I waited too long to look for the box.
Julia
December 2, 1958
Dear Emmy,
I had my first fitting today. I nearly cried when I tried the dress on, even though it’s only partially sewn.
It’s so beautiful, Emmy. So incredibly beautiful. April seems like such a long way off.
Granny came with me to the fitting and she started to cry.
See how talented my sister was,I said to her as she blotted her tears away.
It’s a wonderful dress,Granny said.
The seamstress just clucked something likeEvery bride looks like a princess in a wedding gown that she loves.
When I came home, I could feel the dress still on my skin. Your dress, Emmy. I still feel it on me, caressing me. Holding me.
I think I can be happy marrying Simon in the dress that came from the very heart of you. I think you would want me to be happy marrying him.
Snow is falling outside my window now, diamond white in the spreading dusk.
I feel you here with me, Emmy. It’s as if you are looking down on me from heaven, for surely that is where you are, and the snow is a gift you’ve been allowed to give me so that I can mark this day.
The brides box is sitting on the table here next to me and it occurs to me that I shall marry only once.
I have no need of the other sketches in the box.
I have your forgiveness. I see it in the snow outside my window and I felt it earlier when your folds of white caressed my trembling body.
Across from me, my little coal fire is whispering condolences.
And something else.
I see it now, how I can hold you forever and also let you go.
The happy fire is sighing in agreement, the little beggar. It is eager to play its part for me.
The journal I will keep to remind me, should I ever need to be reminded, that you and I did indeed find each other again, within the seams of my wedding dress.
Good-bye, dear sister.
I will love you always.
Julia
Forty-one
KENDRA
WHENI look up from Julia’s journal, Isabel is asleep on the sofa. Her head is bent forward on her chest and a gentle wheeze floats across to me every time she exhales.
For several long minutes I am torn between waking her and letting her sleep.
I am dying to know how Isabel got her hands on the journal. She had to have been reunited with her sister. Had to have been. How else could she have come by it? I turn my head toward the window as the thought occurs to me that perhaps Julia is in the garden with the rest of the family.
