Chapter1
Tuesday, November 23
Two Days Before Thanksgiving
It was the ugliest wedding dress Annie had ever seen. Which she knew was ridiculous, because all wedding dresses were beautiful, weren’t they? Like newborn babies and puppies and kittens?
She stepped back from the full-length mirror to see if the image improved. It did not.
“How is it?” Claire called from the living room, where she no doubt was wringing her arthritic hands, anticipating the verdict from her soon-to-be daughter-in-law. Originally, the dress had been made for Mabel Lyons, grandmother of John, Annie’s fiancé. But that wedding had been in 1941, when heavy fabric, big shoulder pads, and a bodice tufted as if made for a Victorian settee may very well have been the height of fashion. Claire hadn’t worn it at her own wedding to Earl because she was too short, and the “bottom line,” Earl later confided to Annie, was that it was two or three sizes too small.
But Annie couldn’t use size as an excuse.
“You’re slender enough not to strain the satin buttons that cascade down the back,” Claire had told her when she’d suggested that if Annie wore it, the gesture would be special for all of them, especially for John, who’d been close to his grandmother Mabel. “And you’re taller than she was, so on you it will be tea length. Which will be lovely.” Thankfully, she hadn’t noted that the dress was ivory, which would be more “appropriate” than white, as this would be Annie Sutton’s third wedding. Which Annie was trying not to think about now.
“Annie?”
She realized she had to come up with an answer that wouldn’t hurt Claire’s feelings. “John’s grandmother must have been a beautiful bride” was all she could utter in spite of the fact that, as a best-selling author of mystery novels, she might be expected to have “the perfect words” at hand on any occasion.
“Come, come!” Claire clapped her hands. “Step out here and let’s take a look.”
“One second,” Annie said, stalling. “Let me find shoes. Dresses always look better with the right heels.” She knew, however, that heels were not the answer. Maybe a large burlap sack . . .
“Judy said it’s in wonderful condition,” Claire affirmed. Judy worked at the dry cleaners in Vineyard Haven, where, according to Claire, they’d given it a thorough going-over.
“She’s right,” Annie replied. “It’s hard to believe it’s so old.” She pushed aside sandals, sneakers, and flip-flops in an attempt to locate the lone pair of heels she’d salvaged from the life she’d left in Boston when she moved to Martha’s Vineyard a few years earlier. In addition to writing novels, she now co-owned and managed the Vineyard Inn on Chappaquiddick and also spent time gathering berries and wildflowers for the soaps she crafted—activities that hardly required four-inch high-heeled Manolo Blahniks.
Finally she found the comfortable black pumps and slipped them on. Even the mirror seemed to grimace. Luckily, the wedding wasn’t until Christmas Eve, so Annie had time to buy proper shoes and a more suitable dress.
Right now, however, she needed to say something that wouldn’t make her seem ungrateful. As she put her hand on the doorknob, she tried to imagine how she would feel if the wedding dress had been her grandmother’s, instead of John’s. Annie had known only one grandmother—her father’s mother—and she’d been kind and loving. Turning the knob and opening the door, she willed herself to believe she was wearing Grandma Sutton’s dress.
As she stepped into the living room and onto the rug that had actually been braided by her softhearted grandma, Annie looked at Claire.
“What do you think?”
The only parts of Claire that moved were her pearl-gray eyes as she scanned Annie from the hemline to the bulbous shoulders.
“Well,” Claire said.
Just as Annie was about to smile and say, “It’s a bit much, don’t you think?” Claire said, “You look so beautiful, Annie. Oh, yes, this is going to make Earl and John so happy.” She wiped away a tear. Then another.
There was little doubt that Claire wasn’t crying for the same reason Annie wanted to. What made it worse was that Claire had insisted they not tell John about the dress because it would be a wonderful surprise. Which meant Annie couldn’t enlist his help to convey the news that she did not want to be caught dead, let alone married, in it.
She stifled a groan. “I’ll get matching shoes, of course.”
With an enthusiastic nod, Claire said, “Turn around. Let me see the back.”
While Annie was doing a one-eighty, she wondered if there was some other way to convince herself that the dress would be fine. But when she turned back to face her again, Claire was frowning.
“You don’t seem excited.” The woman’s flyaway white hair was nailed down with a headband that day, causing her seventy-five-year-old face to look more intense than usual.
“Well,” Annie said, “it’s amazing how the quality of the fabric has held up all these years. But the style . . .”
Claire chuckled. “Right! You probably never had shoulder pads. I think they were last popular in the eighties.”
Not wanting to correct her by saying the fad had lingered into the nineties and that she’d had more than one outfit with two padded triangles stitched at the shoulders, Annie reluctantly replied, “The dress does fit. You were right about that.” Then she checked the clock over the sink. “I’ll adjust the rest later. Right now, I’d better change so we can start making our Thanksgiving pies.”
But as she started to retreat to the bedroom, the door to the cottage swung open, and Lucy, John’s younger daughter, the delightful designated maid of honor, walked in. After a quick look at Annie, Lucy halted.
