The dress was the first thing that told me my sister wasn’t just trying to embarrass me.
She was trying to define me.
Every bridesmaid at Simone Hart’s wedding wore sea-glass blue silk. The dresses were soft, narrow at the waist, elegant without trying too hard. They made the bridal party look like a line of cool water moving through the heat.
Mine was canary yellow.
Not soft yellow. Not pale gold. The kind of yellow people use on warning signs.
It was also at least two sizes too large.
When Simone handed it to me in the upstairs dressing suite at the Holloway estate, she did it with that maddening, polished calm she’d perfected by her mid-twenties. Her hair was already half pinned, her makeup done except for lipstick, and three people were orbiting her with steamers, powder brushes, and trays of champagne.
‘Boutique error,’ she said lightly. ‘This was the only emergency replacement they could get here in time.’
I held the dress up and looked from it to the row of blue gowns hanging by the wardrobe.
‘You’re serious?’
‘Please don’t start,’ she said.
That was her gift, the ability to turn other people’s perfectly reasonable reactions into aggression.
My mother, Judith, didn’t even look up from arranging veil combs on the vanity. ‘Nora, it is one day. I am begging you not to make yourself the issue.’
My father, Robert, was standing in the doorway speaking to a florist, but he still found time to add, ‘No one cares what color you’re wearing.’
That was a lie and all of us knew it.
People cared about everything at a wedding like this.
The Holloways weren’t merely wealthy. They were the sort of old Charleston family who seemed to produce silver and opinions in equal quantity. The estate itself sat outside the city on a stretch of marsh-backed land lined with live oaks and low white walls. The ballroom had imported chandeliers. The dinner menu had been calligraphed. There were two violinists just for the cocktail hour.
And I was supposed to believe no one would notice the only bridesmaid dressed like a traffic flare.
‘I can leave,’ I said. ‘That would solve the problem.’
Simone turned in her chair then and gave me a look of practiced injury. ‘Why would you say something so cruel on my wedding day?’
Cruel.
Not humiliating me. Not dressing me in a bright, ill-fitting costume while every other bridesmaid looked graceful and coordinated. My objection was the cruel thing.
One of the makeup artists lowered her eyes. She had probably seen family scenes before. Weddings collected them.
‘Put the dress on,’ my mother said. ‘And please, for once, be easy.’
Easy.
That was another family word that always meant silent.
So I took the dress into the adjoining bathroom and put it on.
The bodice gaped. The waist hit too low. The fabric had the stiff shine of something chosen in a hurry or on purpose. When I came out, Simone glanced at me in the mirror and gave the smallest nod, like a director approving wardrobe.
‘Fine,’ she said.
Fine.
I almost laughed. Instead I stood there while one bridesmaid avoided my eyes and another gave me a look that was half pity, half fear of getting involved.
If
