Jenna, the caterers assistant with the little wedding ring, pulled a wedding photo out of her apron pocket and held it up, a bride in a flowing white gown, glowing.
Mrs. Whitmore, she said, you said you would not trust your dress to a little shop downtown. That little shop is the reason I had a dress at all.
Two days before my wedding, Jenna said, my gown was destroyed in a car accident. Ruined. There was no time and no money to replace it. And a seamstress from a shop on Broughton Street sat down and sewed me a brand-new dress by hand, in forty-one hours straight, and would not take a dime for it. That is my wedding photo. That is the dress she made. I have been carrying it in my bag for two years hoping to find her, and tonight I walked in to pour punch and there she was.
The shower had gone silent. Lisa had her hand to her mouth.
Celeste wore white to a bridal shower and bragged about Vera Wang, and the woman she looked down on had hand-sewn a whole wedding dress in forty-one hours so a stranger would not walk down the aisle in grief.
Jenna said that dress was the most beautiful thing she had ever worn, finer than anything in any shop in New York, because it was made by someone who cared whether she cried on her own wedding day.
I am Lisas mother. She pinned a flower on the brides shoulder and said it is a beautiful party, Mrs. Whitmore, and took the joke, because a seamstress who has sewn a wedding dress by hand in forty-one hours does not need a country club board member to tell her what her work is worth. Celeste, who had worn white to a shower, went a little pale and found somewhere else to look.