But she wouldn’t do it just for herself.
She’d do it for her mother.
CHAPTER NINE
Ella pulled out her old sketchbook. She sharpened her drafting pencil, eager and disbelieving all at once that she finally had an excuse to use it again. To really use it. It’d been too long since she’d allowed herself to get lost in the drafting process.
Chloe and Brandy had delivered Stitches for Sierra’s last set of pillowcases to Harmony Children’s that morning, which not only cleared quite a bit of space in Ella’s dining room-slash-sewing room but also freed her calendar to do nothing but sew.
Energy zinged in her fingertips. She started with a single swoop. Then another and another, until the lines blended together and formed a gown. She hadn’t been imagining anything in particular—she’d just let the pencil do its work.
Ella held the sketch back, taking in the full view.
“This is going to take some work,” she said, doing a mental calculation. Fabric dimensions, amounts, style. For the lace and satin, in the amounts she was figuring, this would be anything but cheap.
How was she going to afford this? Stitches for Sierra had regular donations they used to buy the things they needed. Ella didn’t exactly have a fund to provide cloth for herself.
She did have savings, but that was for things like rainy days and emergencies. An exquisite, luxurious gown wasn’t exactly an emergency. It wasn’t like it could put food on the table. She supposed she could sell the dress when she was done, and if she was going to be quitting, she’d need the money to tide her over until she found a new job.
“What the heck,” she told herself, slipping into her boots and warm coat. She only lived once. She only got invitations to esteemed, romantic gatherings once. Something inside her told her she only had one shot at dancing with Hawk. At showing him she was more than just a custodian who scrubbed toilets. She wanted to be able to answer his questions this time, to let him see her as she wished to be. Strong, confident, and capable. Someone he might want to get to know better.
***
Mallory Fabric and Textile on December Twenty-third was in a word, a nightmare. Crowds packed along the streets all the way there. Lines snaked from the front of the store to the back. What typically took her maybe an hour had instead taken four.
This fabric, though. This was worth it.
Ella created a brand new pile in the corner near her hand-me-down couch, relocating stacks of magazines and clothes waiting to be folded to make room on the table to lay out the fabric. She wiped her table clean, dried it, and then fanned out the material, running her hands along the creases.
Light played on the silver flecks swirling along the flowers embroidered into the lace. After working with the soft cotton from pillowcase after pillowcase, this lace—and the satin chiffon material for the underdress—was delicate and seemingly opinionated. It refused to stay where she put it.
The yardage for a sweep-train gown would have been expensive enough, but with the satin underdress, and the lace flowing over it, she was essentially making two dresses. Ella pictured its trumpet shape, its dipping V-neck, which she would modestly cover with an additional swatch of glittering fabric so it would leave just enough to the imagination.
“It’s going to be perfect,” she informed the quiet room. She retrieved her Ginghers from their cloth case and lost herself in the cutting. First, the large bolts for the skirt and train, then the bodice, and finally, the long sleeves, which would be kept sheer.
The motion, the concentration, the busyness, was enough to keep her mind from wandering to conversations and should-have-saids. She thought of Hawk. Of their brief, but jam-packed interaction in the elevator, of how it’d felt to be held by him, if only briefly, and of the chance she’d thrown away to get to know him.
He’d tried. He’d asked her name, but she’d been so embarrassed at not knowing how to answer that she’d blown it. The air between them had sizzled. She had the feeling, even now, that he would have kissed her if he’d had the opportunity.
This, though. This was a second chance.
In this dress, she could be a different person. Or rather, the person she’d always wanted to be. The person she’d been before her mom died. Before her dad had written her off for a woman like Stina.
She wasn’t write-off-able, Ella told herself. She was loveable. She deserved to be loved.
Footsteps pounded up the stairs outside, and the door to her apartment busted open. Chloe hustled in, breathless and flushed, her cheeks red from going from severe cold to extreme warmth.
“Ellie, we’ve got a problem, and oh my stars, is this your dress?”
Ella smoothed a hand over the skirt piece. The anticipation of wearing it made her fingers prickle. “It will be once I finish.”
Chloe stroked the lace, pinching it between her fingers before shaking herself back into the moment. A few snowflakes drifted from her black hair. “This is so gorgeous. I shouldn’t even tell you.”
Ella had heard this tone before. This had the knell of bad news. Chloe was planning on flying home to be with her family in Illinois in just a few hours. Maybe it was something to do with that. Snow had been blowing like crazy all over the northeast.
“What? What happened? Is it your flight?”
Chloe pressed her lips. “There was an accident. The hospital misplaced the first pillowcases we brought over. You know that new nurse? She didn’t put the box where she was supposed to. They think they’ve been thrown out.”
Relief and devastation duked it out inside her chest. When Chloe had said accident, her mind had flown to worst-case scenarios. Canceled flights. School shootings. At least it wasn’t something drastic like that.
But missing pillowcases?
