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My mother had insisted on taking me dress shopping for the extravaganza. She wouldn’t have me showing up in one of my refurbished vintage pieces with Edison Roads on my arm.
“Mom, Mack’s wife Sharon is going to come. She’s got a great eye for fashion, and she takes in tailoring and alterations for a living.” I just wanted someone in my court—anyone who wasn’t hypnotized by Roads’ dashing looks or his magazine spread or the bulge in his…wallet.
“Darling, they can tailor the dress at the store. I’m taking you to an atelier. You’re not wearing a mass-produced prom dress.”
I couldn’t fight her. She was too determined, and besides, this counted as good mother-daughter bonding time.
“Make sure to bring all the goats for my dowry, Mom.”
“I’m sure one goat is plenty, dear. Is Monday still your day off? I’ll pick you up at three.”
I didn’t take days off anymore, but she didn’t have to know that.
Sharon raided my fridge for cookie dough. She was over once when she was pregnant and discovered I kept leftover cookie dough wrapped in plastic wrap because you never knew when you’d need a fresh batch. She wasn’t supposed to eat it because of the raw eggs, but try telling that to a 5’10’’ woman with raging hunger and swollen ankles. After that visit, I made my dough at home with egg replacer. Once inside, although no longer expecting, Sharon would make a beeline to the fridge and pull out the ball, unwrap it lovingly like it was a Faberge Egg. Then she’d pull off fingerfuls and make orgasmic sounds as she ate it.
“When I was pregnant with Lindsay, I used to dream about this stuff, Lane. You’ve got a real gift. I’ve tried so many times, but it never tastes quite like this.”
Sacrilege.
I stuck my fingers in the ball and yanked out a cold hunk, stuffing it into my mouth like she was. I always ate my cookies cooked, but the cold, hard dough melted in my mouth. Even the grit of the raw sugar was somehow appealing. I pulled off another chunk.
“Careful. Mrs. Mills is going to be here any minute with her tape measure.”
“Good. We’ll tie her up with it.”
“You look great, Lane. Radiant. Happy. I don’t know, but I get the feeling something has changed.”
“I like this time of year.”
Sharon raised an eyebrow at me like I was full of shit.
“Business been good? Mack is the happiest he’s ever been over at Lace. You know that, right?”
I swallowed the cookie dough that was now just a lump holding back my tears. “S’okay. Could be better.” I shrugged.
Could be doing as well as Roads, opening up new locations every which way you turned. I didn’t want to worry Sharon. She had four mouths to feed. I just needed to come up with a plan for sabotaging Edison and turning my luck around.
My mother picked me up with her driver in a tinted-window SUV. She directed him to the old part of downtown, where the serious shops, the ones with the higher price points, were clustered. Old families, older money, cobblestones and French shutters… It was where she made me shop as a kid when she dressed me in embarrassing velvet atrocities with matching hair bows. I was sure I would have ended up in pageants if I weren’t such a tomboy. Here I was, an adult, letting her dress me again. I tried not to be bitter and express only gratitude at her taking an interest in my life—well, Edison Roads’ life, more likely, but I’d take what I could get.
“Just drop us at the door, and you should be able to find parking in the paid lot,” my mother said to the driver. As we approached the little store, my gut seemed to tighten because it dawned on me that I’d be the most scrutinized person at the function. Not the infamous bachelor whose mug was all over the tabloids, but rather the woman who was appearing in public with him, the arm candy, the ornament.
The bell chimed pleasantly as we entered the charming dress shop. Two women my mother’s age immediately stood from the upholstered chairs where they’d been sitting, addressing my mother by name.
The public would be expecting a model, an actress, or maybe an heiress. No one would believe it was me. I’d walk in to a great sigh of disappointment. I thought I had cold feet about my date, about this entire harebrained approach to sabotage. I could have taken Clem, and we’d have an authentic excuse to leave early—his grandkids.
“You remember my lovely daughter, Laney?”
“Why, yes! Laney, it’s been years. We made your train conductor costume for Halloween when you were just a wee thing. How could we forget? You put the fairy costume we’d made you in the dryer and then poured in a bucket of red paint.”
