Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE CHRISTMAS WEDDING
Emmy’s family had decided to celebrate Christmas early this year, so Emmy flew in from New York and Madison from Richmond. They met at Nashville International Airport, rented a car, and drove home to celebrate the holiday early before heading to Adrienne McLoughlin’s wedding in a couple of days.
After hugs all around, Emmy and Madison took their bags upstairs.
“The benefit of Dad not being able to sell the house yet is it’s super clean all the time,” Madison said, dropping a folded pile of sweaters onto the floor next to the air mattress.
After the craziness of this year, Emmy was quietly relieved that she had the house to return to.
Unable to find another job, she worked as a barista at The Big Cup, a coffee shop, during the day and waited tables at the popular Maringa restaurant at night.
Nothing about her life felt normal except coming home to this house.
“True, but I wonder if we’ll be forced to keep it spotless while we’re here in case someone calls to see it,” Emmy said.
Madison made a face. “Good thing Jack’s not here this year to mess it up. He couldn’t get off work.” She zipped up her suitcase and slid it against the wall. “Uncle Stephen will take care of ransacking the place, I’m sure.”
Emmy laughed.
Once they’d unloaded, Madison stopped Emmy as she went to leave the room.
“Before we go downstairs, I wanted to ask you... Did you see anything from Paris Fashion Week this past October?”
Odd question. Her sister never knew anything about the fashion scene. Why would she care now? “No, why?”
“I wanted to wait until we were settled before I brought it up. In the airport, on the way here, I was searching for that guy—Mitchell Augustine—because I wanted to ask you more about him, and when I did, a news article came up that mentioned Harlow and Ash. Doesn’t he own that company?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“I couldn’t remember those drawings of Mom’s perfectly, but could you look at this?”
Madison pulled out her phone and tapped the screen. She held up a picture of a white satin dress with a tapered waist and flowing sleeves.
“Am I remembering correctly? Doesn’t that look like Mom’s drawing?”
Emmy brought the phone closer, not believing what she was seeing. She’d studied her mother’s sketches, and she knew one of her designs when she saw it.
“Yes, it looks exactly like Mom’s drawing that was labeled with Mitchell Augustine and his wife’s name. What is this?”
“It’s his Fashion Week runway model.”
“So Mom actually made the dress?”
“Hopefully. Otherwise, Mitchell Augustine copied her design. I’m thinking it was the latter because the fabric for the Fashion Week dress was commissioned especially for this piece, this year.” She tapped the screen to show Emmy the sentence that supported her comment.
The fabric for this unforgettable garment was commissioned by an artisan in the Netherlands, who rushed the design just for Fashion Week, infusing actual silver thread in the pearly weave, providing its shimmer.
Emmy gaped at her sister.
“I stewed about it for the whole plane ride,” Madison said. “You emailed him, and I’ll bet that got him thinking about her. They were probably students together in Paris, and he somehow had a copy of the design. After all, his name was on it.”
“Maybe it was his design and not Mom’s,” Emmy offered, scrambling for an answer. “His work might have gotten mixed up in hers or they designed it together. After all, those drawings have been sitting around for a long time.”
“The drawings all looked like Mom’s to me,” Madison said.
“Why would they have designed it together if it had his wife’s name on it?
If he couldn’t see the gown before the wedding, she’d have designed it solo.
If he didn’t care about that, then he’s a designer himself: Wouldn’t he have designed the dress on his own? ”
Emmy shook her head, befuddled as she looked at the image on Madison’s phone again. “The seams are even drawn the way she does them.”
“What if, after you told him she died, he thought he could get away with passing off her designs as his own?”
“Would he do that?” Emmy asked, trying to make sense of it.
“If he did, what an awful thing to do.”
“Maybe that’s why none of us know anything about him. He’s probably a terrible person, and she hated him,” Emmy added. “That would make sense because he said to ask Mom to explain how they knew each other. If she hated him, she’d have a different story than he would.”
“Girls!” their dad called from downstairs. “Dinner’s ready!”
“Okay!” Emmy called back. Then she turned to her sister. “It’s Christmas. Let’s not mention any of this to Dad. I’ll look into it more after Adrienne’s wedding.”
“All right.” Madison grabbed her arm. “But if it is Mom’s design, what will you do?”
“I don’t know. I can’t afford a lawyer to sue him, and with his billions, his legal team would run circles around anyone I could hire.”
“And you’d have to prove the design was actually Mom’s. She didn’t sign the designs, did she?”
Emmy shook her head. “Not that I saw.”
Madison gritted her teeth. “Jerk.”
“Hey.” Aunt Charlotte appeared at the bottom of the stairs. “Y’all coming?”
“Yeah,” Emmy said, giving her sister a look of solidarity.
She could at least take a few days to figure out how to respond to the situation. She needed time to ponder the whole thing, and this wasn’t the place to gather her thoughts.
After dinner, their dad brought Emmy and Madison into his room to ask them something.
“Home prices have gone up over seven percent this year, and I can’t get a bite,” he said on their way down the hall. “It’s deflating. I know the house is a little outdated, but surely someone would see the value in it.”
“It’s a wonderful house,” Madison said, putting her arm around him.
“Well, the sluggish response has given me time to organize everything. I was thinking, since you girls are here, maybe it would be a good idea if, instead of packing up your mom’s box of things, you all would like to go through them and take whatever you want.
” He nodded toward the box Emmy had dug through last year.
“That’s a good suggestion,” Emmy said, walking over to it.
She pulled back the flaps and peered down at the contents, still folded the way they were this time last year. The shirt had worked out well for her. Her mind went back to the drive with Charlie, and her heart skipped a beat. Maybe she’d see him at Adrienne’s wedding.
Emmy retrieved a pair of trousers and held them up.
“Oh, those are nice,” Madison said. “If you don’t take them, maybe I will.” Her sister squinted at them. “Although, they look more your size than mine.”
Emmy checked the tag. “They’re exactly my size.”
Madison snapped her fingers. “Darn it.”
Emmy eyed her sister, and unspoken words passed between them. They were both keeping things light for their dad, but the gravity of digging through the last of their mother’s things was heavy.
After the funeral, their dad had put on a brave face too, but they’d both heard him at night, sobbing himself to sleep. A couple of times, his grief was so loud that the two of them had climbed into bed with him.
But today, he looked on with nostalgia in his eyes.
Emmy pulled out a skirt. “What about this, Madison? This looks like you.”
“I remember one of the times she wore that,” their father said. “She and I went out for ice cream one sunny Sunday. I can’t remember what I said, but I can still hear her laugh. I thought she was going to drop her ice cream.” He gazed at the garment.
Emmy handed it to her sister. Madison held it up to her waist and shimmied it back and forth. “I love it.”
Emmy wasn’t sure if her sister had meant she loved the skirt or the story.
They kept going through their mother’s things, some of them familiar, some not. Emmy ended up with three more blouses, in addition to the trousers, and Madison had a skirt, two sweaters, and a handful of scarves.
Then, something glittery caught Emmy’s eye. “What’s this?”
She pulled out a dark green beaded clutch that went perfectly with the Garnet & Petticoat dress she was going to wear to the wedding.
Her dad frowned. “I’ve never seen that before.
But she was known to buy the odd thing and then never wear it.
” He smiled fondly at the handbag. “It was the designer in her. She fell in love with the lines of things or the blend of colors. Sometimes, she bought articles of clothing just because they were too lovely to pass up.”
Emmy claimed it. “I’ll carry it at Adrienne’s wedding. Knowing Mom, she probably would’ve liked someone to get use out of it.”
Emmy was glad she’d be able to take the clutch out on the town for her mother. It seemed awfully glamorous for her mom’s life in Tennessee, and once the cancer had set in, she didn’t get dressed up anymore. Taking the clutch out would be an honor.
Maybe Charlie was right about ten years being a beginning of better times. It was as if her mother was talking to her. The tenth Christmas without her, Emmy had gotten her mother’s dress from France. The next Christmas, she wore one of her shirts, and now, Emmy was given her handbag.
What are you trying to tell me, Mom? she wondered. Hopefully, it was her mom letting her know she was there. Maybe she’d give Emmy a little of her confidence.