Historically Dead Read online

  While Fiona changed I took a minute to set some hot cider to bubbling on the sideboard, breathing in its spicy aroma. In my experience, brides-to-be were happier with my work when they felt relaxed, a neat trick to achieve between the normal stresses of wedding preparations combined with a metal band rehearsing in the basement. I hoped to scale back on my wedding gowns as the historical sewing increased, but I had yet to achieve that level of specialization.

  Fiona emerged from the changing area, clutching the bodice of her dress so the whole thing wouldn’t fall right off her. I quickly pinned up the back and steered her to the three-way mirror. She turned and swayed and admired the shining folds of her wedding gown. She’d chosen a custom-made design based on drawings I’d done from her specifications. The gown featured a striking strapless neckline with diagonal shirring through the bodice to provide the only ornamentation. The wide, flowing skirt trailed on the floor in just a hint of a train. The heavy satin glowed with a luster of its own, needing no adornment of lace or sequins. It was a sophisticated, lovely look that well suited this professional young woman.

  I gave Fiona a few minutes to admire the possibilities, and then instructed her to stand still while I marked the back for the line of satin-covered buttons. When she winced, I nearly dropped the whole pincushion.

  “Oh, no, did I poke you?”

  She gave me a puzzled glance over her shoulder. “No, I’m good.”

  A second later she flinched again. I wasn’t even touching her. “Is everything all right, Fiona?”

  “It’s just, that noise. How can you stand it?”

  It was my turn to look puzzled, until I registered the howling emanating from the basement where the Twisted Armpits held sway. The unrelenting bass of the band had become such a backdrop to my daily life that it didn’t bother me anymore. “I guess I’ve gotten used to it. I’ll ask Aileen to knock it off for a few minutes.”

  “No, no, it’s okay. We’re just about done, right?” She checked her watch. “I’m meeting Randy in half an hour for dinner.” She held her arms out obediently for me to finish with the back. “I hope you’ll get a chance to meet Randy soon. He’s starting work for a client here in Laurel Springs, so we’ll be able to see each other every day instead of just on the weekends.” She checked her watch again, and I instinctively tried to speed up my work. So much for the relaxing effect of the cider aroma.

  “He lives out of town, then?”

  “Philly. You wouldn’t think that would be too far, but between my studies and his caseload, we can only get together on the weekends. I usually go into the city, so it’s a treat to have him come live with me for a bit. He used to live here, so it won’t be such a shock for him to hang out in the backwoods for a while.”

  Fiona jumped as the basement door slammed against the wall, letting loose the cacophony of a truly colossal drum solo. Aileen appeared in the doorway, having characteristically neglected to shut the basement door behind her. Her skintight purple leather short-shorts and red lace-covered corset suited the sultry August day. Her ever-changing pixie hairdo sported streaks of fluorescent red, yellow, and purple today, on a base of jet black. Brass chains looped over her shoulder, snaked around her waist, and twined down her right thigh. A pair of black cracked-leather platform boots added a good seven inches to her over-six-foot frame. If you wanted to sum up Aileen in one word, “intimidating” would work nicely.

  “We’re calling out for pizza, Daria. Do you want to go in on it?”

  After the peanut butter incident, in which Aileen slathered a perfectly good pepperoni pizza with crunchy peanut butter topped with hot sauce and dried mango slices, I’d learned to never, never share food with her, of any description. Whatever she was planning to top her pizza with today, I wanted no part of it. “No, thanks, I’ll pass.”

  She shrugged and said, “Your loss,” before clomping into the kitchen.

  I turned back to Fiona, who was checking her watch yet again. “Two more pins and we’re done.” I set the pins, marked the center back line with dressmaking chalk, and quickly unpinned her.

  While Fiona changed, I flipped through my planner, taking stock of my projects. With Fiona’s wedding in a little over two weeks, I needed to have her in for another fitting to pin up the hem, and then one final time when she would collect her gown and make her last payment. Just in time, with my mortgage payment coming due at the end of the month. For the umpteenth time I prayed for success with my historical sewing business, so I could gain some financial security after all these years. I had also assured Priscilla that her gown would be hemmed by tomorrow—looked like a long night for me. But I still needed to eat, right? My finger ran down the page for today, coming to rest on the entry “Sean M—dinner (?).” I didn’t know where he planned to take me, but it had been three weeks since I’d seen McCarthy and I wasn’t about to forgo that date in favor of an endless hem!

  I sent Fiona on her way with an appointment for the following week for the final fitting of her gown, then ran upstairs to change for dinner.

  My bedroom was on the second floor of my Federal-style house, the only thing left of my failed relationship with my former fiancé. It boasted three stories and a total of six bedrooms complete with fireplaces in every one. Despite my bitter memories of Randall, I loved the house with my whole heart. Its quirky closets, unexpected stained-glass window in the sole bathroom, and promise of hidey-holes behind the eaves gave it a charm that new construction could never offer. The price for charm was felt in the exorbitant heating bills needed to keep the high-ceilinged rooms livable in the winter. I’d solved this problem by taking in Aileen as a renter, and then welcoming my brother Pete to the mix when he returned to Laurel Springs after his disastrous attempt to make it big in Hollywood. Pete got the big third-floor bedroom, Aileen had one on the second floor as well as her band’s practice space in the basement, and I had a bedroom and sewing workroom on the second floor. Technically we had two empty bedrooms, but I resisted Aileen’s suggestion that her four bandmates could move in with us. One crazy guitarist in the household was enough!

  My cozy bedroom, furnished in collegiate style with bricks and boards bookcases and a desk and chair scavenged from yard sales, suited me just fine. I kept a padded rocking chair in front of the hearth. Even though the fireplace was bricked over, it was a comfy place to read a novel. Of course, I usually spent my late evenings at the sewing machine, but I could always dream. But tonight, at least my early evening would be spent in stimulating company.

  I slipped on a pale blue cotton blouse and a swingy skirt that fell just above the knee, paired with my favorite strappy sandals. Not too dressy, but ready for dancing if that was what McCarthy had in mind. I shook out the bobby pins holding back my flyaway brown hair, and studied the possibilities in the mirror. No matter how much I brushed and coaxed, my unruly mop was not so much smooth and shiny as rough and ready. I remember standing in the girls’ bathroom with my high school buddies, the three of us brushing and primping before fourth period math class. Suzanne had poked me and said, “It doesn’t matter if you brush your hair or not, it looks the same either way.” I’d sulked over that statement for weeks afterward, but now at the wise old age of twenty-nine I had to admit she’d been right. No sense wasting time over it! I swept up the sides into two carved bamboo combs and let the back fall free. I smiled at my reflection: wide brown eyes, teeth a titch crooked through lack of middle school braces, cheeks soft and rounded. Standing tall at five foot three, I was repeatedly cast as the young ingénue in high school drama productions. “You’ve got that fresh-faced look we want,” was the mantra. Fair enough. I scooped up a light cotton sweater and headed down the stairs to meet McCarthy.

  He was waiting for me on the front porch. Any other man would be sitting on the porch swing, or leaning on the rail checking messages on his phone. Not McCarthy! He lay on his stomach on the floorboards, his camera lens trained on some point of
f the corner of the porch. He didn’t notice me in the doorway. He scootched along on his belly, heedless of his white shirt, murmuring, “Come on now, you’ve got this.” He chuckled softly, his camera clicking away.

  The familiar sight of his comfortably worn jeans, customary white button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and dark blond ponytail tied back with a thick rubber band made me smile. I hadn’t admitted to myself how much I’d missed him while he was away these past three weeks.

  Sean McCarthy took pictures for the local newspaper, the Laurel Springs Daily Chronicle. I’d met him a month earlier, when he was covering a Civil War reenactment for which I was sewing uniforms. The heady mix of romantic historical reenacting and violent death at the encampment threw us together into an intense relationship. I’d welcomed McCarthy’s recent absence as a chance to sort out my feelings for him. Now, faced with the man himself, I knew I had come to no conclusion. Would it be so bad if I just went along for the ride?

  I must have made some noise coming out the door, for McCarthy rolled onto his left shoulder and peered up at me. His camera caught a quick image of my face, and then he scrambled to his feet. “Spidey’s got a wasp in his web. It’s struggling like crazy, but it hasn’t got a chance. Look, you can see him ejecting the poison.” He fiddled with the buttons on the back of his camera and held it out to me. Indeed, his magnificent close-up shots revealed a showy black-and-yellow spider locked in a death dance with a half-wrapped wasp. A rapid-fire series of photos caught a strand of the web separating from the whole, falling away from the struggle. As always, I marveled at the magical world that McCarthy’s lens unveiled.

  “Are you rooting for the spider, you bloodthirsty voyeur?”

  He grinned, and brushed some dust off his shirt. “This is a story of survival, and I’m on the spider’s side all the way. I was ambushed by wasps once, when I was eight. True, I had just trampled on their nest, but they shouldn’t have taken that so personally. It left me scarred for life.”

  I laughed and gave him a quick hug. “It’s good to see you.”

  With the awkwardness averted, we hopped in his car and drove across town to the Commons to find a place to eat. As usual, the street parking was full, but McCarthy managed to find a place to park in a sketchy-looking alley. I watched my step until we reached the brick pavement of the Commons.

  McCarthy chatted about his trip to the Catskills to photograph a local Boy Scout troop’s high adventure white-water rafting excursion. “They hope to get a feature in Boys’ Life magazine. It’s hardly the Pulitzer, but they’re pretty pumped.” He took my hand and swung our arms between us as we walked. “I hear you’re working on the historical makeover of the old Compton house. Do you suppose those TV folks will let me hang around and take some photos?”

  I gently disengaged my hand. “Would it stop you if they said no?”

  His eyes crinkled at the edges when he smiled at me. “There is that.”

  We settled on Fortni’s Pizzeria, a cozy storefront with round tables covered in red-checkered tablecloths and decorated with candles planted in wine bottles dripping with multicolored wax. We ordered spinach and mushroom pizza, paired with a pitcher of sangria garnished with peaches.

  “So, what’s it like to work on a reality TV show set?” McCarthy pulled out his notebook, but only to doodle on a blank page while we talked.

  “It’s kind of cool, and kind of creepy at the same time. You never know when someone’s going to start filming you and asking a bunch of questions about what you’re doing. Everyone’s hyped up about the money.”

  “Money?”

  “What, you don’t know how this whole thing works?”

  He laughed. “I’ve been in the wilds of upstate New York, camping on the banks of a raging river. I’m a bit out of touch.”

  “Okay, I’ll give you that. Priscilla’s house was chosen by My House in History to compete with maybe a dozen other historic houses. They’re all challenged to restore the houses to the time period in which they were built, which in this case was 1770. Film crews are documenting the work along the way, and when it’s all done the TV viewers get to vote on their favorite historic house. The winner gets a million dollars and the chance to be on the sequel show, My Life in History. In this one they have to live in their historical time period, with film crews documenting their daily activities.”

  I stared at McCarthy’s paper, watching in fascination as he doodled a series of complex snowflakes radiating out from a central point. He caught me looking, and started drawing a line of dollar signs. “A million dollars is a lot of money.”

  “Sure. It might be worth all the upheaval at Compton Hall. But there’s always the chance that someone else will win, and Priscilla will be left with an eighteenth-century house with no running water or electricity.”

  “Poor old lady. It’s hard to imagine her being motivated by a million dollars. She’s always seemed so unsophisticated.”

  “She’s a darling.” I moved the salt and pepper shakers out of the way so the waitress could set down our pizza. “Do you know her?”

  McCarthy snagged a piece of pizza and picked off a big slice of mushroom to pop into his mouth. “I photographed her last year during the Laurel Springs House Tour. It was the first time she’d put Compton Hall on the tour in thirty years, or so the organizers told me. They were stoked to offer tours of a house on the National Register of Historic Places. Priscilla suffered the onslaught of visitors with quiet dignity.”

  “How did she deal with an obnoxious photographer pestering her for yet another close up?”

  He grinned. “I was on my best behavior, I’ll have you know. She reminded me of my grandmother, who died when I was eleven years old. Sweet lady.”

  I wasn’t sure if the sweet lady was Priscilla or his grandmother, but either way, I enjoyed the tender tone in McCarthy’s voice. It vanished in an instant.

  “So, can you get me in for a story on the reality show? The Daily Chronicle would love to run a feature, and I imagine the TV folks would welcome some free publicity.”

  I took a drink of sangria, surprised to find that the sweet, fruity wine was giving me a buzz. “What’s in it for me?”

  “For you...a page one photo, in color, of the town’s premier historical seamstress at work.”

  I laughed, and drained my glass. “I’m the town’s only historical seamstress, who has to get back to finish setting in the biggest hem in history. But let’s walk down the Commons and back before we head home.”

  The evening air was cooling down, making for quite a pleasant walk. I loved window-shopping on the Commons, a pedestrian mall created by closing off a two-block section of downtown, paving the street over with bricks, and installing decorative lampposts to shine outside the quaint, artsy shops. I never spent much money on the Commons, as neither my lifestyle nor my budget allowed for stained-glass hanging candelabras or fairy statues for garden paths, but I always enjoyed looking.

  We strolled past the equestrian statue of Major Samuel Compton, Revolutionary War hero and ancestor to Priscilla and Ruth. Compton Hall had been his home before he was killed in the famous Battle of Laurel Springs. Famous to us in this town, I guess. I stopped to glance at the plaque at the base of the statue.

  “‘Dedicated to the heroism of Major Samuel F. Compton, savior of the town of Laurel Springs at cost of his own life.’ I always love that line.”

  McCarthy trained the lens of his camera on the plaque. “I don’t know, it seems like it would make a better story if he could have made it out alive.”

  “Hey, don’t go criticizing our town hero. You didn’t grow up here. You can’t possibly understand the devotion of the born and bred Laurel Springsian for our own Major Samuel Compton.”

  He laughed, and I laughed with him. But I was partly serious about the sense of pride that I felt for the town hero.

  We strolled on down th
e Commons.

  “Look, Sean, the new Italian restaurant is open.”

  “La Trattoria,” McCarthy proclaimed, eyeing the elegant script letters on the hand-painted sign. “Looks pretty ritzy.”

  Indeed, the dining room looked opulent, with its white linen tablecloths set with shining gold silverware and bud vases with a single rose in each. Well-dressed couples out for a special evening filled the small space, the waiting line spilling over to the sidewalk outside. As McCarthy and I lingered outside, appraising this new addition to our small town, Fiona emerged from the crowded restaurant arm in arm with a tall, dark-haired man sporting a charcoal-gray suit and red power tie. In passing a full table, he leaned over the shoulders of two of the men, tossing out a comment that set them all to laughing. When he turned his head to speak to Fiona, I got a better look at him. I knew that face! Sharp nose, thick bushy eyebrows, and a wide, sensuous mouth—once the face of my dreams.

  Fiona spotted me and weaved through the crowd. “Daria! I’d like you to meet Randy—Randall Flint, my fiancé.” Fiona squeezed his arm lightly and beamed at him. “This is Daria Dembrowski. She’s making my wedding gown.”

  I held my head high as Randall’s eyes fell on me. A wide smile curved his lips as he extended a hand to me. “How nice.”

  His fingers scarcely grazed mine before I pulled my hand away. I could feel my cheeks flaming, but I tried not to lose my cool. “Do you know Sean McCarthy? He’s a photographer for the Laurel Springs Daily Chronicle.”

  McCarthy seized Randall’s hand with a sure grip. “Pleasure.” He glanced down at me, clearly sensing my discomfort. “Daria and I were just scoping out the new restaurant. Hot entertainment in a small town.”