“It is new. And very old.”
“You mean it was never worn.”
Soline dropped her gaze. “Oui.”
The single word posed more questions than it answered. Why had the dress never been worn? Infidelity? Or a tragedy of some sort? She thought of the letters, all penned by grateful brides who’d received the fabled happy ending. But it seemed the owner of the fairy-tale dress had had no such luck. Why?
“I read some of the letters.”
“Did you?”
Rory nodded. “The ones that were in English. I couldn’t read the others.”
“The recent ones were written to me. The others are from women my mother sewed for a long time ago, back in Paris.” She paused, swallowing as she looked away. “She died not long after the Nazis came. When people heard the news, the letters started showing up.”
“And you kept them all these years.”
“To remember her by, yes. And to remind myself that once upon a time, there were happy endings in Paris and that my mother played a part in a few of them.”
Rory laid a hand on the box. “With dresses like this one?”
She managed a thin smile, not quite bitter but almost. “No fairy tale is complete without a proper dress, chérie.”
“But not just any dress,” Rory pressed, sensing evasion in the response. “A Roussel dress. There’s something special about them, isn’t there? Something that makes them lucky?”
“Drink your café, Aurore. Before it gets cold.”
Rory lifted her mug obediently. “I’m sorry for prying. I’m just trying to understand what I read. All those grateful brides with such amazing turns of luck. And they all seemed to be thanking you, as if somehow you’d made it happen. I know what people used to say—my mother told me—and the letters seem to be saying the same thing, that your dresses are . . . magical.”
The corners of Soline’s mouth curled, lending her a faintly feline air. “Any businesswoman worth her salt knows the value of a good gimmick. Toothpaste that makes you kissable. Shiny floors that make you the envy of your neighbors. Brides want fairy tales, so that’s what I gave them.”
Rory eyed her skeptically. “You’re saying your dresses had nothing to do with what was in those letters?”
“I’m saying people have ways of clinging to ideas that make the world seem nicer than it is. And perhaps that’s to be expected. When life is hard, it helps to cling to illusion. I suppose the letters were that for me once. But life has taught me that even in fairy tales, the heroine must make her own magic—or not, as the case may be.”
“But you kept them. You could have thrown them away, but you didn’t.”
Soline pulled in a deep breath and let it out very slowly. “There was so much ugliness back then, so much heartache and loss everywhere you looked. The letters were a way to remember the good.”
“And yet they wound up in a box under the stairs.”
There was an uncomfortable beat of silence, but finally Soline replied. “Before she died, my mother told me there is a time for holding on and a time for letting go and that I needed to learn the difference. I didn’t understand then, but there came a time—a moment—when I knew I had to let go of those broken pieces of my life. In the end, I couldn’t bear to part with them. I thought if I hid them from myself, put them where I wouldn’t see them every day, it would be enough.”
Rory studied her over the rim of her mug. Beneath the flawless style and carefully applied cosmetics, there was an air of tragedy that reminded her of Camilla. “Was it?”
“It must seem silly to you, clinging to such painful reminders, but they were all I had left of that part of my life. Of Paris and the life I thought I would have.”
The life I thought I would have. Rory rolled the words around in her head. They might just as easily have come out of her mouth. “No,” she said finally. “It doesn’t seem silly at all. We all have our own ways of coping.”
“And you, chérie?” Soline asked, her eyes suddenly keen. “Are you . . . coping?”
Rory shifted in her chair, unsettled by both the question and Soline’s steady regard. “I think we’re all trying to cope, one way or another.” She’d been aiming for nonchalance but missed badly. Time to change the subject. “I was sorry to hear about your shop. About the fire, I mean. Did you never think of reopening?”
Soline looked down at her lap, as if weighing her answer. “Life has a way of letting us know when something’s over. It’s not always pleasant, but it’s always obvious if we’re paying attention. I spent half my life reaching for things that weren’t meant to be mine—and paying dearly for it. At some point, one must read the signs.”