The Same Wedding Dress, Two Different Brides novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: That One
Lauren hears her fiance promise to marry the widow and leaves him that night, then sells the widow her own unfinished wedding dress, and Evan walks into the shop to find her pinning the hem.
Evan Thorncroft and I had been together for seven years, and all of Boston thought I was the girl who couldn't take a hint.
Last December his fiancée's mother slapped me in the coat-check line at the hospital gala.
"You're the girl who won't take a hint," she said, loud enough for the whole line.
Evan was standing ten feet away in his tuxedo.
He looked at his shoes.
Madeline Coyne stood behind her mother in cream cashmere and smiled at me.
Everybody thought she was the fiancée.
I was the fiancée.
I had the ring in a drawer to prove it, because Evan said I couldn't wear it yet.
On Wednesday night I was cutting strawberries in his kitchen in Back Bay.
I was five months pregnant, and strawberries were the only thing I wanted.
The study door was open a crack.
Evan was on speakerphone with his old college roommate, the only friend of his who knew I existed.
"Are you seriously going to let Lauren take all the abuse while you keep her hidden forever?"
I stopped in the hall with the plate in my hands.
Evan was quiet for a long time.
"Madeline's husband died pulling me out of the river," he said. "Her parents want me to take care of her for the rest of her life. After what he did for me, I can't say no."
"So you just let them slap Lauren at parties?"
"Lauren loves me for me. I can let Madeline be the one everybody sees as my fiancée. Lauren won't care."
His roommate made a disgusted sound.
"I heard you and Madeline are actually having a wedding. Lauren's five months pregnant, Evan. What happens when she finds out?"
Evan didn't even hesitate.
"She won't. It's one day in a church for Madeline's parents. Lauren never reads the society pages."
I set the strawberries down on the hall table without making a sound.
I went into the bedroom and packed one bag.
My sketchbook. My good shears. The ultrasound picture from the fridge.
When I walked past the study, he was laughing at something his roommate said.
He didn't hear the front door close.
I slept at my grandmother's house in Southie.
At eight the next morning I unlocked Furlong's Bridal on Tremont Street, the way I had every morning since I was nineteen.
My great-grandmother opened the shop in 1951.
My grandmother still sat at the front desk with her beading.
I was the one who made the dresses.
Shauna was already in the workroom with coffee and a box of pastries.
She looked at my face and put the box down.
"What did he do?"
"Later."
At ten the bell over the door rang.
Two women came in, and I knew both of them before they took off their sunglasses.
Evan's mother, in pearls.
And Madeline Coyne.
Neither of them had any idea who I was.
To them I had never been a person. I was a rumor in a coat-check line.
"We need a gown by June twentieth," Evan's mother said to my grandmother. "Trinity Church. My son's wedding."
My grandmother glanced at me.
I came out from behind the counter with my tape measure around my neck.
"Congratulations," I said. "Who's the groom?"
"Evan Thorncroft," Madeline said.
She said it slowly.
Shauna dropped a spool of thread.
Madeline walked past the sample racks without looking at them.
She went straight to the dress form in the back corner of the window.
It held a gown of ivory silk with a square neck and long sleeves of old Boston lace.
Thirty covered buttons ran down the back.
The hem was still raw.
The sleeves were still pinned.
I had been sewing it at night for two years.
I had let the waist out twice for the baby.
Madeline touched the lace with one finger.
"That one."
The shop was very quiet.
"That one isn't for sale," Shauna said.
"Everything is for sale," Evan's mother said, and took out her checkbook.
I looked at the dress I had made to marry Evan in.
I thought about the strawberries on the hall table.
Lauren won't care.
"It's for sale," I said.
Shauna stared at me.
"It's a couture piece," I said. "Hand-made lace, almost a hundred years old. Forty-two thousand dollars, half up front, no refunds."
Evan's mother didn't blink.
She wrote the check and tore it out.
I put it in my pocket.
Then I took the dress off the form and carried it to the fitting room myself.
Madeline stepped up onto the round pedestal under the chandelier.
I buttoned her into my dress, all thirty buttons, one at a time.
It was too big in the waist.
Of course it was.
It had been cut for a woman carrying a baby.
I knelt on the carpet, took a mouthful of pins and started to pin the hem.
Madeline looked down at me in the mirror.
"You're very good at this," she said.
"I know."
Behind me, the bell over the door rang again.
"Mom? The car's outside. Madeline, are you almost done?"
I knew that voice.
I had heard it say Lauren won't care twelve hours ago.
Evan came around the corner of the fitting room with his black card already in his hand.
He saw Madeline on the pedestal in the dress.
Then he looked down and saw me, on my knees at her hem, with my mouth full of pins.
The card slipped out of his fingers and landed on the carpet next to my shoe.
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