“IF YOU LAUGH, you know I can shoot you,” I grumbled, sliding the curtain between the mercantile and Mrs. Maycomb’s living area at the back.
I’d come to the store with Emma and Ann first thing with Quinn, one of the ranch hands, escorting us. We were in Travis Point, the town with the better mercantile for ladies ready-made wear. I had trusted their judgement on this, and I now looked down at myself. Pale blue gingham covered me from neck to wrist to waist, then belled out in a full skirt that was large enough to hide my unladylike boots.
“We will not laugh,” Emma said through the curtain.
I wasn’t so sure now that insisting I wear a dress to my own wedding had been a good idea. I felt ridiculous. I had never worn a dress, let alone gingham or pale blue in all my days. It was practically suffocating me with how trim the fit was, and I wasn’t even wearing the wrap around my breasts. That had been snug, but it had been beneath my clothes, hiding my figure, not accentuating it as this dress was. I didn’t have much of a mirror, Mrs. Maycomb only had a small one that she held in her hand, but I’d been able to maneuver it about to get some idea of my appearance.
“Are you going to stay back there all day?” Ann asked, then I heard the two of them laugh.
“I’m glad you’re enjoying yourselves,” I grumbled. “I’m not.”
“Come out, Grace. You’re going to look lovely.”
I could run out the back door, but that wouldn’t do me any good. I’d still have to face the women when I wanted a ride home. Home. Did I now think of Bridgewater as my home?
I had barely slept last night for all the thinking I’d done. I wanted Hank and Charlie. I did. I was, perhaps, just as crazy as them. As everyone at Bridgewater for they all wed in haste.
But every couple there was happy. The women were adored and protected, the men doted upon and loved. If that was crazy, then I wanted to be a part of it.
I was. I just had to walk out from behind the silly curtain so the ladies could see me in a dress.
Thank goodness Hank and Charlie were in Simms, checking on the prisoners while I was shopping. I’d consistently pushed thoughts of my family from my mind. I hadn’t wanted them in my life and they weren’t any longer. I’d ensured that. I was getting everything I ever wanted.
“Grace!” Emma called.
I sighed, swiped the curtain back and stepped into the back corner of the mercantile.
Ann gasped and clapped her hand over her mouth. Emma squealed and came over to me and wrapped me in a fierce hug, then stepped back. She looked me over, perhaps even more thoroughly than Hank and Charlie had.
“You’re beautiful! Those two men of yours are going to swallow their tongues.”
“And die of blue balls before they even get inside you,” Ann added.
I blushed and felt something blossom in my chest. Hope, perhaps? Hope that they’d still like me even though I was wearing something that made me different? Wasn’t that what I had always wanted, to be different? To not be a Grove?
“You think so?”
Ann nodded, her blonde curls bouncing. “It fits you perfectly. You have to take it and a few others.”
It was easy for her to speak of dresses. She was wearing one. A pale yellow color that showed off her hair and her three husbands had no doubt she was a woman.
I gave her a funny look. “One dress is plenty. I only need one to marry Hank and Charlie.”
They shook their heads in unison.
“When you get back to Bridgewater and they get one look at you, they’re going to rip that one to bits in their eagerness to have you,” Emma vowed. The idea of Charlie and Hank seeing me and being overwhelmed with desire for me, enough to ruin a dress, made me feel powerful. Being feminine, for the first time, felt like I had some control, that I was somehow bewitching to my future husbands. Was it like that? Did I, with just being me, have power over Hank and Charlie?
“More than one is required,” Ann agreed. She looked to Emma. “Let’s go see if they have a pink. That would look pretty with her complexion.”
“Pale yellow?” Emma countered.
“Let’s go see.”
“I’ll change my clothes and be right out.”
They turned back to me as one. “Oh, no. You may fetch your other clothes, but you are wearing that dress out of the store.” Emma stomped her foot along with it and gave me a look that probably worked well on recalcitrant children, or stubborn husbands. They walked off toward the ready-made dress table, leaving me alone at the back of the store.
I huffed, then spun on my heel to retrieve the pants and shirt I’d worn into town. I took one step and someone stepped into my path.