I was late getting back to Aunt Cora’s Closet, but luckily Bronwyn and Duke had already arrived and opened the doors for business. Even though weekday mornings were slow, I liked to open on time. One never knew when a customer would be in a mad rush to find just the right dress.
Also, we’d be closed tomorrow to prep the shop for the Magical Match Tea on Sunday. So today was the last day for customers to find true vintage matching outfits in time for the event, and we still had a few outfits up for grabs.
“Maya and her cousin Kareem are due to arrive within the hour,” Bronwyn said. “So please don’t worry; you do whatever you need to do, and we’ll be just fine and look after the place.”
The bell over the front door tinkled as Selena walked in.
“Hi, Selena,” I said, though in truth my stomach dropped. I had hoped she would stay clear of the shop for a while—at least until things were settled. “What are you doing here?”
“School’s off. And I still don’t have a bridesmaid’s dress. You left yesterday, ’member?”
“Yes, right. Of course. Good idea. Let’s get you outfitted.”
I turned to the “Dressy Dresses” rack and started rummaging through it with gusto. There was one thing in this life I was still good at: finding the right dress. If I couldn’t do it for myself, the very least I could do was to come through for Selena.
As usual, Selena gravitated toward rather garish flounces, but I convinced her to take a few of my choices into the dressing room as well.
The first was a late-1950s claret red sleeveless number with a wide skirt and charcoal gray fabric roses peppered along the neckline, down to the waist, and over the straps. The next dress was a simple ice-blue tea-length A-line chiffon, with a sweetheart neckline and a swishy skirt. The last was a true antique, a genuine flapper-era dress. The top was made of the palest blush silk with satin ribbon and lace details, and a vintage lace sash. The long skirt was made of ashes-of-roses cotton embellished with appliqués and overlaid with a pink cut silk velvet overskirt, with pink tulle and lace trim at the hem. It was finished with a large pink satin rose at the waist. Unfortunately, the last dress, in particular, hung rather limp and uninspiring on the hanger.
“I’m telling you as a professional, Selena: Not many women can wear true vintage from the twenties. You should try it on, see if you like it.”
“I guess,” she said with a shrug. “Want to try on your wedding dress again? We could use the big dressing room, together.”
“Of course,” I said. “I’d love to.”
We passed the next forty-five minutes trying on dresses, laughing as Bronwyn added more items to our rack, urging us to try on silly items from the sixties, seventies, and eighties. We had the shop to ourselves this morning, so it was like playing dress-up. I reveled in such a relaxed, unguarded, normal time with Selena.
As I had predicted, the twenties ensemble was exactly right for Selena. It needed to be taken in a bit here and there, and the cotton skirt was much too long, but otherwise, it was perfect.
She emerged from the dressing room to show Bronwyn and Duke, delighted and blushing as they made a fuss over her.
“I do look pretty good, don’t I?” she asked shyly, observing herself in the three-way mirror.
“So good I’m going to have to keep up my search,” I declared. “Otherwise you’ll outshine me at my own wedding!”
She grinned, and light danced around her.
I had put on the dress Wind Spirit brought again, because Selena asked me to, though I had already decided no amount of alteration would transform it into what I wanted. I considered several of the fancy dresses in the shop—who said I had to wear an actual wedding gown? In the old days, people simply wore a nice dress that they could wear again and again for special occasions.
As we were changing into our everyday clothes—a few customers had arrived, so it was time to get back to work—Selena wrinkled her nose.
“That wedding dress smells kind of funny.”
“It does?” I sniffed, but didn’t pick up on anything. “My sense of smell is terrible these days. What does it smell like?”
“Like . . . musty, sort of. And kind of like cupcakes? But in a bad way. Burned cupcakes.”
“Like the ones in your drawings?” I asked, concerned.
“How did you know they were burned?”
“I saw some burned cupcakes recently, and they reminded me of the ones you drew. I just can’t figure out what it means. Do you have any thoughts about it?”
“I see things, sometimes, that’s all,” Selena’s tone was defensive, and a blush stained her cheeks. “I don’t know what they mean, but I feel like I want to draw them. Like how you smell things, or at least you used to, and the scents tell you things. It’s not like I’m weird, at least no weirder than you are.”
Selena turned away and ducked out of the changing room.
“Selena, wait.” I followed after her, wrestling with the wedding dress, trying to get it to stay on its hanger. “No one said you were weird.”
The shop phone rang, and Bronwyn answered.
I watched as Selena disappeared into the back room, clearly unwilling to talk. For the third time, the wedding dress slipped off the hanger before I could manage to tie it on. I swore under my breath as I picked it up from the floor.
“Patience, Lily,” said Bronwyn.
“I’m trying, believe me. But I’m so frustrated by—”
“No, no,” Bronwyn said with a laugh. “I meant the phone is for you. It’s Patience.”
“Oh, right. Thanks.”
“I made an appointment with Juna at eleven,” said Patience when I answered the phone. “Pick me up in half an hour. And bring your credit card, ’cause Juna’s not cheap.”
* * *
? ? ?
When I first arrived in San Francisco, I assumed the neighborhood known as Russian Hill would be home to a lot of Russians. While that may have been true at one time, these days “Little Russia” referred to an area of the Inner Richmond, along Geary, where Russian restaurants and bakeries flourished. There was an occasional sign in Cyrillic, and a higher-than-average number of hunched, scarf-wearing elderly women making their way along the sidewalks. But the neighborhood’s most obvious cultural marker was the spectacular Russian Orthodox Holy Virgin Cathedral, also called Joy of All Who Sorrow. Its onion-shaped domes were covered in gold metallic tiles, and tall mosaics of saints adorned the cathedral’s facade.
Geary is a busy commercial boulevard, but the narrower side streets are lined with stucco row houses. We parked on Twenty-seventh Avenue and walked around the corner, where Patience paused in front of the cathedral’s open doors.
“Do you mind if I go in, just for a minute?” Patience asked.
“Of course not,” I said. We stepped into the hallowed space. The ambience was hushed inside, with a few solitary worshippers in the pews. Patience walked toward the front. I lingered near the entrance, taking in the colorful murals and the elaborately carved, gold-leafed woodwork.
In general, witches had a fraught history with traditional churches; my own personal experiences hadn’t been particularly positive, either. On the other hand, some of the best people I knew were believers. People of faith had accomplished some amazing—some might even say miraculous—things for the betterment of humanity. I supposed it was like what Patience had said with regard to the Russian psychics; it was best to take people as individuals, rather than as members of a group.
Patience came back to join me, and we walked out the tall doors together.
“My mother never passed a church without lighting a candle for her mother. It used to drive me nuts. Now I find myself doing the same.”
“Has your mother passed?”
“Car crash on my sixteenth birthday.”