Page 43 of Ten Christmases Without You
Madison pulled out her phone and tapped the screen. She held up a picture of a white satin dress with a tapered waist and flowing sleeves.
“Am I remembering correctly? Doesn’t that look like Mom’s drawing?”
Emmy brought the phone closer, not believing what she was seeing. She’d studied her mother’s sketches, and she knew one of her designs when she saw it.
“Yes, it looks exactly like Mom’s drawing that was labeled with Mitchell Augustine and his wife’s name. What is this?”
“It’s his Fashion Week runway model.”
“So Mom actually made the dress?”
“Hopefully. Otherwise, Mitchell Augustine copied her design. I’m thinking it was the latter because the fabric for theFashion Week dress was commissioned especially for this piece,thisyear.” She tapped the screen to show Emmy the sentence that supported her comment.
The fabric for this unforgettable garment was commissioned by an artisan in the Netherlands, who rushed the design just for Fashion Week, infusing actual silver thread in the pearly weave, providing its shimmer.
Emmy gaped at her sister.
“I stewed about it for the whole plane ride,” Madison said. “You emailed him, and I’ll bet that got him thinking about her. They were probably students together in Paris, and he somehow had a copy of the design. After all, his name was on it.”
“Maybe it was his design and not Mom’s,” Emmy offered, scrambling for an answer. “His work might have gotten mixed up in hers or they designed it together. After all, those drawings have been sitting around for a long time.”
“The drawings all looked like Mom’s to me,” Madison said. “Why would they have designed it together if it had his wife’s name on it? If he couldn’t see the gown before the wedding, she’d have designed it solo. If he didn’t care about that, then he’s a designer himself: Wouldn’t he have designed the dress on his own?”
Emmy shook her head, befuddled as she looked at the image on Madison’s phone again. “The seams are even drawn the way she does them.”
“What if, after you told him she died, he thought he could get away with passing off her designs as his own?”
“Would he do that?” Emmy asked, trying to make sense of it.
“If he did, what an awful thing to do.”
“Maybe that’s why none of us know anything about him. He’s probably a terrible person, and she hated him,” Emmy added. “That would make sense because he said to askMomto explain how they knew each other. If she hated him, she’d have a different story than he would.”
“Girls!” their dad called from downstairs. “Dinner’s ready!”
“Okay!” Emmy called back. Then she turned to her sister. “It’s Christmas. Let’s not mention any of this to Dad. I’ll look into it more after Adrienne’s wedding.”
“All right.” Madison grabbed her arm. “But if it is Mom’s design, what will you do?”
“I don’t know. I can’t afford a lawyer to sue him, and with his billions, his legal team would run circles around anyone I could hire.”
“And you’d have to prove the design was actually Mom’s. She didn’t sign the designs, did she?”
Emmy shook her head. “Not that I saw.”
Madison gritted her teeth. “Jerk.”
“Hey.” Aunt Charlotte appeared at the bottom of the stairs. “Y’all coming?”
“Yeah,” Emmy said, giving her sister a look of solidarity.
She could at least take a few days to figure out how to respond to the situation. She needed time to ponder the whole thing, and this wasn’t the place to gather her thoughts.
After dinner,their dad brought Emmy and Madison into his room to ask them something.
“Home prices have gone up over seven percent this year, and I can’t get a bite,” he said on their way down the hall.“It’s deflating. I know the house is a little outdated, but surely someone would see the value in it.”
“It’s a wonderful house,” Madison said, putting her arm around him.
