Chapter 16: The Dress

Erin's POV

Mama held the cream card at arm's length.

"She wants you to bring the baby," she said.

"Of course she does."

"She wants to meet her. She wants three hundred people to watch her meet her."

"And she wants me to scream," I said. "So the doctor at table one can sign his paper."

My phone buzzed on the counter.

It was the new one Ryan had bought me that morning, with a number nobody had.

Match, the text said. Ninety-nine point nine percent. The captain read it himself. Bean is yours, in writing.

I let out a laugh that sounded like crying, and Mama held my face in both hands until it passed.

"Right," she said. "What are you wearing?"

"I don't have anything."

"You have a closet upstairs in the room you grew up in, and a mother who can use a needle."

She was right.

The green silk had hung in that closet since I was twenty-six. I had bought it for a wedding and worn it once.

It didn't close over my ribs now.

Mama pinned the seams out with her mouth full of pins, swearing at it.

"Hold still."

"I am holding still."

"Hold stiller. She's four days old, you've bled through three towels, and you're going to walk into a ballroom like a queen."

"I'm going like a woman with a plan."

"Same thing," Mama said.

By six, the dress fit. It had a high neck in front and a low scoop down the back, because the seams had needed room there.

I sat on the edge of my childhood bed and fed Bean while Mama dug through the dresser for stockings.

I looked at my wrist.

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