True to her word, Natalie showed up right at the thirty-minute mark. She was holding a bag from the local grocery.
“Provisions,” she declared. “They’re not perfect, but it was short notice.”
Once inside the kitchen, Natalie pulled out a plastic container of macadamia-nut cookies and piña colada wine coolers. Chloe smiled at the impromptu tropical theme.
Natalie opened a wine cooler and passed Chloe the still-cold bottle, then opened one for herself and held it aloft. “To Aunt Jane.”
“To Aunt Jane.”
They clinked the bottles together and each drank. Then Chloe slit the packing tape with one of the kitchen knives and pulled back the cardboard flaps. On top was a postcard, showing a beautiful white sandy beach and crystal-blue waters. Chloe flipped it over.
I got you a card with a half-naked cabana boy, but then kept it for myself. Put this by your computer and daydream about future vacations. I saw the enclosed dress and thought of you—you still don’t know how beautiful you are. Give some local fellow a chance to show you! Or come with me to the tropics, and I’ll introduce you to a nice cabana boy. I’m proud of you, Wheezy, but don’t spend all your time at the computer and taking care of your parents! Shake things up from time to time.
Love and mai tais,
Aunt J
Chloe had to blink away tears to read the end of it, but she grinned when she got there. She held the postcard out to Natalie.
A second later, Natalie chuckled. “Think there are cabana boys in heaven?”
“If not, Aunt Jane’s talking Saint Peter into it even as we speak.”
“So what’s this dress look like?”
Good question. Chloe pushed aside some plain tissue paper and got a glimpse of deep red. The silky material slipped through her fingers like water.
“Whoa,” Natalie said, looking over her shoulder. “Now that’s a dress.”
Chloe held it up, stunned. Her aunt had seen this and thought of her? Perhaps Jane had been under the influence of a mai tai at the time. The so-called sleeves were wide, off-the-shoulder bands, hardly more than straps; the skirt, while the same color, was a different material. It fell in gauzy, staggered layers to form a handkerchief hem. Even at its longest point, the skirt would barely reach her knees.
“Try it on,” Natalie urged. “That’s what she would have wanted.”
“I’m not convinced it’s my size,” Chloe said. The hours she did on the treadmill to improve her lung capacity kept her trim, but the skirt looked brazenly insubstantial. And the draped neckline—which wouldn’t come anywhere near as high as her neck—didn’t seem big enough to hold in generous C cups.
Natalie rolled her eyes. “It’s not like I asked you to show up for dinner at the Dixieland Diner wearing it. It’s just us.”
“All right, all right.” Chloe took the dress back to her room without further protest. She shrugged out of her clothes and eyed the red fabric. Here goes nothing.
Not only did the dress fit, it looked as though it had been magically tailored to her body. Surprised, she turned in front of the mirror, enjoying the way the fabric moved. When Vonda had said she could see some of Aunt Jane in her, Chloe had dismissed it as a well-meaning fib. Now though…
“This is not a Chloe dress,” she told her reflection. It was beguiling, just for this moment, to see herself as someone else, someone—
“I’m going out of my mind with curiosity,” Natalie complained from the other room.
“Come take a look,” Chloe called, doing mental inventory of her closet. What kind of shoes did one wear with an outfit like this? She doubted canvas sneakers would cut it.
From the doorway, Natalie reiterated her earlier assessment. “Whoa.” Then she grinned. “We have so found your outfit for the reunion.”
“Natalie—”
“Explain to me why you won’t go,” the blonde demanded, her hands on her hips.
Because high school had represented some of the most abysmal times in Chloe’s sheltered life. In elementary school, she’d been mostly invisible, the girl who sat quietly in class and read storybooks through recess; she’d never minded. The only child of a couple who hadn’t expected to be blessed with a baby, as well as being born premature and battling respiratory developmental delays as a kid, Chloe had received tons of attention at home. Not being the center of everyone’s focus at school had been a relief.
Her teachers liked her well enough and she made good grades. Maybe she hadn’t been invited to a lot of roller-skating and swimming parties, but she wasn’t that coordinated anyway. She’d buried herself in descriptions of faraway places and made lots of fictional friends.
Then came her teenage years. As a freshman, she’d had a significant growth spurt, and was suddenly several inches taller and filling out her blouses much differently. Also, there were far more extracurricular activities offered in high school. Teachers were no longer content to inconspicuously give her A’s—they asked her to peer tutor and courted her publicly for events like the Academic Decathlon. Although her parents’ official policy was that Chloe couldn’t date until she was sixteen, they’d allowed her to go to the fall homecoming dance sophomore year and meet a boy from her geometry class there.
That dance had been a fiasco. Chloe had been nervous, awkward within her changing body and with the sudden attention of classmates who’d previously ignored her. Her date had grazed her breast at the punch table—which she realized in hindsight had been an accident—but she’d jerked away violently enough to send Candy Beemis, a popular brunette, sideways into three dozen filled and waiting cups. Candy went on to cocaptain the varsity cheerleading squad, so one would think she could forgive a less socially adept person an awkward moment.
One would be wrong.
Instead, Candy and her A-list entourage targeted Chloe for snide comments. What Chloe had hated most wasn’t that they cracked jokes at her expense, but her own inability to quip back or at least to shrug it off. She froze every time, her throat tightening as her cheeks heated. Natalie, annoyed with Candy’s pettiness and exasperated by Chloe’s tendency to react like a deer in the headlights, had claimed that Candy was jealous. Chloe couldn’t imagine what kind of insane person would have been jealous of her in high school.
And now Nat wants me to willingly relive all those superfun glory days?
Chloe sighed. “Our former classmates fall into two groups. Those who had no clue who I was and those who ragged me about who I was.”
“A-hem.”
“Not counting you,” Chloe amended. “You are a true friend.”
Although it had been Natalie’s idea senior year to give Chloe highlights, neither girl knowing that Chloe’s dark brown hair had natural red undertones. The proposed blond touches intended to make Chloe glamorous had become clownish orange streaks that sent Candy and others into fits of giggles. Fairy godmothers were supposed to transform pumpkins for you, not give you pumpkin-colored hair.
“You’re a successful self-employed woman who can seriously work that slinky red number you’re wearing,” Natalie said. “Don’t you want to stick it to everyone who heckled you by showing up and looking hot?”
She hated to think she was insecure enough to need that kind of validation. “Stick it to them? It’s been ten years. I don’t care that much about anyone’s opinion. Especially at seventy-five dollars a ticket.”
“Well, that includes a sit-down dinner and dessert buffet. Don’t forget the great band. And it goes without