“Miz Taylor, please,” a masculine voice said.

Mitzi crossed her fingers. “Speaking.”

“This is Rayford Thompson. We spoke earlier about the Dallas Bridal Fair. Are you still interested?”

“Yes, sir, we are,” she said.

“We have an opening if you want to join us on June fifteenth. It’s an all-day affair. If you’re having someone model for our red-carpet show that evening, it costs a little more, but the prices will all be on the form I can send you.”

“We’d love to take that spot and yes on modeling the dress.” Mitzi was already picturing one of the twins in Paula’s sister’s wedding dress.

“I’ll send you the link to the form. You fill it out and pay at that time,” Rayford said. “It will have all the information about setting up and the day’s schedule included, along with the dimensions of your space. Thank you, Miz Taylor. We’re glad you can join us.”

“Thank you.” Mitzi tried to keep her cool, but she wanted to jump up and down like a little kid at Christmas. As soon as she hung up, she whipped around and practically yelled, “We’re going to the Dallas summer bridal fair. And we’ve been invited to put a model on the runway.”

“Holy smokin’ hell.” Jody’s eyes grew bigger and bigger. “I can’t model it for sure, not now. Give me a year to get my weight back up, and if we get to go next year, I’ll do it.”

“Well, I dang sure can’t. I’m pregnant, and besides, that dress is a sixteen. I haven’t seen that size since I was in junior high,” Paula said.

“Me, either, but one of the twins would fit into it perfectly,” Mitzi said.

“Fit into what?” Dixie asked.

“That wedding dress out there. We got our invitation to the Dallas Bridal Fair.” Mitzi thought about pinching herself to see if she was dreaming, then she thought of the rose quartz in her bra. Did it bring good luck as well as love? If so, she might keep it next to her skin forever.

“Tabby can do it. I’m too clumsy. But I want to go and help. Maybe even make a few corsages to take along?”

“I can do what?” Tabby wandered into the room. “Y’all got so loud. What’s going on in here?”

Dixie gave her a short version of the story.

“Oh. My. Gosh! Am I dreaming? I really get to walk on a runway. I’ve got to practice my pivot.”

“You’ll have to ask your dad before we set anything in stone,” Mitzi said.

“He’ll say yes. I know he will,” Dixie said. “And he’ll probably even come so he can see us.”

“He’s a pretty good father, isn’t he?” Mitzi said.

“The best,” Dixie said.

Chapter Nine

Jody put the final pin in the lace around the edge of a chapel-length veil and laid it to the side. “I wish I’d been more like Dixie and Tabby when I was fifteen. When I was that age, I’d just entered the rebellious stage. Lyle and I’d started having sex, and we thought we knew everything. I wish I’d known then what I know now. To see them this excited about the bridal show is . . .” She searched for the right words. “It’s the way I wish I would have been, but then no one ever took much interest in me, other than when I was allowed to come visit at your house, Mitzi. I used to wish your mama and daddy belonged to me.”

“I wasn’t as focused as they are when I was twenty-five.” Paula finished basting two long pieces of skirt together and stuck the needle into a pincushion. “It is something else to see two fifteen-year-old girls so excited about everything, including the bridal show.”

“Don’t put them up too high on a pedestal.” Mitzi gathered elastic through a blue-satin wedding garter.

“Why? They’ve kind of earned their position on it.” Jody’s thoughts slipped back more than half a lifetime before. The summer she was fifteen and, according to her mother’s standards, too young to date, she’d snuck out the bedroom window and met Lyle at the park every chance she got. They were young and stupid, and no one, not even adults, could tell them how to live their lives.

“Because it will be painful when one of them does something stupid and falls off their pedestal,” Mitzi said.

Jody was so far into her own thoughts that she didn’t hear what Mitzi had said.

“Earth to Jody,” Mitzi teased. “You looked like you were a million miles away.”

“I was,” Jody admitted. “Do you think it was because we weren’t skinny that our self-esteem was low when we were Dixie and Tabby’s age?”

“No, it was because two of us had dysfunctional families,” Paula answered. “We weren’t the only big girls in Celeste schools.”

“Yes, but we were the only ones in our class,” Mitzi reminded them. “Twelve boys. Ten girls. The biggest of the other seven girls was a size six. And every family is dysfunctional. It just matters to what degree.”

“Not yours,” Paula said. “Your dad is a sweetheart.”

“Yes, he is.” Mitzi stood up and rolled the kinks from her neck. “And my mama would’ve fought an army for me using only a kitchen butter knife, but she could manipulate the devil into letting her set up a snow-cone stand in hell. And Lord, don’t even get me started on the guilt trips she could lay on a person.”