The Hope Dress

by Roz Denny Fox

  “Dory? Did you put me on hold?”

  “You’re serving milk and cookies in the middle of a workday?”

  “I’m taking a break. Rianne Mercer has been over here helping me make the Sunday-school snack.”

  “You’re feeding Mercer’s daughter, right? The kid from next door? For a minute there, I thought you meant you were entertaining Mr. Gorgeous himself.”

  Warning bells sounded in Sylvie’s head, but she couldn’t resist inquiring, “That description came from where, Dory?”

  “From everybody who saw him in town this morning. Plus, I ran into Kay Waller at lunch. She agreed. Apparently she got a look at him while she was at your house for a fitting. She said you told her the guy has a wife. Hmm, funny, other people say Mercer only ever mentions his daughter. Kay and I think you should ask him outright about his marital status. If he’s divorced, it gives you the perfect opening to invite him to Kay’s wedding this Saturday.”

  “Why would I do that, Dory? He doesn’t even know Dave or Kay.”

  “For one thing, it shows your intent to stake your claim. For another, you wouldn’t be the only unattached female at the wedding dance. Kay and I feel—”

  “What? I can’t believe you two—”

  “We’re thinking of you, Sylvie. You need a life.”

  “Dory, I have a life. And I’ll thank you to butt out of it.” She’d spoken so sharply, Sylvie felt Joel Mercer’s eyes boring into her back. Hunching her shoulders, she tried to step around the corner into the hall for some privacy. It was harder to ignore the tic of irritation that began to hammer insistently behind her eyes. “Look, Dory, I know you guys are sincere. But I guess you haven’t talked with Carline since yesterday. I already have a date for the wedding.”

  “No kidding? You sly dog. Who?”

  “Uh, Buddy Deaver.” Sylvie almost dropped the phone because Dory screamed in her ear.

  “Tell me this is a joke! I know his family has money and all, but Sylvie, he’s a loser with a capital L.”

  The tic turned into a dull pounding at the base of Sylvie’s skull.

  “No one in the world is as boring as Buddy,” her sister wailed. “Not only that, he’s two full years younger than me, which makes him three years younger than you. People will think you’re desperate, Syl.”

  “Carline said he graduated in your class.”

  “He did. He’s a nerd who got bumped up two grades.”

  Sylvie’s heart dived to her toes, but she wasn’t about to give ground to her sister, especially after Dory had been the one to foist Chet off on her. “Look on the bright side, Dory. It’s become the thing to date younger men.” She ended the call before her sister could do more than sputter. Turning as she started to hang up the phone, Sylvie walked squarely into Joel Mercer. She felt a wave of heat emanating from his body and blindly aimed the receiver at the hook on the wall phone, but missed twice.

  Eyeing her curiously, Joel plucked the receiver from her limp grip and dropped it into place. “That was my sister,” she offered lamely.

  “I gathered. Is everything all right?”

  “Fine. Everything’s fine.” Sylvie shivered, stepped back and rubbed her bare upper arms.

  “Okay, then. It’s getting late, so Rianne and I will be on our way after she thanks you. We should hurry—she has to go to the bathroom.” He grinned crookedly. “I’m embarrassed to admit I already polished off every cookie on the plate.”

  Releasing a hand she’d clamped around her arm for stability, Sylvie waved down the hall. “Don’t make her walk all the way home for that. Rianne, honey, I have two bathrooms. The main one is down the hall, second door on your left. The other’s between the two rooms on your right. That’s for my guest bedrooms. And...uh...my sewing room.”

  “No need to trouble you.” Joel might as well have saved his breath. His daughter sailed past him, headed down the hall at a dead run.

  “Poor kid,” Sylvie murmured. “She had a glass of water earlier, and that huge glass of milk with the cookies. I should’ve pointed out the location of the bathrooms earlier.”

  “She’s not shy. She could’ve asked.”

  “At that age, ask a near stranger? Get outta here! Girls her age would burst rather than do that.”

  The look crossing Joel’s face was one of pure horror. “Why are girls so difficult?” he muttered.

  “You think she’s difficult at...what—six, seven? Wait until she reaches the dreaded teens.”

  “She’s almost six. And please don’t mention teenage. I can’t force myself to think that far ahead.”

  Though his tone was lighthearted, Sylvie sensed an underlying desperation to his remark. Just then she knew that, whatever the reason, her neighbor’s wife was out of the picture. Joel Mercer was raising his daughter alone.

  Sylvie couldn’t offer him any help beyond the cookie-baking they’d done today.

  Stepping around Joel, she knelt and pulled a disposable aluminum pan out of a bottom cupboard, where she kept a supply for taking dishes to church socials or family potlucks. Straightening, she began loading the pan with the oatmeal cookies.

  Tension thickened the air until suddenly Rianne bounded back into the room. “Daddy, come see,” she said excitedly. “Sylvie’s got a whole room full of headless people, like at Dillard’s ’partment store. They’re all wearing beautiful dresses like I want for my Princess Barbie. There’s even some dresses for kids.”

  The cover Sylvie started to snap over the cookie tin shot off and clattered to the counter. “Headless people!” She laughed. “Rianne, you had both of us going there for a minute. She’s seen my dress forms,” she explained to Joel. “I sewed gowns for an entire wedding party.” Managing at last to get the lid on the container, she handed it to him.

  “Rianne, honey,” she murmured. “Something you’ll learn about men—it’s a rare one who can work up any enthusiasm for a dress.”

  “You wouldn’t be tarring all of us with the same brush, would you?” Joel drawled, refusing to be intimidated.

  “Definitely.” Sylvie’s eyebrow spiked up.

  “I suppose I’m guilty as charged,” Joel said. “But I’m striving to become a more enlightened male,” he said, grabbing his daughter’s hand. “Let’s go see those dresses, shall we, snooks?”

  Rianne tugged her father into the sewing room door, prattling nonstop. Joel stopped at the threshold.

  Sylvie hung back, really not expecting him to comment. At first he remained silent, then she heard him utter a long, low whistle. “I may not know a thing about women’s fashion,” he said, “but I know a professional job when I see one. Mind if I ask why you bury your talent in a backwater like this? You could make a mint in Atlanta—or New York, for that matter.”

  He couldn’t have hurt her more.

  “If it’s a matter of contacts,” he said offhandedly, “I may have a few.”

  “It’s not... I don’t need contacts,” Sylvie said quickly, trying to usher them out of the room so she could shut the door. After all, she’d had a contact and the relationship had ended with her career in shambles.

  “If working in Atlanta is so fabulous, why did you move to Briarwood?” she asked coolly.

  “My reasons are personal.” Joel stiffened, leaving a decided chill hanging between them.

  “Exactly.” Sylvie pursed her lips. “As you said a minute ago, it’s getting late.” She looked pointedly at her watch. “Don’t let me keep you from more important things,” she said, opening her front door.

  “Bye, Sylvie,” Rianne called over one shoulder as her father urged her gently down the hall and out the door. “Can I come back another day and watch you sew those pretty dresses?”

  Sylvie didn’t have it in her to crush any child’s hopeful expression. Not even if that girl’s father happened to have stumbled on to something she felt so sensitive about. “Sure, Rianne. You’re welcome to come here whenever you want. Bring your Barbie doll. I’ll make her a new dress. Or you can pick a
pattern and we’ll sew one for you.”

  “Really?” Rianne’s thin voice rose.

  “That’s not necessary,” Joel snapped. “Thanks all the same, but I can dress my daughter fine all by myself.” The door slammed.

  Sylvie detoured into the kitchen to pack the cookies for Sunday.

  Later, she cried over a box of cookies as she sat on her bed and stared at the covered wedding gown. She couldn’t help it. She did envy the loving relationships her sisters had, envied Dory her kids and Carline’s burgeoning belly. Even Kay had David now, a really wonderful man.

  It seemed now that she’d been terribly wrong when she’d assured herself last week that she’d gotten over double-crossing Desmond Emerson. He’d so carelessly and easily killed her dreams. What was worse, she sat alone weeping in her wine, was knowing that Des and his new wife, her own former assistant, suffered not one shred of remorse.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  JOEL SAT BROODING over a cup of coffee in his kitchen. He doodled around the edges of a half-finished list of things he needed to do. His breakfast consisted of three oatmeal-raisin cookies and black coffee. Fortunately for him, Rianne had slept in. He didn’t want her developing his bad eating habits. Although, Mary Shea used to say she put healthier ingredients in her cookies than most manufacturers used in their breakfast cereals. At times she used to alter her oatmeal recipe, adding in grated apple or cranberries and nuts. The newspaper’s health columnist got after him one day over the disgusting meals he showed Poppy and Rose eating. The woman said a lot of young people read his strip, and that Joel should show a little responsibility. So he had Poppy going on a health-food kick for a time. Even used one of the columnist’s lines, having Poppy tell Rose that there was more nutrition in the cardboard box than the sugar-coated cereal inside.

  Remembering the furor that touched off in the paper’s advertising department, Joel smiled. It was his first inkling of how powerful his work had become. He’d been summoned to a meeting with his editor, the editor in chief and ten suits from the ad division. The men shouted at each other and at him, all of them talking as if his characters were real people who’d committed a cardinal sin. Oh, it’d been sweet. He’d ended up getting a bonus, plus a fat raise. But he had to promise that Poppy and Rose wouldn’t step on the toes of the paper’s multimillion-dollar advertisers again.

  “Daddy,” a plaintive voice warbled down from upstairs. “Where are you?”

  Jumping up, Joel quickly brushed cookie crumbs off the table into his hand, and dumped them in the garbage disposal on his way to the foot of the stairs. “I’m in the kitchen having coffee. What do you need, Rianne?”

  “Nothing. I looked in your bedroom and office, and I couldn’t find you.” She padded to the landing in her bunny slippers and long nightie, rubbing her eyes. A yawning cat twined about her legs. “The ’partment didn’t have so many rooms.”

  Joel felt a stab of guilt for taking her away from all that was familiar. “Do you miss Atlanta so much, baby?” Rianne usually acted grown-up beyond her years. Except for early mornings or when she was ill. Running up the stairs to meet her, Joel held out his arms, and she stumbled forward and let him swing her aloft.

  “I like it here ’kay. But I thought there’d be kids to play with.” She pushed tangled blond hair out of her eyes. “Yesterday was fun. I loved making cookies with Sylvie. Daddy, why don’t you like her? She makes me laugh. I like her.”

  “I don’t dislike her...” he began, and realized he had no explanation for what had erupted between him and his neighbor yesterday.

  “Come on, kid. Let’s go fix you toast, juice and peaches.”

  “Are the peaches sour?”

  “Nope. Sweet. I ate a whole one after you went to bed last night, and it was yummy.”

  “Sylvie had some in her fridge. She said they were good, too.”

  Joel set Rianne down to choose a seat. He rummaged until he found whole-wheat bread. As he shoved two slices in the toaster, his attention was again drawn to his neighbor. Joel thought he’d paid Sylvie’s obvious sewing talent a compliment, but then he’d glanced at her, and her big, dark eyes were brimming with pain—as if he’d injured her with his comment. After that, she’d sounded shrewish. And her remark about sewing Rianne a pretty dress had hit him wrong, as if he let his daughter wear rags. It was too similar to a row he’d had with Lynn a few days before he decided to move to Briarwood.

  His ex hadn’t been back in Atlanta long, a month maybe, collecting her accolades and preening in the spotlight of her new TV job. Up to then, she hadn’t contacted him or asked to see Rianne. Suddenly, out of left field, she phoned him at the paper and insisted he bring Rianne to a celebration of sorts—a party they were having for her at the station.

  Rianne’s toast popped up just as Joel finished slicing her peach. He buttered both slices, cut them corner to corner and turned the buttered sides together. He remembered with a start that it was how the woman who’d left him this house had served her toast. Iva followed rituals, and rituals created a sense of continuity. Yet she allowed Joel the freedom to be himself. A lack of that kind of tolerance lay behind the growing rift between him and his ex-wife.

  Joel had notified the sitter that he’d collect Rianne early for the party. She’d worn clean jeans, sneakers and her favorite Dora the Explorer T-shirt to kindergarten. Joel saw no reason to swing past their house for a change. On arriving at the sitter’s, he’d taken a minute to wash chocolate milk off Rianne’s face and comb her hair. He hadn’t noticed the small chocolate stain that pretty much blended with a flower in Dora’s hand. Probably no one else would have, either, if his so-perfect ex hadn’t made a major production of it. Lynn claimed that Joel had purposely let Rianne come to the station looking like an urchin to humiliate her. She further announced, for all to hear, that he was unfit to raise their daughter. And ended by suggesting that her parents, who lived at a ritzy country club in Florida, might sue for custody. Like they’d done such a bang-up job raising Lynn.

  Granted, when he’d met Lynn, Joel had been attracted by her perfection. Her face. Her figure. Her clothes. That had led to his buying a ring, and culminated in a huge wedding. It wasn’t until the honeymoon began to fade in memory that Joel saw what it took to maintain twenty-four-hour-a-day perfection. Their first Christmas with Lynn’s parents in their five-million-dollar mansion further revealed the source of his new wife’s need to have the best, look the best, be the best. Lynn, her parents, a sister and an overachieving brother all spent an entire week trying to remake Joel in their image. It had been a rude awakening to discover that the woman he thought he loved, and hoped to live with for fifty years or more, hadn’t married him for what he was but for his potential. As it turned out, he didn’t have enough potential to suit Lynn, after all.

  That day at her la-di-da party, she made it plain that Rianne didn’t measure up, either. Joel had seen red, and said stuff he shouldn’t have. He’d grown up with parents who fought over everything, and he’d sworn he wouldn’t fight in front of his child. But he had, and it’d been for Rianne. Who could look into the face of his beautiful child and not think her perfect as she was?

  Rianne bit into her toast, and Joel fed Fluffy, then poured himself another steaming cup of coffee. “What I want most in all the world, Rianne, is for you to be happy.”

  She lifted her eyes as her dad slid into a chair across from her. “So...it’s okay if I go see Sylvie? And it’s okay if I let her make me a dress? I want a frilly dress, like the blue one with the shiny ribbons and lace.”

  “This desire to have a girlie dress is something new. Generally when we shop for your clothes, you pick jeans and tops with your favorite cartoon characters.”

  Her blue eyes clouded, and she blinked as if warding off tears. “Maybe Mommy will like me better if we send her a picture of me in a dress.” A tear slipped between her lashes, catching on the curve of her cheek.

  Joel’s hand wobbled so much as he lowered his mug, he spilled his c
offee. Was it possible Rianne had tapped into his thoughts? Sliding to his knees, Joel wouldn’t allow her to turn aside. He gently brushed away the tear. “I swear, sweetheart, it’s me Mommy doesn’t like. Not you. Never you. You know how messy I let my room get. I don’t scrub the shower. Sometimes I wear holey jeans or the same shirt for three days. That’s why Mommy got fed up and left.”

  “But...she left me, too. I make my bed and put on a clean shirt every day. At school, only one girl ’sides me didn’t have a mommy. Why, Daddy?”

  Joel felt sweat bead on his brow. Maybe it’d been a mistake to send her to an expensive private kindergarten; at the initial interview even the principal had mentioned most of their students came from two-parent households. Friends warned him he’d face this conversation one day. He actually thought he’d be better prepared.

  “You were only a baby when Mommy and I found out we were both happier people if we didn’t live together. I can do my work here at home, but she had important stuff that took her far away. Out of the country. I’ll call and ask her for some recordings.” How could he tell Rianne that Lynn had chosen those years as a correspondent in preparation for her current job?

  Rianne slowly nodded. “Okay. But I think being mommies and daddies is ’portant. When I grow up, I’m gonna make cookies ev’ry day with my kids. And I’m gonna work at home like you do, Daddy.”

  Joel hugged her tight, knowing he probably ought to explain that not every parent had the luxury he enjoyed of working at home. He’d save that for another father-daughter talk. Joel stood, and let her go back to her breakfast, all the while thinking he should dig through his boxes for a cookbook and find a cookie recipe.

  He jotted a note on an already long list. “We still have a lot of unpacked boxes, but what do you say we play hooky and I take you fishing this afternoon? This morning I thought we’d sign you up for first grade, and then have lunch at a café in town.”

  Rianne pondered his proposal as she ate the last peach half. “I never fished except at the school carnival. What if I can’t? What if I don’t catch any?”