Adelia chuckled. “You’re right. I doubt Emily Post covered anything quite like that in her etiquette books.”
“At least you can laugh about it now,” Laura said approvingly. “That has to be progress.”
“Yeah, on the days when I’m not furious, bitter and resentful, I’m a barrel of laughs,” Adelia said, tempering the remark with a smile. “But the truth is, every day is better than the day before. I can thank my kids and this job for keeping me focused on the future, rather than the past. And my attorney has been a godsend. Helen’s not letting Ernesto and his dirtbag lawyer pull anything.”
Laura nodded. “I’ve heard Helen is an amazing ally in a situation like this.”
“The best,” Adelia confirmed as she plucked a dress out of the size-twelve section of the rack. “This is an eight, and it would look fantastic on you. This soft sage-green would be perfect with your coloring. It’ll bring out the green in your eyes and the blond highlights in your hair.”
Laura studied the simple, A-line design of the linen dress. On the hanger it didn’t look like anything special, and she’d never before worn any shade of green. She’d always thought it would make her skin look sallow. “Are you sure?” she asked doubtfully.
“Trust me,” Adelia said. “You’ll thank me the minute you see yourself in the mirror. Go. I’ll keep looking, in case there are more size eights that have been misplaced on the rack.”
Two minutes later, Laura was gazing at herself in the dressing room mirror with astonishment. The dress skimmed over her curves, slimming her hips, caressing her breasts and showing off just the right amount of cleavage with the V-neckline. The sage-green did, indeed, turn her eyes emerald. Her cheeks bloomed with unexpected color.
“Holy cow,” she murmured, just as Adelia arrived with the perfect flowered silk scarf to add a splash of extra sophistication and style.
“Told you so,” Adelia said with a satisfied grin as she adjusted the scarf in various ways to demonstrate the possibilities.
“Could you come to my house and dress me all the time?” Laura asked, only half kidding. She never put outfits together with the pizzazz Adelia had accomplished in minutes. It seemed every time she complimented one of her friends on a new look, the credit always went to Adelia. No wonder Raylene’s store was doing a booming business these days.
“Find yourself a hot date and I’m there,” Adelia promised with a chuckle. “I yearn to live vicariously.”
“I haven’t even looked at the price tag,” Laura lamented. “I’m going to cry if this is beyond my budget.”
“It’s on sale and you have a coupon,” Adelia reminded her. “And who can put a price on looking as smashing as you do?”
“You’re really good,” Laura complimented her as she changed back into her clothes and then followed her to the register. Though she winced at the total, she handed over her credit card with barely a whimper.
She consoled herself with the thought that the shopping excursion had been so successful, she no longer needed that hot fudge sundae. Good thing, since to pay for this, she’d be dining on cereal or peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches for dinner for the next month.
After years of coaching and teaching at Serenity High School and a good long while being married to Maddie and dealing with stepchildren and their own two little ones, Cal thought he had some pretty finely tuned instincts when it came to those children lying to him as Katie was doing right now. He’d asked her to hang out with him in the kitchen after the dinner dishes had been put into the dishwasher. She’d reluctantly stayed behind.
They were sitting at the kitchen table now, and she was doing her best to avoid looking him in the eye as she skirted every question he’d asked so far.
“You’re being very careful to sidestep what was a direct question,” he told his stepdaughter eventually. “Let me try again. Do you have any idea why Misty is skipping Ms. Reed’s English class?”
“Shouldn’t Ms. Reed be asking Misty that?”
“Believe me, she will. I was just hoping you could fill me in before this whole thing blows up and Misty winds up being suspended. Ms. Reed doesn’t want that. She’s trying to help before Betty Donovan gets involved. You know for a fact that Mrs. Donovan has a zero-tolerance policy for skipping. Didn’t you learn that the hard way all too recently?”
Katie squirmed uncomfortably. “Misty shouldn’t get suspended,” she protested weakly. “Not when there are, what do they call ’em, extenuating circumstances.”