“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 reali
zed.
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.”
Chapter 11
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.
“Meemaw?” I whispered.
The swirling air slowed at the sound of my voice. I stretched my arm out, taking a step forward. I’d been communicating with Meemaw for months, but only through symbols and signs. I’d speak and suddenly pages of a nearby book would flip back and forth, letters and words lifting off the pages as I interpreted her response. I’d need a particular spool of thread or my scissors, and—voila!—what I needed was suddenly in front of me. She anticipated my needs and had become my confidante. Somehow that had seemed reasonable. Soothing.
But watching my deceased great-grandmother take on a physical form wasn’t quite so comforting.
“Meemaw,” Mama said to the wraithlike shape in front of us. I squinted, watching it until I could make out faded blue and burnt orange. She’d been buried in her jeans and a snap-front blouse, a good choice since it looked as if she’d be spending the hereafter in her favorite outfit.
“I was beginning to think you’d never show yourself,” Nana said. “What took you so long?”
I shoved my glasses up the bridge of my nose, gaping at my mother and grandmother. “What?”
But they ignored me and focused on Loretta Mae’s ghost. “Are you all right, Mother?” Nana asked, moving past me and reaching toward the apparition.
Meemaw moved in response, her whole wispy body nodding, but then she flickered, looking just like Princess Leia’s hologram sprouting from R2-D2 when she’d said, “Help me, Obi-Wan. You’re my only hope.”
“What’s happening?” Mama asked, rushing forward, tears streaming down her face. “Meemaw?”
Meemaw’s ghostly figure quivered again, disappearing for half a second before reappearing. The edges of her form grew fuzzier, and the moments she wasn’t there, compared to the moments we could see her, seemed to stretch.
“She can’t do it,” Nana said, shaking her head. “She’s not ready.”
“But it’s been months,” Mama said.
I stared at them, and at Meemaw’s flickering shape. “What are you talking about?” I demanded.
Suddenly, like a bubble popping, Meemaw was gone. As if on cue, the pipes in the ceiling creaked, the door slammed against the chest again, the ceiling fan spun, and the sheer curtains fluttered.
“She’ll be back,” Nana said, walking toward the kitchen, but her shoulders slumped.
“Wait a sec, Nana. You knew Meemaw would… would…” I went after her, catching her arm. “Would come back from the dead?” Was she back from the dead, caught in some sort of purgatory, or haunting us? Or maybe she was like a guardian angel. That was the explanation I preferred. “You knew she was here?”
Nana shook her head. “I knew she wasn’t here, but I’ve been waiting.” She turned back to the place the billowing figure of my great-grandmother had just been.
“What do you mean you’ve been waiting?” I looked from Nana to Mama, not even bothering to hide the shock on my face. “You knew she’d become a ghost?”
Nana took my hand and gave it a firm squeeze. “It’s the Cassidy way, Harlow.”
“For the women, anyway,” Mama said.
“Right. Poor Red.”
“Wh-what do you mean, it’s the Cassidy way?” I sputtered. After thirty-three years, how was it possible that, every day, I seemed to learn something new about my family?
They sat me down at the kitchen table. “I don’t know what kind of spin Butch put on that wish he made in that fountain,” Nana said, “but it was a doozy. When a Cassidy woman passes on, she doesn’t really pass on all the way. She stays right here, kind of like a guide for the ones who are left behind.”
“Like an angel, then?” I asked.
A chunky strand of Nana’s hair had broken free from her ponytail. She hastily tucked it behind her ear as she sat back against the ladder-back chair, the snaps of her blouse pulling open between the closures. “More like a ghost, I reckon, but you can call it whatever you want.”
My head felt full of cotton. “Wait,” I said, her words finally sinking in. “You said when a Cassidy woman passes on, she doesn’t go all the way.” I pressed my fingers against my temples, trying to grasp the big picture here. It was one thing to be charmed, but quite another to know you were going to be a ghost. “Do you mean all the Cassidy women?” The ones who’d come before me, and… and… the ones in this room right this minute?
Mama and Nana nodded. “My grandmother, Cressida, died when I was just a little bit of a thing,” Nana said, “but I still grew up with her. She was right here, every single day.”
“When I came over here to see Meemaw,” Mama said, a dreamy lilt to her voice, “Cressida would sing lullabies to me. It was like she’d wrap me up in a blanket and lull me to sleep.”
They went on, remembering the ghostly presence of Cressida, Butch Cassidy’s daughter with Texana, my great-great-great-grandmother, until I thought my head would explode. “How could you not tell me all of this?” I finally blurted. “I’m a Cassidy. I have a right to know if I’m going to come back as a ghost.”
Nana tsked me. “Hush now. It’s better to discover something like this naturally. Would you have believed us if we’d told you Meemaw would come back as a spirit? That we all will?”
She had a point. I’d had a hard enough time understanding that Cassidy women were charmed, and that I hadn’t been blessed with a special gift. It wasn’t until I’d worked on Josie’s wedding gown that I realized I did have a charm. But ghosts in my family? That was something altogether different.
I needed time to think. Time to process. Time to summon Meemaw—just her and me—for a one-on-one, tell-it-like-it-is session. Thelma Louise tapped her nose against the windowpane as if she could read my mind and knew just what I needed.
“Coming, Sweet Pea,” Nana called to the matriarch of her herd. “I’ll be back later,” she said over her shoulder as she padded to the kitchen. She slipped on her Crocs and with a backward wave of her hand, she was gone.
“How can we get her to come back?” Mama mused, more to herself than to me.
“Maybe we should have a séance,” I said, only half sarcastically. Surely there had to be a technique or a way to summon a ghost.
“Bite your tongue.” Mama’s cell phone rang. She pulled it from her jeans pocket, holding it as she said to me, “Knowing we’re charmed is one thing, Harlow, but the people here would run us out of town if they
knew the Cassidy women would be back to haunt them from the ever-after. No. No séance.” She pushed the ON button and turned away from me.
No séance, I thought, more dejected than I’d imagined I’d be. Which meant we’d have to sit around and wait while Meemaw figured out how to communicate with us. I wanted answers, and I didn’t want them on slow-mo Texas time; I wanted them in a New York minute. I wanted… Madelyn Brighton. Of course!
The Englishwoman had been one of the first people I’d met when I came home to Bliss. She was a Jill-of-all-trades: part-time photographer for the town, freelance photojournalist, wannabe medical examiner, and expert on all things supernatural… including a strange but thorough knowledge of the Cassidy family.
For years we’d worked hard to keep our charms under wraps in a sort of don’t ask, don’t tell kind of way. People sort of knew there was magic going on, but they didn’t ask questions because magic didn’t really exist in their minds. It was just easier not to admit the truth.
But Madelyn Brighton and her supernatural society had a fascination with all inexplicable things and I suddenly felt very sure that she’d be able to help me communicate with Meemaw. If only I knew how to broach the subject.
A peck on the cheek brought me out of my thoughts. “We’ll talk about this later, Harlow,” Mama said. She put her cell phone away, took another look around the room before heading to the front door, and then, almost like Meemaw’s disappearing act, she was gone.
The room where my grandmother and mother—and the ghost of my great-grandmother—had been minutes before, was now utterly empty and quiet. I sat in silence for ten minutes, waiting for Meemaw to reappear. She didn’t.
I glanced at the clock. Time had flown and now I was due to go meet the Lafayette sisters. I couldn’t make my great-grandmother show herself, but I could finish the job I’d promised to do for Mrs. James. Manifesting my best Scarlett O’Hara, I told myself I wouldn’t think about Meemaw and ghosts anymore right now; I’d think about it all tomorrow.
A Fitting End: A Magical Dressmaking Mystery Page 9