Chapter 9: The Dress

The silver car backed out of the pasture without a sound and was gone.

"That was her," Jude said.

"That was her."

"She watched us for a full minute and didn't get out."

"She never gets out," I said.

"She sends a box."

I meant it as a joke.

At nine the next morning, on Cup Eve, a box came to the north barn.

A groom carried it in and set it on a hay bale.

It was long and flat, white cardboard tied with green ribbon.

There was a card on top in Renata's neat hand.

For Miss Linden.

Cup Eve is formal.

I thought this might suit you.

I untied the ribbon.

Under the tissue lay a gown of deep emerald silk, with a low square neck and a fitted waist.

I knew it before I touched it.

My mother had worn it on the night of her third Cup.

She had worn the silver crown on her head and the family emerald on her finger.

I had been ten years old, sitting on the stairs in my pajamas, watching her glow.

The silk still smelled faintly of her perfume.

Abel, over my shoulder, drew a hard breath.

"She's daring you," he said.

"She's testing me."

"Same thing."

"She wants me to put it on, so she can watch my face."

"Or she wants to see you refuse."

I lifted the dress from the tissue.

It was cool and heavy in my hands, and I thought of everything it had been through.

"Then I'll wear it," I said.

The ballroom of Redmond Hill took up the whole west wing.

A grand staircase curved down into the middle of it.

By eight, it held three hundred people.

There was a quartet in the corner and an ice sculpture of a horse.

I stood at the top of the staircase in my mother's dress, with my short dark hair brushed back.

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