Chapter 2

I locked the vestry door and held out my hand to Sophie. “Take off my dress.”

The organ had gone quiet, but four hundred guests still filled the church hall beyond the wall. Their laughter came through in soft bursts. Sophie stood beneath a yellow lamp with my mother’s work fitted around her waist, cake crumbs caught in the lace. The broken thread dragged from the hem like a vein pulled loose.

Matthew planted himself between us. His jacket hung open, and a dark splash of wine marked his shirt. “You’re not stripping her in a church.”

“I’m taking back what you stole.”

I moved around him and lifted the torn hem before Sophie could hide it. My mother’s stitches crossed the cloth in small, uneven steps. Her fingers had swollen near the end. Some nights she could make only three stitches before I threaded the needle again for her. She had kept going because she wanted part of herself to walk beside me.

Sophie gathered the skirt against her knees. Under her hand, the blue embroidery showed through the lining.

Hannah.

My mother had sewn each letter while I held the cloth steady. The H leaned too far left because pain had caught her wrist. I had kissed that crooked letter when we finished.

“Let go,” Sophie said. “You’re stretching it.”

I slid my place card from inside the lining and tucked it into my sleeve. “You stretched it when you put your body into something made for mine.”

Matthew caught a loose ribbon before it touched the floor. “Enough. You postponed our church wedding twice. The dress sat in a box for three years.”

“I postponed it to care for my mother.”

“And then she died.” His voice stayed level, as if death had closed an account. “You still didn’t wear it.”

I took the ribbon from him and wound it around two fingers, saving it from his grip. “We buried her eleven days after the second date.”

Sophie looked toward the locked door. Music started again beyond it, and the guests clapped to a beat meant for her. The movement shook the broken thread against her shoe.

Matthew nodded toward the sound. “That dress deserved more than darkness. Sophie gave it a wedding. She gave it photographs, a church, hundreds of people seeing it. She gave your mother’s work the moment it deserved.”

“My mother made it for me. Her work was not waiting for an audience.”

“You wasted it, Hannah.”

I pulled the skirt away from Sophie’s knees and turned the lining outward. Blue letters ran beneath the white silk, plain enough for both of them to read. Beside my name, my mother had sewn the date we never reached. Sophie covered the embroidery with her palm.

I peeled her hand away one finger at a time. “You stood in front of four hundred people while he said you made this.”

Her face lost the bright look she had worn at the altar. “Matthew made the speech.”

“You let them applaud you.”

“What was I supposed to do?”

“Tell the truth.”

Matthew pushed the loose ribbon into his pocket. “Nobody needed a scene during the toast.”

“You needed my silence.” I opened the narrow cupboard beside the sink and took out a pair of sewing scissors. Sophie backed into the table, making the metal water jug rock against a tray.

Matthew watched the scissors. “Don’t ruin it because you’re angry.”

I slipped one blade beneath the temporary seam at Sophie’s side. The dress had never fit her. Someone had folded my mother’s hand-sewn panel inward and closed it with quick machine stitches. They had not remade the dress. They had hidden part of it.

“This seam comes out,” I said. “Then the dress comes off. You can wear the sheet from the table if you need something white.”

Sophie pinched a sugar flower from the skirt and crushed it between her fingertips. “I didn’t know it was yours.”

“My name is under your hand.”

“I thought it was old embroidery.”

“You knew my mother made it.”

She looked at Matthew. He stared at the scissors, but he did not tell her I was wrong. That silence changed the shape of the room. Sophie released the lining, and my name opened between us.

“Matthew told me the dress belonged to his family, Hannah.”