Her Wedding Dress novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: In the Light

The seamstress was waiting for me behind her shop's front counter with her glasses pushed up into her gray hair.

She did not wait for me to speak.

"I measured the wrong woman," she said.

"I was told to. I was told you'd never be in for a fitting, and I should have asked why."

"You didn't owe me that."

"I did."

She smoothed a panel of silk on the counter.

"They sent the dress back to me with wine on it and asked me to burn it. I took it apart instead. I thought, I'll keep the good part for her."

I touched the silk.

It was whole, and it was cool, and it was mine.

"Can you make something small from it?" I asked.

She looked at the baby asleep in my arms and smiled for the first time.

"A christening gown," she said. "Give me a week."

The week went by with the baby and a lot of laundry.

On the last Thursday of the month, my lawyer called.

"It's signed," she said. "Congratulations, Ms. McAlister. You're free."

I put the phone down on the kitchen counter and stood very still.

My father had come that afternoon with my mother for the first time since the hospital.

They sat on the couch.

My father held the baby against his shoulder and rocked her, and did not say a word.

"Take her to the park," I said. "Please. For an hour."

My mother looked at me.

"I'll bring her back before dark," she said.

I watched the three of them go down the path.

Then I crossed the street and knocked on Rhett's door.

He opened it in his shirtsleeves, with a pen in his hand.

"I'm free," I said.

He did not move.

"Legally?" he said.

"Legally."

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