“Of course it was,” Jordan said, her tone a little bit mocking. But then she quickly added, “It is beautiful, Daise. All this lace.” She stopped buttoning and ran her fingers gently across my lacy back. “What a dream.”
The dress was a dream: formfitting lace with a heart-shaped neckline and an excessive amount of pearl buttons—they wound all the way up from my backside to the nape of my neck. I wasn’t sure exactly how much the dress cost, and I would’ve been afraid to even ask Mrs. Buchanan that question. When I’d fretted about it to Tom, insisting that really, it was all too much, this dress, the trip to Paris, the wedding reception with four hundred guests at the Seelbach—half of whom I was pretty sure neither one of us had ever met—he said I shouldn’t even think about those things. As his wife I’d have everything. Too much was not enough. Money meant nothing any longer. And that thought washed over me now, making me feel light and happy, the way a bride should.
Truth be told, I was relieved to hear Jordan complimenting my dress. Relieved she’d taken a little time off from her tour to come home and stand up at the altar with me. I hadn’t been sure how she would react to the news of me marrying Tom when we got engaged last fall. When I first wrote her about dating him, a year ago, she made it clear in her response that she didn’t love the idea of me dating someone on the basis of his enormous wealth, and from Chicago no less. But Jordan was different when she’d come back to visit last Christmas, softer somehow. The golf tour seemed to be agreeing with her. And when I’d asked her then about coming back home for the wedding in the middle of June, being my maid of honor, she’d answered me with a squeal and a hug and an of course. And in that moment, neither one of us had even stopped to be sad about Rose, about the fact that she certainly would’ve been my maid of honor, if she’d still been here.
I thought about it later, though, after Jordan went back to her tour, after New Year’s. When I traveled to Paris with Mother and Mrs. Buchanan and sat inside the small, warm atelier, looking over designs, allowing the old Frenchwoman to stretch her tape measure around my body, over my bosom and across my hips, I’d looked up, and Mother had had a cautious smile on her face and Mrs. Buchanan was looking, well, like Mrs. Buchanan. (Tom said when she wasn’t deeply frowning that actually meant she was quite happy.) But I’d looked at them then, and in that moment, I could almost see Rose sitting there in between them, her bright eyes, shimmering with excitement, at me, her older sister, in France, getting her wedding dress.
Or would she have been sitting there shaking her head, reminding me to be good? Telling me how many poor people she could help with all the money going to pay for this too-extravagant trip across the Atlantic, for a too-extravagant dress that I would only wear once. Then I’d had another thought: in a world with Rose, I might have never even gone to Paris for my wedding dress, never even met Tom Buchanan at all.
“There you go, all buttoned,” Jordan said, interrupting my thoughts. I examined my figure in the mirror, smoothing the lace down around my hips and pushing all negative thoughts away, too. It was my wedding day. I was here with my Jordie, and I was about to become Mrs. Tom Buchanan. “We still have to fasten your veil,” Jordan was saying now. “But open your gifts first.”
Gifts! From Tom. I’d almost forgotten about them. I clapped my hands together, gleefully. They were sure to be expensive gifts, beautiful gifts. I picked up the larger of the two boxes first and unwrapped the gold foil. Inside was the most gorgeous pink pearl necklace I’d ever seen. Jordan, who was glancing over my shoulder, let out a little gasp. “So that’s what three hundred and fifty thousand dollars looks like on a necklace.” She put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, I wasn’t supposed to tell you that part. But Tom accidentally let it slip.”
I smiled and shook my head. Tom didn’t do anything by accident. He was calm and careful, everything calculated. He’d wanted me to know how much he loved me, how much I was worth. And he knew Jordan would be terrible at keeping such a secret from me. “Help me fasten it, would you, Jordie?” I wrapped the necklace around my neck and she did the clasp.
“God, Daise, that’s stunning,” Jordan said, stepping back to admire the pearls.
“It is, isn’t it?” I murmured. In the mirror my neck was shimmering. But the weight of the pearls was unexpected, overwhelming. The necklace was so heavy it felt uncomfortable, almost like hands tightening around my throat. And I had to breathe slowly with purpose. In and out. In and out.
“Here—open the other one.” Jordan reached for the smaller box on the bed and handed it to me. I unwrapped the gold foil, and when I opened the box, inside were two delicate gold hairpins, covered with diamonds. “To hold your veil in place,” Jordan said, her voice rising with excitement. “I helped him pick these out.”
“Oh, Jordie. I love them.” I really did. They were beautiful and certainly expensive but small, tasteful. They’d sparkle just the right amount in my hair and hold my veil in place perfectly.
Jordan smiled and lifted my veil from the hat stand. She placed it gently on my hair. Then she took the pins from the box and fastened it to my head. When she was finished, she trailed her fingers down from my hair to my cheek, resting them there for a moment. “Oh, Daise,” she finally said. “You’re a bride.”
I laughed a little, took a step back, and examined myself in the mirror. This woman staring back at me was indeed a bride, lacy, shimmery, pearlescent—I barely even recognized her. In my reflection, I suddenly caught sight of the third thing Jordan had brought to my room—a letter—sitting on my bed behind me now. “Is that a note from Tom?” I asked her, turning to go pick it up.
She shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. Fredda handed it to me on the way up, said it had come in the post for you.”
I examined the envelope, and there was no return address. But it bore a postmark, from Oxford. It had come for me, all the way across the Atlantic? I didn’t even know anyone in England. I ripped the envelope open, wondering if it still might be another gift from Tom, after all. But as soon as I caught a glimpse of the handwriting on the paper inside, I inhaled sharply.
“What is it, Daise?”
I pulled the letter out and ran my fingers over Jay’s neat script, the words swimming together as my eyes watered. Why today again, of all days?
Jay’s letters had still come for a little while after he went to war, but then I met Tom, and I’d stopped opening them. I’d burned them in my fireplace, unread, feeling it was somehow disloyal to read them. Or maybe, I worried deep down, they might break my heart. But suddenly, about a year ago, they’d stopped coming altogether. I’d hoped it meant he had given up on me, not that he had died.
And now my heart rose and fell, holding this piece of paper, with his handwriting on it. He was alive. He had not been killed in the war. He was alive. And in England?