“We cannot afford any beautiful dress, Aunt Rosemary,” she said, her voice shaking as she stared at her silver ring. “Maybe we should just go to the courthouse and get it over with.”
“I do not care what the price tag says, you are not wearing a department store dress,” I said, turning the Buick onto our gravel driveway.
“But eight thousand dollars is my whole savings,” she whispered.
“We do not need Mrs. Gable, and we do not need her marked-up satin,” I said, turning off the ignition.
I walked into the house ahead of them, my knees stiff from the drive. I went straight down the narrow hallway to the linen closet, where the smell of lavender detergent always hung heavy in the air.
Behind the spare winter blankets, the black metal case sat on the bottom shelf, heavy as an anchor.
I reached in and pulled my sixty-year-old vintage Singer sewing machine out of the dark.
I set the heavy machine on the kitchen table, the cast iron clinking against the wood, and wiped the thin layer of dust from its long black metal arm.
“Feel the weight of this bolt, Miss Rosemary,” Clara said, lifting the heavy cylinder of ivory satin from the bottom shelf.
The warehouse in Savannah smelled of dry cotton and sizing starch, a dusty scent that made my throat itch. I rubbed my right thumb, feeling the sharp ache starting in the joint.
“That is twenty yards of heavy bridal satin,” the clerk behind the counter said, his pencil tucked behind a hairy ear.
“Twenty yards,” I said, sliding my hand over the cool, thick surface.
It did not have that cheap, shiny look of the synthetic rolls near the door. This was dense, with a low, pearl-like luster that would hold its shape under a heavy needle.
Clara pulled her tape measure from her pocket. “It is enough for the long train and the pleated skirt, with some left over for mistakes.”
“We are not making mistakes,” I said, opening my purse.
I counted out four hundred dollars in crisp twenty-dollar bills, the money I had set aside for my property taxes due in July. The clerk took the cash, his thumb counting the bills twice before he dropped them into the metal drawer. My bank account was down to sixty-four dollars, and the damp Georgia heat was already making my fingers swell.
We carried the bolt out to the Buick together, the heavy fabric pressing against my collarbone with every step.
“Margaret was seen at the bank in town yesterday morning,” Clara said as she helped me slide the bolt into the backseat.
“She does not bank in Oconee,” I said.
“She does now,” Clara said.
Emily sat on the small braided rug in my living room at seven that evening, her knees tucked under her chin.
“I brought down something else,” I said, setting a small blue velvet jewelry box onto the coffee table.
The velvet was worn bald at the corners, showing the gray buckram underneath. Emily reached out, her silver promise ring clicking against the table edge as she lifted the lid. Inside, on a bed of yellowed satin, lay thirty-eight saltwater pearls, each one drilled by hand forty years ago.
“These were your mother’s,” I said, sitting back in my armchair with a groan I could not quite hide. “She was going to wear them on her own bodice, but she ran out of time.”
Emily touched a single pearl, her finger turning it over in its little nest. “They look like little drops of milk.”
