A Fitting End: A Magical Dressmaking Mystery by Melissa Bourbon Page B

finished our snack, I asked Nana, “Can you stay and help do a little beading?” I’d learned to sew fromMeemaw, but Nana knew her way around a needle and thread. She was particularly good with the tedious hand-beading. Whenever I needed extra help, she usually sat by the open window and chatted under her breath with Thelma Louise and whatever other of her goats happened off her property and onto mine. She beaded and hand-sewed three times faster than I could, but her attention span was ten times shorter.
    The Lafayette sisters had agreed to meet me at the country club at three o’clock to take a look at what was done and what still needed doing. That didn’t leave me much time and Libby’s gown beckoned.
    “I can work for a spell.” I followed as she padded toward the workroom. “I have a new batch of lotion I’m working on,” she said over her shoulder, “but it can wai—” She stopped in her tracks and—“Oomph!”—I plowed right into her, lurching her past the French doors leading to the workroom and right into the old armoire Will and his friends had moved from the attic.
    “This is just where it used to be,” she said, lightly running her hand down the side paneling of the wood.
    “I remember. Red and I used to play hide-and-seek and whenever I hid in the armoire, he never found me.” My brother would shout my name from the top of his lungs. He’d even open the doors of the armoire and take a quick peak, but I’d shrink back into the corner behind the stacks of fabric, careful not to put my weight on the center floorboard where the buckled wood popped. It was as if I blended right into the paneling itself. I’d giggle to myself, then jump out when his back was turned, scaring him half to death.
    It was only when I was about ten years old—too big to fit inside the cupboard without making the base creakand moan—that I realized that the armoire wasn’t magical and couldn’t transport me to Narnia. That was about the same time I figured out that Red only pretended not to see me. “Why was it in the attic?” I’d recently asked Mama the same question.
    “No idea,” she said. “Meemaw never would say why she moved it up there.”
    Nana’s wavy hair had taken on a charge of electricity, the flyaway strands reaching toward the ceiling. “How did you get it back down here?”
    “Will Flores brought some friends by and they moved it down. It was tough. They got stuck on the landing, and I hadn’t taken out the—”
    She pulled open the doors and gasped, cutting me off. “Gowns,” she said, the word like a heavy breath floating in the room. “Oh my word. I haven’t seen these since… Where did they come from?” Her fingers fluttered over the fabrics just as mine had and although Nana was a goat-whisperer and her charm had nothing to do with sewing, I could almost hear her heartbeat speed up and see her breath settle over the silk.
    I sat on the red plush settee. There had to be a reason these dresses had been kept secret all these years. Finally, I broached the subject in the forefront of my mind. “It was locked,” I said. “I used different needles to pick the lock and when we—”
    She looked up sharply. “We?”
    “Gracie was with me.”
    The green of Nana’s eyes, so similar to mine, had grown concentrated. She waved at me. “Yes, yes. Go on.”
    “I used different needles to pick the lock,” I repeated. “We opened the doors and there they were.”
    “Three dresses. They didn’t use to be in here. I didn’t know Meemaw still had ’em.”
    Nana was known to turn on her heels and blow out of a place if she didn’t like the subject of conversation or didn’t feel like talking anymore. I drew in a deep breath and gathered up my words, letting them waft out of my mouth gently so they wouldn’t send her scurrying back to her farm. “They are the… pageant dresses, right? Margaret gowns?”
    She dropped her hand to her side and stood stone still, her back to me. She