Chapter 8 - THE DRESS TWO SIZES TOO BIG
Laura took a photograph of the note and made me promise not to go hunting for its author. I agreed because I was dizzy, not because I intended to listen.
Two days after I was discharged, I learned Paige had been to the storage unit. My wedding dress was missing.
I found it at a bridal shop on Michigan Avenue, hanging from a rack under someone else's name. The seamstress, Mrs. Vega, knew me. She'd altered the dress for my wedding and had saved the extra lace in a paper envelope because I was too sentimental to throw anything away.
"Oh, honey," she said when she saw me. "I didn't know."
Paige stepped out of the fitting room in my dress.
The bodice gaped near her ribs. The waist wouldn't close over her stomach. Pins glittered along the side seam.
"It's two sizes too big up top," Mrs. Vega said, sounding furious with herself for discussing fit at a moment like this.
Paige looked at me in the mirror. "Alex said it was being donated."
"It's mine."
"I didn't know you'd want it."
I put my hand on the doorframe because the room tilted. The gown had a tiny stain under the hem from the strawberry cake Alex and I had stepped in while dancing. I had laughed so hard that day I could barely breathe.
Now I saw Paige's makeup on the lace.
"Take it off," I said.
"You're making a scene."
"Yes. I am. Take. It. Off."
Mrs. Vega asked me to wait in her office. I couldn't. I pulled one of the satin ribbons from the gown and felt the seam give. A six-inch strip of lace tore away in my hand.
We all froze.
I had ruined part of my own dress. I didn't get to blame Paige for that.
Outside, I sat on the sidewalk and shook so badly Laura had to help me into the car. The lawyer called while we were parked.
"I found something in the paperwork," Nia said. "That money your husband transferred wasn't all used for rent. Nearly fourteen thousand went to a bridal company."
"For Paige's wedding?"
"That's what the invoices suggest. But here's the part you need to hear: the transfers are dated three months before Alex told you about the affair."
I looked down at the piece of torn lace in my hand.
Three months before Alex said he had fallen in love with Paige, he had already been paying for a wedding.
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And my name was still on the account.
