Part 3 of 3

One Saturday, Caleb insisted on joining a charity walk. We covered only two kilometers, and he complained about my pace for most of them.

At the finish line, I cried anyway.

“Emily, we walked two kilometers.”

“I know.”

“People are running ten.”

I wiped my face.

“Let me be dramatic.”

He rolled his eyes and put an arm around me.

For us, two kilometers was plenty.

“You Kept It?”

My relationship with Evan changed slowly enough that I trusted it.

For more than a year, we were not a romance. He was simply someone I had stopped assuming wanted something from me.

That was harder for me than falling in love would have been.

Eighteen months after the night I first stood in the rain, Evan asked me to come to his office.

I entered carrying a client folder.

“If this is about Seattle, I already fixed the shipment problem, but I need—”

I stopped.

The blue dress was lying across a table.

The same dark blue fabric.

The same silver threads.

For a few seconds, I simply stared at it.

“No.”

Evan leaned against his desk.

“Yes.”

“I thought it sold.”

“I took it out of the window.”

I looked at him.

“You kept a dress for eighteen months?”

“I’ve made stranger business decisions.”

Despite myself, I laughed.

Then I touched the fabric and became serious again.

“Evan, I can’t accept a $4,800 dress.”

“Technically it’s from an old collection now.”

“That doesn’t make this better.”

He came around the desk but stopped several feet away.

“The first night I saw you, I thought you were staring at a dress you wanted to buy.”

“I wasn’t.”

“I know that now.”

I looked at him.

“Then what do you think I was looking at?”

He took his time answering.

“A life where you were still allowed to want something for yourself.”

My fingers stopped against the fabric.

For years, every dollar I spent had needed a defense.

Medicine.

Rent.

Food.

Gas.

Doctors.

School expenses.

I had become so accustomed to measuring my life by what Caleb needed that I hadn’t noticed how thoroughly I had removed myself from the equation.

Evan touched the edge of the box.

“You don’t need this dress to prove anything. And I’m not giving it to you because you owe me.”

“Then why?”

“Because the first time I saw you, you were standing outside in the rain looking through that glass like beautiful things belonged to another category of people.”

I swallowed.

“Maybe I thought they did.”

“Then consider this a reminder that they don’t.”

I shook my head.

“It’s still too much.”

He thought for a moment.

“All right. Then do one thing for me.”

“What?”

“When you don’t want it anymore, give it to someone who needs the same reminder.”

I looked down at the dress.

Accepting help had always frightened me because I treated every gift like an invoice whose total I hadn’t seen yet.

For the first time, I took something beautiful without immediately calculating what it would cost me later.

The Same Window

Two months later, I wore the blue dress to Mercer Foundation’s annual gala.

I nearly turned around before entering the ballroom.

Then I saw Caleb.

He was wearing a navy suit with a crooked tie and grinning at me from across the room.

I walked straight toward him.

“Your tie is terrible.”

“I love you too.”

I fixed it.

“How do you feel?”

“Good.”

That word still had the power to stop me.

Not perfect.

Not magically cured.

Good.

I could live with good.

Caleb looked down at my dress.

“So that’s the famous dress.”

I frowned.

“Famous?”

“Evan told me about it.”

I turned.

Evan was standing several feet away.

“Seriously?”

He raised both hands.

“I needed conversation material.”

Before dinner, photographs of families helped by the foundation appeared on the screen at the front of the ballroom.

Ours wasn’t among them.

I had asked that it not be.

I did not want to be presented as the struggling woman a rich man had rescued, because that wasn’t what had happened.

Doctors had treated Caleb. A committee had approved foundation assistance. A social worker had solved the authorization problem. My new team had taught me a career I knew nothing about.

Evan had opened a door.

I still had to walk through it.

After the gala, I stepped outside for some air.

Rain had begun falling over Michigan Avenue.

Across the street, the boutique windows were glowing.

I walked toward the same pane of glass where I had stood eighteen months earlier.

The blue dress was gone.

A red one had replaced it, and the price tag was somehow even more ridiculous.

My reflection floated over the glass.

Evan came to stand beside me.

“Thinking about buying that one too?”

I laughed.

“Not even if you double my salary.”

“Good. Finance would object.”

For a while, neither of us spoke.

Eighteen months earlier, I had stood in that exact place with wet shoes, $19.37 in my account and a pharmacy bill I couldn’t cover. I had believed my life was already mapped out: work, bills, Caleb, more work, more bills.

Now my brother was upstairs at a gala making jokes about his tie.

I had a job I loved.

For the first time in my adult life, I had savings.

I had plans that extended beyond the next prescription refill.

I looked at the red dress, then at my reflection.

“You know what the strange part is?”

“What?”

“That first night, I thought I was staring at something I’d never have.”

Evan glanced toward the window.

“The dress?”

I shook my head.

“No. The possibility of wanting something for myself again.”