All Dressed Up by Lilian Darcy Read Free Book Online Page A

jumped
in, slammed the door, started the engine, and gunned the car away
up the unsealed track that led from the lakefront houses to the
road. As soon as she thought she was out of sight, she stopped it –
to scream? to shake? to cry? – but she wasn’t out of sight. Mom and
Sarah could both see the vehicle’s polished dark finish glinting
through the trees. They watched for ten minutes, muttering various
things to each other occasionally.
    “What’s she
doing?”
    “Should we go
up?”
    Then they saw
a flicker of movement and heard the sound of the engine as Emma
drove away.
     
    The flip-out
coming away from the lake-house was short, efficient and
meaningless.
    “Okay, Mom,”
it went in Emma’s head. “You said you’d do anything, you’d cut off
your arm? Yes? So here’s what I want. Turn back time for me. Not
all the way. Ten years should do it. Even nine, at a pinch. I mean,
I don’t expect miracles. Oh, time turning is beyond your powers?
Sorry, my mistake. I’ll just keep going, then. No, no. It’s not
killing me. It doesn’t mean my whole relationship with Charlie is
built on a huge lie and a massive failure. I’m fine. Back on track.
Starting the engine. Off I go.”
    Still, she
spilled great splodges of emotional blood like oil from a car with
a shot engine, up the lake track, along Grays Hill Road and south
on Route 9N. Parking outside the church at Steeple Point, she left
another pool of it in the lot. The church was empty and quiet. No
paper doves fluttering in the trees. No guests. No Reverend,
either.
    He lived just
across the lane. She pealed the bell and he came around from the
back a few minutes later, edging past the classic Norton motorcycle
parked on the gravel. He had wet hands and garden dirt around the
beds of his fingernails, and wore grass-stained trousers. Had an
unexpected break from work on a sunny Saturday afternoon in bridal
June. Thought he’d get some weeding in, instead of wedding.
    Nice for
some.
    Emma might
have felt less affronted by his opportunistic use of time once
slated officially as hers if he’d appeared three sheets to the
wind. She couldn’t even say hello. “I left my dress behind in the
church yesterday,” she began bluntly. “Do you know what happened to
it?”
    “It’s okay,”
said the Reverend Mac. “Nothing to worry about. Charlie took
it.”
    “Charlie.” Her
heart sank so fast it flattened her lungs on its way down. The Rev
Mac was supposed to say, Yes, I have it right here for you. How
come nobody but her ever seemed to know their lines? She felt sick
to her stomach about Charlie taking the dress, because she couldn’t
think how to get it back. She couldn’t bear to see him or talk to
him. She didn’t even know why she had to have the dress, she just
knew that she did. When the wedding got canceled the bride ended up
with the dress.
    Because I need
to know I don't hate it now? Because I’m its legal guardian, and
responsible? Because I want the control? Because I do hate it, and
if anyone’s going to shred it to ribbons, it’s going to be me?
    “I’m sorry,”
the Reverend said. He looked sincerely troubled.
    “It’s
okay.”
    “Doesn’t seem
to be okay.” It was an invitational line. Spill, honey. I’m a man
of God. Even though she’d never actually seen him looking like one,
with the bike leather, gardening gear and jeans.
    “Oh, shoot!”
she stormed at him. “You, too! Giving me openings, showing you’re
ready to listen. Like Mom. However she at least did offer to
castrate him for me. I sincerely appreciated that.”
    “Castrations.
Same category as exorcisms. We don’t do ’em here. Nice line in home
visits and bake sales. No confession. Very few candles. We’re
Episcopalians. We’re boring.” His voice was deep and gruff and
jolly, and he had red-brown hair and a red-brown beard. He looked
like Santa’s renegade, heart-of-gold younger brother, not yet gone
gray, away from the Pole on summer vacation. He was