The Richest Woman in Town Claimed Me as Her Lost Daughter on Stage, Then I Read the Date on Her Lab Report novel · Chapter 17 of 24
Chapter 17: The Green Dress
"I'm not going," my mother said.
It was five o'clock on Saturday, and she was sitting at the yellow table in her robe with a cup of tea.
"Mom, it's your night as much as anybody's."
"I have been on a microphone once this month, and I didn't care for it." She dunked her tea bag. "Go and read your date. I'll be here with the radio."
Lindsey stood at the sink, drying the same plate she had dried for two minutes.
She had the Gala program folded in her back pocket.
She pulled it out and put it in front of my mother, open to the second page.
"A Reunion Toast," it said, in gold script. "Barbara Chalmers, with her daughters Lindsey and Hallie Chalmers. 9:15."
My mother read it through her reading glasses.
"Chalmers," she said. "Huh."
She took the glasses off, folded them and got up.
She went down the hall without a word, and we heard the closet door.
She came back holding a peach taffeta dress on a hanger, with sleeves.
"Bridesmaid, 1998," she said. "Your aunt got married in a barn."
"Mom."
"I'm going to see my picture taken as a mother." She hung the dress on the doorframe. "I want to see what face they give me."
It took twenty minutes to get the dress over the brace.
My mother stood in the kitchen in peach taffeta, with a black knee brace showing under the hem and a cane with a silver handle that the railroad man next door had lent her.
"Well?" she said.
"You look like a very serious bridesmaid," Lindsey said.
"Thank you, honey."
I put on the green dress.
I stood in front of the bathroom mirror with my hand on the zipper, and a horrible thought came.
"Mom," I called. "Should I wear something else? It's what she told me to wear."
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