Hi all: So here I am, four days from my daughter's grad, trying to finish her dress, and this story will not leave me alone. Maybe if I write it out, I can concentrate.

Or not.

I Will

"Please, Stella! Please! I'm begging you! Help me out and I will owe you the biggest favour ever," Lindsay's brown eyes were beyond pleading; she was blinking back tears.

"Does that actually work, even on Danny?" Stella said scornfully.

Lindsay puckered up her forehead and thought for a minute before breaking into a big grin. "Usually! Though I have to admit, I sometimes have to add sexual favours to the mix. I'm assuming that won't help in this case?" She looked at her friend quizzically.

"Don't be too sure," Stella muttered. "There has been a long dry spell in that area of my life."

Lindsay rolled her eyes, "I'm sure there is a tall, dark, adorably handsome detective who would be more than willing to help out in that area. Probably lots of them, come to think of it, but I have a certain blue-eyed boy in mind."

"That's just it, Linds: boy. He must be 8 years younger than me."

Lindsay twirled around the room, trailing fabric behind her, humming "Jenny, Don't be Hasty" under her breath:

You said you'd marry me if I was 23

But I'm one that you can't see if I'm only 18

Tell me who made these rules

Obviously not you

Who are you answering to?

Oh, Jenny don't be hasty

No, don't treat me like a baby

Let me take you where you'll let me

Because leaving just upsets me

Stella picked up a cushion and laughingly threatened Lindsay with it. "Don't matchmake, Linds. Just 'cause you have found the perfect man doesn't mean we are all going to be so blessed."

Lindsay stopped in mid-whirl and put her hands up to her face. "Shit, Stella, you have to help me or I am doomed."

Stella looked over the table covered in three kinds of white fabric, pins, a sewing machine and shears so large they looked more suited for sheep than the delicate lace they lay on. "Explain this to me one more time: you live in New York now, right?"

"Right," groaned Lindsay. "Where the hell is that pattern?"

"Best shopping in the world, right?"

"Right."

"Whole streets devoted to nothing but bridal shops?"

"Your point, Stel?"

"WHY are you making your own wedding dress?" Stella reached behind the cushion of the couch and pulled out the pattern Linds was now searching in the refrigerator for.

"Umm, because it's been my dream since I was a little girl? Because I am a good sewer? Because I don't want to spend several hundreds of dollars on a dress I am going to wear once for a few hours when I can make one for," Lindsay rummaged in the bag and pulled out a receipt, "$82.17?"

"Aren't you supposed to spend disgusting amounts of money on your wedding dress?" Stella pointed out, she thought, logically.

"Why? I'd rather save it for shopping in Milano, Roma, Paris!" Lindsay crooned the names in her best Italian and French accents.

Stella sat down on the couch, then yelped and got up quickly, pulling a second pair of scissors out from under her, before flopping down on the cushion again. "I don't see why I should help you when you are taking two weeks off work and going to Europe. You probably won't ever get out of the hotel room in the first place."

Lindsay sighed happily, "Maybe not. That would be good too." She turned to Stella, "Please help me, Stella. I have forty-eight hours to get this dress made, and my parents come tomorrow."

"Why did you leave it so long?" Stella sighed, but got up and came over to the table, looking curiously at the piles.

"We had that double homicide, then those burglaries. There was so much evidence to process, and it all took way longer than it should have. Besides, I knew it wouldn't take long to make." Lindsay looked up pleadingly again, and Stella took a step back.

"Whoa. How long, and what are we making?"

"A lined dress and a lace overcoat: should be twelve hours … Less!" Lindsay said quickly, "Less if you help. Maybe eight hours."

Stella frowned, "I don't know how much help I'll be, Lindsay. I've never sewed anything in my life."

"Really? I just assumed …" Lindsay foundered to a halt.

"How come?"

"Well, didn't you grow up in an orphanage? I thought the nuns would teach you to sew."

Stella rolled her eyes, "Maybe if I had grown up in the 40s! I grew up in the 70s; the nuns taught us to strip a car engine and replace a tranny!"

Lindsay giggled, "That's quite a picture! No sewing, or 'domestic arts' at all?"

"Some plain cooking and how to sew on a button," Stella shrugged. "I guess they saw more old cars in our futures than wedding dresses."

Lindsay reached out and hugged Stella, "So I'll teach you. Then I can help you make yours, sometime in the not-too-distant," she choked at the fire in Stella's eyes and swiftly changed it to, " sorry – the far-far-off future!"

She put the fabric down on the floor, grumbling. "I hate cutting on the floor; what I wouldn't give for a freezer or a ping-pong table right about now."

"Ping-pong? Not pool?" Stella said it slyly, chuckling when Lindsay blushed a deep rose.

"Not half as good for cutting out fabric on," she replied composedly. "Look, could you pull out the pattern pieces and cut out these ones?"

Under Lindsay's direction, Stella watched as first the lining, then a dress were cut out and sewn together. Within five hours, the wedding dress, a slim slip of a thing in a stiff brocade, was hanging in the bathroom, steaming over a hot bath.

"Now for the jacket," Lindsay said.

Stella groaned. Her shoulders hurt, her feet hurt, even her pinkies hurt from the un-accustomed sewing. She could now confidently say she knew how to sew. She could with equal confidence say, if she ever had need of a wedding dress, "Vera Wang, here I come!"

"Lindsay, I am revolting," she said firmly, then stopped Lindsay's mouth with one hand when she opened it to make the obvious comeback. "I mean I need a cup of coffee and some food, or I will go home now. This was supposed to be my day off!"

"I will buy you food, I promise. I will buy you so much food you can't even walk. I just need you to help a little longer, please. If we get the jacket cut out and put together, then I can let it steam too while we go get something to eat."

"It doesn't seem fair that the dress is getting to shower and I don't," Stella groused, but she got up from the floor where she had collapsed and continued her apprenticeship as chief pattern-snipper, pin-holder, remnants-folder and general dogsbody.

Lindsay's estimate was right on: in two more hours the jacket was ready to have its steam bath. "Now all I have to do is hem the dress and the lining, and cut the lace away on the jacket to make its hem, and I am done. Stella, I will buy you anything you want for dinner – the sky's the limit!"

Stella looked at the dress hanging over the bathtub in the little bathroom in Lindsay's apartment. It shimmered softly in the dim light, the heavy brocade softened by the sheen of the lace. She had a sudden vision of Lindsay coming down the aisle of the old stone Cathedral where Danny had grown up, and had to blink back tears.

"Stella? What is it, honey?" Lindsay wrapped an arm around the woman who had been more than a boss or even a friend to her since she had moved to New York; she had truly become the sister Lindsay had never had.

"You are going to be so beautiful," Stella whispered.

"Well, I'm glad you like it," Lindsay grinned a little guiltily, and pulled another bag of deep teal fabric out from behind the couch. "We still have to make your maid of honour dress!"