Chapter 14: The Bride

"We'll take it," I said.

Una and I said it at the same time.

We looked at each other across the counter.

Neither of us smiled. But neither of us looked away first, either.

The bride's name was on the binder in pink marker, with hearts. She was twenty-six and worked at a dentist's on Broadway.

She'd been engaged for three years. Her fella was a firefighter from Ladder 2 who cried at movies.

She told me all of that while I measured her, because she couldn't stop talking.

"Is it true you said no at the altar?"

"Arms up, please."

"My cousin was there. She said you gave the ring to the old man in the wheelchair."

"Turn left."

"She said you were the most beautiful bride she ever saw."

I wrote down the length of her arm.

"Your cousin was in the back," I said. "Everyone looks good from the back."

She laughed so hard the tape slipped.

Her mother didn't laugh. Her mother watched me.

"Half now," she said, and counted forty-five hundred-dollar bills onto the counter.

When they left, Una picked up the stack and fanned herself with it.

"Four weeks," she said.

"Four weeks."

"Silk."

"You're out of your mind."

"I know."

"Good," she said. "Me too."

That was all the making-up we did that day.

I sewed at night, after Nessa was in bed.

I cut the silk on the big table downstairs with the blinds down and every light on.

My hands shook the first time I put the shears into it. Nine thousand dollars of somebody's day.

Then they stopped shaking.

The bodice took a week.

The sleeves took four nights each, because the lace had to be hand-set so it ran unbroken from the shoulder to the wrist.

Nessa came down every morning before school in her nightgown to check on progress.

"It's not finished."

"No."

"It's still not finished."