The Perfect Dress(43)

Throwing back the covers, she got up and dressed in a sundress. She even applied a little makeup. When she reached the end of the stairs, she called out, “Hey, I’m following my nose.”

“Me, too,” Jody said from right behind her.

“Bacon, biscuits, and western omelets.” Paula pointed to the counter. “I woke up hungry, so I made enough for all of us.”

“Thank you.” Mitzi picked up a plate and heaped it up with food.

“I didn’t even realize how much I missed this kind of breakfast,” Jody said as she filled her plate and carried it to the table. “I love pastry, but it takes second place to this.”

Mitzi carried her plate to the table and sat down. “So how are y’all this morning?”

“Much better,” Paula answered. “I wasn’t surprised at the way Mama reacted, but I wasn’t ready for the pain that it caused. Selena called last night to rake me over the coals, again. I let her go on for a few minutes, then reminded her that I’d been disowned, so that leaves her to jump every time Mama said frog.”

“What’d she say about that?” Jody asked.

“She hung up on me,” Paula answered. “She and I’ve been down this path before. She’s so much like Mama that they can’t get along for long.”

“That ought to be a circus,” Jody said.

Paula shrugged. “Mama’s disowned me many other times before.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell us all this?” Jody asked.

“It was too embarrassing to tell anyone, even y’all,” Paula said. “But I’m fine this morning. Now that telling them is over, I feel like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders.”

“Remember me tellin’ y’all that my mama made me pray on my knees twice a day for thirty minutes?” Jody asked.

Mitzi’s eyes widened so big that they hurt. “I remember, but I still can’t figure out why she’d do that.”

“Evidently she thought I was going to be a bad child and was hoping that would help me be good.” Jody set about eating breakfast.

“How old were you?” Mitzi asked.

“I can’t remember when I didn’t do it. I thought everyone did it. Mama said you didn’t talk about what you did in secret because that was a sin,” she said between bites.

“That’s just downright mean,” Paula said.

“Holy crap! I said ‘Now I lay me down to sleep’ when I was a little girl, but thirty minutes would be an eternity to a kid,” Mitzi said.

“It was.” Jody nodded and turned her attention toward Paula. “When did Gladys disown you the first time?”

“When I accepted the scholarship to West Texas A&M in Amarillo. She wanted me to commute the fifteen miles to Commerce and go to Texas A&M there. She said I owed it to her and Daddy to live close by and take care of them,” Paula answered. “She didn’t speak to me the whole first semester. At Christmas I’d planned to stay on campus, but Selena guilted me into coming home.”

“That’s when you stayed with me the last few days of the break, and we told my parents that I was quitting school and going to work full time at the bridal shop in Amarillo, wasn’t it? I was sure glad you were there when I told them,” Mitzi remembered.

Paula finished her breakfast and carried her plate to the sink. “Best holiday I’d ever spent. Made me kind of glad that Mama kicked me out.”

“Speaking of the holidays, are we going to your dad’s this Christmas?” Paula asked. “Or will we invite all of them to join us here?”

“I vote we have it at Graham and Mitzi’s down the street,” Jody teased. “And before we get into that, I want to apologize for that hateful remark Lyle made yesterday. Him calling y’all fat made me madder than him telling me that his precious Kennedy deserved something better than a trailer house. I fumed about it all night, even dreamed that I burned the trailer to the ground before he could move it.”

“Forgiven,” Paula said. “And I like your idea. That gives Mitzi and Graham six months to get over their shyness and for one of them to ask the other one out.”

“Forgiven, and I’m not shy,” Mitzi protested. But Paula was right. When it came to Graham, she acted like an awkward teenager.

“I was there yesterday when he showed up to get the girls. There’s definitely vibes between y’all. You may have to be the bigger person and ask him out if he doesn’t get up some nerve,” Jody said.

“Maybe the time is right for something to happen between y’all now,” Paula said.

“I’ll wish in one hand and spit in the other and take bets on which one fills up the fastest,” Mitzi said.



Ellie Mae arrived right on time at eleven thirty that morning, and Mitzi ushered her back to the fitting room. Ellie Mae quickly removed her shirt and stood in front of the mirror. Mitzi slipped on the bodice of her dress, and Ellie Mae squealed like a little girl.

“It’s going to be exactly what I wanted, only prettier than I could have ever imagined,” she said.

“Okay, now be very still while I mark the back seam, and then I’ll pin it so you can feel the fit and see if we need to tighten or loosen anything.” Mitzi laid the pincushion on a small table in front of the mirrors.