The Restoration of Celia Fairchild - Marie Bostwick Page 0,58
will break your heart into a million pieces and then demand alimony for the privilege.” Pris wasn’t listening and probably wouldn’t have believed me if she had been. When it comes to romance and the misery it creates, we all insist on taking the field trip.
Pris reached inside my dress and snipped away, then extracted the shoulder pads. The shoulder seams drooped to my biceps.
“Just wait a minute,” she said after I shot her a look. “I’m not finished yet.” She reached into the big shoulder bag she’d brought from home and pulled out a pair of old-school, white canvas tennis shoes and a gray sweatshirt with three-quarter-length sleeves. “Trust me,” she said.
I slipped my feet into the sneakers and the sweatshirt over my head. Pris fussed with the sleeves and the bow, retying it so it looked a little less limp, then stepped away so I could see my reflection.
“What do you think?”
“It works.” I blinked a couple of times. “I don’t know why but it does.”
“Because it’s fun,” Pris replied. “And original. You don’t have to worry about anybody else showing up wearing the same outfit.”
“True. Not unless Felicia decides to clean out the back of her closet.” I twisted my body from side to side, trying to see how it looked from a different angle. “I like it. But I feel like something’s missing.”
I rummaged in the top drawer of a taupe-and-white dresser with leaves and vines on the drawer fronts, stenciled by Aunt Calpurnia when I was about ten. I remembered helping her paint it, watching her spray aerosol glue to the back of the stencils, coating the brush carefully with paint and handing it to her, hearing her mutter under her breath when she pulled off a stencil and saw the paint had bled a little. I’d discovered it a couple of days before, fortressed behind three walls of boxes and a lumpy, button-tied mattress, and decided to keep it, another carefully curated piece for my collection, along with some of what I’d found inside.
“What do you think?” I held the pearls together at the back of my neck with my hand, the strand falling halfway between the bow and my breast. Pris grinned.
“Perfect.”
“IT’LL JUST BE a small get-together,” Felicia had said when she had first invited me to the surprise party. “Beau doesn’t like a lot of fuss at birthdays.”
I wasn’t sure if she’d lied about Beau or simply decided to ignore his wishes, but the crush of bodies crammed into the Pickneys’ cavernous home was the furthest thing from a “small” get-together.
“Hubert and Sissy Lee are coming,” Felicia said, as she escorted me down the hallway toward the bedroom. “You might remember them; he was a deacon at St. Philip’s and she painted watercolors. I asked Mr. Laurens but, of course, he said no. But Mrs. Aiken is here—”
“Sonya Aiken?” Mrs. Aiken had been ancient when I was a little girl. If she was still alive, she had to be a centenarian.
“No, no,” Felicia said. “Deborah Jean Aiken, her daughter. Let’s see . . . who else? The Wrights will be here. The Mazlows. Oh, just lots of nice people. I’m sure you’ll have a lovely time. Just leave your wrap in the guest room,” she said. “But hurry! I told Foster to bring Beau back to the house right at seven. They’ll be here any minute.”
I tossed my shawl onto a bed in the guest room and hesitated, thinking about just picking it back up and slipping out a side door. Felicia had already seen me, so my presence had been counted. If I left early, she’d probably never know.
“Thinking about bailing?”
I turned around. Trey Holcomb was standing in the doorway. He was wearing his usual awful suit but had paired it with a royal-blue shirt. It was an improvement over his usual white and made his brandy-brown eyes look even browner. Though I’d noticed Trey’s eyes from the first, I’d always thought of Lorne as the handsome one. But when Trey was smiling, like he was now, it really was hard to decide which brother was better looking.
“Celia? Did you hear me?” Trey’s smile twisted into a question, and he tipped his head to one side.
“Hmm? Sorry. What did you say?”
“I asked if you were thinking about bailing.”
“Maybe,” I admitted. “I don’t really like parties. Or small talk.”
Trey shoved his hands in his pockets. “Yeah. I get that. But word on the street says Felicia’s crab puffs are pretty spectacular.”