Pull yourself together, Antonia, she chastised, could almost hear Evie’s no-nonsense voice instructing.
She couldn’t fall apart now.
With a pained sigh, she tucked her hand beneath the pillow and carefully turned on her side.
Across the room, the black dress puddled over the rolled arm of the wing chair where she’d tossed it during her swift seduction of Greg (who would never second-guess why she’d come on so strong; he always seemed grateful to be the beneficiary of her affection). Even in the rawness of morning, with the curtains drawn and hazy light filtering in, the fabric of the dress gleamed, reminding her of shiny scales on a fish. There was something so unnatural about it, like it was a living, breathing being.
She’d taken off her nightgown and put on a black dress, and there were dog-eared photographs scattered around her. She was curled up like a baby. At first I thought she was sleeping.
Toni recalled Bridget’s tale of finding Evie and thought again of last night’s incident, and it didn’t take long for her to recognize a common bond between them because she was looking right at it.
The dress.
She stared at it solemnly and another rash of gooseflesh tickled her arms and the back of her neck.
What are you? Toni wondered, because it wasn’t like any off-the-rack frock from Saks that she’d ever worn.
Was it the dress that had drawn her mother up to the attic so early on Friday morning? Had it somehow compelled her to take off her nightgown and pull it on? Was there something in the silk, some kind of “fairy dust” that not only cured tattered fabric but made its wearer see things that hadn’t happened? And what about the way her skin had tingled and her whole body had hummed, maddeningly in fact, when Hunter had touched her arm?
If any logical explanations existed, they were beyond Toni’s grasp. The only answer she could conjure up wasn’t one she’d ever say out loud, at least not in the company of rational human beings, not unless she wanted an involuntary vacation at a gated facility with padded rooms and straitjackets.
Sometimes you just have to accept the magic that comes into your life and leave it be.
She should take Bridget’s advice and stop analyzing. It wasn’t as though the dress could rectify her love life or fix what was wrong with Evie’s brain. Those things would take a real miracle.
“Snerk gerk snerk.”
Greg snorted in his sleep, rolled away from her, and pulled the sheets and blanket with him, leaving Toni half-exposed.
The chill that settled over her dispelled further mental meandering, and she tore her gaze from the dress to glance at the alarm clock on the night table. The tiny arms showed half past seven, as if the yellow beams of sunlight poking at her eyes through the shutters and frilly curtains weren’t sign enough that it was morning.
Although she wished she could close her eyes and sleep off the headache and heartache, she couldn’t. An urge took shape inside her, pressing her to move, to do something she should have already done. It seemed as good a time as any to do it, so she would leave Greg alone to snore for a while.
Carefully, she sat up and swung her legs around the side of the bed, slipping out as quietly as she could. She left the dress on the chair, too afraid to touch it, and snatched up her panties and Greg’s rumpled button-down, which happened to be the items of clothing nearest at hand. As she buttoned up the shirt, she tiptoed across the room, wincing as the floorboards creaked beneath her feet. She held her breath, not exhaling until she’d squeezed around the door and pulled it shut with a muted click.
She walked up the hallway, her bare legs cold despite the radiators hissing heat. She hesitated only long enough to draw in a deep breath before she opened the door to the third floor, flipped the light switch, and climbed the stairs to the attic.
The last time she’d gone up had been two years ago, when she’d come home after her father had passed away. She’d been unable to sleep and had heard noises, like squirrels scurrying in the eaves above her. Toni had grabbed her robe and wandered up the narrow stairwell only to find Evie rummaging through the maze of boxes, the yellow light cast down by the hanging bulb surrounding her in a cloud of dust motes.
When her mom had spotted her, she’d frowned and said, “Antonia, why are you up at this hour? The funeral’s in the morning, and you’ll need your rest.”
“Can I help you with whatever it is you’re doing?” she’d asked, praying Evie would say yes and prove that she was vulnerable, too. That she needed a hug or a hand to hold or, well, something. Toni had wanted so badly to feel needed.
Only her mother had shaken her head. “You can’t do anything now, no. So go back to bed. I need to be by myself for a spell.”
As Toni recalled the exchange, she pictured a detail she’d forgotten: Evie had been on her knees, digging inside a flowered hatbox, very much like the one that sat on the worn floorboards just ahead of her. Before she’d left that last time, Toni had, in fact, snuck up to the attic again but couldn’t find the box anywhere. Her mother must’ve buried it deeply under the eaves, behind something equally old and dusty. For all Toni knew, Evie had kept it hidden until the morning of her stroke when she’d come back up and dug it out.
That was where her mother hid her secrets from the world, Toni knew without anyone telling her.
She walked forward beneath the slanting beams, noting the cartons and furniture that had been pushed aside, no doubt moved in haste by the paramedics so they could get to her unconscious mother. She stopped when her feet came upon a spot where a ragged circle had been rubbed clean, free of the dust that seemed to cover everything else.
She pictured Evie there, curled up and helpless. She wanted to reach out, to touch her mother and save her; but it was too late for that. Toni could do nothing more than sit back and wait.
“I wish you hadn’t been alone,” she whispered and pushed tangled hair from her face, willing away the image of her mom lying there in the dress, her white skin so deathly pale against the black.
She swallowed hard, thankful again that Bridget had arrived when she had. Too much later, Dr. Neville had said, and Evie might be gone already. Toni wouldn’t have had a second chance.
Poor Mama, getting out of her warm bed when it wasn’t even daybreak yet, seeking something she’d put away long ago, never knowing what hit her.
Solemnly, she crossed the floor and started to crouch, when she stepped on something that wasn’t wood. She reached down, retrieving a faded photograph with a thick white border, its edges slightly curled.
She moved closer to the bare bulb that dangled from the rafter so she could better see. Squinting at the tableau captured on film, she saw two young women, arm in arm, standing in front of a marble statue. She recognized the fair-haired girl easily enough: Evie’s nose, her square jawline, and barely-there tight-lipped smile were unmistakable. Her mother linked arms with a dark-haired beauty whose wide eyes glanced away. Her false smile looked equal parts terrified and excited.
The crest on the wall in the background reminded Toni of the foyer in the Blue Hills Country Club. Although the building had been renovated several times in the past forty years, the crest had remained.
She turned the picture over and read the loopy cursive on the back with a date in March some fifty years ago and an inscription: Me and A. The night that changed everything.
Yep. She nodded to herself. That was definitely Evie’s handwriting.
Could the “A” be for Annabelle, Evie’s younger sister, who had presumably died long ago? Since her mother had never shown her a photo of Anna much less talked about her, she had no idea what her mysterious aunt even looked like. Toni had rarely heard Anna’s name mentioned in their house, save for once when her dad had asked Evie something along the lines of “Do you ever miss your sister?” Instead of tearing up and reminiscing, Evie had tightened her mouth and there was a look akin to fear in her eyes. In a clipped tone, she’d replied, “My sister is gone, and that’s all there is to it,” and Jo
n Ashton had lifted his hands in surrender. Wouldn’t that have been an odd remark to make if Anna were alive?
What a mismatched pair the two girls in the picture made, Toni mused, completely captivated by them: one fair and slender and oh-so-serious; the other dark and tiny and strangely luminous. There were similarities of features that she recognized in each—and in herself—like the strong jaw and strong, straight nose.
They had to be Evie and Anna, she decided, feeling it in her bones. This was her aunt Annabelle, the woman she’d often thought was a ghost.
Toni felt giddy, light-headed even, sensing a lost connection to the past, to a piece of herself that had always been missing. What she didn’t understand was her mother’s reluctance to share stories of her growing up. The tales would be even more valuable, wouldn’t they, if Anna had passed away before Toni had gotten the chance to know her? Why had Evie never shown her this photo? What had happened between the women? Had Anna done something awful to Evie? Or was Anna’s demise too painful for Evie to dwell on?
I want to know, Toni thought suddenly, and it went beyond mere curiosity. It had to do with her family history and understanding where she came from. If she were to lose her mother, all the memories would die with her. Toni hadn’t realized exactly what that meant until now.
“Who are you?” she whispered, studying the shiny square of Kodachrome in her hand. There was something about Anna that nagged at her, and she stared fiercely at the image until it hit her.
“No way,” she murmured, “it can’t be.”
But it was.
She recognized Anna’s dress. Certainly the style was classic in its simplicity, in the way of scores of cocktail dresses designed and sold in the past fifty years, and Anna wore it well, as if it had been tailored just for her.
But it was more than that.
Sometimes you just have to accept the magic that comes into your life and leave it be.
So what if she didn’t believe in magic?
Toni looked so intently at Anna in the dress that her head pounded. It was the same one, she was sure of it, the exact black dress she’d worn last night when she’d had the strange vision of Hunter. It was Anna’s dress and Evie’s dress, which made no earthly sense. For that to work, the thing would have to be woven from something stretchy and as malleable as Silly Putty, not delicate silk.
How else could the dress fit the petite yet shapely Anna as well as the tall and slender Evie, not to mention Toni, too, who was somewhere in between. Without a brilliant seamstress and extra material, such tricky alterations couldn’t be done, could they? So what the heck did it mean?
She kept squinting beneath the yellow haze of the bare bulb until the picture blurred before her eyes.
“Antonia? Are you up there?”
Toni started at the bark of Greg’s voice, and the photograph fell from her hands. “I’ll be down in a second,” she called back as she scrambled to collect the image and shoved it into the breast pocket of Greg’s button-down.
“Will you come back to bed? It’s still too early to get up, but I can’t snooze without you there,” he groggily explained, and she heard the creak of his tread on the bottom steps.
Was he heading up? No, no, no, that wouldn’t do at all.
She hollered, “Be down in a sec!”
Toni hurriedly pushed the hatbox back beneath the wicker chair.
“Coming!” she promised and, brushing the dust off her hands, scurried down the stairs, flipped off the light, and closed the door.
Bridget called at a quarter past ten, just before church, offering to swing by after to fix Toni lunch; but Toni told her that Greg had come down from St. Louis and he’d be sticking around until the evening.
“If you need me, I’ll be near,” Bridget kindly reminded, and Toni assured her she’d be fine before saying good-bye.
Greg offered to accompany her to the hospital to visit Evie but Toni firmly told him no. He had never met her mother, and she didn’t want their introduction to be in the Blue Hills ICU. “Greg, there’s my mom, Evelyn Ashton, the white-haired woman hooked up to the ventilator. Mother, if you can hear me in there, this is Greg McCallum, the man I’ve been sleeping with for two years who apparently doesn’t love me enough to marry me.”
Yep, that would pretty much suck.
And truthfully—selfishly—Toni needed to spend time with Evie without Greg hanging over her shoulder. There were things she felt compelled to say, whether Evie could hear her or not.
So she packed a few specific items in an old knapsack and left Greg pouting in the den with a chicken salad sandwich and a cup of hot tea. She’d stuck him in her dad’s beat-up desk chair with Charlotte and Joseph Morgan frowning at him from their portraits over the fireplace. Surrounded by piles of magazines, junk mail, and paperwork, he’d appeared none too thrilled.
“What exactly am I supposed to do while you’re gone?” he’d asked, eyes blinking behind his dark-rimmed specs.
“See if you can make sense of this stack of financial statements, would you? I’d appreciate it if you could figure out whether or not Mother’s as bad off as Bridget seems to think,” she’d explained and kissed him on the cheek.
Then she’d ducked out before he could further complain.
Not ten minutes after, she stood before the nurses’ station at ICU, where she got the okay to use her laptop in her mom’s room. Once Toni shed her winter gear and set the knapsack on the floor, she pulled out her computer and positioned it on the table beside Evie’s bed. She brought up her music library, selected a handful of songs to be played then set the volume down a smidge.
Softly, Nat King Cole began crooning “Unforgettable,” a tune she’d heard sung more than once as the first dance at weddings, but still it got to her. There were others in the queue, too, music equally beautiful, songs whose lyrics were commanded by the likes of Sinatra and Crosby. She knew Evie would approve. Her mother had always adored the old crooners.
Toni had sent her a set of Michael Bublé CDs last Christmas, and when she’d phoned on the holiday to wish Evie merry, her mother had remarked, “The boy’s not bad, but he’s no Frankie.”
You’re welcome, Ma.
“I figured you’d be bored in here listening to nurses’ babble and machines beep,” she said to her mother as she dragged a chair up to the bed. “Doesn’t it make you want to get out of this joint? Maybe get up and dance?” she joked, wishing Evie would wake up and say, “Is that Nat King Cole? I hope you’ve got some Sinatra as well.”
But, of course, that didn’t happen.
“Do you remember when Daddy used to come home from work, and he’d catch you around the waist, holding you cheek to cheek and swaying, whenever an old song came on the radio? You’d laugh and swat him, but you looked so happy. You both did. I loved those moments. They were great.”
They were some of her best memories.
Toni felt an ache between her ribs and missed her father all over again, missed the light he’d brought into her life. Would she ever get over him? He could make Evie smile when no one else could or take a tense situation and defuse it, as he had so many times between Toni and her mother. Greg was stalwart and reliable, to be sure, but he didn’t have Jon Ashton’s spark, his compassion, his lack of inhibition when it came to showing affection. Toni wondered how she could have ignored it for so long, how she could have pretended she didn’t crave the connection, the passion her parents had shared.
“. . . that’s why, darling, it’s incredible that someone so unforgettable, thinks that I am unforgettable, too,” Nat cooed, and tears she hadn’t meant to unleash skidded down her cheeks.
“He was good for you, you know,” Toni said and set her chin on the cool metal bed rail. “When he held you, and you beamed, it was like for those few minutes you’d stop worrying, because you always seemed to worry so much, especially about me. Sometimes the way you held on so tightly scared me. It made me want to leave.”
She covered her mother’s thin hand
with her own, mindful of the IV.
“Please, come back to me, okay? Whenever you’re ready, I’ll be waiting. Maybe we can figure out how to make you smile like you smiled for Daddy.”
Toni paused and sucked in a breath, desperate to keep it together. She needed to ask her mom a question that she wasn’t even sure how to ask. Before she could, she dragged the knapsack nearer and removed the second item she’d packed.
Toni came out of the chair and draped the black dress over the bed rail, so the skirt fell across Evie’s hip.
“When you wake up, you’ll have to tell me about this,” she started slowly, brushing her hand across the fabric to smooth it. “It’s the dress you put on the morning you collapsed. The one the hospital cut right off you that somehow fixed itself. Because I wore it last night”—a light charge of static rose from the silk and tickled her palm—“I put it on and it fit, and I don’t know how, because we’re not built alike, you and I.”
She watched her mother’s face as she carefully moved Evie’s hand. She set it atop the black dress before covering it with her own. “Hunter Cummings was there. I didn’t know it was his restaurant. He touched my shoulder, and I felt like Alice falling down the rabbit hole. I know this sounds weird but I had this vision of us together, him and me, and it was like no dream I’ve ever dreamed. It seemed so real. I have no clue what to think about any of it.” Her cheeks heated up at the memory, and the hand that covered Evie’s began to tremble. “Please, Mama, please,” she whispered desperately, “you have to tell me what’s going on. Tell me I’m not going crazy.”
A sudden jolt skipped from Evie’s hand to her own, a wave of energy pulsing through her, and Toni squeezed her eyes closed as a vivid scene played out in her head.
She stood as she was now, beside her mother’s bed, the black dress spread over Evie’s torso. Next to her was a woman with a cap of white hair and eyes so deep a blue they looked indigo. “Oh, Evie,” she tearfully said. “Don’t leave us. Please, don’t go. It’s not supposed to end like this.” And then the damnedest thing happened: with a flutter of lashes, Evie’s eyes opened.
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