Chapter 9: The Fitting

I looked down at the text on my phone at the kitchen table.

Dinah's mother laid a pair of kitchen scissors beside the salt.

Final fitting for the wedding dress is Friday at ten at the Grand. Quentin will be there alone. Do NOT come.

"She's telling me not to," I said, "so I'm going."

"She said it twice," Dinah's mother said. "In capital letters."

"I heard her."

"You're not going to listen, are you?"

"No," I said.

She sighed and picked up the scissors.

"Sit still."

I had never worn my hair shorter than my shoulder blades.

She cut a long, even line at my jaw.

Dark brown curls fell onto the linoleum.

When she was done, I looked into the mirror over the sink and Dinah looked back.

"That's frightening," Dinah's father said from the doorway.

"Good," I said.

At ten on Friday I walked into the Ellingham Grand through the service entrance.

I wore Dinah's black coat and copied the way she carried her chin.

The head housekeeper was loading towels into a cart.

She looked at me once.

"Good morning, Miss Ellingham," she said, in a perfectly flat voice. "The bridal suite is on twelve."

She did not ask.

I rode up in a cart elevator that smelled of bleach and lemon.

The bridal suite had a white sofa and a three-way mirror.

A seamstress knelt by a mannequin in a wedding dress, pinning the hem.

Quentin stood at the window with a glass of orange juice in his hand.

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