All Dressed Up by Lilian Darcy Page B

that something
could be? Even when she ended up with the same thing that Lainie
had, like the real estate license, or that other time even longer
ago, the answer was somehow never there, after all.
    She let
herself into the house and went right to the spare-room closet, to
see if what she had claimed to Lainie and Brooke might turn out to
be true, that she really didn’t like the dress. But when she opened
the closet, she discovered that Lainie had ignored her well-meant,
loving, sensible, correct advice and stored the gown someplace
else.
    Where?
    Not in
Lainie’s own room, not in the coat closet downstairs. Angie finally
found it in the attic, a place she’d advised Lainie straight out to
avoid, and she’d meant so well with that advice, she’d overcome all
her bad feelings, pushed them down and away, all she’d wanted was
to help Lainie do the right thing with the dress.
    It was the
straw that broke the camel’s back.
    No excuse, but
it was.
    She rushed
downstairs in a state of rage, went into the bathroom, grabbed a
plastic cleaning bucket from under the vanity, filled it with water
and went back up and just threw it at the dress, like throwing
chalk or shoes. Threw it as if the dress was Lainie herself, and
the water was the consequences Lainie somehow always managed to
avoid. Viciously threw it, like a stoning in the Bible, so
angry.
    It had a
garment bag around it but Lainie hadn’t zipped the bag up. The
water gushed through the opening and down the feathers and beading
at the front, soaking in as it went, making the feathers heavy and
flat. What didn’t soak in disappeared into the bottom of the bag
where it began to pool and then drip slowly through the bag’s seam
onto the floor. What was still in the bucket Angie flung at the
wooden beam overhead.
    That’s what’ll
happen, Lainie, if we get a storm and the wind drives the rain
under the shingles. I’m surprised it hasn’t happened already from
this morning, it was coming down heavy for at least an hour and
you’re lucky there was no wind, but would you listen to me?
    She felt a lot
better, and then she felt worse. Really criminally worse and had to
coach herself down from it, tell herself everything would be
okay.
    It would. It
will.
    Anyhow, it’s
done. It’s out of my system. It’ll dry. She’ll never know. I did
it, I got it out of my system, it was bad, but it’ll dry.
    She put the
bucket back in the bathroom and let herself out of the house,
gleaming with menopausal sweat.
     
    At Charlie’s
apartment, Sarah looked under the bed, and opened two suit bags in
Charlie’s closets that could only have fit suits, nothing anywhere
near as big as Emma’s gown. She looked in the laundry basket where
there were still some of Emma’s underwear and tops, but of course
no big white dress.
    Emma called
again. “Is there any evidence of a fire?”
    “You mean you
think he’d have burned it? In the apartment? With the smoke
alarms?”
    “You can
disconnect smoke alarms.”
    “Where, Emma?
You tell me! Where in this Manhattan-sized apartment would he have
burned a dress that big?”
    “In the
bathtub. Can you check for residue? Does it smell?”
    “I am not
checking for residue. You are such a drama queen.”
    Silence.
“Well, check in the basement. In the trash.”
    “Emma…”
    “I think he
could have done it. Just trashed it. Or burned it.” She sounded
shaky and desperate. Sarah knew the wedding gown wasn’t the real
issue, knew that if anyone might burn a wedding gown, it would be
Emma. “Stay on the line and tell me your movements.”
    “No. I’ll call
you back.” She cut the connection. Could she do this? Would she
placate Emma this way? Go and comb through trash? Sniff around for
the smell of burnt feathers?
    When she first
had suspicions about Creep’s infidelity, she never said a word to
him. Like Emma, she was good at that, when it really counted. She
just quietly noted inconsistencies in casual things he said and did
which