“Oh, pish,” Frances says, waving her hands. “It’s just such high fashion, dear. Of course you feel strange in it. It’s the most formal thing you’ve ever put on in your entire life. Especially since you refuse to wear anything but those tatty jeans of yours. You’re supposed to feel a bit odd in your wedding dress.”
“Am I, though?” Nancy says weakly.
Her mother ignores her, as does the saleswoman, a stout fifty-something with crunchy blond curls and heavily lined eyes under a thick layer of makeup that highlights rather than masks her age.
“It’s very on trend, as you say, ma’am, because of the princess’s exquisite taste,” she says, honing in on the potential sale like a taffeta-clad sniper. “Your daughter would be showcasing the most modern style wearing this dress. She’s a beautiful girl already,” she adds, turning back to Nancy and batting her false lashes, “and the dress highlights her thin waist and brings out the very best in her fine features.”
Nancy passes off her grimace for a modest smile as the woman addresses her mother once again.
“You look so alike, you two,” she says, looking past their mismatched hair and eye colour, Nancy’s thin chin and Frances’s square jaw, the several inches’ difference in their height. Nancy’s stomach flips underneath the layers of satin and lace.
“Oh my, well, yes,” Frances says, blushing like any proud mother would.
Nancy watches her mother’s features for a crack in the facade. She isn’t sure whether to feel relieved or disappointed when she sees none.
“We should get you into a mother-of-the-bride ensemble that will set your daughter’s dress off perfectly,” the saleswoman plows on, pushing another sale. “We have an extensive mother-of-the-bride section at the back of the shop. Right this way, ma’am.”
She’s walking toward the back of the store before Frances has even had a chance to respond to the summons.
“Oh yes, of course,” Frances says, rising from the chair and patting the curls on her wig. “Nancy, dear, you just spend a few more minutes in that dress and see if you can get it to grow on you. I really do think it’s the one!”
“Do you need a hand, Mum?” Nancy asks.
“Goodness, no, I’m fine, I’m fine.”
Part of the tumour is still in her brain; they weren’t ever able to remove it all without further damage. It’s weakened her. She walks slower than she ever used to. Her gait could be supported by a cane, but her stubborn dignity prohibits its employment.
She pads down the hallway to the back of the store on unsteady feet, leaving Nancy to stare at her reflection in the oversized gilded mirrors.
After the engagement last summer, Frances was beside herself with excitement over the prospect of wedding preparations. Seeing how eager she was, Nancy let her mother indulge herself in all the trappings of the process. Michael insisted they hold their ground on the dinner menu and guest list, but they’ve agreed on a traditional ceremony at their parish church, and Frances has gone completely overboard with every other aspect of the production. Nancy doesn’t mind too much, though. The wedding is just a day. Most of all, she’s looking forward to being married to Michael and starting their life together.
“And apparently we’ll be starting our life together with me dressed like a cupcake,” she says to the woman in the mirror dressed like a cupcake. She turns from side to side, swishes the layers of crinoline and skirt, and catches a glimpse of the hundred buttons dotting their way up the back of the dress. She can already tell Michael’s going to hate it. And hate trying to get me out of it at the end of the night, she thinks with a grin.
It’s a winter wedding, and she wonders whether her mother’s wedding cape might serve to hide some of the ostentatiousness of the style, or if the addition of yet another layer of fabric might further overwhelm it. But at the thought of the wedding cape, she recalls her grandmama’s words that day at the nursing home.
That was right around the time they got you.
Nancy’s finding it hard to breathe through the cinched corset of the dress, and her calves are starting to protest in the expensive mile-high heels the saleswoman shoved onto her feet before parading her out of the changing room and up onto the dais. With difficulty, she hikes up the layers of fabric, piling it in her arms. She kicks off the shoes and digs her toes gratefully into the scratchy carpet before flopping down, none too gracefully, onto her bum. The dress pools around her and she wonders how long her mother will be with the saleswoman.
A set of bells tinkles over the shop door and Nancy watches in the mirror as a mother and daughter enter. Sounds from the street rush in with them, and Nancy aches to get the hell out of this dress and go home. She watches for a while as they paw through the racks of dresses, blond heads together, smiling and critiquing the styles in low voices. The women look up from the racks. But for the lines in the older woman’s face, they could be sisters.
Nancy’s mind wanders to Margaret Roberts. Ever since she saw the ad, she can’t stop thinking about her. Now she wonders what kind of taste she had. In some alternate reality, would they have sorted through the racks together in this same bridal store?
“Good Lord, Nancy!” Nancy’s eyes snap from the mother-daughter pair over to Frances, who has emerged from the back room, cheeks flushed with embarrassment. “Get up off the floor! What are you doing?”
“I’m sorry!” Nancy says, scrambling to her feet as best she can and nearly tripping over the fabric as she descends the stairs from the dais in her bare feet. “I could hardly breathe in it, I needed to sit down.” She lets the dress fall again and it swishes out to the sides and back.
“You are not supposed to sit down in a gown such as this,” the saleswoman tells her. She’s carrying a burgundy taffeta mother-of-the-bride ensemble. “The dress should wear you, not vice versa.”
“Am I supposed to eat my dinner standing up, then?”
“Well, what do you think?” Frances interjects. “Is this the one?”
“It’s beautiful!” the blond girl calls from the racks.
“You should do it!” her mother adds.
“See?” Frances says, and Nancy spots a smug smirk on the saleswoman’s face as she relieves Frances of the taffeta dress and clip-clops over to the cash desk.
Nancy looks at her mother. Her eyes are sparkling with love—for both her daughter and the designer dress—and Nancy feels the futility of the situation settle on her puffed-up shoulders. She pastes a smile on her face.
Frances turns to the saleswoman. “We’ll take it.”
CHAPTER 22 Angela
MARCH 2017
Three days after Angela requested that Tina put her in touch with Dr. Evelyn Taylor, Angela finds herself standing outside the doctor’s apartment door with a box of bakery brownies in hand.
After Angela explained her theory about “Maggie” to her initially skeptical, then increasingly intrigued wife, Tina emailed Dr. Taylor to ask if she might be willing to speak to Angela about her experience at the maternity home. Angela feels a squirm of guilt that they didn’t warn Dr. Taylor about precisely why Angela was so eager to meet with her. Tina just told her Angela had been reading The Jane Network and was keen to talk about it. Which is true, but if there’s the slightest chance Dr. Taylor was best friends with Margaret Roberts, Nancy’s birth mother, she might know something Angela doesn’t. It’s worth a conversation and some overpriced brownies to find out.