Chapter 21: The Dress

Odette arrived in Cheyenne on Friday afternoon with a garment bag over one shoulder and a furious face.

"You went to Wyoming without me," she said, in the hotel doorway.

"I had two small children and a head start."

"You went to Wyoming without me, and you got into a fistfight with a rancher's daughter."

"I got into a conversation."

"Same thing." She hung the bag on the closet door and unzipped it. "Come look."

It was the dress from our fall rail, the last sample, the one I had told her to hold back.

It was long, in a deep green wool crepe, with a high neck and a back that dropped in a clean line to the waist.

It had no sleeves.

I had cut it for a woman who stands up straight.

"I can't wear that in front of three thousand people," I said.

"Why not?"

"My brace shows."

"It does not."

She had sewn a lined slit up the inside of the left skirt panel.

The brace sat hidden against my leg, and the fabric fell over it.

I put my fingers on the seam.

"You did this on the plane."

"I did it on the plane, in the dark, with a flight attendant holding my flashlight." She sniffed. "Get your slip on."

She helped me into it.

She did the hooks down my back while I looked at the mirror, and neither of us said anything for a while.

My hair was pinned up.

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