Alma's Mail Order Husband (Texas Brides Book 1) Read Free Page A

had his accident.”
    “That’s only because I haven’t had time to
sew,” Alma replied. “It doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten how to do it. I
know how to do it, and it will be a lot easier to let out Mama’s
dress than to buy or make another one.” She looked at her father.
“You don’t mind, do you, Papa?”
    Clarence disguised his hesitation behind
chewing his food. “I don’t mind. It’s been sitting in the bottom of
that trunk since your mother died. Someone might as well wear it. I
think she would be very happy if Alma was married in it.”
    Alma choked back the urge to sigh with
relief. She hadn’t actually thought about what she’d wear to the
church until Allegra asked her. “We’ll get it out after supper and
have a look at it. I’ll try it on and see what it needs to make it
fit me. I might get lucky and only need to lengthen the skirts a
little bit”
    The family chewed a while longer.
    “I thought you would want a dress all of your
own,” Amelia remarked. “I don’t think I could get married in a dead
woman’s dress, even if she was my own mother. That would be more
like going to a funeral than a wedding.”
    “I thought about that,” Alma replied. “But
just think how much it would cost to buy a new dress. And then
there’s the problem of having it fitted for me. I don’t even know
anyone in town who could make one. We aren’t going into Eagle Pass
before the wedding. Even if someone had one ready-made, I’d have to
buy it, put it on, pray to heaven it fit me properly, and then
scoot off to the church in time to meet Jude. It wouldn’t
work.”
    “If I was going to get married,” Amelia
announced. “I would plan in advance to have a dress made. I’d order
it from San Antonio, if I had to.”
    “You would?” Allegra put in. “You’d get a
dress made—with what money? How would you pay for it? And how would
you pay the money to travel up to San Antonio to get measured and
fitted for the dress? Alma’s right. It wouldn’t work.”
    “I’d find a way to make it work,” Amelia
insisted. “I’d find a way to get myself a wedding dress. You don’t
want to play fast and loose with your own wedding.”
    “I’m not playing fast and loose,” Alma shot
back. “There’s nothing fast and loose about wearing your mother’s
wedding dress. It makes the dress into a tradition handed down from
mother to daughter. I could hand the dress down to my own daughter
when she gets old enough to get married.”
    “I think it’s wonderful that you’re all
thinking about getting married,” Clarence told them.
    “I’m not thinking about getting married,”
Allegra shot back.
    “Fine,” Clarence snapped. “You’re not
thinking about getting married. You’re just talking about it. And
it’s wonderful that you all have different ideas about how to do
it. You can each do it in your own way. There’s no right or wrong
way to get married.”
    “Except when you don’t,” Allegra persisted.
“I’m not getting married.”
    Clarence Goodkind let out an exasperated
gasp. He threw up him hands and slapped them down flat on the
table. “Yeah, you said that already. You’re not getting married.”
He kicked his chair out from under him and stalked away from the
table to his chair by the fire.
    Alma exchanged glances with her sisters. They
continued eating in silence until Alma wiped the juice from the
meat platter with the last tortilla. “Let’s go get Mama’s dress out
and have a look at it.”
    Allegra gathered up the dishes from the table
and washed them in the kettle of water boiling on the fire as Alma
and Amelia slid the heavy wooden trunk away from the wall and threw
back the lid.
    Amelia sat on the nearest bed, which just
happened to be Allegra’s, while Alma unpacked the trunk. She laid
one wrinkled article of clothing after another on the bed next to
Amelia until she reached the very bottom.
    “Here it is,” she announced.
    She reached all the way down to the bottom
and