“Taking pictures isn’t like playing a game of soccer,” I said, opening the little side gate and picking my way through the thicket of bluebonnets.
“They’re not in season, you know.” Madelyn’s British accent made everything she said sound so sophisticated, especially compared to the typical Southern drawl ninety percent of Bliss residents had.
I looked down at the stems of bold indigo petals. “Mama’s been here.”
“Yes, she was. We had a nice chat before the sheriff whisked her off for a late dinner at Buffalo Joe’s.”
“The best barbeque in town.”
“You’re the third person who’s said that. I do believe we should try it.” She set her camera down and whipped out her cell phone, slid the lock screen free with her thumb, and started typing on the touch pad with her thumbs.
“Are you texting Bill?” Madelyn had met Bill Brighton, a Texas native, at Oxford, but they’d moved back here when he’d taken a job at the University of North Texas.
She nodded. “He’s been working so many bloody hours,” she said, “but after I’m done photographing the pageant, we’re taking a week off together. We’d like to go to the Hill Country for a little getaway.”
“Wimberly,” I said immediately. It was the one place Mama used to take Red and me on vacation when we were kids. She didn’t like to venture far from Bliss, but Wimberly was close enough that we could go to Schlitterbahn, the water park in New Braunfels, see the River Walk and the Alamo in San Antonio, visit UT Austin, which we’d both ended up attending, and raft down the Brazos.
“Stay at Creekhaven Inn. It’s right on Cypress Creek and just a stone’s throw to the village square. You can walk, see the ancient cypress trees, visit the wine country. It’s perfect.”
She typed herself a note on her phone, tucking it into her pocket when she was finished. The next second she was back to pointing her camera and clicking. “You’d best keep your grandmother’s goats away,” she said, aiming her camera at the fence behind me.
Oh no. Thelma Louise, along with Farrah, another of Nana’s escape artists and the prettiest Nubian of the herd, stood near my truck, poking their heads through the horizontal slats of the fence. Summer rain kept their pasture nice and green, but any goat would choose the succulent bluebonnets over grass.
“Shoo!” I retraced my steps, trying not to crush the pretty little flowers. Nana’s goats helped keep the weeds in check if Mama’s gift got out of control, but the buffalo clover, as some Texans called our state flower, was like a vibrant blanket of blue and I didn’t want it eaten away by the pesky goats. “Go on,” I said, waving my arms and stomping my feet as I reached the fence.
Farrah scooted away, but Thelma Louise just gazed up at me with her golden eyes. Her black-and-brown face, framed by her floppy white ears, made her look innocent, but I knew better. She could make all the deep, soulful sounds she wanted, but I still wouldn’t let her into my yard.
“You trying to make it rain, darlin’?”
I froze midstep, arms still raised. Will Flores. Why was it that anytime I happened to be doing something ridiculous—like shooing away wayward goats—Will was there to see it? “I made it stop raining,” I said, lowering my arms and turning around.
He stood, rocking back on his heels, his hands in his pockets, a crooked little smile on his lips. Gracie stood next to him. I heard the faint click, click, click as Madelyn snapped more pictures from the porch.
“Good work, then,” he said, his smile widening. “So next flash flood that comes through, you just do your thing.”
Thelma Louise had finally scurried back to her own pasture. I threaded through the bluebonnets, staying on the flagstone path and trying not to crush the encroaching flowers. Mama’s charm seemed to have lingered after her; the flowers were multiplying faster than a flurry of June bugs dive-bombing in the moonlight on a hot summer night. I unlocked the front door and held it open as Gracie and Madelyn stepped inside.
Will caught the door behind me. He leaned down and whispered in my ear, his hand, just for the briefest second, resting on my waist. “You look mighty fine, whatever kind of dance you’re doing.”
He had a good six inches on me, and I’d worn flats today so the distance from my eyes to his… was pretty steep. I looked up at him as I passed inside. “Why, thank you,” I said, waxing heavy on my Southern accent and batting my eyes.
“My pleasure.” As he closed the door behind him, I was already shifting gears. Flirtation had to give way to work. Madelyn was snapping test pictures, pointing her camera in different directions. “Trying to figure out the best spot for the photo shoot,” she answered, even though I hadn’t asked.
Gracie slipped behind the privacy screen in the workroom. I dropped my purse and Trudy’s notebook on the coffee table so I could take the gown off the dress form and hand it to her. “Let me know if you need help,” I told her.
“It’s really lovely.”
“I wonder if she’ll feel that way when she finds out that was her grandmother’s gown,” I whispered to Will.
His eyes instantly darkened. “Eleanor Mcafferty wore that dress?” he hissed.
Suddenly the air whooshed around me, rushing through the room like an invisible meteor. The clothes swayed on their hangers. My purse flopped open. The pages of Trudy’s book rustled from the coffee table. Finally, I felt a feathery breath against my ear. Meemaw had joined us.
Will looked around, striding to the front door, which was cracked open, and slammed it shut. “Damn house,” he muttered under his breath. He scowled as he walked back to me, his lips pressed together between his mustache and goatee. “When did you find that out?”
“My grandmother just told me the story.” Or at least enough of the story that I knew who wore each of the three gowns. “She wore the yellow one, Eleanor’s was the green silk that Gracie has, and Mrs. James’s was the cornflower blue. Will,” I said, sensing that he wanted to forbid Gracie from wearing the gown I’d fixed for her. “She was instantly drawn to that dress. It’s almost as if she sensed it had been in her family.”
“Gracie doesn’t need anything of that woman’s,” Will said.
“You can’t blame Mrs. Mcafferty. She doesn’t even know about Gracie,” I reminded him. Like he could forget. I squeezed his arm. “It’s just a dress.” And if I really believed that, I was sure there was some prime vineyard land in the Hill Country somebody could sell me on the cheap. What I knew for sure was that everything had a history to it, including, if not especially, fabric and clothing. The threads connected us, weaving together the past, the present, and the future, sometimes in deeper ways than we might have thought possible.
The bells hanging from the knob on the front door jingled. “Knock knock,” Anna Hughes, Buckley’s wife, said in a singsong voice as she stepped into the shop. Her son, Libby’s beau, was on her heels. Anna’s eyes grew wide as she took in Buttons & Bows: the metal display board with photographs of models wearing my designs and swatches of fabrics held to it with tiny magnets, the rack of samples, the bolts of fabrics stacked against the far wall in the workroom and on the worktable, the antique shelf with the Mason jars filled with buttons and trims. “Wow.”
Oh lordy. Anna and her Wow! dress had completely slipped my mind. I left Will leaning against the French doors between the two rooms, stewing over Eleanor Mcafferty’s dress, and rushed to her. “Anna!” Her timing wasn’t great, but working for Maximilian had taught me to multitask.
“Is now a good time?” The slur of her words made me wonder if she’d had a cocktail or two already. I raised my eyebrows in a silent question at her son, Duane, but he just shrugged. Being dragged to a dressmaker’s studio was hardly exciting for a teenage boy.