Pleating for Mercy

left Bliss behind. I was well adjusted, but even at thirty-three I thought about him, wondered if I had even a sliver of him left in me. Sometimes I longed for the wisdom a father might give his daughter, but if I let myself think about it for too long, an ache began to grow within me until I could taste the hole.

My hand brushed against Gracie’s and I could almost feel the barriers she had in place to protect her heart.

“My father left before I was born,” I said quietly. “I’ve never met him.”

She linked her fingers with mine and whether she knew it or not, we were initiated into a secret sisterhood all our own at that moment. Mrs. James noticed, and nodded.

“My mom hasn’t been back in a while, but she’s due for a visit real soon,” Gracie said.

The words were colored with hope.

Mrs. James cleared her throat. “I should leave. I don’t want to interrupt the two of you any more than I have.”

Gracie grabbed Mrs. James’s hand. “No. Please stay.”

“But you’re working . . .”

I waved away her concern. “It’s fine. We’re getting ready to do the bridesmaid fittings.”

“Of course. I was here the day you were meeting with the bridal party.” She glanced at the dress form that held the very beginnings of Josie’s gown. “I can’t imagine who could have done such a horrible thing to that poor girl.”

“Did you know Nell?”

“Oh, no. I’d seen her around, of course, but no, I didn’t know her.” Her perfectly preserved, immobile face clouded. “But there is something . . .”

My ears perked up. My impression of Mrs. James was that she was a smart senator’s wife who knew what she wanted and was rarely at a loss for words. Not so at this moment. She trailed off, patting her silvery hair, sighing in frustration.

“About Nell?”

“Mmm-hmm. I came here to see . . . That is, something she said that day . . .”

“Something Nell said?”

“Yes, yes. Something she said that day . . . well, quite frankly, it’s been bothering me. Though,” she added, “it may be nothing.” She hemmed and hawed another few seconds before fluttering her hand. “Sometimes my mind doesn’t work the way I expect it to, you know.” She gave a self-conscious laugh. “An unhappy consequence of growing older.”

“If it’s about Nell, maybe you should go to the sheriff—”

“No, no. He might just laugh me out of the office.”

“Oh.” My hope deflated. I glanced at the clock. Karen and Ruthann were late, which meant they really would be here any second. “What is it, Mrs. James?”

Her nervous fluttering tapered off as she drew in a bolstering breath. “Nell Gellen lied, my dear,” she stated very matter-of-factly. “She stood right here in this room and lied. I’d bet my life on it.”

Chapter 24

“Nell lied—” she said again. “And now she’s dead.”

“Okay,” I said, “people lie. But whatever she lied about, it’s bothering you. You can’t ignore that. It’s like my grandmother always says. You can’t ignore the girls in the attic.”

Her mouth twitched into a small grin. “Does she still say that?”

I nodded. “Which means, don’t ignore your intuition.”

She shuffled a low-heeled foot against the floor, then sighed, making up her mind to speak. “Yesterday, when the bridal party was here, Lori Kincaid talked to Miss Sandoval and the bridesmaids about shopping in Fort Worth. Do you recall?”

It was imprinted in my memory. Mrs. Kincaid had tried to pull the rug right out from under my feet. “I remember.”

“She asked if they’d been to a restaurant called Reata—”

“Right.” It felt like Gracie and I had breathed in every bit of air and were holding it in our lungs as we waited.

“Nell said she’d never been,” Mrs. James continued, “but the thing is, I saw her there not too long ago.”

I exhaled. Loudly. “She probably thought Mrs. Kincaid was talking about someplace else.”

She wagged her finger. “I don’t think so. The name of the restaurant was repeated several times. Someone said it was at Sundance Square. She knew. In fact, I swear I could see it in her eyes.”

I decided to play devil’s advocate, even though I was beginning to wonder if Mrs. James was a little bit dotty in the head. “Okay, so you saw Nell at Reata at Sundance Square,” I repeated, “but she’d said she hadn’t been there. Why does that bother you?”

“Think about it a moment, Harlow Jane.”

And bam!, the lightbulb went off over my head. I also saw Gracie out of the corner of my eye. Oh, God. Was it even okay for her to be hearing all of this? “How old are you, Gracie?”

“Fifteen. And I’m old enough to know what’s going on,” she said, hands on her hips. “My dad says knowledge is power.”

“He’s not the only one, so he’s in good company, then,” Mrs. James said.

“Well?” she demanded. “Why does it bother you? Did you see who she was with?”

Mrs. James shook her head, tapping her temple with the pad of her index finger. “I have glasses but prefer not to wear them. Pride and beauty trump age, you know.”

Not for me. Like a Pavlovian response, my finger immediately pushed my glasses up the bridge of my nose.

“I was close enough to be fairly certain it was her. When I heard her say she’d never been to Reata, I started doubting myself, but the more thought I’ve given it, the more I’m sure it was her. Unfortunately, whoever she was meeting was already seated and too far away for me to see. But now . . .”

Gracie gasped. “But now what?”

“But now,” I said, finishing Mrs. James’s sentence, “it’s pretty clear she was with someone she shouldn’t have been with.”

Mrs. James touched a finger to her nose. “Exactly.”

The sound of Gracie sliding buttons across the hardwood floor was like steady rain on the roof. One by one, she plucked them off the floor and dropped them with a ping into the jar.

“I’ll be right back,” I told her, following the senator’s wife into the front room.

Instead of going to the front door, Zinnia James headed straight to the display wall of my designs. “You’re quite talented.”

She wasn’t a celebrity, but I’d take it. A politician’s wife, especially a fashion-conscious one, was a close second. “Thank you.”

“Your great-grandmother talked about you all the time, you know. She missed you something fierce. She was convinced you belonged here. No—that you were needed here.”

Instinctively, I looked around the room, hoping for a sign that Meemaw was around, but all was still. “She said that? That I was needed?”

Zinnia James nodded solemnly. “She said New York wasn’t a good fit for you.”

I hadn’t ever admitted it out loud—possibly I hadn’t ever admitted it even to myself—but with every minute I spent back in Bliss, I knew this was where I belonged. I wasn’t wired for the high stress and fast pace of Manhattan. “She was right.”

“She usually was,” Mrs. James said with a chuckle.

“I didn’t realize you knew my great-grandmother that well.”

She gave me an affectionate smile. “Oh, goodness, yes, everyone knew Loretta Mae. But I was actually