out of her cashmere coat and dumped it in my arms. She took the purse from my mother’s grasp and shoved that in my direction, as well. Then she took my mother gently by the elbow and led her through the workroom, while I trailed behind like a Sherpa.
The fitting room was swathed in white wallpaper and curtains, and contained two slightly worn couches and a carpeted pedestal in the middle of the room.
Next to the pedestal, my dress was hanging. And it was gorgeous. Even now, unsure of whether I would ever wear it, having not wanted to wear it for a while now, I let out a little gasp.
The dress, made of a creamy, ivory Duchess satin, had a strapless top with a bustline that curved gently inward. The gown was A-line with graduated bands of ribbon. The effect, I hoped, was sweet but fashionable. I also wanted it to be sexy, hence the eight hundred fittings so that Maria and I could argue about how low the neckline should be, how tight the waist.
My mother sighed with pleasure when she saw it.
“Oh, Izzy,” she said. “Put it on.”
Maria left the room so I could change.
I stripped off my clothes, lifted the dress off the hanger and slipped it over me. I saw myself in the mirror—a palette of ivory topped with the red of my hair. I saw myself standing like this, in this dress, with Sam in front of an altar. Now, it didn’t seem so overwhelming. Now that he was gone.
The thought nearly flattened me.
I flopped back onto the couch.
“What’s wrong?” My mother sat next to me.
“A lot of things.” I gulped and looked at my mother’s face—smooth but for the faint lines around her eyes and throat. She had gone through so much when my dad died. I didn’t normally confide much in her, not because she couldn’t handle it, but simply because we had different styles of handling stress. Yet now more than ever, I needed advice from someone who had lost a spouse.
“It’s Sam,” I said. “He’s … well, he’s disappeared. And Forester died.”
My mother’s delicate lips formed an O. Her eyes, muted blue with flecks of gray, opened bigger. “What? My God.”
“I know.” I fell into her body and she wrapped her arms around me tight. For the second time in two days, I gave in to the tears lingering like unwelcome party guests. Apparently, the tears heard it was a big bash, because I cried huge gulping sobs. My mother squeezed me hard. I managed to tell her the story.
When I pulled back, she wore the same startled expression, but she was quiet. This was how my mother reacted to bad news—she went inside herself, she gathered evidence, she turned it over like a gem in her hand until she could determine its quality, its clarity.
“I can’t believe this,” she said quietly. “Why didn’t you call me sooner?”
I shrugged. “I guess I thought it would end. But it isn’t ending.”
I told her about the safe and the bearer shares and the cops who’d visited my office.
“Sam wouldn’t steal from Forester,” she said in a strangled voice. My mother loved Sam.
“I know. That’s what I think, too, but with him gone, with no other explanation.” I threw my hands up. “I don’t know what to believe.”
“Oh, Izzy, baby.”
The words were said with such feeling, and my mother’s eyes fixed on me like never before. We sat like that—two women who’d always thought themselves so different from one another, suddenly had so much in common.
My mother opened her mouth to speak again, when Maria stuck her head in the fitting room. “You ready now?” Her irritation was undisguised. She’d had enough of this.
“I don’t know,” my mother said. She grabbed my hand. “Do you want to do this?”
I sucked in a breath and thought about it. The doubts about Sam were starting to flood me, but I hated that. At my core, I believed he was a good man, but the evidence seemed so far the other way. I reminded myself the case wasn’t over. All the evidence wasn’t in yet. And so I would go forward, for now, with the wedding that just yesterday I didn’t think I wanted.
“Yeah, I do.”
I disentangled myself from my mom, gathered the cool, heavy satin skirt in my hands and climbed onto the pedestal.
Maria was already surveying me, pins at the ready on her wrist cushion.
Just then, my cell phone bleated from my purse. I jumped off the pedestal and scrambled for it.
Maria mumbled something in Spanish that I guessed were curse words.
Instead of Sam, cell, the display on my phone read, Unknown.
I answered it.
“Isabel McNeil?” It was a woman’s voice, calm and confident. “This is Andi Lippman with the FBI.”
I sat down hard on the pedestal. I felt bad news looming, large and black.
Maria cursed again and took the pins out of her mouth. My mother mouthed, “What is it?”
“Ms. McNeil? I’m calling about Sam Hollings.”
“Is there any news?”
“The FBI is investigating the matter of the shares owned by Forester Pickett, which are missing from Carrington & Associates.”
I blinked fast. The FBI, I thought. Once again, I was hit with how real this was, how severely momentous. “Have you heard anything new?”
She paused. “Well, I’m not exactly sure what you know and what you don’t. I’d like to meet with you in person.” She mentioned an address on Roosevelt Avenue. “Tomorrow at eleven.”
I rooted in my purse for my date book. Most people I knew kept their calendars on their BlackBerries or computers, but I liked the old-fashioned hard copy. I liked seeing my months, my weeks, my daily appointments laid out and organized in front of me.
I found the date book—thin with a maroon cover embossed in gold. A gift from Forester, I suddenly remembered. “One second, please.” I cupped the phone between my ear and shoulder and rifled through the pages for the end of October. I tried to think whether I had any meetings tomorrow, maybe a court call.
But as I reached the right page, everything blurred in front of me, because I realized it didn’t matter. Whatever I had to do tomorrow wasn’t important, not even a little bit, compared to Sam. And Forester.
I closed the book. “I’ll be there.”
16
Sam Hollings walked down Duval Street, sidestepping a woman sitting on the curb, talking on her cell phone, then one block later a pack of college kids pouring out of a bar, all drunk and happy and loud.
Sam gave the kids a wide berth. He hated how far away from them
