A Fitting End: A Magical Dressmaking Mystery

“I… um…” My tongue was tied. How was I supposed to tell my grandmother that Meemaw, her mother who’d died, was still hanging around the old farmhouse?

Nana stared at my face as if she could read every last wrinkle and frown line. After a long few seconds, she blew out a breath. “She’s here, isn’t she?” She didn’t wait for me to answer, instead just dropping her arms and spinning around. “Loretta Mae Cassidy, is that you?” Her voice cracked, just barely. “Mother?”

A tapping sound came from the workroom. I tiptoed to the French doors separating the space from the front room and peered inside, no idea what to expect. The tap-tap-tap came again and I saw Thelma Louise, her nose pressed against the windowpane. It was as if she’d sensed Nana’s emotions and had come to be by her side. “Ah, Thelma Louise,” I said, undoing the latch and patting the black and white fur. She trained her dark yellow eyes at me, then moved her head up and down, her lips pulling back.

“She’ll be okay,” I told the goat—once Nana processed that her mother’s spirit was still with us. I gave Thelma Louise another pat, relatching the window just as the bells on the front doorknob jingled. My mother stepped into the shop looking harried and rushed.

I pressed my fingers to my tingling hairline, to the spot where the blond streak in my hair began. My eyes flew open wide as Nana and Mama both touched the same spots on their heads. We had the same blood flowing through us, and I’d always known that the threads of our history encircled us, twining us together, but this… this was new. It was as if we all felt Meemaw.

Mama walked in, stopped short, and breathed in. After a moment, she said, “She’s here, isn’t she?”

Of course, she smelled the lavender, too. “Who?” I asked, but my voice crumbled into a mere unintelligible sound.

But Mama understood me. “Loretta Mae, of course. Who else?” She scanned the room, seeming to absorb every detail in a split second. She spotted the photo that had been ripped from my lookbook and made a beeline for it, as if it called to her. “What collection is this from?” she asked.

My eyes narrowed as I looked at the ensemble. “Southern Industrial,” I answered.

Nana’s eyes were sharp, but Mama frowned. “Oh,” she muttered with disappointment. She’d been expecting some sort of confirmation, I realized.

Nana bent and fanned through the pages of the lookbook, stopping to read, moving on, then stopping again. Slowly, she straightened up, scanning the room.

Mama tiptoed forward, her hand clasping Nana’s shoulder. She pointed to the lookbook and the Southern Industrial collection. She looked at me, her streak of blond hair falling into her eyes. She quickly brushed it aside. “It’s a sign.” She held up the picture, pointing to the blank spot in the lookbook. “You dedicated this collection to her.”

“To all of you,” I answered, “but, yes, to her.” The line blended my Texas roots with an urban edge. Ruffles mixed with angles. Florals mixed with metal and denim. Meemaw had been my biggest influence… and still was.

We stood in complete silence for a full minute. I held my breath, waiting. Would Meemaw reveal herself? Was my secret time with her over?

“She’s here, Tessa,” Nana whispered to my mother. “Bless my soul. She’s here.”

“I feel her, too,” Mama said.

“Mama?” Nana whispered.

Nothing happened for another thirty seconds, then the pages of the design book lifted slightly.

We let out a collective breath. “It’s about time, Mother,” Nana said. “It’s about dang time.”

Chapter 11

It happened all at once. Thelma Louise tapping her nose against the workroom’s window. The front door blowing open and banging against the chest behind it. The pipes in the ceiling creaking and moaning as if they were strained beyond capacity and would burst any second. And the slow gathering of air in the center of the room, like a funnel cloud forming.

“Meemaw?” I whispered.

The swirling air slowed at the sound of my voice. I stretched my arm out, taking a step forward. I’d been communicating with Meemaw for months, but only through symbols and signs. I’d speak and suddenly pages of a nearby book would flip back and forth, letters and words lifting off the pages as I interpreted her response. I’d need a particular spool of thread or my scissors, and—voila!—what I needed was suddenly in front of me. She anticipated my needs and had become my confidante. Somehow that had seemed reasonable. Soothing.

But watching my deceased great-grandmother take on a physical form wasn’t quite so comforting.

“Meemaw,” Mama said to the wraithlike shape in front of us. I squinted, watching it until I could make out faded blue and burnt orange. She’d been buried in her jeans and a snap-front blouse, a good choice since it looked as if she’d be spending the hereafter in her favorite outfit.

“I was beginning to think you’d never show yourself,” Nana said. “What took you so long?”

I shoved my glasses up the bridge of my nose, gaping at my mother and grandmother. “What?”

But they ignored me and focused on Loretta Mae’s ghost. “Are you all right, Mother?” Nana asked, moving past me and reaching toward the apparition.

Meemaw moved in response, her whole wispy body nodding, but then she flickered, looking just like Princess Leia’s hologram sprouting from R2-D2 when she’d said, “Help me, Obi-Wan. You’re my only hope.”

“What’s happening?” Mama asked, rushing forward, tears streaming down her face. “Meemaw?”

Meemaw’s ghostly figure quivered again, disappearing for half a second before reappearing. The edges of her form grew fuzzier, and the moments she wasn’t there, compared to the moments we could see her, seemed to stretch.

“She can’t do it,” Nana said, shaking her head. “She’s not ready.”

“But it’s been months,” Mama said.

I stared at them, and at Meemaw’s flickering shape. “What are you talking about?” I demanded.

Suddenly, like a bubble popping, Meemaw was gone. As if on cue, the pipes in the ceiling creaked, the door slammed against the chest again, the ceiling fan spun, and the sheer curtains fluttered.

“She’ll be back,” Nana said, walking toward the kitchen, but her shoulders slumped.

“Wait a sec, Nana. You knew Meemaw would… would…” I went after her, catching her arm. “Would come back from the dead?” Was she back from the dead, caught in some sort of purgatory, or haunting us? Or maybe she was like a guardian angel. That was the explanation I preferred. “You knew she was here?”

Nana shook her head. “I knew she wasn’t here, but I’ve been waiting.” She turned back to the place the billowing figure of my great-grandmother had just been.

“What do you mean you’ve been waiting?” I looked from Nana to Mama, not even bothering to hide the shock on my face. “You knew she’d become a ghost?”

Nana took my hand and gave it a firm squeeze. “It’s the Cassidy way, Harlow.”

“For the women, anyway,” Mama said.

“Right. Poor Red.”

“Wh-what do you mean, it’s the Cassidy way?” I sputtered. After thirty-three years, how was it possible that, every day, I seemed to learn something new about my family?

They sat me down at the kitchen table. “I don’t know what kind of spin Butch put on that wish he made in that fountain,” Nana said, “but it was a doozy. When a Cassidy woman passes on, she doesn’t really pass on all the way. She stays right here, kind of like a guide for the ones who are left behind.”

“Like an angel, then?” I asked.

A chunky strand of Nana’s hair had broken free from her ponytail. She hastily tucked it behind her ear as she sat back against the ladder-back chair, the snaps of her blouse pulling open between the closures. “More like a ghost, I reckon, but you can call it whatever you want.”

My head felt full of cotton. “Wait,” I said, her words finally sinking in. “You said when a Cassidy woman passes on, she doesn’t go all the way.” I pressed my fingers against my temples, trying to grasp the big picture here. It was one thing to be charmed, but quite another to know you were going to be a ghost. “Do you mean