she continued. “Then you went off to college, and Miss Evie got word that her sister was being released from the hospital. They were shutting it down, apparently. Although she worried something fierce, there was no reason.” Bridget blushed as she reluctantly confessed, “I saw Miss Anna many times during those years, despite your grandpa telling me not to visit. They'd done all kinds of treatment on Miss Anna at that sanitarium, and it made her docile as a mouse. In fact, she seemed terrified to leave the place after all that time. She just wanted to be left alone, to live out her life in peace and quiet.”

“If she'd changed so much, why wouldn't my mother want to see her?”

“Miss Evie and I, we made sure she had a place to go,” Bridget said quietly, avoiding Toni's eyes again, “but by then their bad feelings were stuck in cement. Neither could face the other, no matter what I said. So much had come between them.” She sniffed and stuffed the used tissue in her pocket. “Now we're older and no one knows how much time anyone's got, eh?” Bridget ticked tongue against teeth. “Miss Anna would not budge unless Miss Evie made the first move. I kept telling your mother to let bygones be bygones for her sake and yours, and I believe that's what she meant to do before she had that stroke.” Her rheumy gaze fell on Toni. “Maybe you can do what I could never do and what your ma didn't get the chance to, at least I pray so.”

“What's that?”

“Bring her sister home.” Bridget carefully spread out the skirt of the black dress, which lay between them. Then she took Toni's hands and placed them squarely on the silk. “You're a part of her, child, a part of them both, more than you know.”

“The dress connects them?”

“And them to you,” Bridget said.

Toni felt a tickle beneath her palms, and a familiar hum began to spread beneath her skin. She closed her eyes, waiting for the world to fade around her, as it had the last time. Instead, she smelled a scent, so strong it nearly took her breath away. “It's Anna who wears lily of the valley.”

“She always has.” She could hear Bridget's smile.

The hair bristled at her nape, as it had when she'd been up in Evie's room the night the dress had healed itself, and Toni opened her eyes. “My aunt is near, isn't she? It's like I feel her presence. Is she on the property? In the old cottage up the gravel road?”

“No, she's not there. But she's close enough,” Bridget replied and looked fit to bursting. “I can tell you no more. I've said far too much already. But I will get a message to her. I figure she'll be mighty interested to hear the dress works for you as well.”

“It was Anna's to begin with,” Toni said. “It all started with her.”

“A long time ago.” Bridget nodded. “Miss Annabelle told me it was made from spider silk, that if she wore it, she could see her future.” She brushed a hand in the air dismissively. “I thought she was making it up. She always did love to tell stories. And then I saw it for myself when I was in this house with Miss Evie. I found her weeping the night you left, after your daddy's funeral,” the housekeeper confided, plucking lightly at the shimmering fabric. “She said the dress didn't work anymore. That she wished for it to tell her when you would come home, and it only showed her the face of a young man. She didn't realize who it was or what it meant until she read the paper one morning and looked up at me, her eyes as wide as saucers.” Bridget cleared her throat. “ ‘It's Davis' youngest boy,' Miss Evie told me and pointed at his photo on the front page. She got up from the table, looked up his number, and called him straightaway.”

“Hunter Cummings,” Toni said and warily lifted her hands from the black silk, recalling her own, very different vision of him. Somehow, it didn't surprise Toni in the least to learn that Hunter was a part of this, too. “I wish I'd known all this before. I wish my mother hadn't kept it bottled up like the past was poison.”

“To her, it was.” Bridget sighed. “Don't you see, child? She was protecting you the only way she knew how.”

If Toni had thought she would feel some kind of moral outrage at her mother for hiding the truth—hell, for hiding
Anna
—she couldn't. So much had changed since she'd come home; everything felt different. Nothing was the same as it had been before Evie's stroke, and no good would come of dwelling on old mistakes. Hadn't that been the cause of all the trouble in the first place?

“Will you help me reach my aunt?” she asked Bridget, and her pulse strummed in her ears. She knew in her gut that Anna had to come back for Evie. It was part of the vision she saw at the hospital, when she'd pressed her mother's hand into the black silk. If it didn't happen just that way, Evie might not wake up. “It has to be soon.”

Bridget sucked in her cheeks then let them out again. “You've got my word, Miss Antonia, I will do my best. If anyone can bring Miss Evie out of this horrible sleep and put those sisters together again, it's you.”

“I hope you're right,” Toni said and hugged her tight.

W
ake up,” I heard a voice say softly from what seemed a long, long distance. I thought it was a dream until it grew stronger and more persistent. “Evie, wake up!”

It was still dark when I opened my eyes, roused from sleep by my husband, shaking my shoulder none too gently. Before he said another word, I knew by his face that something big had happened.

“Bridget's come to take us over,” he told me with an excitement in his voice I hadn't heard in a long while. “Antonia arrived during the night.”

“She's here?” I said, hardly able to believe it. Such joy overwhelmed me that I found myself laughing uncontrollably and hugging Jonathan. “She's here!”

It was December 9 and not yet dawn. The baby had clearly been in too much of a hurry to wait until morning.

“Hurry up,” he prodded. “Bridget's out in the car. She's anxious to get going.”

He didn't have to ask twice.

Flinging aside the covers, I shed my nightgown and dressed quickly, realizing this meant I could stop telling lies. My daughter was born. I wouldn't need to pretend to my father that I was about to become a mother, because, as of this morning, I would be someone's mother for real.

About to shut the closet door, I hesitated, finally drawing it wide and removing the black dress from its box. I was tempted to leave it behind. But I was afraid if I didn't produce it, Anna would put up a fight. So I rolled it up and stuck it inside my coat before I finished buttoning up.

“Evie!”

“I'm coming!”

Minutes after, we were out of the cottage and inside the back of the paneled station wagon. The air was toasty warm as Bridget had kept the engine running.

“How does she look? Is she well? Was the delivery hard?” I couldn't stop asking questions as Bridget drove us quickly through the dark toward the river.

Even through the shadows, I could see the hint of a grin on her mouth. “The baby's pink and well with all ten fingers and toes.”

“Did you hear that? She's perfect.” I leaned over to squeeze Jon's shoulders. “And how is Anna? Were there any complications? Will she be all right?”

“No complications, Miss Evie, not to do with the birth anyhow.”

What did that mean precisely?

Bridget kept her eyes on the road, and I didn't want to distract her. But I had to know more. I moved apart from Jon, leaning over the front seat. “How's my sister?” I asked. “She hasn't tried to hurt herself, or”—I swallowed hard—“Antonia?”

“Oh, no, miss, it's not that,” Bridget insisted. “I can't rightly describe what's wrong, and I'd rather not try. But she's sad, I think. Very sad.”

“Is that abnormal?” Jon said, having overheard us. “I remember my mother saying she cried for days after I was born. She said it was exhaustion.”

I answered the only way I could. “I'm sure she'll be okay once she's had time to recover.” The moment the words left my lips, they seemed a lie, because something was wrong with Annabelle and I'd known it for a while. “The baby's better off with us,” I told him as I sunk into the seat, folding myself against his side.

“I think you're right, miss, so if you're ready, it might be wise to take the baby quickly and without a lot of fuss,” Bridget suggested. “When I left, Miss Anna had cried herself to sleep, and I reckon she's still dozing, as tuckered out as she was once she'd finished all that pushing.”

“We're ready for her,” Jon said before I could.

I nodded, too, thinking of how long ago we'd stocked up on cloth diapers and pins and formula. Daddy had given me all the baby things from when Anna and I were little, and the crib from the attic that had been ours and Mother's before us.

Daddy! Oh, God. I could hardly wait till the moment I could tell him the baby was here.

“We won't stay long.” Bridget gave a curt nod as she pulled into the graveled lot above the boat slip. “It would be best for Miss Annabelle if we don't make it any harder than it is.”

Despite how bundled up I was in sweater, boots, and winter coat, when we stepped from the wood-paneled car and into the skiff, my teeth chattered unmercifully. The river wasn't icy, but the gusts of wind made it choppy, and the skiff bounced over the waves, battering the three of us in it. I would have thrown up, as much from nerves as the bumpy ride, if Jon hadn't been sitting beside me, holding me tight and telling me over and over, “We're nearly there. It's almost done.”

I spied the cottage across the water: a solitary glow amidst the dark clusters of evergreen. Except for the putter of the engine and the wind whistling past us, the night felt empty, as if no one else was awake or even alive.

It wasn't until we'd reached the dock that I saw a burst of yellow light from the house above us, and I heard a cry to shatter the silence. “Anna!” Then again, more intensely,
“Anna!”

Ingrid came flying down the steps without a coat, her long gray braid streaming down her back. “Anna!” she called at the top of her lungs as the skiff bumped the floating dock. “Where are you?”

I'd started to look around me even before the boat was tied up. I couldn't wait to get off. Once we were close enough to the wooden platform so that I could jump over, I did and narrowly missed falling in.

“Anna!” I began to yell and leapt from the dock to the hard-packed dirt at the river's edge, running after Ingrid, my heart in my throat. If my sister had left the house in the cold, I prayed to God the baby wasn't with her.
“Anna!”

I heard splashes ahead and fixed my gaze on the sound of Ingrid's voice coming from the shallow waters. “Give her to me, child,” she was saying as I spotted their shadows. “You don't want to do this. Give her back, and we can all go inside and get warm.”

I raced toward the rocky shallows, my boots plunging into the water; out of breath, my lungs raw. Ingrid was already emerging, coming toward me with something in her arms.

“It's all right,” she said as she slogged onto shore. She had Antonia clutched against her chest, the hem of her sweater pulled up around the tiny body.

Dear God, what had Anna done?

I glimpsed the top of a pink head as Ingrid rushed past me toward Bridget, who cooed and wrapped her coat around them both and shepherded them toward the steps.

Pinned in place by my horror, I watched them go, certain now that this was the vision the dress had shown me that night weeks ago: Anna walking into the darkness with Antonia, trying to take my daughter away for good.

Was this the prophecy she'd talked about, the one she'd come back to fulfill? To offer me her daughter only to rob me of her? Had she meant to kill them both? Or did this have nothing to do with the dress at all and everything to do with the fact that Annabelle was suffering a breakdown of sorts—something I'd tried to ignore?

Whichever it was, in that moment, I didn't care. My anger swallowed me whole, and I turned on my sister.

“What have you done, Annabelle?” I screamed at her as I walked deeper into the water, until it began to fill my boots. Her arms at her sides, she stood motionless beneath the clouds as the river lapped against her. “What have you
done
?”

Even without the light of the moon, I could see her nightgown soaked through, her small body trembling. She looked like a ghost with her black hair and white skin, and I found myself wishing fervently that she were a figment of my own imagination, a wisp of vapor that would disappear on the next gust of wind.

“Evie, go inside,” Jonathan said to me sternly, and I saw him pull off his coat and wade into the water. “Go!” he called back over his shoulder as he covered Anna then scooped her up in his arms, her bare legs dangling.

I ran up the stairs ahead of them, my boots squishing with every step. The air stung my lungs by the time I reached the top and held the door as Jon brought Anna in.

“Ah, you've got her! Good!” Bridget said and waved him to the first bedroom.

Shivering, I closed the door and went halfway across the room, following Jon's damp footprints, before I realized I had no desire to see Anna; no urge to comfort her and hold her hand, not after what I'd just witnessed. Instead, I focused my attention on the newborn held in Ingrid's arms.

The child had been swaddled in a blanket, and Ingrid paced in front of the Franklin stove, cradling her and saying, “There, there,” as tiny lungs wailed and my heart broke wide-open.

“What happened here?” I asked, my voice shaking as much as the rest of me.

“I'm so sorry, Miss Evie, but I fell asleep sitting up. If I hadn't heard the door shut and realized she was gone—” Ingrid stopped and tears spilled down her cheeks. She had such dark circles beneath her eyes that I wondered how she was awake at all. “It would've been my fault if anything had happened to the baby.”

“But it didn't,” I said so she would stop apologizing. “She's fine, isn't she?”

Ingrid gazed upon Antonia and nodded. “She's stronger than she looks, aren't you, child?” Then she lifted her chin and looked squarely at me. “Would you like to meet her?”

“Very much,” I replied, biting my lip, and held my gloved hands out to her.

“Antonia, this here's your new mama,” Ingrid said easily, and I took it as a sign that she believed what we were doing was the right thing, too.

Gingerly, she set the baby in my arms, and I marveled at the solid feel of her against my chest. I stopped noticing then that my boots were wet, my toes tingling with cold. I could only stare at the pink skin, the delicate blue veins, and the tiny puckered-up features. Such love filled my soul that it drowned out the rest.

“Hello, angel,” I whispered, and she squinted blue eyes, peering curiously into mine. “You're going home now,” I told her, and she gurgled, happily, I thought. I rubbed the tip of my nose against her cheek while she yawned and closed her eyes. As my skin touched hers, I felt an incredible warmth, a connection so strong it made my body hum, my flesh tingle; and I remembered the dress, stuffed beneath my coat, pressed against my heart. It knew, I realized. It
knew
.

“We should go,” I said, my eyes on Antonia. She was what mattered. Everything else was flotsam.

“I'll get Bridget to take you home,” Ingrid replied just as Jon came out of the bedroom. He ran a hand through his hair, and I knew that he had to be freezing. His jeans were wet to the knees, and the front of his coat looked soaked from carrying Anna.

“I want to leave,” I told him, but he stopped near the stove, rubbing his hands briskly.

“She's asking for you,” he said, which made me hold the baby closer. “She's your sister, Evie. You're the one who told me she'll be a part of you forever. You need to say something to her, whatever it is.”

I drew in a deep breath. “I can't do it.”

“Yes, you can,” he insisted and reached for Antonia. “We'll wait here for you.”

Reluctantly, I released my child, tucking her into his arms, touching her face before I walked toward the bedroom door.

Within the tiny space, Ingrid and Bridget sat on either side of Anna, perched at the foot of the bed, a blanket draped around her. Through it, they rubbed her arms and back, and, beneath it, her shoulders unmercifully shook. I heard Bridget plead with her to let them change her nightgown for a dry one, but Anna just cried, “I need Evie, Evie, Evie,” again and again, until I stepped forward and said, “Here I am.”

Ingrid let go of Anna and stood, moving aside so there was a place for me, although I didn't want it. I could no more have sat beside my sister then and touched her at that moment than the man on the moon.

“Evelyn Alice,” Anna breathed my name, making hiccuping sounds as her weeping ceased. She turned her face up toward me, her tangled hair dripping, so I couldn't tell what was or wasn't tears. “Leave us alone, please,” she told Bridget and Ingrid.

“It's okay,” I said, wanting to get this over with. I nodded. “We'll be all right.”

Although I wasn't sure of that myself.

“Shut the door,” Anna begged once they were gone, and so I did.

I kept my hand on the knob regardless. “What do you want?” I asked, although I knew good and well.

“Did you bring the dress?” Her voice was so soft I could barely hear. “Do you have it?” she said, this time more loudly, and her dark gaze stared across the room at me, unflinching.

“First, tell me why.” Somehow, I stayed calm, though it hurt to even look at her, knowing what she'd almost done. It was all I could do not to walk away and never return. “Why did you take the baby into the river? Were you trying to kill her? Did you mean to drown yourself, too?”

Her nail-bitten fingers clutched the blanket to her chest. “I had to do it, Evie. I had no choice. She will marry a Cummings otherwise, the dress told me so the night I walked out on Davis. She will grow up to marry his son, and there would be nothing I could do about it.” Her face contorted, confused, before her eyes filled with defiance. “It's the same fate Father tried to force on me, and I couldn't let that happen. I couldn't do it. Don't you see?”

“No.” My legs trembled; my knees turned weak.

“She would be swallowed by darkness,” Anna hissed at me.

But it was my sister who had been swallowed already. There was no doubt in my mind, none at all. I had ignored the signs for Antonia's sake, but I couldn't pretend anymore. Her delusions consumed her.

“You are sick,” I said, and my chest hurt to breathe, as though the weight of the black dress beneath my coat compressed my lungs. Though I pitied her, I could not give it back, not when her thoughts were so twisted. “You can't have the dress,” I told her, my voice hoarse, a piece of me dying; I had never denied her anything. “I can't give you what you need.”