The Man Under The Mistletoe. Muriel Jensen

even though she was three thousand miles away in a tiny dressing room in snowy Maple Hill, Massachusetts.

      The light blue gaze she cast over the dress revealed nothing. Then she sighed—a sign that she knew her opinion wouldn’t be well received so she would keep it to herself. “It’s very pretty,” she said. “Very pretty.”

      Francie closed her eyes—a sign that after twenty-three years of dealing with her mother’s criticism, she still let it get to her.

      Rosie tried to distract Francie by reaching for the veiled hat she’d selected to go with the dress, but she was too late.

      “It’s the hair, isn’t it?” Francie demanded, turning with a swoosh of taffeta to glare at her mother. “I told you it’s staying blue. Deal with it, Mom!”

      “I’m dealing,” Sonny replied with a calm smile.

      Rosie had always admired that her mother could do that—react to shrieks of anger and frustration like an amused goddess. She was the composite of a fifties up-bringing that forbade expressing displeasure, and a talent for making everyone around her somehow pay for what she was feeling but couldn’t show.

      At last she heaved a long-suffering sigh. That meant all bets were off. Her mother would say what was on her mind.

      “It’s the eyebrow ring I’m worried about.” She stood gracefully, still fashionable at fifty-seven in a classic suit. “What if your veil gets caught in it? Will there be blood everywhere? Will you need plastic surgery? What personal statement is worth ruining your wedding day?”

      “It’s not a statement of anything!” Francie screamed. Blue hair did not flatter a purple face. In the little room, the sound of Francie’s voice ricocheting back and forth took on a physical force. “It’s who I am, that’s all. It’s me!”

      “Mom, Francie,” Rosie pleaded quietly. “I have other customers…”

      “You were not born with an eyebrow ring!” Sonny shouted back. “Believe me! I’d have noticed during my thirty-seven hours of labor!”

      “Oh, God.” Francie put both hands to her ears. “If you regret having me so much, why did you do it? You already had two beautiful overachievers!”

      “I do not regret having you!” Sonny said heatedly. “But there are moments when I regret letting you live! I’ll be in the car.” She handed Rosie her Visa card.

      Rosie pushed it back at her. “Mom, I told you. The dress is my gift to Francie.”

      Her mother took her hand and forced the card into it. “Don’t be ridiculous. You know Happily Ever After will be out of business before spring. You’re going to need the money.”

      That salvo delivered, she left the dressing room. Seconds later the bells over the front door tinkled. Her daughters knew she wasn’t going far—she’d brought Francie to the shop, after all, and would be taking her home.

      Rosie sank onto the bench.

      “Why does she hate us?” Francie demanded.

      “Try this.” Rosie handed Francie a veiled bowler hat. “She doesn’t hate us. She just doesn’t know how to love us.”

      Francie put on the hat, then tugged the veil carefully down to her chin.

      Rosie knew she’d been right about the choice. A standard headpiece and veil would have accentuated Francie’s nontraditional hair and piercing. The hat and muff worked with them.

      Francie nodded at her reflection, her expression softening. She looked at Rosie in the mirror as she played with the veil. “I don’t understand. What’s so hard about it?”

      “I’ve been working on that for a long time.”

      “I thought being willing to die for your children was supposed to be instinctive to all mothers.”

      “Oh, I think she’d die for us. She just finds it really hard to live with us.”

      Francie handed back the hat, then reached behind her to unzip the dress. Rosie stood to help her. “You and I,” Francie said moodily, “are never going to make her happy. How do you stand it? She always makes me feel like the last kid picked for the baseball team.”

      Rosie held the dress with one hand and helped Francie step out of it with the other. “You have to get over the idea that you’re responsible for her happiness.” She eased the dress onto a hanger. “She’s had a rough time, you know? She always looks as though she’s got it together, so we expect her to behave that way. But inside, she’s more at a loss than she’ll let us believe.”

      Francie made a scornful noise as she slipped into jeans and a red, crushed-velvet sweater. “You’re saying she wasn’t like this before Jay and Daddy died? I don’t remember. Seems like she’s been on my case forever.”

      She watched as Rosie stuffed the skirt into the plastic cover, smoothed it neatly and pulled up the zipper, then asked, “Do you ever wonder about Dad?”

      The confines of the tiny room made avoiding eye contact difficult. Besides, Rosie found it hard to lie to the sister to whom she’d explained menstruation, sex and geometry.

      Still, she hedged. “About what, particularly?”

      Francie shifted impatiently. “About not loving us enough to want to live.”

      God. Only her family could take an afternoon in a bridal shop and turn it into a Faulkner novel.

      “And don’t try to put a positive spin on it,” Francie went on. “Even you can’t do that. Dad was so devastated by Jay’s death that he didn’t want to live. I mean, think about it. What does that say about you and me, his daughters? Didn’t it occur to him that I’d need him to walk me down the aisle one day? Or that you’d have babies who’d need a grandfa—” She stopped abruptly, looking horrified, then spread her arms in apology. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think…”

      Rosie snatched the dress off the hook and carried it out into the shop, needing to escape the words, knowing she couldn’t.

      The store smelled of a spicy-sweet carnation-and-vanilla potpourri and she breathed in a whiff of it to reestablish her equilibrium. This is me, she told herself firmly. Beautiful things, steady little business, cheerful, grateful clients. Not the grim confusion my life has been for the past two years.

      “Don’t be silly,” she said, hanging the dress on a rack behind the counter as Francie joined her. “Women have miscarriages every day and don’t expect other people to apologize every time a baby is mentioned. Now. Yes, it bothers me about Dad. He didn’t have much time for us, but he adored our brother and there’s nothing we can do about that now that they’re both gone. So…try to have a little more sympathy for Mom. She played second fiddle to Jay, too. If you worry about Dad not caring enough to stay with us, imagine how she must feel.”

      Rosie reached to the shelves behind her for a hatbox.

      “I feel sorry for Chase, too,” Francie said, “living out here in the boonies with his grandmother and his aunts.” She held the box steady while Rosie placed the hat into the tissue. Their eight-year-old nephew had already suffered more than his share of tragedy. His mother had run off with a group of musicians, and his father had died in a grizzly accident.

      “Yeah, well, he’s a brave little boy.” Rosie put the lid on the box. “You want to take the dress and hat home, or do you want me to keep it for you?” The wedding was only a week away, but Francie’s room in the family home still looked like a fourteen-year-old’s.

      “Keep it, please.”

      Rosie put the hatbox back on the shelf and slapped a label on it that read, Francie. “I worry about Chase, too,” she said. “Fortunately, he has Jay’s sunny nature.”

      “Did you find somebody to help you watch the shop so you can take care of him while Mom’s in California with Aunt