Little Black Dress with Bonus Material (3 page)

A
lonely light glowed from the kitchen as Toni let herself inside the Victorian where she'd spent the better part of her first eighteen years. The manse with its turrets, gingerbread trim, and wraparound porch had been started by her great-great-grandfather Herman Morgan and finished by her great-grandparents Charlotte and Joseph Morgan more than a century ago. Plenty of reminders of their past still lingered, from the Georgian grandfather clock that noisily ticked in the foyer to the painted portraits of Charlotte and Joseph side by side above the mantel in the study, and all the heavy old period furniture that Evie had refused to ever part with, filling every nook and cranny.

As she took off her coat and hung it on the rack near the door, wisps of cold air seeped inside through broken caulk, tickling Toni's skin rather like the fleeting touch of ancestral spirits. Not that Toni was spooked, but she suddenly wished for warm-blooded company.

She plucked gloves from her fingers and fished in her bag for her phone. Sitting down on a straight-backed chair in the foyer, she called Vivien to say she'd be out of town for a while because of a family emergency. Then she phoned Greg and filled him in on what the doctor had said and that she intended to remain in Blue Hills until they brought Evie out of the coma. She couldn't well leave before then, not until she knew that her mother was okay.

“What if she wakes up and asks you to stay?”

Toni could only take a deep breath and say, “Right now, I'm just hoping she wakes up at all.”

“But I need you here,” he insisted, petulant as a boy, and she would have laughed if she wasn't so drained.

“You'll be fine for a few days,” she told him and tapped the toe of her shoe against the floor.

“A few days? Do you think that's all it'll be?”

“Honestly, Greg, I don't know.”

The only thing she knew for sure was that she couldn't desert her mother, not under these circumstances, no matter the emotional distance between them, and there was plenty. Toni's adoration for her dad had been unabashed and messy, full of hugs and sticky kisses. “How's my angel?” he'd ask each morning at breakfast and tousle her hair. He'd never missed a dance recital, no matter how deplorable her ballet skills. When she'd skinned her knee falling from her bike on the graveled drive, she'd run to him, not to Evie.

Toni's feelings for her mother had been far more controlled, never spontaneous. If she appeared less affectionate, it was because that was all Evie seemed to allow. Her mom kept her at arm's length and held her tightly at once; she was both overprotective and taciturn, not at all like her highly emotional daughter.

“I hate you, I hate you!” she remembered screaming at Evie fairly often during her tumultuous teen years, and now she wished like hell that she could call those words back. She was quite sure her mother hadn't forgotten them. Toni had craved more from Evie, a deeper connection; but it was as if something unsaid had always hung between them. Whatever it was, she couldn't bridge the gap now—or ever—not if she lost her mother, too.

After saying good-bye to Greg, she considered eating something. But, in spite of missing dinner, she wasn't the least bit hungry. Nerves had tied her belly in knots. Instead she bypassed the hallway to the kitchen and dragged her overnight bag past the grandfather clock toward the stairwell. The hands struck eleven just then and the chimes began as she trudged up to the second floor, her footsteps on the stairs out of tune with each chord. She toed open the six-paneled door to her old room with its canopied bed and frilly curtains.

“I'm in a freaking time warp,” she said out loud and dropped her bag to the floor. Everything was as she'd left it after college and the same as it was on her last return trip two years before: the half-used perfume bottles on the dresser, the romance novels crammed into the bookshelves, and the closets filled with clothes from high school that were probably back in style, if she could still fit into them. It was as though the room kept waiting for her to return and resume her life within it.

She felt certain that Evie wouldn't have turned it into a guest room or craft nook even if she'd actually needed the space.

If she put a dusty old Def Leppard cassette in her 1980s-era stereo, would Evie appear at her door, telling her to “Turn that racket down!” Would her dad poke his head in at the crack of dawn and chirp in a singsong voice, “Rise and shine, Clementine! Time to get up for school!”

God, it felt weird being in the house without her parents, her dad especially. Deprived of his vibrant voice and his welcoming arms, the place seemed stripped of its soul. When he'd died, the Victorian had become preternaturally solemn, and she and Evie hadn't known how to fill the silence between them.

Enough with the depressing thoughts,
Toni told herself, sniffling, and wiped at her nose with her sleeve. Then she unzipped her duffel and dug inside, not finding what she needed.

In her haste, she'd forgotten to pack pajamas. So she rifled through the dresser drawers and unearthed a much-worn nightshirt emblazoned with
MADONNA GIRLIE SHOW WORLD TOUR
across the chest. She caught her tired reflection in the bathroom mirror and wanted to ask, “Who's that middle-aged woman wearing my T-shirt?” Maybe her bedroom hadn't changed since high school, but she definitely had.

Toni quickly brushed her teeth, turned the lights out, and crawled between sheets that smelled—as ever—of Ivory Snow. For a while, she lay with her eyes wide-open, listening. The radiator hissed with heat, and the house gently creaked and sighed, very much alive and breathing. Otherwise, there was merely an ungodly quiet without Greg's snores and the ebb and flow of traffic and people on the streets below her Central West End apartment.

Absent the familiar sounds, Toni felt even more out of sorts. She thought of calling Vivien, since the Dimpleman affair was over; but her assistant would be busy supervising cleanup, ascertaining that all vendors had been tipped, and making sure the guests found their coats and got to their cars. Tempted though she was to phone Greg to say good night, she knew he'd be less interested in how she was coping than in her reaction (or lack thereof) to his proposal that they move in together, and she didn't have the strength to get into that.

Oh, Evie!
She turned her head to rest her cheek against the pillow.
What the hell happened? I always thought you'd live forever. Don't prove me wrong and die, or I'll never forgive you, you hear me?

Toni closed her eyes and imagined her mother as she'd seen her last, at Jon Ashton's funeral: her back ramrod-straight in the church pew, sober expression, her mouth pressed into a hard line. Once home, she'd calmly sorted through all the casseroles and cakes dropped off by well-meaning friends and neighbors. She had even written thank-you notes with her silver-gray head bent over Daddy's desk—“Before I forget,” she'd said, as if Evie forgot anything anybody ever did. As always, she'd been the picture of strength and resilience.

What a stark contrast to the thin woman in the hospital bed lying so still beneath the white sheet, unable to breathe on her own, Toni realized, and that frightened her immensely.

Please, let her brain mend,
she found herself praying without really meaning to.
Please, don't let this be the end of it. I'm not ready for her to go.

After an hour or more spent tossing and turning, Toni nodded off and slept so soundly she didn't awaken until daylight peered through the eyelet on the frilly curtains. The persistent whir of a vacuum slowly entered her consciousness, the hum coming from somewhere below.

If she hadn't known better, she might have panicked, thinking a thief had broken in; but what thief would tackle the dust on the rugs before he rooted through the silver?

Yawning, she pushed back tangled hair and planted her feet on the floor. She tugged down her nightshirt and shuffled downstairs to find her mother's longtime housekeeper rolling a battered Hoover over the rug in the living room. Just the sight of Bridget made her want to bawl. The woman had been with the Ashtons since Toni's grandpa Franklin Evans died, right about the time Toni turned ten. She was as much a fixture in their lives as the old Victorian and the twenty acres of grapevines.

“How am I supposed to get any sleep around here?” Toni approached and barked above the roar of the machine.

The woman glanced up, brow furrowed. She shut off the vacuum and set it upright in one swift motion. “Well, well, if it isn't our girl, live and in the flesh! I saw the car outside with that Engagements by Antonia bumper sticker, and I said to myself, ‘Of course she'd come! She's got a heart of gold beneath those designer duds she's so fond of wearing.' ”

The rumpled face softened, and Bridget opened her arms to Toni, who walked straight into them. She sagged into the embrace as her eyes welled with tears.

“How could this happen?” Toni asked, choking up. “I've never even seen my mother sick—”

“Miss Evie will pull through, believe you me. She has too much unfinished business,” the woman said as she rubbed Toni's back. “As for why she chose to go up to the attic at the crack of dawn yesterday, I have no idea. Something must've called to her, or else it was her brain doing funny things before the stroke hit.” Bridget drew in a breath. “But thank the good Lord I found her when I did. The doctor said if she'd been left alone too much longer, it might have been too late.”

“Yes, thank God,” Toni echoed.

Bridget gave her one last pat and drew apart. “Let's remember that your mom's a tough old bird. She's made it through everything life's thrown at her so far, hasn't she?”

Toni wiped her nose with the back of her hand and bobbed her chin in agreement.

“The good thing is that you're here now, child,” the older woman said and smiled sadly. Time had bleached once copper-hued hair to an iron-gray, and the wiry curls starkly framed coarsened features. “Miss Evie hasn't been as attentive to her life for a while, and she's had me worried. There's a lot she's let go, including her own self. If I hadn't been here to care for her and the house, the place would've fallen down around her ankles.”

Toni rubbed tears from her tired eyes. “What do you mean, she let things go?”

Bridget had to be exaggerating. Sure, the rugs had gotten a little threadbare, and the plaster walls had more than a few noticeable cracks. But the house was at least a hundred years old. A degree of wear and tear was to be expected.

“Everything seems okay,” Toni said as she looked around her. “So what's the problem?”

“How shall I put this gently?” Bridget wiped her palms on her striped apron. “I've been buying groceries on store credit, which Chester says she forgets to pay for months at a time. I'm afraid one of these days the lights and gas will go off, leaving us cold and in the dark. Then where will we be, hmm?”

“Everyone forgets to pay a bill now and then,” Toni countered, resenting the implication that her mother had become anything less than the infinitely self-reliant being she'd been every day of Toni's life. “If she needs money, I could help until we figure things out,” she suggested. The least she could do was keep Evie's local credit afloat until her mother recovered. “Let me grab my checkbook. You can tell me who's waiting on payments, and I'll drive around town to square things with everyone.”

Toni figured that seemed reasonable enough, but Bridget merely stared at her like she'd lost her marbles. “I'll get my purse,” Toni said and headed for the door.

She had not gotten far when Bridget clamped a hand on her wrist.

“No, child, I can't let you do that,” the older woman insisted, eyes wide with alarm. “Your mother would rather die than have you settle her bills. Besides, the problem goes deeper than that.”

“I don't understand.” Bridget wasn't making sense.

Evie had always pinched pennies. She'd even done the books for the winery full-time after Granddad Evans had passed, when Jon Ashton had taken over running the vineyard. So far as Toni was aware, the winery had always turned a profit; not a big one, but enough to keep them out of the red. So how could Evie's situation suddenly be so precarious?

“What's going on, Bridget?”

“It's just that . . . well, everything's gotten so muddled. I don't even rightly know where to begin.” The housekeeper paused to puff out a breath and gestured toward the rear hallway. “Come,” she said, “this way. I'll let your mother's mess speak for itself.”

Tugging self-consciously on her nightshirt, Toni obligingly followed through an arch in the living room and down a narrow paneled hall toward closed double doors that led into the study.

“In here,” Bridget said and, with a grunt, pushed the pocket doors apart. “Your mother's shrine to clutter.”

What she unveiled was a human pigsty, myriad piles of paper that Evie had apparently been ignoring, stacks of mail and magazines that overflowed the rolltop desk and spilled out of boxes, burying the rug beneath.

“Oh, my God,” Toni breathed.

“I tried to stay on top of things,” Bridget insisted, “but I couldn't keep up. Miss Evie scolded me if I touched anything before she had a chance to look at it. It's like once your daddy was gone, she clung to every scrap.”

“Nuts,” Toni said for lack of anything better. She picked her way over to the desk and rifled through a handful of envelopes, letting them slide between her fingers. “Why didn't you tell me?”

Bridget sniffed. “What would I have told you, child? That your mother's lost her direction? That she's been ignoring everything around her because she can't bear to live in a world without your father?”

“Yeah”—Toni nodded—“that would've done the trick.”