I looked into the rearview mirror to see if she was crying, but she had a beautiful smile on her face.
“That,” she went on, “I’m a part of a family. How does the Tumbleweed do that?”
“It’s not the café,” Rosie answered. “It’s Matilda’s spirit.”
“Who?” Tressa asked.
Scarlett and Rosie took turns telling stories about Matilda and the adages she had passed along to them. A little over an hour later, they were still talking when the GPS lady said, “You have arrived.”
A woman greeted us with a smile when we walked inside the shop. Racks and racks of white dresses were to our right. How on earth was Scarlett ever going to go through all those gowns? She would be exhausted by the time the shop closed. “Y’all must be with the Scarlett Jones group. I’m Mary Beth, and I will be helping you. Which one of you is the bride?”
Scarlett raised her hand. “That would be me, and I’m already bewildered by all this.”
“Don’t you worry about anything. I will take good care of you.” She looped her arm through Scarlett’s and led her toward the back. “Two of your group have already arrived and are waiting for you.”
We rounded a corner to find Ada Lou and Nancy sitting in a semicircle of pink velvet wingback chairs and drinking champagne from crystal flutes. Ada Lou raised her glass. “Since we are part of the family, we decided to crash the party.”
I looked over at Rosie, who shrugged and said, “I always make an exception for a wedding.”
A stage with a bank of mirrors on three sides and two open doors leading into dressing rooms was right ahead of the chairs. A crystal chandelier with what looked like thousands of prisms hanging from it threw out light over the whole area. I heard a short gasp from Tressa and turned to find her blushing.
“I feel like I should run back to Mississippi. Folks like me don’t belong in places like this,” she whispered.
“You will do fine,” I assured her with a pat on her back. “This is not the norm for the Tumbleweed folks. It’s just a dress-up day.”
“We crashed for two reasons,” Nancy said as all of us took a seat. “We wanted to get in on the excitement, and we both need to buy a new dress for the wedding.”
That was when it dawned on me that I would need something suitable to wear, too. The little black dresses that I wore to poker games wouldn’t be appropriate. Neither would my denim skirt or jeans. The only things left in my closet were work clothes.
I could feel Tressa squirming next to me and remembered the duffel bag full of secondhand things. “Then I guess we’ll all need something decent to wear,” I said. “After we get Scarlett all set, the rest of us can try on outfits. Maybe we should all wear shades of red since that is Scarlett’s color.”
“Since y’all are paying for the wedding dress, I’m picking up the bill for the rest,” Ada Lou said. “Don’t argue with me. This is something I didn’t get to do for my daughter.”
I bent down, gave Ada Lou a hug, and whispered, “Thank you. Tressa is super nervous.”
Mary Beth whipped out a white notebook and a pen. “You all have a seat, and then the bride can tell me what she has in mind. I’ll gather up a couple of dozen dresses and bring them back for her to try on. But first, what is your budget?”
“She doesn’t have one,” Rosie said. “If she likes it, then she has it.”
“Nothing too elaborate. I like things that are more vintage than modern,” Scarlett said.
Mary Beth poured four more flutes of champagne and handed one to each of us. She set the half-full bottle on a low coffee table along with an assortment of cute little petit four cakes and a carafe of water with six small glasses arranged around it.
“This is the fanciest place I’ve ever been in,” Tressa whispered.
“Me too,” Scarlett agreed and set her flute on the table. “I don’t really like champagne. Does anyone want mine?”
“I’ll take it,” Nancy said. “Ada Lou is driving, so she can only have one drink, but I’ll take whatever any of y’all don’t want. This is the good stuff.”
Tressa also passed her glass down to Nancy. “Ada Lou, I will pay you back for my dress as soon as I get a paycheck.”
“Nonsense.” Ada Lou waved her off with a flick of her wrist. “Family takes care of family. You can pay me back by coming to my trailer sometime and playing Scrabble with me and Nancy.”
Mary Beth rolled a rack up to the side of a platform and showed us all the first dress. It had pearls scattered on the skirt and looked like it came out of a 1960s fashion catalog.
Scarlett shook her head on that one, as well as the second one, but the third was the charm. Her sudden intake of breath told me that she had picked out the perfect dress before she’d even tried it on. But the expression on her face said everything when she walked out of the dressing room in a dress that fit her like it had been tailor made for her figure.
“That is gorgeous,” Ada Lou gasped. “Please keep it as a maybe, if not a yes.”
