Pleating for Mercy

plunged into her arm.

She screeched. “Ow!”

“Oh! Oh!” I pried her grip from my arm, pushed her off of me, and pulled the tip of the needle out of her flesh. Her hand flew up and a cluster of beaded bracelets slid down her arm as her fingertips pressed against the microscopic wound.

A cacophony of high-pitched voices came all at once. “Are you all right?” one of the women asked, her voice rising above the others. They’d surrounded us like clucking hens.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” she said, backing away from me. “Are you okay, Harlow?”

I looked around for a place to ditch the needle. There was a puffy pink pincushion on top of the antique secretary desk just outside the workroom. I didn’t remember setting it there, but I quickly stabbed my needle into it and turned back to the women. “I’m okay.” I squinted at the bubble of blood on Josie’s arm. “Do you need a bandage?”

She shook her head. “It’s fine.” Her face broke into a toothy smile. “I can’t believe it’s really true. I told Loretta Mae how great it would be if you came back. We talked about it just before she passed.” She paused, quickly crossing herself, from forehead to breastbone, left shoulder to right. “God rest her soul.” She hurried on. “She came into Seed-n-Bead—that’s where I work—and I told her I wished you would come back to Bliss. And do you know what she told me? She said, “Josie, honey, don’t fret. Harlow’s on her way back.”

I stared. “Really? She said that?”

“Exactly that,” Josie confirmed. “I’m not surprised she was right. She was always right.”

More proof that Loretta Mae Cassidy really did have the gift of foresight and knew what would happen long before it ever did.

I’d listened intently to Josie’s rapid narrative, all the while taking a better look at her. She was a little shorter than my five feet seven inches. Her coffee-colored hair hit just past her shoulders. She had full cheeks and was rounder than I remembered, and also prettier. She was very Jennifer Lopez, all womanly curves, and those curves were in all the right places.

The other two women looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place them. “This is Karen,” Josie said, gesturing to the shorter woman on her right, “and this is Ruthann.” Ruthann unwound the Grace Kelly scarf she had draped over her head and tucked it into her purse. She was tall, probably five feet eleven inches. Perfect bone structure and not an ounce of fat on her body. She could have made it as a model if she’d been twelve instead of thirtysomething. Karen, on the other hand, was the complete opposite. Five-five, round, but without the perfect curves that Josie was blessed with, and flyaway hair that hadn’t been protected from the wind.

I kept my hair in two ponytails just below my ears most of the time so I didn’t have to fuss with it. Like all the Cassidy women, I had thick chestnut ringlets with distinct streaks of blond woven throughout, one quite prominent strip right in front, like the stripe of a skunk. Not even a sophisticated Jackie O or Princess Grace scarf would keep it tamed.

“Nice to meet you—”

“We went to school together,” Karen said with a little laugh. “Karen Lowe. Now Mitchell. Guess I wasn’t too memorable.”

Like all Cassidy women, I’d kept to myself in high school to stay under the radar, not that I had anything to hide or a secret to protect. I smiled as big as I could, waving away her comment. “Karen Lowe! Of course. It’s been a long time.” Almost fourteen years, to be exact. I’d left for college when I was almost twenty.

We chatted for a few minutes before Ruthann, who was perched on the edge of the settee and looked like she belonged in the swanky Preston Hollow neighborhood of Dallas, asked, “What brought you back here?”

I spread my arms wide. “Seems my great-grandmother deeded the house to me on the day I was born. I’ve owned this place all my life and I never knew it.”

“Your mother didn’t want to move in instead? So you could stay in New York?” Ruthann, with her perfectly coiffed hair and neat-as-a-pin summer dress, asked the question so innocently. Little did she know that life in New York was no picnic.

“No.” I shook my head, remembering the conversation I’d had with my mother. “Harlow Jane,” she’d said to me over the phone when I’d asked her that very question, “when you were born, Meemaw took one look at your face and she said she could see your whole life laid out. She put your name on the deed that very day. She said that that old house was your future. ‘She might not understand it at first, Tessa Cassidy,’ she told me, ‘but one day she will.’ ”

“So you quit your job in New York and moved back here, huh?” The voice came from behind me.

“Nell!” Josie jumped up as the Daisy Duke look-alike joined the group around the coffee table. “You’re here!” She turned to me. “So you’ve met?”

Daisy, who I now knew was Nell, had practically disappeared into the rack of clothes and I’d forgotten all about her. “Not officially,” I said, and I thought to myself what a misfit group of friends Josie had.

“Nell Gellen, Harlow Cassidy,” Josie said. We nodded at each other, and Josie went on. “Nell owns Seed-n- Bead.”

I had to force my mouth not to drop open in surprise. This really did not compute. Josie, with her full white skirt and springlike yellow top, looked crisp and together. She looked like a store owner. Nell, on the other hand, looked like she’d ridden into town on the back of a hay truck. “I love beads,” I said, trying to remember that things are not always as they seem.

Sitting back on the paisley couch, I crossed my legs. Hopefully they had some dressmaking need I could fulfill. “So, what can I do for you ladies?” I asked when the chattering had died down.

I might as well have opened the floodgates of a dam. They all began talking at once, each voice straining to be the loudest. My head jerked from one moving mouth to the next, trying to figure out which one I should be listening to.

A shrill whistle broke through the noise. Josie was next to me on the couch and had her thumb and index finger in her mouth. She let out another high-pitched sound. “Shut it!” she shouted and, amazingly, they did. “Harlow,” she said turning to face me.

I leaned forward. “Yes?”

“I’m getting married.”

From the way she’d blurted the news to the way her frenzied hands twisted around each other as she spoke, I didn’t know whether to congratulate her or say I was sorry.

But Karen laughed, clapping her hands, and I noticed the nondescript wedding band on her left hand. Mitchell, I mused. I couldn’t remember any Mitchells from school. I felt disconnected from my hometown. “So exciting!” she said.

Nell nodded. She’d tucked one heeled foot up under her on the love seat and her lips curved into a pleased, if subdued, little smile. Ruthann sat primly on the settee. Her ring finger was bare, but her smile looked genuine. As different as they were, they all seemed happy for Josie.

A little thrill went through me. A wedding! The idea of catering to brides hadn’t occurred to me, but now the possibility circled in my head. Vera Wang hadn’t started making wedding gowns until she was thirty-nine! I was only thirty-three. And I didn’t need or want Vera’s level of success. I’d be happy making a comfortable living doing what I loved to do. If I made a small, or maybe medium, mark on the fashion world, that would be the gravy on my biscuits.

Maybe Josie had some sort of family heirloom dress she needed altered. Or maybe it was just a small job. Sleeves she wanted removed or a train shortened. It didn’t matter. Even a small job was better than no job. My foot started tapping on the floor. There were so many possibilities.

“Congratulations,” I said calmly. I didn’t want to scare them off with my eagerness. “When’s the big day?”

“Assuming he doesn’t break her heart, you mean,” Nell said under her breath.

My chin snapped up and I met her steady gaze. Josie, Ruthann, and Karen didn’t look like they’d heard her, but I had. It was as though she’d whispered the words right into my ear. But she went on, casually resting one arm across the back of the love seat and the other on the armrest, and I wondered if I’d imagined it. After all, why would a man break his fiancee’s heart?

“It’s on the twenty-fourth . . . a little less than two weeks away,” Josie deadpanned, and just like that, all the air was suddenly sucked out of the room.