The Same Wedding Dress, Two Different Brides novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Pins

Evan pretends not to know her and then begs in the workroom, the wedding turns out to be legal, and Madeline says she always knew.

Nobody moved.

The black card lay on the carpet between my shoe and the hem.

I took a pin out of my mouth and put it in the silk.

"Evan, darling, out," his mother said. "You can't see the bride in the dress. It's bad luck."

He didn't go.

He was looking at me.

I knew that face.

It was the face he made when a waiter brought the wrong wine and he didn't want to make a scene.

Madeline smiled down at both of us in the mirror.

"Do you two know each other?" she asked.

She asked it.

Evan bent and picked up his card.

"No," he said. "Sorry. I don't think so."

Shauna made a sound.

I took another pin out of my mouth.

I put it in the hem two inches from the last one.

Then the next.

Then the next.

My hands didn't shake.

I had been pinning hems since I was nine years old, and my hands had never once shaken.

"She's fast," his mother said, approving.

"She's the best in Boston," Gran said from the front desk, without looking up from her beading.

I finished the front of the hem and stood up.

It took me two tries, because of the baby.

Evan watched me do it.

His eyes went to my stomach and stayed there.

"I need chalk," I said to nobody, and walked into the workroom.

I heard him say something about the restroom.

I heard his shoes on the floorboards behind me.

The workroom smelled like steam and machine oil.

Shauna came in right behind him and stood in the doorway with her big shears, opening and closing them.

Evan didn't even see her.

"Lauren," he said. "Where were you last night? I called you nine times."

"I know. I saw every call."

"What are you doing here?"

"I work here."

"You do alterations. You said you did alterations."

"I said I sewed. This is my grandmother's shop. I've worked here for ten years. You never asked which one."

He ran his hand through his hair.

He looked back at the curtain, toward his mother's voice.

"Okay. Okay. Whatever you heard, let me explain it."

"Go on."

"It's only a ceremony. It's for her parents. Her father's had two heart attacks, Lauren. They need to see her settled. It's one afternoon in a church, and then nothing changes for us."

"Nothing changes."

"Nothing. I swear to God."

I walked past him to the front desk.

Gran had the morning paper folded at her elbow, the way she had every morning of my life.

She read the society pages first, then the obituaries, then the crossword in pen.

She had already circled it.

I carried the paper back into the workroom and held it up in front of his face.

Intentions of marriage, filed at Boston City Hall.

Thorncroft, Evan, 32, Back Bay.

Coyne, Madeline, 30, Beacon Hill.

"You told your roommate I never read the society pages," I said. "Gran does. Every single morning."

He looked at the paper for a long time.

"You don't file intentions at City Hall for a ceremony," I said. "That's a marriage. A real one."

"It's paperwork. It doesn't mean anything."

"It means she'll be your wife."

"Lauren."

"The ring's in your sock drawer. It's been in your sock drawer for two years. You can give it to her if it fits."

His jaw went tight.

"You can't sell her your dress."

"I already sold it. Your mother wrote the check."

"That's insane. You're five months pregnant. You're not sewing my wedding."

"I'm not sewing your wedding. I'm sewing a dress for a paying customer."

I put the paper down on the steam table.

"Listen to me, because I'm only going to say this once," I said. "The baby is mine. I'm going to raise her. The forty-two thousand is the shop's. You don't get either one."

"Her?" he said.

His voice cracked on it.

I hadn't told him it was a girl.

I'd found out on Monday and I'd been saving it for his birthday.

"Evan?" his mother called. "Madeline needs you to see the back. Just the back. It's allowed."

He looked at me.

I looked at him.

Then he turned around and walked back out through the curtain.

Shauna lowered her shears.

"Say the word," she said, "and I put a pin somewhere in that suit he'll find at the altar."

"He's getting his suit across the street."

"Then I'll go across the street."

I almost laughed.

It came out wrong, so I stopped.

When I went back out, Madeline was down off the pedestal and back in her cream cashmere.

Evan's mother was booking the next fitting with Gran.

Evan was already outside, standing beside the car with his phone to his ear and his back to the window.

He didn't turn around.

I hung my dress on its padded hanger and zipped the garment bag over the lace.

Madeline picked up her handbag.

His mother went out ahead of her, still talking about flowers.

The bell rang over the door.

Madeline stopped on the threshold with her hand on the frame.

She waited until the door had almost closed behind his mother.

Then she looked back at me, at my stomach, at my hands on the garment bag.

"For what it's worth," she said softly, "I've always known who you are."

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