And for once, she had no answer.
CHAPTER 2
The band resumed, but the room had changed.
Diane handed back the microphone.
Paul remained standing, looking at his wife as if he were reconsidering a story he had believed for years.
He came to me after the toasts.
“Ruth, I’m sorry.
Diane told me the dress had come from Paris.
She said the designer required payment in advance, so I wrote her a check in the spring.
I wanted Chloe to have something beautiful.”
I told him he didn’t owe me an apology.
He shook his head.
“You made it for her, paid for the lace, and worked eleven months.
Meanwhile, I paid twelve thousand dollars believing I was buying a designer gown.”
Most of the money, he explained, had gone toward a kitchen renovation and a trip to Scottsdale.
After the truth came out, Diane returned it to him.
Paul asked her to give it to me.
I refused at first.
“I made the dress because Chloe asked me.
It was a gift.”
“Ruth, I’ve been married to your sister for thirty-four years,” he said.
“Don’t argue with me.
You gave our daughter eleven months of work.
Let me do this.”
I finally accepted, not as payment for Chloe’s dress, but as help toward a dream I had put off for years.
Mrs.
Laurent found me before the reception ended.
She asked about the lace, the hand-sewn beads, and the message inside the hem.
I told her my mother had taught me to sew and had always signed her finished dresses with pale blue thread.
Mrs.
Laurent listened closely.
“Thirty years in bridal fashion, and I haven’t seen handwork like that in a long time,” she said.
She asked for my shop address and said she would like to visit.
I assumed she was being polite.
A week later, she called and arrived at the little room above Kim’s dry cleaning with a notebook.