My Fiancé Chose His Ex, So I Chose Myself novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Centennial

I spent the afternoon on the floor of the workroom picking seed pearls out of the bottom of a garment bag.

Two hundred and twelve of them.

Picking them up kept my hands from shaking.

My mother's dress lay across the cutting table with its bodice gaping open.

"It can be fixed," Bonnie said.

"I know it can be fixed."

"Then why are you crying?"

"Because I have to be the one who fixes it."

At six o'clock Bonnie came out of the back with a dress over her arm.

It was red. Deep red silk crepe, long, with a low back, a sample gown a designer had left with us two years ago and never collected.

"Mrs. Meade said red," Bonnie said. "So you're wearing red. I'll take it in at the waist while you do your face."

"I'm not going to that party."

"Edie. She's wearing your robe. She's sleeping in your sheets. She cut your mother's dress open with a knife." Bonnie shook the gown at me. "You're going to that party."

The Meade boathouse sat at the end of its own pier on Ruston Way, all old timber and big windows over Commencement Bay.

There were strings of lights along the railing and a jazz trio in the corner.

Two tugboats were tied up at the dock outside, painted dark green and cream, with crews in pressed shirts drinking beer on their decks.

Two hundred people filled the room. Port people. Money people. Men with weathered faces in suits they wore once a year.

Every one of them turned to look when I walked in.

Bonnie hooked her arm through mine.

"Chin up," she said. "You look like a lawsuit."

I saw Shayla at once.

She was by the bar in a strapless black dress, laughing up at some man from the port commission.

Clint stood at her elbow, holding her drink.

He saw me and went still.

Then Shayla turned her head, and the lights over the bar caught her ears.

She was wearing my mother's earrings.

Small round pearls on gold posts. My father gave them to my mother on their wedding day, the only good thing he ever gave her.

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