The Same Wedding Dress, Two Different Brides novel · Chapter 6 of 32

Chapter 6: Seventy-Five Years

The women in the parlor waited to see what I'd do.

I could feel them waiting.

They wanted me to cry on the hall rug, so they'd have something to tell at the wedding.

I folded Gran's cardigan tighter over the baby.

"Your husband's grandfather gave my great-grandmother that lease in exchange for a wedding dress," I said. "Your family has been getting married in our dresses for seventy-five years. This is the first time you've paid for one with the whole shop."

Evan's mother's smile didn't move.

"Good afternoon, Miss Furlong."

The housekeeper opened the door for me.

I went down the steps with my hand on the iron rail and my knees not quite working.

I was halfway down Chestnut Street when I heard heels behind me.

One of the women from the parlor was hurrying to catch up, a woman in her sixties in a lavender twin set.

She was out of breath.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm so sorry. I didn't know what to say in there."

"It's all right."

"It isn't. I was married in a Furlong dress. 1989. Your grandmother made it. Silk taffeta, puffed sleeves, eleven yards of skirt." She pressed a card into my hand. "I still have it. If you need anything. Anything at all. Call me."

She hurried back up the hill before anyone could see her talking to me.

I looked at the card in my hand for the whole walk home.

When I came in, Shauna was sitting at the front desk with Gran's laptop and her tongue between her teeth.

"Don't talk to me," she said. "I'm being a genius."

"Okay."

"Okay, I'm done. Talk to me." She spun the laptop around. "Look."

It was a page on the city's website.

Legacy business protection.

"The city council can declare a shop a legacy business," Shauna said. "If it's been in the neighborhood seventy-five years, and the neighborhood stands up for it. Then the landlord can't just throw it out because somebody's bride wants a present."

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