Lila laughed. “Okay, so I guess we know what you’re wearing at the fashion show.”
Daphne flipped through the other dresses, which included a gorgeous silk “handkerchief dress” and a strapless black taffeta gown with a full skirt and tulle lining. “This is a Suzy Perette with the tags still on. Was this Hattie’s?”
“Yes. She never even wore it.” Pauline placed one hand on her hip. “She didn’t really want it, but she didn’t want anyone else to have it. Typical.”
While Daphne and Pauline continued to inventory the cache of clothing, Lila and Summer started talking logistics.
“So who else can we get to walk in the show?” Lila sat down on the edge of Pauline’s bed and started making notes on her phone. “You and Jenna, of course. And you think we can get Mimi Sinclair?”
“I’ll get her,” Summer vowed, still holding tight to the Malcolm Starr with both hands. “I’m good at strong-arming bad-tempered rich women.”
“If we get Mimi, we can get all her mean-girl friends, too.” Lila tried to envision the event with glamorous guests milling around in the country club ballroom. “Do we want to try to pull in some of the younger crowd?”
“Good idea,” Summer said. “We can ask the mean girls’ daughters.”
“Ooh.” Daphne unearthed a long, drapey pink nylon nightgown. “Is this a Lucie Ann?”
“That’s a hot dress,” Summer said. “Can I try it on?”
“But of course.” Pauline handed it over. “You know who used to wear Lucie Ann? Zsa Zsa Gabor on Green Acres, that old TV show.”
“Actually, Eva Gabor was on Green Acres,” Daphne corrected.
The four of them were laughing and bonding and trying on various dresses when a sleek dark blue Mercedes pulled up to the portico.
Summer glanced out the window and yanked the pastel nightgown off in one swift movement. “You guys, it’s Hattie!”
“Oh, dear.” Pauline started scooping up dresses and shoving them back in the closet.
“She’s going to kill us all.” Daphne paled. “Try not to bleed on the clothes.”
“Hello?” a thin, reedy voice called from downstairs. “Pauline, do you have company?”
“You girls go out the back.” Pauline hustled them into the hallway. “I’ll stall her.”
Lila heard the authoritative click-clack of Hattie’s shoe heels on the marble floor. “Summer Benson, is that you up there? What on earth are you up to? Pauline? I demand an explanation right now!”
Summer barely stifled her laughter and pointed out a large pink and green room with French doors that opened up to a second-story balcony. “Climb down the drainpipe,” she whispered. “Try not to fall and break your neck. Good luck.”
Lila went first, scraping her palms and snagging her jeans as she shimmied down to the porch. Daphne tossed down a pair of priceless old gowns, giggling like a teenager, and began her descent.
“She’s coming!” Summer screamed out the window, all dramatic. “Hurry!”
Lila held her arms out and caught the fluttering tiers of silk and lace.
Then they heard Hattie’s voice, outraged and vehement: “Daphne Alders, is that you? And is that . . . Lila Alders? Come back here, both of you!”
“Save yourselves!” Summer yelled.
“This isn’t over!” Hattie shouted. “You can run, but you can’t hide!”
Daphne reached out and took Lila’s hand and together they fled the scene, crashing through the underbrush and making sure that the beautiful old dresses didn’t get torn or soiled. For the first time since she’d come back to Black Dog Bay, Lila saw a flicker of her mother’s old spark—the willingness to run, to take a chance and push ahead . . . even if they weren’t completely sure where they were going.
* * *
Late Sunday night, under cover of darkness and her dad’s old Baltimore Orioles cap, Lila drove to the other side of town to pick up the leopard-print car coat. She cut the headlights as she turned into Malcolm’s driveway, then kept her head down while she skulked around his porch, feeling like a junkie going to her dealer’s house to score a hit.
A hit of haute couture.
When Malcolm opened the door, she pulled the ball cap’s brim even lower on her forehead and murmured, “The password is ‘Pucci.’”
He started to close the door. “That’s not the password.”
“Okay, the password is ‘Prada.’”
“Wrong again.” He sounded gruff, but she could tell he was trying not to smile. “The hat’s a nice touch.”
“I’m just doing my part to maintain confidentiality.”
“Very thoughtful.”
She waited for him to open the door wider than six inches, then gave up and moved closer, trying to peer through the narrow gap. “I try. I was thinking we could cross-stitch a nondisclosure agreement, too. With red thread, so it looks like we wrote it in blood.”
The door eased open another two inches. “I’ll be sure to whip that up next time I have a spare minute.”
“Speaking of red thread . . .” She revealed the ripped Ceil Chapman dress she’d been hiding behind her back.
As soon as he saw the ruched red fabric in the clear dry-cleaning bag, he tried to slam the door, but Lila had anticipated this and wedged her foot in front of the jamb.
“Wait!” she cried. “Let me explain.”
“I already did emergency surgery on that thing in a gas station parking lot in the middle of my workday,” Malcolm said. “I’ve fulfilled my obligations.”
“You have, and I am deeply grateful. But—”
Malcolm used his deepest, most commanding SRT leader voice. “No means no, Lila.”
She responded in her softest, sweetest prom queen voice. “Oh, come on! Don’t you want to finish what you started?”
His jaw dropped. “What I started?”
“Okay, what we started.”
There was a long pause. Lila took advantage of the silence to add, “There was a wee wardrobe malfunction. My mom doesn’t know, and I’m hoping she never finds out because it will probably kill her if she does. Don’t do it for me; do it for her. A bereaved, lonely old widow.”
The door swung open. “I’ll look, but I make no guarantees. And for future reference, the password is ‘proliferation.’”
Lila grinned as she breezed by him. “The password is ‘Pucci.’”
Malcolm took the dress from her and assessed the damage. “Damn, Alders. What’d you do?”
She flushed. “I didn’t do anything!”
His eyebrows shot up. “What’d your date do?”
“He offered me a lease and then his ex-girlfriend texted him.” Even though she was telling the truth, she knew she sounded like she was lying. She was all flustered and fidgety again. Damn psy-ops. “I told you before, it was just a friendly dinner. Ben and I had our moment, and it was back in high school. We’re friends now. Or something.”
Malcolm crossed his arms and gave her a stony stare. “Friends don’t tear each other’s clothes off.”
“The dress tore itself.” She held up her right hand. “Sartorial suicide. I’ll take a polygraph if you want me to.”
“I don’t.”
“Well, that’s what happened. I have no idea why.”
“Remember what I said about old thread?” He motioned her inside so he could inspect the dress’s stitching in better light. “Silk deteriorates over time. You’ll need to go back over the seams with new thread.”
“Sounds like a pretty basic repair.” Lila tried to sound all blithe and innocent. “If you won’t do it, I guess I could just take some upholstery thread and—”
“Upholstery thread?” Malcolm’s head jerked up.
“Well, yeah. That’s what you used to reattach the button, right?”
“Buttons are completely diff
erent from side seams.” He exhaled in evident disgust. “Upholstery thread? Come on.”
“Well, I don’t know!”
“No shit.” He peeled off the clear dry cleaner bag. “And while we’re on the subject, you can’t store these in plastic. It’s bad for the fabric. So is light.”
“Sunlight?”
“Any kind of light.”
Lila stared up at him. “You’re kind of strict.”
“This isn’t some department store dress you want to wear for one season. These things are forty, fifty, sixty years old. If you want them to last another sixty years, you’ve got to treat them right.”
“This is why I need you.” Lila put the back of her hand to her forehead. “Save me from myself, Malcolm. More importantly, save Ceil Chapman from me.”
He exhaled again, loud and irritated. “I know what you’re doing.”
“Asking you to work from home?” She craned her neck, trying to see over his shoulder. “Where’s your workstation, anyway?”
He shifted his body, blocking her view. “My what?”
“Sewing basket. Whatever.”
His jaw dropped. “I don’t have a sewing basket.”
“Sorry.” She backed off. “Didn’t mean to offend. Where do you keep your testosterone-infused needle and your thread of manly might?”
He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “By the TV.”
She glimpsed a huge sewing machine, complete with a flatiron foot pedal, in the corner of the living room. “Wow. That looks like serious business.”
“It’s old-school,” he informed her. “Older than me. Nineteen seventy-two Columbia. It’s a workhorse. Sews leather, silk, everything in between. All you have to do is change the needle and you’re ready to go.”
“Does she have a name?”
“No.”
“You’ve spent all these years with her. . . .”
He looked like he was inwardly praying for patience. “It’s not a ‘her.’ It’s an ‘it.’”
“How about ‘Rosa’?” Lila suggested. “Since she’s Colombian and all.”
Malcolm didn’t deign to reply to that, so Lila picked up the plastic-handled scissors on the sewing machine’s tabletop. “And these are your official sewing shears?”
“Four bucks at the drugstore.”
“Oh.” She glanced down at them. “Listen, I’ll be the first to admit that I learned everything I know about sewing from Project Runway, but isn’t cutting important?”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “The cutting is what counts, not the scissors. Think of sewing like sports. The player is more important than the equipment.”
Lila laughed. “So now sewing is like football?”
“Most of the game is mental.” For the first time, his eyes softened. “My grandmother was Romanian, and growing up with her was excellent training for the Marines.” He nodded at the sewing machine. “This was hers, originally.”
“She was a master?” Lila asked.
“Oh, yeah. You know how she did it? She never said no. Women from the neighborhood would bring in dresses and ask for impossible things, like making a waistline five sizes larger. She said yes every time, and she always got it done.” He tossed the Ceil Chapman dress onto the sewing table. “She was the one who taught me that I could do anything.”
Lila looked at the sewing machine again, then looked back up at Malcolm and saw him—really saw him. She saw past the beer and the baseball and the muscles and the marine, to the heart and spirit that had always been there. The boy who had to become a man too soon, who had the soul of an artist but refused to admit that, even to himself.
When he looked back, she knew that he saw her, too—past her hair and her makeup and her carefully maintained physique. He saw all the flaws and the false starts. Both of them let down their guards in that moment, and they recognized each other as two people terrified of their own power, but slowly, slowly edging toward their potential.
Then they broke eye contact, trying to pretend it had never happened.
“Everyone needs that,” Malcolm continued. “Someone who believes that they can do anything.” He grinned. “Besides, it kept me out of trouble. Between that and running track and cross-country, I didn’t have time to get tattoos and smoke a bunch of meth.”
Everyone needs someone who believes they can do anything.
He’d said the words so casually, but Lila realized she’d never had that. She’d been so fortunate in so many ways; she’d always had someone to shelter her and protect her and bail her out of trouble. She’d spent her whole life buffered from reality, first by her parents and then her husband.
But she’d never had anyone who believed that she could bail herself out.
She noticed a thin black metal cylinder resting on the corner of the tabletop, draped with a looped fabric tape measure. “Is that a weapon?”
Malcolm followed her gaze, then nodded. “PR-24. Standard-issue.”
“In civilian, please?”
“It’s basically a sidearm baton.” He went back to examining the dress seam.
“So you can beat back a riot while you hem your pants?”
“Hey, you never know.”
“You are so . . .” Lila didn’t know how to finish that sentence, so she started a new one. “So how do you make a waistline five sizes larger?”
Malcolm turned the red dress’s bodice inside out and showed Lila the excess fabric edging the seams. “They used to make clothes with much bigger seam allowances. If we wanted to make this bigger, first we’d let out the side seams as much as possible, and then we’d have to add gussets on the sides.”
“Gussets?” Lila searched the mental glossary of sewing terms she’d accrued from six seasons of Project Runway.
“Extra fabric that you add to expand the waist or the skirt or whatever. Like . . .” He cast his eyes up, searching for an example. “Remember in Silence of the Lambs, when Jodie Foster goes into Buffalo Bill’s house and sees those diamond-shaped sewing patterns hanging on the wall?”
“Stop.” Lila made a face. “We’re working with Ceil Chapman and Valentino. Can we please not talk about skin suits?”
“I’m trying to drop some knowledge on you.”
She shook her head. “You’re such a boy.”
“I’m a man,” he corrected.
She smiled sweetly. “And you do beautiful sewing work.”
He pointed at the door. “Get out.”
She scooped up the repaired coat and obliged, laughing as she went. “So you’ll fix the dress?”
Malcolm picked up the TV remote and clicked onto a basketball game. “I’ll think about it.”
“Don’t think about it—do it.”
He managed to withstand a few more seconds of her shameless begging before relenting. “Okay, I’ll do it.”
She raised one fist in victory. “Yes!”
“On one condition.”
“What?”
For a moment, the only sound was the low drone of the televised sportscaster.
Then Malcolm said, “I want a do-over.”
Lila stared blankly back at him.
“Of our date,” he clarified. “The one you don’t remember. I demand a do-over.”
Lila parted her lips to protest that this was crazy, this was doomed, this was an unwise pairing of personal and professional interests.
And then she looked at him with the red silk dress in his hands and the riot gear on his sewing table and the abs that she knew were hidden under his shirt. She remembered Summer’s advice: Live your life. Make mistakes. Don’t worry so much about destiny.
“Okay.” She took off her cap and shook out her hair. “I’m game.”
He looked a little surprised by her acquiescence.
“It’ll be fun, right?”
�
�Right.” The cagey smile was back. “We’ll do the same thing we did on our date in high school.”
“Refresh my memory,” Lila said. “Where are we going? What’re we doing?”
“That’s for me to know and you to find out.”
“You’re impossible.” She gave him a look. “At least give me a hint about what to wear.”
He glanced down at the slinky crimson cocktail dress. “Your dress will be ready and waiting for you.”
chapter 19
“Sweet Bluette or Labrador Blue?” Lila stepped back to examine the patches of paint drying on the north wall of the empty storefront. “What’ll it be?”
Daphne barely glanced at the pale blue splotches. “Oh, sweet pea, I don’t care.”
“Well, the contractor wants to start painting this afternoon. Pick a color.”
“Yes. About that . . .” Daphne sat down on a sawhorse, suddenly looking very frail despite her formidable height and fashionable outfit. “I’m not sure you’ve really thought this through.”
Lila gestured to the carpeted floor and bare walls. The store’s front window afforded a partial view of the Atlantic. “We have the perfect retail location for the summer. We have great product to sell. What’s to think through?”
“Well.” Daphne cleared her throat. “Don’t take this the wrong way, baby—”
“Oh, boy.”
“—but the reality is, you’re not qualified to run a business. Neither am I. We don’t know the first thing about finance or marketing.”
“That’s not true,” Lila countered. “When I worked for the shopping channel, I learned a lot about how to move merchandise. I can talk about a hideous velvet scarf for forty-five minutes straight. I can sell out that hideous velvet scarf in forty-four minutes. That hideous velvet scarf has a waiting list by the time I’m through.”
“But what about the business side?” Daphne pressed. “The budgeting, the bookkeeping, the payroll . . .”
“We won’t have a payroll.” Lila was making this up as she went along, but it sounded plausible. “You and I are the only employees. We’ll use any profits to pay down your debt and keep the house afloat.”
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