The Valentine Wedding Dress by Sherryl Woods

CHAPTER ONE
    It had been her mother’s annual Valentine’s Day ritual. Now it was a tradition Lara intended to continue.
    She climbed the stairs of the old Victorian house that had been her home for all of her 22 years, opened the door to the attic, and stepped inside for perhaps the first time since she’d stopped playing dress-up there as a child. The old clothes and her mother’s childhood toys had been the attraction then. Now it was the locked trunk that drew her across the chilly space.
    Dust motes swirled in the beams of sunshine coming through the single round window. Using the rag she’d brought with her, Lara carefully wiped off the lid of the trunk, took the old brass key from her pocket, inserted it into the lock, then hesitated.
    Whatever was inside had been her mother’s private treasure, something that made Susan Calhoun nostalgic and teary every single February 14, as far back as Lara could remember. And yet she had continued the ritual, though it was obvious that it made her unhappy. It had been almost a year since her death and Lara was determined to carry on the tradition, even though not once in all those years had her mother told Lara or anyone else what was inside the trunk.
    After the funeral Lara had asked her father about the mysterious contents. He had shrugged off the question, insisting that everyone was entitled to their whims…their secrets. Her 24-year-old twin sisters, less curious and more self-absorbed than Lara, hadn’t even recalled the tradition. With their big-city careers, fancy homes, and doting husbands, they rarely came home to the small Virginia coastal town where they’d grown up, much less worried about one of their mother’s many idiosyncrasies. That had been left to Lara, who identified with her mother in so many ways.
    Lara sat down, letting the rays of sunshine warm her, and considered whether she was doing the right thing. Was she invading her mother’s privacy? Or was this something her mother would want her to do, now that she was no longer here to carry on the tradition herself?
    â€œMom, what should I do?” Lara whispered. “I want to understand why this trunk was so important to you. I need a sign. I really, really need a sign.”
    Just at that instant, her mother’s beloved gray-and-white cat jumped onto the trunk and began purring. Maybe it was a sign, maybe it wasn’t, but it was good enough for Lara. She reached for the key and turned it. As she lifted the lid, Prissy leapt down without protest and curled against her side, still purring as if she wholeheartedly approved of Lara’s decision.
    At first glance, the trunk appeared to be filled with little more than tissue paper, not yellowed with age as she might have expected, but as crisp and white as if it were brand-new…as if it had been replaced frequently with loving care. Lara lifted the top layer and then the next, then gasped as she found the treasure beneath…a wedding dress.
    Like the paper, the white satin bore few of the marks of time. The tiny seed pearls adorning the neckline were as neatly in place as if they’d been sewn on the day before.
    With an odd sense of reverence, Lara lifted the dress from the trunk and held it up. It was a size eight, her mother’s size and her own. Her breath caught in her throat, Lara moved to an old mirror and stared, trying to imagine what her mother must have looked like in this elegant, simple gown. It had been years since she’d looked at the wedding album downstairs or even noticed the enlarged wedding snapshot on the dresser in her parents’ bedroom. But gazing into the mirror she had some idea.
    Not only were they the same size, but they had the same fair coloring, the same dusting of freckles across their noses if they spent too long in the summer sun, the same periwinkle blue eyes.
    Tears welled up as she stared at her reflection and imagined her mother looking just like