Little Black Dress with Bonus Material (5 page)

But Anna didn't respond. She merely stared at the dress, hypnotized, and the woman went on as if I'd never interrupted.

“The silk the spiders spun was once golden, but the first owner of the dress believed it was cursed and tried to destroy it by burning. It merely turned the silk as black as pitch.”

Ha!
I sniffed, thinking that was the silliest thing I'd ever heard. Anna stroked the fabric, which glistened diamond-like beneath her fingers, and I saw goose bumps rise on her arms, lifting the downy hairs.

The Gypsy woman smiled, well aware that she had Anna hooked. “The dress will make happen what is meant to be. Once you see your fate, you can never go back.”

“So it's like a crystal ball,” Anna said softly, but the Gypsy shook her dark head, ribbons rustling.

“It is destiny,” she corrected.

“Either way it's magic,” my sister decided, enthralled, and I nudged her, leaning in to whisper, “You don't believe this fortune-telling bunk, do you?”

But she already had her fingers in her purse, digging out her billfold, more than willing to pay whatever price the Gypsy asked. I could tell that she wanted the dress, and nothing I could say would change her mind.

I rolled my eyes, thinking how gullible she was. She hadn't even tried it on. It might hang on her tiny body like a potato sack. Part of me wished that it would.

She bought it then and there and decided she'd wear it that night to the rehearsal dinner, forsaking the cream-colored gown with the sweetheart neckline Mother had bought her during a pre-wedding shopping excursion to Marshall Fields in Chicago.

I seriously hoped to persuade her to reconsider when I went to her bedroom that evening to help her get ready.

“Annabelle, it's me.”

When she didn't answer my knock, I tried the knob, but she'd locked her door. I curled my hand to a fist and pounded more loudly.

“Anna!”

“Evie, please, stop banging!” she said through the door. “I need to be alone awhile.” Her voice sounded so shaky that it worried me.

I put my eye to the keyhole and caught a glimpse of her kneeling on the floor in what appeared to be the black dress, and I wondered if she were ill.

“Please, let me in,” I protested, but she insisted, “Go on without me.”

Reluctantly, I left her, despite how wrong it felt. My mother buzzed about the foyer, digging into the coat closet, gathering wraps for her middle-aged cousins, and calling for Daddy to warm up the car.

“Where is Annabelle?” she asked me, a panicked look in her eyes when she realized my sister wasn't with me.

“Still dressing,” I said, not wanting to admit that Anna had ordered me away. And even if I'd declared, “She's locked in her room, acting very strangely,” it wouldn't have explained anything. Annabelle didn't exactly behave in a way most would consider normal, even on an ordinary day.

“That girl,” Mother murmured. “She's always holding things up. You go on with your father.” She herded me toward the front door alongside the older ladies. “We'll meet you at the club.”

So I sat smashed between the women in Daddy's backseat, my head humming with their voices as they chatted all the way there; and it was no better once we arrived at the Blue Hills Social Club, where a pianist played loudly and two hundred guests all gabbed at once. I grabbed a glass of punch from the silver tray of a circulating waiter and pressed my spine into a corner of the foyer behind a statue of Athena, and I bided my time until I saw Annabelle walk into the room half an hour later.

She shed her coat, and I frowned at the sight of her in Grandmother Charlotte's pearls and the dress from the Gypsy's shop. I thought she was making her own bad luck, wearing black to such an occasion, but she positively glowed, as if lit from within. Her skin seemed even more alabaster, her blue eyes deeper. The dress fit her like a glove, hugging her hourglass figure, and a stab of envy pricked my heart.

“Breathtaking,” I heard a voice say from somewhere nearby, and I felt as though the word had been stolen from my lips.

Beneath the chandeliers of the Blue Hills Social Club, the silk shimmered, and heads turned as Anna entered the marbled foyer to greet her guests. When she made her way to my side, she linked my arm in hers, and I sensed a shiver run through her at the very moment a flashbulb went off. For a moment, all I saw were spots.

“I'll miss you so much when I'm gone, Evie dear. Sometimes I think you're the only one who even tries to understand me,” she whispered in my ear, and I caught a whiff of the lily of the valley she always wore.

“I'll miss you, too, Annabelle.” I took her hands and squeezed; convincing myself everything was okay, despite the knot in my belly that said otherwise. “It'll be so quiet with you out of the house and married to Davis, but at least you won't be far.”

She looked at me curiously but said nothing, merely squeezed my hands hard. Then she moved on, kissing cheeks, chatting, and smiling for the photographer until a bell was rung and dinner was served.

I remember thinking the night should have been picture-perfect. All the ingredients were there—dozens of friends and family, many from out of town, Anna looking as resplendent as I'd ever seen her, and Davis as handsome as any movie star—only I had a sense of impending doom, confirmed when Anna stood up to toast her future husband.

There was something in her face that made me sit up straighter, the coconut-sprinkled cake I'd just eaten churning in my stomach, even before she turned to her fiancé and said quite plainly, “I apologize to everyone, and to you most, Davis, but I can't marry you. I do like you well enough but I don't love you near as much as my daddy does, and everyone in town knows Christine Moody has been crazy about you for ages. She's the one you should be with, not me.”

A collective gasp filled the room, and I threw my hand over my mouth, afraid I might throw up everything I'd just eaten.
What the devil was she doing?

Cool as a cucumber, Anna set down her champagne flute and smiled sadly. “I can't pretend to be something I'm not. When I marry—
if
I marry—it will be for love and love alone.” She slowly turned to the table where our parents sat with Davis' family. “I'm sorry, Mother”—she nodded—“Daddy.”

“Annabelle, you can't do this!” Davis stood, knocking over his glass, and shouted after her, “If you walk out on me, don't you ever come back!”

My father's face had turned a scary shade of purple, and Mother swayed in her chair as though she might faint. I sat stunned in my seat so all I could do was watch as Anna strode purposefully from the room, the black dress setting off sparks beneath the light of the chandeliers. And then the dining hall exploded with voices buzzing like a mad hornet's nest, before the drumming of my heart drowned out the rest.

I had come in the car with my father; but, in the confusion, he and Mother had left without me. So I begged a ride from Arden Fisher, whom I'd just met that morning. She was Mother's great-aunt from Ladue in St. Louis.

When I arrived home, I knew from the closed door to my father's study and the raised voices behind it that he and Anna were having it out. I didn't stay, leaving the house without my coat to wander the grounds, shivering beneath the sliver of moon and rubbing my arms, feeling sick to my stomach, like the world had come to an end.

When the cold set my teeth to chattering, I finally went back to the house, afraid they'd still be shouting, but all was quiet. The cousins of Mother's, who were staying in our guest rooms, told me in low tones that my parents had retired for the evening and Anna had fled “to heaven knows where, and I hope for her sake she stays away long enough for your father to calm down.”

I went to bed, afraid I wouldn't fall asleep for the ache in my chest, but a fatigue swept through me as I drew the covers to my chin. Soon, a warm numbness enveloped me, chasing off any lingering chills.

Sometime much later, Anna came into my room, whispering my name and that she needed to explain why she'd done what she had; but I felt so conflicted by the hurt on my mother's face and by my father's anger at Anna's “unforgivable betrayal” that I kept my eyes closed and pretended to sleep.

“I'm sorry, Evie”—she knelt beside my bed, and I felt the mattress dip as she leaned toward me—“but I had no choice. You can't know what I've seen.”

I wanted to shout at her, to tell her how careless she was with people's feelings; how irresponsible and selfish! Instead of lashing out, I kept silent. I proved to be a stoic Morgan through and through.

“Good-bye,” I heard her whisper before she tiptoed out again.

I wished I'd said something then. I wished I'd opened my eyes to look at her, even if I'd ended up yelling; even if I'd stayed mum and held her hand. But I'd done neither.

It was the last time I saw her until I'd married Jonathan and settled into a house all our own. Only that wasn't the end of either the dress or of my sister.

S
nug in jeans and a sweater, her shoulder-length hair slicked off her forehead, Toni headed downstairs to confront “that Cummings boy” and see what, in fact, he really wanted. Bridget certainly seemed to think he was out to suck the last drop of juice from the Morgan family winery's grapes, like some kind of
vino
-vampire.

Vacuum tracks neatly crisscrossed the rug in the center of the foyer, leading Toni to surmise that her visitor was afraid to sully the Aubusson or, more likely, Bridget hadn't shown him to the living room and made him feel welcome.

As she paused on the landing, she watched him approach the pier mirror, still wearing his winter coat, a red-and-white-striped knit cap clutched in his hands.

The youngest son of Davis Cummings was a handful of years her junior, so she'd never known him well, only by sight. He'd been tall and lanky back then, a nice-looking kid who was always the center of a crowd, clearly following in the footsteps of his athletic older brothers, Trey (aka Archibald Davis Cummings III) and Eldon. Trey had been one class ahead of Toni in school while Eldon had been a year behind, but both had won countless sports trophies as well as infamy for stealing the hearts of swooning girls from every corner of Ste. Genevieve County. Though they'd left Toni's heart alone. Hell, they'd ignored it entirely. But she could say the same for most of the farm-grown boys in Blue Hills who'd preferred easy-on-the-eye blondes dubbed things like “Miss Corn Cob” or “Miss Apple Butter” at the annual fairs, or girls who were flat-out easy. Sometimes they'd been one and the same. Toni had been neither.

She wondered if Hunter had grown into a cocky man like his brothers, spoiled by family money and women, anxious to continue the Cummings tradition of buying up local businesses and taking no prisoners so that, for all intents and purposes, they owned the entire town.

For a minute, she hung back, one hand on the banister, playing voyeur and watching as he squinted into the mirror and smoothed his ruffled hair with a bit of spit on his palm. Even from the stairs, she could make out the crow's-feet at the corners of his eyes and the hint of gray threaded through his brown hair and sideburns. She noticed, too, how snugly his broad shoulders filled his winter coat. Either he pumped iron at the gym or he was used to a hard day's work (or maybe a bit of both).

But, besides the fact that he was handsome, she didn't have an opinion of him one way or the other.
So I'll give you a shot to prove yourself, Hunter old boy,
she decided and continued down the steps to greet him.

At the creak of her tread on the floorboards, he glanced up and let out a low whistle. “If it isn't local girl done good, Ms. Antonia Ashton, back in our neck of the woods,” he said, and a grin crept across his lips. “Hunter Cummings,” he introduced himself, as though she'd caught amnesia while she'd been living in St. Louis.

“I know who you are,” she said.

“Well, it has been a long time since I last saw you, a really long time.”

Saw
being the operative word, Toni figured, since she couldn't recall ever having an actual conversation with him, nor with any member of the Cummings clan, not on purpose. It was well-known in Blue Hills that their families didn't exactly swap recipes, although their long-standing “feud” was hardly on par with the Hatfields and McCoys. The families were civil, though hardly chummy, as both sides had been forced to do business decades ago when the Cummings family had swallowed up the town's only bank.

“You're right, it has been quite a while,” Toni agreed, and her hand went to her wet head. “Although, if it had been just ten minutes longer, I could've dried my hair. Evie would scold me about catching pneumonia if she were here.”

“I'm very sorry about your mom,” he said and sounded like he meant it. “And I'm sorry for intruding. But I was afraid that if I gave you fair warning, you might not let me in.”

Toni smiled. “Bridget might not have let you in, but I would have. She's got a long memory.”

“She's a bit of a Doberman, isn't she? Very protective, I mean.”

Toni figured the “Doberman” was somewhere near, listening, so she shrugged and left it at that. Hunter shuffled in his boots, and she finally remembered her manners enough to ask, “May I take your coat?”

He waved her off. “Don't worry about my coat, I'm fine,” he said and looked around him. “Any chance we can sit down for a minute?”

“Sure. C'mon in.” Toni led him into the parlor and gestured at the sofa. He took a seat while she perched on a nearby wing chair. “What brings you here, Hunter?”

“Curiosity mostly,” he admitted, working his hat in a circle in his lap. He had nice hands, she thought, strong with lean fingers. And no wedding band. “I heard you were back, and I wanted to see how you'd turned out.” He squinted at her thoughtfully. “When I saw you last, I was twelve, and you were a high school senior, working the counter at the Tastee Freeze. You know it's closed now.”

“Thanks for the heads-up,” Toni said and nervously combed fingers through damp hair, surprised he'd even taken notice of her back then. “It's a good thing I didn't come home to reapply then.”

“Too bad. I always thought you looked strangely cool in a hair net.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Is that a compliment?”

“Yeah, it is.” He nodded, shooting her that cock-eyed grin.

Something in her chest fluttered as she realized he was flirting with her. It had been a while since any man had tried to charm her—Greg and his apartment key notwithstanding. And normally Toni would have enjoyed his attention; hell, she would've encouraged it. But, under the circumstances, it just made her suspicious.

“Not to be rude, but why are you really here?” she tried again. “Does my mother owe your father's bank money? Did she bounce a check or fail to make a payment on a loan?”

“Dad's been retired for a while, ever since my mom died,” he said simply. “Trey runs the bank now so I haven't a clue if Miss Evie bounced a check or missed a payment. You'd have to ask him.”

“I can't imagine you dropped by to chitchat. Retired or not, your dad would have a cow.”

He bobbed his head. “You're right, my father's not a big fan, and I can't blame him after the way your aunt carved his heart out.”

“Ah, the infamous Annabelle Evans,” Toni said, feeling as she sometimes did that her aunt was made up and not real. “She broke off their engagement the night before their wedding, right? Hardly the first time that's happened in the history of man.”

“Yeah, but it was in front of about two hundred people, including everyone in the county who mattered,” Hunter added. “My dad was crushed, and my grandfather was pretty damn pissed off as well.”

“So I heard.”

The story was legend in Blue Hills. Though Evie hadn't exactly filled in the details of the event from five decades ago, every citizen over age fifty seemed to know something about runaway bride Annabelle Evans, vanishing the eve before she was to marry Davis Cummings. As history had it, Anna had never set foot in Ste. Gen County again. Whenever Toni had asked her mom about Annabelle and what had happened to her, Evie would shush her with a glare. “Let them gossip, if they want,” she'd admonish, “I have put the past behind me.”

“So my aunt bailed on her wedding,” Toni remarked casually, despite the fact that she'd throttle one of her brides if she got cold feet after all the blood, sweat, and tears and months of micromanaging the Big Day and all that led up to it. “Everything turned out just fine, didn't it? You wouldn't have been born otherwise.”

“My sentiments exactly,” Hunter replied. “Which is why I don't share my father's negative view of the women in your family. It's also why I'm here. I care about Miss Evie, and I wanted to see if I could do anything to help.”

Toni sat up straighter. “Are you offering to pick up the newspaper and the mail, perhaps? Or would you like to shovel the drive?” she asked to provoke him, because she still wasn't sure what to make of his presence.

“Hmm”—he furrowed his brow—“I didn't see a paper outside, and the drive looked shoveled to me, but if you need me to come back another time for either, you can holler.”

Toni gave him a look. “I need to get to the hospital soon, so unless you're going to level with me, maybe you should leave.”

“All right, hang on,” he said, sitting up straighter, and he took a deep breath. “I'm guessing your mom hadn't talked to you about our project?”

“You and my mother had a project?” Toni would've laughed except she recalled Bridget saying something about Evie's pact with the devil. “Did you plan to rob a bank together?”

He lifted a hand. “It's no joke. And it was Evie who got in touch with me. She read an interview I did with the local weekly about my crusade to get more of the vineyards involved in organic winemaking. She thought going green might be the solution to all the problems she'd been having at the Morgan winery.”

“And you agreed to help her, just like that?” Toni didn't hide her skepticism. Because her mother had never mentioned any such thing to her. Not that they talked often or about anything important when they did. But it galled her that Hunter Cummings would know more about what Evie wanted than she. “I hate sounding like a broken record, but considering how your father feels, why would you do something like that?”

“Let's backtrack a little, okay?” he said and settled into the sofa, slinging an arm along the back. “Last fall, Miss Evie lost her key winemaker, Louis. He'd been managing her staff and running the business since your father died. I'm sure you realize how hard your dad's death hit her.”

Oh, crap, he would have to go there, damn him.

Toni's chest tightened, and she felt the prick of tears in her eyes. “She was hit hard, yes. We both were. I'm sorry I wasn't here for her more.”

“She didn't blame you,” he told her, very matter-of-factly. “She blamed herself for being neglectful, for not keeping an eye on the place.”

Toni sat up straighter, remembering what Bridget had said. “So is the winery in bad shape?” She imagined the worst, as she was wont to do, and felt a sinking sensation like she had when Bridget had unveiled the cluttered study and nattered on about unpaid bills. “Should I bring in my accountant?” She meant Greg, of course, her non-fiancé, who quite probably loved numbers more than he loved her. “Do you think that Louis embezzled? Should we call the police?”

“Antonia, slow down,” Hunter said and pushed his hands against the air until she settled back into her chair. “From what Miss Evie and I could tell, it was more a case of throwing good money after bad. Times have changed, and the Morgan winery wasn't doing anything to keep up. Your mom figured that if she didn't make a move now, somewhere down the road she'd have to close shop or sell out.” A boyish grin touched his lips. “So she and I put our heads together, and we cooked up a plan to take the vineyard into what we hope will be a profitable niche. But it's not a quick fix, and, thankfully, Evie was willing to be patient.”

Toni blinked, sorting out the rush of information. So the longtime manager had quit, leaving the business in a lurch, and Evie had hooked up with the youngest Cummings son to remedy things, just like that? She felt a pang in her chest at being so out of the loop. Did her mother not trust her at all?

“So your family's okay with it?” she asked, squinting at him, hating that she was jealous.

“Ah, there's the rub.” Hunter exhaled slowly. “I haven't told them yet, and Miss Evie didn't see a need to announce it prematurely.”

“So why are you doing it?” Toni wondered aloud. “Can't you play organic farmer on your own property?”

“I get that you don't trust me,” he said and shifted in his seat, rubbed his hands over his knees. “But Miss Evie seems much more receptive to innovation than my father. There's an artistry to making wine without using synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and growth stimulants. My brother Eldon manages our vineyard now, and he's far less interested in change than the status quo. He blows me off when I mention getting certified organic. It's not easy and it's not inexpensive.”

Toni had no clue about the requirements for going organic, but the “it's not inexpensive” part she understood all too well.

The hard line of Hunter's jaw softened as he said, “Your mother's ready to move forward. She's as excited as I am about the prospect of going green, like we're exploring another planet. ‘I need to get both feet out of the past,' was how she put it.” He nodded. “I couldn't agree with her more.”

Toni's pulse pounded as she listened, hearing every noble word, and it would have all sounded so lovely, so admirable. If only her mother wasn't lying unconscious, unable to verify any of it.

“I'm still trying to figure out what's in it for you? What are you after?” she pressed, ignoring the sound of Evie's voice in her head, chiding,
Do you take me for a fool, Antonia? Don't you trust your mother's judgment? I've never done anything that wasn't in your best interest.

“I'm not
after
anything. I just thought you should know that your mother and I—” He cut himself off, shook his head. “Never mind. I'm sure Miss Evie will be back on her feet soon, and you'll be off to St. Louis, and then it's just me dealing with her, which was a whole lot simpler.” He stood and pulled his peppermint-striped cap over his wavy hair, tugging it low over his ears. “I'm sorry I bothered you. Give my best to your mother.”

He didn't even give her room to respond, merely started walking out. But at the threshold to the foyer, he stopped and turned around. “Don't you ever just want to take a leap of faith?” he asked. “Believe in something just because you need to?”