Pleating for Mercy

equaled small world. Six degrees—or fewer—of separation worked for more than just Kevin Bacon.

“Yeah.”

“You and Holly are good friends?” I asked.

“BFFs.”

I absently loaded spools of thread onto a thread rack I’d hung on the wall as we chatted, wondering if Gracie had any insight into why Miriam had dropped out of the wedding. “I heard that Miriam was supposed to be in the wedding, but now she isn’t.”

Her smooth brow furrowed. “Yeah, that was weird. First she was the maid of honor. Then she wasn’t. She went a little cuckoo.”

“Cuckoo how?”

She dropped a few buttons into the mason jar. “Like now she wants to know exactly where Holly is all the time. Holly lost her cell phone and has to pay for a replacement, but Ms. Kincaid got her a new one and said she can work it off, but Holly has to take pictures of where she’s at and send them to her mom. She won’t let her stay out past ten o’clock anymore. Stuff like that.”

That all sounded like fairly reasonable mom behavior to me, but if it was out of the ordinary for Miriam, then I wondered what had caused it. Something must have happened to set her off.

Maybe Josie hadn’t really wanted Miriam in the wedding. She’d said they got along, but did they really?

If they didn’t get along, had Josie forced Miriam out, opening it up for Nell to step in? If Miriam was as prideful as the other Kincaids, maybe she harbored some bitterness over being forced out of the wedding.

Could she have taken her anger out on Nell?

My imagination was getting the better of me. Miriam hadn’t been in Buttons & Bows—or had she? I remembered thinking for a second that I’d seen her before I’d realized it was Mrs. Kincaid. What if it had been Miriam after all? Could she have darted in, hoping to blend in with the crowd, just to find a murder weapon to use on Nell later?

“Holly doesn’t know why her mom dropped out?”

She shrugged. “She might.”

Two things I’d learned about Gracie already: she wasn’t shy and she definitely had opinions. “Do you have a theory?”

She nodded. “I think maybe she’s jealous.”

Interesting. Jealousy was a spin-off of the motive I’d already thought of. My reasoning was sketchy since I didn’t really know them, but Gracie would have more insight. “Jealous of Josie?”

“Yeah, totally,” she said. “You know Mrs. Kincaid? The grandmother, I mean?”

“I think everybody in town knows Lori Kincaid.”

“Yeah, well, when Miss Miriam left her husband, Mrs. Kincaid sided with him in the divorce.” She huffed indignantly. “Shouldn’t she have sided with her own daughter? I mean, that’s just wrong.”

It did sound wrong, but there were always two sides to a story, and this particular version was twice removed, so it definitely needed to be taken with a grain of salt.

“A mother should be there for her daughter, right?” I nodded, but it was clear she’d already answered that question for herself when she said wistfully, “I think she totally should be. Always. Why have a baby if you’re not going to be there for her? Period and the end.”

“Mrs. Kincaid wasn’t there for Miriam?”

Gracie plucked a few more buttons from the floor and dropped them into the jar. “Nope. Not even close.”

“Or for Holly?”

She shook her head. “Nope. Holly’s dad wouldn’t move out of their house, so Miss Miriam left instead. Took Holly and moved into”—she made air quotes—“ ‘the castle.’ That’s what we call it because of the moat and bridge and everything.”

“You nailed it. The Kincaids’ mansion looks like a big ol’ stone castle. Or a fortress.” I perched on the edge of the stool, leaning my elbows on the cutting table, completely sucked in by Gracie’s story. “So what happened?”

“Well, Mrs. Kincaid, the grandmother, I mean, wouldn’t let them stay at the castle. She actually kicked them out. Can you believe that? Holly said she heard Mrs. Kincaid tell her mom that she couldn’t put her head in the sand and hide. She had to face things head-on. ‘Go back to your husband,’ she told her.”

I’d kept up with a lot of the town gossip during my years away, but I’d somehow missed the story of Miriam’s messy divorce. “But she must have had a good reason for wanting out of the marriage, right?”

“Oh, yeah. Holly’s dad’s a jerk. Doesn’t come around, never goes to her soccer games, calls her mom names. Miss Miriam couldn’t get to any of her money. That’s why Miss Miriam asked my dad for help. They stayed with us till he helped them get into an apartment.”

“It’s a good thing you were there to help,” I said. Glimpsing behind a family’s closed door was like reality television: you couldn’t predict what would happen and there was always a surprise around the corner. The Kincaids were no exception.

Neither were the Cassidys.

I couldn’t imagine what Miriam must have felt, but I’d lost the connection to what this story had to do with Miriam’s being jealous. If there was one. “So what’s your theory about the wedding?”

“Oh! Right.” She dropped a few more buttons into the first jar, added a length of ribbon to the second jar, and a hunk of glass to the bag. “When Mrs. Kincaid found out Holly and her mom moved in with us, she totally wigged out.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know, but I think Miss Miriam dropped out of the wedding because she’s jealous that her brother and your friend are in love and that Mrs. Kincaid is so happy about it when she wouldn’t even help her get divorced from Holly’s dad.”

I had to admit it was a good theory, but it seemed too thin. I came back to why? Questions and answers funneled through my mind.

Why would Lori Kincaid refuse to help her daughter during her divorce?

One: Gracie’s understanding of the marriage was simplistic, one-sided, and painted Miriam as the victim, but if the husband had been betrayed by Miriam, Mrs. Kincaid’s allegiance might make sense.

Or two: Appearances were big to the Kincaids and divorce would be a big ol’ black spot. Bullying worked with schoolkids, but it also worked with adults. Mrs. Kincaid may have sided with Miriam’s husband in order to try to coerce Miriam back into the marriage.

Why wouldn’t Miriam be glad for Nate and Josie? Their happiness had nothing to do with her. But I knew from the fashion world and the cutthroat modeling business that jealousy was ugly and had more to do with a person’s insecurities than anything else. Did the thought of her brother’s picture-perfect wedding highlight her own failed marriage and divorce?

And three: Why would Lori Kincaid have been so upset about Will Flores stepping in to help his daughter’s friend and her mother?

Miriam moving in, even briefly, with someone else made it pretty clear to anyone who cared—which meant all of the gossipmongers in Bliss—that there was definitely trouble in Kincaid paradise. And that she’d turned to outsiders instead of her own family.

Another idea popped into my head. Oh, no. I fiddled with the pincushion, lining the pins up in neat rows, hoping the thought might disappear.

It didn’t.

What if the problem was that Will Flores and Miriam weren’t just friends? What if there was something going on between them . . . and it was happening right under poor Mrs. Flores’s nose?

That would have been bad. A double black spot on the Kincaids’ reputation.

I suddenly had the unmistakable feeling I was being watched. Gracie was focused on fishing out chunks of glass from the pile in front of her, steadily dropping buttons into the mason jar. There was no sign of Meemaw.

So why—?