Chapter 1

My husband gave the wedding dress my dying mother and I had sewn for me to his stepsister, and four hundred guests watched her wear it into the church hall.

I had never worn it. Now I never could.

The ivory skirt brushed the old stone floor as she passed between the tables. Candlelight caught the tiny pearls my mother had fastened during her last week alive. Along the hem, her uneven stitches trembled with every step.

I gripped the folded dinner program until its edge cut between my fingers. My mother had coughed into a towel while sewing that hem. I had begged her to rest.

“One more stitch,” she had told me. “Then one more.”

The guests rose and clapped. My husband stood beside the family table, smiling as his stepsister came toward him. He raised the microphone before she reached her chair.

“Sophie made this dress herself,” Matthew said. “Every pearl, every seam, every stitch.”

Applause struck the walls again.

Sophie lowered her eyes as if praise embarrassed her. She lifted the skirt just enough to show the work, and my mother’s hem shook beneath her white shoes.

I left my table and walked into the open space before the music could start.

“That is my dress.”

The microphone carried my voice farther than I meant it to. Faces turned from Sophie to me. Matthew’s smile stayed in place, but he lowered the microphone to his chest.

“Hannah, please sit down.”

“My mother and I made that dress.” I pointed at the row of pearls near Sophie’s waist. “She sewed those on while she was dying.”

Sophie gathered a fold of my skirt against her hip. “Matthew said you didn’t want it.”

“I postponed my wedding because my mother was too sick to come.” I pulled the program open and showed Sophie the sketch printed from the photograph Matthew had chosen. “That dress was waiting for me.”

Matthew reached for the program. I moved it beyond his hand.

“This isn’t the time,” he said.

“You made it the time when you put her in my dress before four hundred people.”

A murmur moved through the nearest tables. Sophie glanced toward the doors, then touched the pearl at her throat.

“I didn’t know,” she said. “He told me it was unfinished.”

“My name is embroidered inside the lining.”

Matthew caught the microphone stand when it tilted under his elbow. “Enough, Hannah.”

“Show them.”

Sophie let the skirt fall. “I’m not taking off my wedding dress in front of everyone.”

“It isn’t your wedding dress.”

Matthew stepped between us, carrying the microphone with him. “You’re upsetting Sophie on her wedding day.”

I reached around him and caught the edge of the lining. Sophie pulled back, but not before the pale blue thread flashed beneath the skirt.

HANNAH.

The nearest guests saw it. Their whispers sharpened.

Sophie covered the embroidery with both hands. “Why would you give me something with her name in it?”

Matthew’s collar bent beneath the finger he pushed inside it. “I thought it could be removed.”

“You knew it was there,” I said.

He looked past me toward the tables. “We’ll discuss this at home.”

“No. Tell them who sewed every stitch.”

Matthew raised the microphone again. “Please return to your seat.”

“My seat is at the family table.”

“Not tonight.” He pointed toward a chair beside the kitchen doors. “You’ll sit there until you can behave.”

The chair stood alone, half hidden behind a pillar. A place chosen before I spoke. A place prepared for the wife whose dress he had stolen.

I tore my place card from the family table and slipped it into the blue-embroidered lining.

Sophie tried to step away.

Her white heel pressed one of my mother’s uneven stitches into the church floor, and the thread snapped.