“My mother won’t leave Onions, and you know that. It’s the place she and Dad built together, so it’s full of memories for her. And she’s getting older. She may seem to have the energy of a teenager, but she hides a lot. It’s easier for me to move here; then all three of us can be together.” He paused. “Unless you’re unhappy here and want to leave. Is that the case?”
Kady put her head back down on his chest. “No, I’m happy wherever you are. We’ll stay here, run Onions; I’ll write my cookbooks, and we’ll produce a dozen babies.”
Gregory laughed. “They’ll certainly be well fed little crumb crunchers, that’s for sure.” Putting his hands on her shoulders, he set her away from him. “Now go to bed. Get some sleep. Tomorrow your friends are going to take you to a carpet store to look at rugs to buy for the house.”
“Oh, no!” Kady said, clutching her stomach. “I can feel an attack of bubonic plague coming on. I think I must stay in the kitchen tomorrow and brew an herbal remedy.”
Laughing, Gregory used his key to open her apartment door, then pushed her inside. “If you don’t behave, I’ll hire a bridal consultant to ‘organize’ you. You’ll find yourself being asked to register for trash cans and monogrammed toilet-seat covers.”
He laughed harder when Kady turned white at the very thought of such horror. Still laughing, he closed her apartment door, leaving her to get some sleep.
So now Kady stood with her back to the door and looked about the pretty but bland apartment. She really was grateful that Gregory understood her total lack of talent in choosing furnishings. It wasn’t that she didn’t want a nice place to live; it was just that she had no idea—and, okay, no interest—in choosing chairs and such.
“I am the luckiest woman on earth,” she said aloud, as she had twice a day since she’d met Gregory.
But oddly enough, as she stepped away from the door, her energy seemed to revive. As she felt the tiredness draining from her, she thought she might make herself some cocoa and read a book or see if there was a late-night movie on.
But even as she thought it, her eyes drifted to the big tin box sitting smack in the center of her living room. She could scarcely allow herself to admit this, but, truthfully, all evening this rusty old box had been in the back of her mind. As she’d been deglazing a roasting pan, she’d thought, I wonder what is inside that box?
She absolutely refused to think that her tiredness had been an excuse to get away from the others and get back to the box and its hidden treasure. “Probably a rat’s nest inside,” she said aloud as she went to her tiny kitchen to take a short, strong offset spatula and an ice pick from a drawer. It was going to take some work to get the lid off the rusty box.
Thirty minutes later, she had finally scraped away enough rust to pry the lid off enough to get her fingers under it. Her tugging made her fingertips hurt, and she was thoroughly disgusted with herself for her frantic pulling and scraping. After all, just as the woman at the antique shop had said, the only treasure inside was probably flour, complete with the dead carcasses of weevils.
With her fingertips jammed under one edge of the lid, Kady gave such a great pull that she went tumbling back across the room, the lid clattering to the floor. Pulling herself upright, she leaned over the box and peered inside, and saw yellowed tissue paper.
On top was a tiny bouquet of dried, faded orange blossoms, obviously put there with loving hands and undisturbed for many years.
Immediately, Kady knew that what was under the paper was something very special. And something very private. Sitting back on her heels, she looked at the flowers, pinned to the paper, so they had not been dislodged in all her frantic attempts to pry the lid off.
For a long moment, Kady hesitated with indecision. Part of her cried out that she should replace the lid and never open the box again—put it on top of her kitchen cabinet and look at the outside, forget about the inside. Or better yet, get rid of the box and forget she ever saw it.
“You are being ridiculous, Kady Long,” she said aloud. “Whoever put this in here has been dead a long, long time.”
Slowly, disgusted to see that her hands were trembling slightly, Kady unpinned the flowers, set them aside, then peeled back the tissue paper. Instantly, she knew what she was looking at.
Folded carefully, untouched by light or air for many years, was a wedding dress: perfect white satin with a deep, square neck edged in a white satin ruffle. Rhinestone buttons twinkled up at her.
There was still a feeling in Kady that she should replace the lid on the box and close it forever. But having just today had such a dreadful experience in trying to find a wedding dress and now seeing that the old flour tin she’d bought on impulse contained a wedding gown, she thought it was too extraordinary to let pass. Almost lovingly, she put her hands under the shoulders of the dress and lifted it out.
It was heavy, since there seemed to be many yards of the beautiful white satin, all of it aged to the most perfect color of heavy cream. The bodice ended just below the waist, and below that was a skirt, smooth and straight in the front, then yards of fabric pulled to the back in a heavily ruched train that would extend three feet behind the wearer. Hand-knotted silk fringe graced the skirt and the top of the train. Below that were little pleats and the dearest handmade sil
k roses.
Holding the dress up to the light, Kady marveled at it. Today she must have tried on a dozen modern wedding dresses, but she’d seen nothing like this. Compared to this dress, the modern gowns were peasants’ clothes, with no embellishment, no thought to the design: mass produced versus one of a kind.
Kady couldn’t seem to take her eyes off the dress. The long sleeves ended in buttoned cuffs, tiny piping about the edges; then what had to be handmade lace spilled from the bottom edge.
Shifting the dress in her hands, Kady glanced down into the box and caught her breath. “A veil,” she breathed; then, with reverence, she spread the gown across her sofa and knelt before the box.
If a whisper could be made into fabric, then that was what she was looking at. Reaching toward the gossamer lace, she drew back, almost afraid to touch something as lovely as this; then, taking a deep breath, she slid her hands under the lace. It was so light it seemed to have no weight, no substance, as though it were woven of light and air. Standing, she let the lace drape over her arms, feeling the divine softness on her skin. It didn’t take a costume historian to recognize this lace as handmade, the flower-and-vine pattern worked by tiny needles, and if Kady didn’t miss her guess, it had been made with love.
Very carefully, she spread the lace on her sofa, feeling that it was almost sacrilege to allow that fairy fabric to touch modern, plastic-based upholstery fabric.
Turning back to the box, she slowly and carefully began to empty it of the rest of its contents. It was as though she knew exactly what she was going to find inside it: shoes, gloves, corset, petticoats of fine cotton, hose with embroidered garters. A buttonhook. More dried flowers.
Reverently, she set each item aside as she returned to the box to look at the rest of the treasures. In the very bottom of the box was a satin case, sewn with white ribbon that was tied into a bow. As Kady lifted the case, her heart was pounding because, by some instinct, she knew that what was inside this case was the key to why this beautiful dress had been stored away so long ago in such an ordinary old tin. As she lifted the case, she could tell that there was something heavy inside.
Leaning back against the couch, she put the case on her lap and slowly pulled one end of the ribbon to untie it; then even more slowly, she lifted the top flap of the case, put her hand inside, and withdrew an old photograph. It was a tintype of a man, a woman, and two children: a very handsome family, all of them fair-haired with sweet, happy-looking faces.