Chapter 12: The Stained Gown

The gown had been lying on the bathroom tile in Sausalito for two weeks.

The wine had dried into a dark stain down the whole front.

I had been stepping around it every morning.

On the day before the gala, the phone rang while I was brushing my teeth.

It was the woman who ran the atelier that had made the dress.

"Miss Whitman," she said. "I'm so sorry to bother you. I wanted to tell you before you heard it elsewhere."

"Heard what?"

"Your sister has been to six designers since the wedding. So has Mr. Draper's mother."

"They're asking every restoration house in the city to save the gown."

I spat into the sink.

"Why?"

"They said it was for sentimental reasons," the woman said. "I was told it's needed for a family photograph."

"What family photograph?"

"The engagement party. The one on the twenty-ninth." She hesitated. "Miss Lydia would like to wear it."

I leaned on the basin and laughed until it hurt.

Malcolm heard me from the hall and stuck his head round the door, a towel slung over one shoulder.

"They want to put my sister in my wedding dress," I said. "At the party for the man I was going to marry."

He looked at the stained silk on the floor, and then at me.

"Can it be saved?" he said.

"Not by anyone," the woman said, over the speaker.

"I could take out the color, but the silk would never hang right again. It's finished."

"Thank you," I said. "Don't send anyone a thing."

I hung up.

I picked the gown off the tile and held it up against the light.

Keep reading free with an account. Start I Was Always Second. Until I Left. from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.