"Black," Mom said.
"You'll be on headset all night."
She held the dress up against me like a measuring tape.
It was plain black jersey.
The tag on the sleeve came off the staff rack.
$89
It was 2:00 PM on Saturday, October 10, in the Bellhaven bridal suite.
Sutton stood on the fitting box in her gown.
The gown cost $14,800.
I knew because I'd approved the deposit.
Two consultants knelt at her hem with pins in their mouths.
Six bridesmaids sat along the window seat in matching robes.
One of them wore a satin sash across her robe.
Maid of Honor
It was Sutton's college roommate.
In June, Sutton had asked me on the porch with a glass of rosé.
"You're my maid of honor, Laur."
"Obviously."
Nobody had told me the sash had moved.
Sutton turned on the box to see her back in the mirror.
"Nobody looks at staff," she said.
"That's the point of black."
One of the consultants nodded around her pins.
I didn't take the dress.
Mom kept holding it out.
Her arm didn't get tired.
It never did.
At 2:10 PM, Sutton stepped down off the box.
The consultants moved with her on their knees.
"You're not in the party, Laur."
"You're running it."
"That's your gift to me."
The bridesmaids already had their phones up.
They had been filming the gown.
Now they were filming me.
"When did you decide?" I asked.
"Decide what?"
"The sash."
"I'm telling you now."
Sutton smiled at the phones.
"She's so good on headset, you guys."
"It'd be a waste."
Mom laid the black dress across my arm.
"We'll have it taken in."
"You've lost weight since spring."
I'd lost eleven pounds since spring.
Since April I'd been eating in the walk-in between cues.
At 2:30 PM, someone knocked on the open door.
Henry Thorne stood in the doorway in a field jacket and work boots.
He had a folded site map in one hand.
He didn't look at the gown.
The bridesmaids lowered their phones an inch.
"I'm walking the estate with Laurel."
Mom turned on her hostess face.
"Sutton can walk you, Henry."
"She knows every inch."
Sutton gathered her skirt to step down.
Henry didn't move from the door.
"Laurel."
"It's two-thirty."
It was.
The walkthrough was on my calendar.
It had been there for three weeks, under my name.
I walked to the staff rack by the closet.
I hung the black dress back on its hanger.
I straightened the shoulders so the jersey wouldn't stretch.
"Return it," I told Mom.
"I'll buy my own."
The roommate in the sash laughed under her breath.
"She's buying her own dress."
The girl beside her kept her phone on the black dress.
Sutton got back on the box.
"Wear whatever you want, Laur."
"Nobody'll be looking."
At 2:45 PM, Henry and I stood on the catwalk under the Orchard Barn roof.
New standing-seam steel ran above us, still bright.
"The bid was $212,000," I said.
"It came out of your loan."
"I know."
"We got three bids and took the middle one."
"The low one wanted to reuse the purlins."
He looked up at the purlins.
They were new too.
"Why does a DC lender fund a barn?" I asked.
He was quiet for a while.
"My mother's family had a farm."
"Here, in Fairleigh County."
"It went at auction when I was twelve."
"I watched from the truck."
He didn't say anything else about it.
I didn't ask.
We walked down past the Stone Chapel and through the orchard rows.
Most of the apples were in.
"If it were yours," Henry said, "what would you book?"
Nobody had ever asked me that.
"Small weddings."
"In orchards."
"A hundred people, not three hundred."
"No head table."
He nodded like he was writing it down.
At the carriage house, he stopped on my gravel.
He looked at the porch light and the two pots of mums I'd planted in September.
"Your mother says you're leaving."
"Did she."
"She emailed me Friday."
He took out his phone and turned it so I could read.
Laurel will be moving on after the wedding.
It was stamped Friday, October 9.
Then he saw my face.
"You didn't know."
"No."
Nobody had said a word to me.
Not on the porch, and not in the office.
Not in the bridal suite with the dress across my arm.
I looked up at my own porch light.
"Mom already gave my notice."