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“I AM LOOKING UP—”
“Blot, don’t wipe—” Hallie arrived with a makeup brush and a look of absolute professional focus—“blot, blot, blot—”
“I’m trying—”
“Stop scrunching your nose—”
“MY NOSE DOES WHAT IT WANTS—”
Isabelle materialized with tissues, calm and efficient in the way she was about everything, dabbing with precision while Annie continued to hold Sage’s face toward the ceiling on the theory that gravity would handle the rest.
Mary Sue sat on her stool and watched all of it with her arms folded and her expression absolutely composed, fighting a losing battle against the tears in her own eyes, and losing it quietly and with great dignity.
Sage laughed. She laughed through the tears she was desperately trying to contain, her hands raised in surrender, her face tipped up, while Hallie murmured focused instructions and Annie issued commands and Isabelle worked with tissues.
“I’m okay,” Sage managed. “I’m okay, I just—”
She looked in the mirror again.
The girl in the midnight dress looked back.
“I’ve never looked like…this before,” she said softly. Not performing it. Just saying it because it was true and she was tired of not saying true things. “Like — the me I wanted to be. You know?”
The room was quiet for a moment and Mary Sue got up and pulled Sage into her arms.
“Baby girl? You’ve always looked like this. Every day. I know it. Your mama Felicity knew it, and my boy Cal knows it. You know why?”
Sage gave up trying not to cry “W…why m…mama?”
Mary Sue kissed Sage on the cheek and said, "because it’s not the dress, sweetheart. It’s your amazing heart.”
Annie and Isabelle were grabbing tissues for themselves at this point.
Then Hallie stepped forward and took Sage’s face in both hands. “You have always been this girl,” she said. “We just found her the right dress.” She smiled. “Now. Let Aunt Hallie fix your makeup so you can go knock that man sideways.”
Sage exhaled a laugh.
“Yes ma’am,” she said.
“Aunt Hallie.”
“Yes, Aunt Hallie.”
They redid her makeup. They added the iron stud choker — Hallie had sourced it weeks ago and said nothing, producing it from a velvet tray like she’d been waiting for exactly this moment — and it settled at the base of Sage’s throat like punctuation.
They took what seemed like a thousand photos. Mary Sue allowed herself to be photographed once, made a face, and then allowed three more before declaring it sufficient.
At the counter, Hallie was wrapping the dress in tissue paper with careful hands when Isabelle stepped forward with her card.
Mary Sue was already there.
“I’ve got this one,” she said.
“Mary Sue—”
“She’s my daughter.” No heat in it. No performance. Just fact, plain and complete. “I’m paying for my daughter.”
The shop went quiet.
