A Fitting End: A Magical Dressmaking Mystery (11 page)

I stopped short as the red-and-white-checkerboard curtains under the sink fluttered suddenly and the plantation shutters on the window above rattled. The lights, which I hadn’t switched on, flickered, and the trickling sound of water filling the mechanisms of the freezer’s ice maker magnified. “What? What’s wrong?”

The Dutch door leading to the back porch flung open. “Thelma Louise,” Nana called over her shoulder. “You stay put, you hear?” As she stepped out of her navy blue Crocs and turned toward me, the mayhem in the kitchen instantly stopped.

“Hey, Nana.”

My grandmother, standing there in her pristine white socks, stared at me. “Child, what in heaven’s name are you doin’?”

I was standing in the center of the kitchen, the box of crackers under my arm, the container of chèvre in one hand, the class of sweet tea in the other, and a surprised expression on my face. It was as if I’d been frozen for a moment and Nana’s voice brought me back. “I was just… er… getting ready to have some of your cheese,” I finished. I’d almost revealed the secret—that I’d been chatting away with Meemaw—but the chaotic interruption made me hold my tongue and a sliver of skin at the hairline on my forehead tingled. I felt it was a sign she didn’t want Nana to know about her yet.

“Well, what are you waitin’ for?” She took the cracker
box and plopped down at the table, her fingers fluttering to her hairline, almost as if she were mirroring me. I started, realizing that the prickling sensation stemmed from the exact spot where all the Cassidy women’s dark hair streaked blond. Odd, I thought. Were we feeling the same thing, or was it a coincidence? Did she sense Loretta Mae?

“You buy the same crackers Meemaw did,” Nana said.

I set two plates and a knife on the table and she began spreading the chèvre, filling up both the plates with the cracker rounds.

“Oh.” I looked at the box, realizing that it was the same brand. “I hadn’t realized.”

“You’re more like her than your mama or me ever were. You know that?”

I nodded. I was well into my thirties, but I felt like I was finally figuring out who I was and what I wanted and to hear that I reminded Nana of her mother filled me with a comfortable sense of home. “I didn’t think I wanted to come back to Bliss,” I said, “but Meemaw was right.”

“Meemaw was always right. What Meemaw wanted, Meemaw got.” She chuckled. “Right down to the crackers,” she said, pointing to the box. “I bet you didn’t even know you had a hankering for ’em when you bought ’em.” She nodded, as if she’d experienced the very same thing. “Happens to me all the time. I don’t know what I want, then, bam!” She slammed her open palm down on the table. “It hits me and a memory of Meemaw hits me at the same time. She had a gift, and sometimes…” She trailed off for a minute, staring off in the distance. “Sometimes I think she’s still here.”

Sometimes she is, I wanted to say.

As we finished our snack, I asked Nana, “Can you stay and help do a little beading?” I’d learned to sew from
Meemaw, but Nana knew her way around a needle and thread. She was particularly good with the tedious hand-beading. Whenever I needed extra help, she usually sat by the open window and chatted under her breath with Thelma Louise and whatever other of her goats happened off her property and onto mine. She beaded and hand-sewed three times faster than I could, but her attention span was ten times shorter.

The Lafayette sisters had agreed to meet me at the country club at three o’clock to take a look at what was done and what still needed doing. That didn’t leave me much time and Libby’s gown beckoned.

“I can work for a spell.” I followed as she padded toward the workroom. “I have a new batch of lotion I’m working on,” she said over her shoulder, “but it can wai—” She stopped in her tracks and—“Oomph!”—I plowed right into her, lurching her past the French doors leading to the workroom and right into the old armoire Will and his friends had moved from the attic.

“This is just where it used to be,” she said, lightly running her hand down the side paneling of the wood.

“I remember. Red and I used to play hide-and-seek and whenever I hid in the armoire, he never found me.” My brother would shout my name from the top of his lungs. He’d even open the doors of the armoire and take a quick peak, but I’d shrink back into the corner behind the stacks of fabric, careful not to put my weight on the center floorboard where the buckled wood popped. It was as if I blended right into the paneling itself. I’d giggle to myself, then jump out when his back was turned, scaring him half to death.

It was only when I was about ten years old—too big to fit inside the cupboard without making the base creak
and moan—that I realized that the armoire wasn’t magical and couldn’t transport me to Narnia. That was about the same time I figured out that Red only pretended not to see me. “Why was it in the attic?” I’d recently asked Mama the same question.

“No idea,” she said. “Meemaw never would say why she moved it up there.”

Nana’s wavy hair had taken on a charge of electricity, the flyaway strands reaching toward the ceiling. “How did you get it back down here?”

“Will Flores brought some friends by and they moved it down. It was tough. They got stuck on the landing, and I hadn’t taken out the—”

She pulled open the doors and gasped, cutting me off. “Gowns,” she said, the word like a heavy breath floating in the room. “Oh my word. I haven’t seen these since… Where did they come from?” Her fingers fluttered over the fabrics just as mine had and although Nana was a goat-whisperer and her charm had nothing to do with sewing, I could almost hear her heartbeat speed up and see her breath settle over the silk.

I sat on the red plush settee. There had to be a reason these dresses had been kept secret all these years. Finally, I broached the subject in the forefront of my mind. “It was locked,” I said. “I used different needles to pick the lock and when we—”

She looked up sharply. “We?”

“Gracie was with me.”

The green of Nana’s eyes, so similar to mine, had grown concentrated. She waved at me. “Yes, yes. Go on.”

“I used different needles to pick the lock,” I repeated. “We opened the doors and there they were.”

“Three dresses. They didn’t use to be in here. I didn’t know Meemaw still had ’em.”

Nana was known to turn on her heels and blow out of a place if she didn’t like the subject of conversation or didn’t feel like talking anymore. I drew in a deep breath and gathered up my words, letting them waft out of my mouth gently so they wouldn’t send her scurrying back to her farm. “They are the… pageant dresses, right? Margaret gowns?”

She dropped her hand to her side and stood stone still, her back to me. She hadn’t bolted, which was good, but she wasn’t bursting with an accounting of the dresses’ history, either. The air in the room thickened and felt suddenly heavy, the way it feels before a storm hits and the thunder rolls across a dark sky. “They’re a whole lot more than that, Harlow,” she finally said.

My brows lifted. “What do you mean, Nana?”

“I wore this one,” she said, taking the yellow gown out of the cupboard and holding it out. “The Lafayette sisters made it.”

“Why didn’t Meemaw make it?”

She closed her eyes like she was remembering. “They’d just moved from the Panhandle and missed their town, bless their hearts. They’ve long since settled here, but at the time, I reckon Meemaw was just trying to help ’em build their business.”

“It’s what she wanted, and I guess it worked,” I said. “They have a good business.” Ah, Meemaw. Tears pricked behind my eyelids. She was with me, I knew, but I missed her touch. The sound of her voice. Her laughter. Breath caught in my throat as the sheer curtains on the picture window facing Mockingbird Lane fluttered. She was here now.

The faint scent of lavender settled my emotions. “Who wore the other two?” I asked Nana. Those dresses had a story to tell; I was sure of it.

“Zinnia James. ’Course she was Zinnia Hecker back then.” Nana’s voice, usually sharp and focused, had taken on the dreamy quality of a memory. “I’d wanted her dress. The pale blue one. Thought it would make a certain young man take notice of me.”

“Granddaddy?”

She nodded. “Didn’t need the dress after all,” she said, smiling a little wistfully.

“What about that one?” I asked as she fanned out the skirt of the olive green gown Gracie liked so much. “I think I’d like to alter it so Gracie can wear it to the pageant.”

She sucked in a sharp breath. “Oh, no, Harlow. You, of all people, should know that that is not a good idea. These dresses have history, each belonging to its owner. They tell a tale. We don’t know… if… if…” Her voice faded away as if she’d lost herself in a memory.

My curiosity piqued and I leaned forward, my elbows on my knees. “We don’t know what?”

She hesitated before she said, “It doesn’t matter.”

“Why is it ripped, Nana? What happened—?”

A gust of air shot through the room and the doors to the armoire suddenly slammed closed. At the same moment, a low moan filled the air, the pipes in the ceiling above creaking and groaning. Nana started, looking first at the cupboard, then at the ceiling, her gaze finally landing on me. “What in tarnation…?”

“The house is settling I guess,” I said with a shrug, but my thoughts spiraled. It was as if Meemaw wanted to keep the history of these dresses locked up tight. But I’d found them, and she’d have to let me work with them.

Nana turned her skeptical face to me. “I grew up in this house, Harlow Jane Cassidy,” she said, her voice back to its usual sharpness. “That is
not
settling.”

I jumped as my lookbook flung open, the hard cover thumping against the coffee table. The pages fluttered back and forth, gently at first, then with such vigor that a photo of one of my earlier designs dislodged from its page and flew across the room, landing by the wall underneath the metal display board hanging on the far wall.

I lunged for the book, but it slid across the table as if it were attached to an invisible string and someone was pulling it. “Meemaw,” I said with a hiss.

Like a flash, Nana was by my side. “What do you mean, ‘Meemaw’?”

I wanted to slap my hand over my mouth. “Nothing,” I said, but I knew from her wide eyes and the circle of her mouth that she didn’t think it was nothing.

“Spill it,” she said, folding her arms over her plaid snap-front Western blouse, one of her socked feet tapping the pecan planked floor.

“I… um…” My tongue was tied. How was I supposed to tell my grandmother that Meemaw, her mother who’d died, was still hanging around the old farmhouse?

Nana stared at my face as if she could read every last wrinkle and frown line. After a long few seconds, she blew out a breath. “She’s here, isn’t she?” She didn’t wait for me to answer, instead just dropping her arms and spinning around. “Loretta Mae Cassidy, is that you?” Her voice cracked, just barely.
“Mother?”

A tapping sound came from the workroom. I tiptoed to the French doors separating the space from the front room and peered inside, no idea what to expect. The
tap-
tap-tap
came again and I saw Thelma Louise, her nose pressed against the windowpane. It was as if she’d sensed Nana’s emotions and had come to be by her side. “Ah, Thelma Louise,” I said, undoing the latch and patting the black and white fur. She trained her dark yellow eyes at me, then moved her head up and down, her lips pulling back.

“She’ll be okay,” I told the goat—once Nana processed that her mother’s spirit was still with us. I gave Thelma Louise another pat, relatching the window just as the bells on the front doorknob jingled. My mother stepped into the shop looking harried and rushed.

I pressed my fingers to my tingling hairline, to the spot where the blond streak in my hair began. My eyes flew open wide as Nana and Mama both touched the same spots on their heads. We had the same blood flowing through us, and I’d always known that the threads of our history encircled us, twining us together, but this… this was new. It was as if we all felt Meemaw.

Mama walked in, stopped short, and breathed in. After a moment, she said, “She’s here, isn’t she?”

Of course, she smelled the lavender, too. “Who?” I asked, but my voice crumbled into a mere unintelligible sound.

But Mama understood me. “Loretta Mae, of course. Who else?” She scanned the room, seeming to absorb every detail in a split second. She spotted the photo that had been ripped from my lookbook and made a beeline for it, as if it called to her. “What collection is this from?” she asked.

My eyes narrowed as I looked at the ensemble. “Southern Industrial,” I answered.

Nana’s eyes were sharp, but Mama frowned. “Oh,”
she muttered with disappointment. She’d been expecting some sort of confirmation, I realized.

Nana bent and fanned through the pages of the lookbook, stopping to read, moving on, then stopping again. Slowly, she straightened up, scanning the room.

Mama tiptoed forward, her hand clasping Nana’s shoulder. She pointed to the lookbook and the Southern Industrial collection. She looked at me, her streak of blond hair falling into her eyes. She quickly brushed it aside. “It’s a sign.” She held up the picture, pointing to the blank spot in the lookbook. “You dedicated this collection to her.”

“To all of you,” I answered, “but, yes, to her.” The line blended my Texas roots with an urban edge. Ruffles mixed with angles. Florals mixed with metal and denim. Meemaw had been my biggest influence… and still was.

We stood in complete silence for a full minute. I held my breath, waiting. Would Meemaw reveal herself? Was my secret time with her over?

“She’s here, Tessa,” Nana whispered to my mother. “Bless my soul. She’s here.”

“I feel her, too,” Mama said.

“Mama?” Nana whispered.

Nothing happened for another thirty seconds, then the pages of the design book lifted slightly.

We let out a collective breath. “It’s about time, Mother,” Nana said. “It’s about dang time.”

It happened all at once. Thelma Louise tapping her nose against the workroom’s window. The front door blowing open and banging against the chest behind it. The pipes in the ceiling creaking and moaning as if they were strained beyond capacity and would burst any second. And the slow gathering of air in the center of the room, like a funnel cloud forming.