Chapter 24: More Preparations

The first Saturday in May

Maria already felt out of place, just on this street. Even in her best frock, the last she had sewn from that lovely blue fabric and wearing her lighter coat in the warming Salzburg spring, her arms were drawn in against her sides. I don't know why I'm here, she thought as she stepped out of the way of a woman in a better dress, though for a second, she fancied the woman smiled at her. I can't imagine she did. Maria almost looked over her shoulder—wondering if that woman was peering back at her before she finally ducked through an unfamiliar door, only certain of the address Georg had given her.

Everything was nicer, here, she saw that immediately: a little brighter, a little smoother, a little better looked after than the shop where she always bought the fabric for the dresses she sewed in her evenings in Salzburg. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, she thought as the bell rang as the door closed behind her. I'm not here just to buy the fabric, after all. Once I leave—or once I come back, I suppose it will take some time—all I have to do is look after it. I just never really thought I'd need to seeto my wedding dress.

She hadn't quite been able to believe it as Georg drove her home that Sunday two weeks ago, his left hand searching for either of hers whenever he didn't have to bother with...well,well, whatever seemed to relieve the engine's complaints. (She hadn't known what it was called until then, she had only ever been in one other car when she was young, before her father finally sold it ahead his final trip abroad.) Finally closing the scratched door to her boarding house, Maria had half run up the stairs—but not to avoid...him. Even though she hadn't seen him for weeks, she still dreaded the thought of seeing Lukas. It always saw the wind at her heels whenever she was home from her schoolroom. Her dread was always worse those days she hadn't managed to put much in her bag for lunch, leaving her to need longer to find something to satisfy her stomach.

It wasn't fear or apprehension that drove her to her room as soon as she could manage, though. And her stomach was still full enough from everything Georg had brought along for their little picnic, she had no need for a detour to the cluttered kitchen. (She tried not to wonder about how he had uncovered that little clearing, so far away from Salzburg's streets as she scrambled for a pen and paper to write an excited letter to her foster mother, wanting to tell anyone.) She had collapsed against her door, heart pounding and chest heaving, all the while trying to understand...what? "Why not marry me?" "But I can't believe it," she told herself with her hands flat against the door. To hold the world out...keep herself in? "Why...why me?" She had asked herself that every day since when she woke, still not knowing the day when she would no longer be a girl on her own, but a wife instead. Trying not to think about everything that meant as she scrawled something wrong on her classroom's chalkboard. And especially not as she tossed and turned in her bed at night, struggling not to think about someone lying beside her. Or lying with—

Maria shook her head, rustling the knot of hair at the back of her head. There were no shelves of fabric here, no stacks of spooled thread, no piles of ribbon. Behind the counter, it was two or three lovely dresses on cloth covered hangers there half concealing the bolts. Something that's been finished? I could never—

"Who are you, why are you here?"

Maria's started. She hadn't even noticed her, the youngish woman was standing there, arms crossed across her chest and blond hair pulled back tight behind her head. "I—I'm sorry?" she stammered.

The woman waved a hand at her, now flipping through a few pages of a diary that lay open on the counter. Maria saw nicks here and there on the wood, almost as though a pair of scissors had carved its way the same groove one time too many. "Do you have an appointment? We don't take anyone wandering in off the street."

Maria nodded. "Well, I was told—"

"Your name?" The woman already had a pen in her hand.

"Maria—"

"You're not the Mother of God, all of it."

"I would have, but…" She swallowed, a sudden rush of anxiety rising up from her stomach.How many more times will I say it? "Maria Kutschera."

The pen slid along the page, finally stabbing at something. "Ah, there you are…" The woman glanced up and Maria tried not to flush. She was no doubt seeing the little imperfections between the top halves of her coat; Maria couldn't a single flaw in hers, probably constructed right here. And probably from much nicer fabric, too, I'm sure it must be from what I can see. "We just don't see many women your age here. Usually older or much younger." Her eyes were back on the diary, as she marked something else. "One minute."

"All right." Well, what else was I supposed to say? she wondered as the woman turned around and hurried through the door to the back.

Her eyes were still dancing everywhere, even if there wasn't much out here. She couldn't resist peering closer than ever at the dress hanging from the back shelf. Not even where I worked in college would have made anything—

"Well, what are you doing there?"

Maria spun around, her heart racing for a second. "I'm sorry?"

It wasn't the same woman who had just disappeared into the back. Her body was a little wider, her face a little more lined, her hair darker and shot with patches of grey or silver. "You're here to have a dress made, not stare at nothing."

"I didn't know—I didn't expect you to be ready just now."

"I am, so back here with you."

Maria couldn't help but fold her hands together behind her back, walking slowly as she followed the woman. Past the counter and the folded stacks of fabric she could finally see in the gap between those dresses and the shelves: into a room with rippled mirrors here and there, a chest of drawers almost like she remembered from her childhood, thread and needles and pins in a basket on a little table in the middle. And that woman already standing—waiting, foot tapping away beneath the wide skirt of her dress. "I'm sorry, I don't know your name," Maria finally said, clasping her fingers even tighter.

The woman waved her hand, almost beckoning her forward. "Frau Eder." She waved again. "Now!" Maria darted past her, into the center of the room. At least I remember this, she thought, even if I only ever stitched together what I was given. "Shoes and coat off. If you're about to be measured for a wedding dress, I don't want to think about those shoes."

Maria wasn't sure why her hands were shaking as she slipped her coat off—folding it, then setting it aside as she knelt down to loosen the laces and tugged them apart. She'd rarely been around a woman so forceful; her foster mother might have been strict with her, but never like this. And of course her aunt had never been able to say much of anything, they had both been so wary of her uncle. She slipped off her spring shoes, leaving them beside her coat. I can't quite think of it, really. They hadn't yet decided on a date—Georg had just murmured more than once that he still needed to look after a few things, sometimes looking a little cross—but it already loomed ahead as something exciting and terrifying. Whenever they stood before a priest, it was coming sooner rather than later, Georg had insisted on it. A married woman, she thought as she smoothed down her dress. No point in letting wrinkles set—

"And I'm afraid I'll have to insist on that as well, Maria."

Maria stood again, confused. "What?"

"It's lumpy enough I won't be able to measure you properly. I can't imagine where you got it."

"I made it. I've made my own clothes since I left home—"

"I can tell, dear." Frau Eder was already busying herself with that basket of notions, probably searching for a measuring tape. "You've enough botched seams to see from miles away."

"I put myself through college while working in a shop like—"

"Not one like mine. But we don't have much time for you to be wrong, if you want it in the requested time frame."

They hadn't really talked about the dress very much, Georg simply saying to do as she wished with it, just where to show up and when. If anything, the speed with which he had made the appointment had surprised her. With those dresses hanging from the shelves in the front room, she couldn't imagine Frau Eder and her staff made very much for men. I haven't thought about, really—

"We haven't all day."

Maria dragged her dress over her head, now leaving only her shift hanging from her shoulders. She couldn't stop herself glancing down, more aware than ever at the faint grey that had imprinted in it over the last few years, even if it would only be cotton that Frau Eder worked with today. She shivered, crossing her arms across her breasts. I don't know this, she thought, still not certain why the goose pimples were racing across her skin. It was certainly warm enough—

"Oh, for goodness' sake, what are you doing? I was about to have a daughter by the time I was your age, I think, you met her just now, Ingrid, and she has two of her own," Frau Eder said with a click of her tongue as she turned back around. I suppose she saw me in the mirror, Maria thought, her own thin face peering back at her from the wavy glass. "It's nothing I haven't seen before." With a few steps toward the center of the room, Frau Eder already the tape measure around her shoulders before turning to the little table beside where Maria stood, scribbling down a quick word and number on a pad she hadn't noticed before. She turned back and now opened the tape to measure from the top of Maria's arm to her wrist, a finger sliding along the top pressing it flush to her skin before she added that number to the page.

"But we'll have to sort something out for you," she went on as she shook her head. "You're getting married, not entering a convent. Your new husband won't be happy to see you in that. Arms out!" With her arms out of the way, Frau Eder wrapped the tape around Maria's breasts, not tightening it. "Down again, but let me around your waist." Maria did, though she held her arms from her sides, just as she remembered happening in the dress shop where she once worked. Frau Eder wrapped the tape around her waist—still not tugging it tight—and shook her head once more with another click of her tongue when she saw the number. "Do you eat, child? There's nothing of you."

"Yes!" Maria said, now relaxing her arms against her sides, trying not to shiver again. "But I'm a teacher, there isn't a lot of time...or money."

"So who is paying for your dress?"

"My fiancé." She bit down a smile, still struggling to understand how that word and she could be related. "He...he said I should look presentable when we're married."

"Quite right, you shouldn't be wearing any of this but your home." Her last figure noted, Frau Eder returned her attention to Maria. "Turn around!"

She already felt the tape across the back of her shoulders, from one blade to the other. "My students don't mind, it's what—"

"I don't care if your students have seen their mothers and sisters in something similar, you're marrying a man of some means, if he can afford to send you to me and expect it to be done so soon!"

"I suppose. He has said the navy took good care of him." Every now and then, Maria wondered about what Georg must have done to earn his pension. Sometimes, he hesitated when telling her more stories about his times both on and beneath the ocean, as though he was choosing his words more carefully than usual. I'm not that naïve, but I know horrible things can happen in the navy or army.

"Back around." Maria obeyed. "And he must be quite taken with you, wanting to see you as you are, not wrapped up in a fancy gown." She couldn't suppress a giggle. "Well, don't do that when he has you alone!"

Those evenings when they still wandered through the local park, hand in hand despite the little looks mostly from the older women traveling home themselves after an evening stroll themselves, Maria found herself wondering what would it be like? She still didn't know where her dreams had originated, just that they left her wanting something more. And all that Georg had whispered into her ear that afternoon in the clearing...

Frau Eder shook her head. The girl's eyes were glassy, as though she was far away or lost in her imagination. "I'm sure you're in love with him," she muttered to herself as she double-checked all of her figures, "but I don't think you really know everything he wants from you."

"Hmm? I'm sorry?"

Frau Eder shook her head. "Don't worry over it, my dear. But that's you done until next Saturday, we'll have you back for some of the adjustments."

He really is expecting this quite fast, Maria, she thought as Maria hurried back into her own dress, Frau Eder wincing at the slightly uneven hem as she did. I hope you're as eager for a quick wedding as it seems he is, even though you can't really know what anything will be like after that.

O O O

The flat had never been this cluttered, Georg realized as he sank back into his chair. Both with new possessions out and about and things still in packages, the boxes all ready to catch his toe after a little too much brandy. Really, apart from his front room where he contemplated his unhappiness and indulged his vices, there was nothing to see, let alone anything demanding ornaments. But now, it was only a matter of time before he needed something—anything.

There was a new set of curtains hanging from the windows, both in the front room and his bedroom. Even the duvet cover was new, though he hadn't bothered to replace the several hundred count sheets, despite the red stain he knew would soak in soon. In the kitchen, it was a new table covered by a red cloth and flanked by chairs in the prime of their youth. There hadn't been one before; he had never even touched the stove and needed a place to eat the simplest breakfast. Even the dishes were new, the neighbors he never spoke to cocking an eye at the endless column of delivery men with boxes and furniture wrapped in brown paper to protect each piece along the way.

It was still sparse, a bookcase along the far wall beside the door still nearly empty but for the small handful of books he had brought from Aigen and swiftly tucked into the corner beside the mute gramophone. "I'm sure she has more than enough to keep her imagination occupied when she's home alone," he muttered around his newest cigarette. "And I'm sure she'll be happy to keep it around her, like most women are."

Maria's face had fallen the night before when he said he couldn't even drop her off at Frau Eder's shop. He had known the shop well in his past that sometimes felt a lifetime ago; it was the same shop where many of Agathe's dresses. "I have something to look after," that was all he had told her, all he could tell her.

The letter had arrived that Thursday—registered!—one of only a handful the household had ever sent to his flat in Salzburg. His address had been a mystery to even them for some time, but as his stays in the city grew a little longer—particularly as Frau Wimmer mostly managed to keep the children in line—there too many things here and there to simply leave him alone for quite so long. But...that woman was the problem, now. Another rush of smoke through his nostrils coated Frau Schmidt's letter with a thin grey cloud as he read it again. But he remembered every detail the housekeeper written in her impeccably neat handwriting.

The governess was becoming frustrated with the children. The pranks and tricks they had begun to amuse themselves, the housekeeper said, were no longer so simple. No longer salt in her coffee or wasting her time each morning, but now it was glue left under one of the shoes in her wardrobe, or a little garden snake hidden in her bed. (Frau Schmidt still didn't know how the children had managed to do that with the entire household none the wiser.) Occasionally, the housekeeper added, the governess grumbled that if not for her own sons, she wouldn't have bothered with the children for more than those first few weeks.

"Another woman losing her nerve." Georg flicked the ash of his cigarette into the tray on the rough table. They would both have to go, he knew, the wooden chair and the table where his brandy and cigarettes lived, or at least be separated. You'll just have to learn to live with it, darling. "I don't suppose I should be surprised over that governess, she never seemed to have much of it to begin with."

He tossed the letter away, just missing the smoldering cigarette embers. Nothing else for it, he knew. If the woman wasn't quite able to keep up with a handful of children, then he would have to find another woman to do it for her. At least I think I know what to do for the moment. Georg wasn't certain how he could say it, how to ask his mother-in-law to look after seven children, particularly two still needing a nurse. Well, writing it was the easy part, the woman adored any time with her grandchildren, visiting Salzburg as often as she could before Agathe at last begged her to stay away for her own sake. "Well, at least one of you had some sense." He would have to send the telegram to Vienna shortly, before the blasted governess collapsed. He still couldn't quite understand it, if Frau Schmidt was correct about her credentials.

More troubling was the telegram from Vienna. Elsa never quite bothered with letters, she never had in all the years he had known her. Though, Georg allowed with another drag of smoke, she must have written a few of her own as a girl. They always seemed to, if his own elder daughters' old stacks of correspondences with distant cousins—Liesl's sometimes to and from England—were something normal. Agathe had never quite let go of her own letters, whether they were from her own childhood or received in those final few days. This telegram was much the same as the last he had received from Elsa, though as he often did, he wondered if she had actually read the one he sent. You're lonely there I know that STOP Do come to Vienna you havent been here for so long STOP Do tell me it wont be long STOP Elsa

"I already let you now that, darling," Georg muttered around the back end of the cigarette. "I don't know when I'll be back." He had to stand, his legs and arms finally too restless to sit still any longer. "I don't know when I'll be back."

It wasn't even Elsa, Georg knew that as he began pacing from one end of the front room to the other, almost knocking his shins int the unfamiliar furniture and trinkets in boxes. It was Vienna itself. All the short trips there, the weekends when the children were old enough not to need them and to be content with a nurse before any of the children were old enough to need a governess. Sometimes, he hated that city. Wherever he had strolled on Elsa's arm—when there wasn't a party calling her name—it was a little memory here and there calling to him. A café where he and Agathe had shared a quick meal and a cup of coffee before wandering through one of the parks—

"God," he hissed as he turned back to his chair and the table, hurrying across the room to grind out the last of his cigarette. They would have to be gone before she was here, or at least move...It's not you I'm thinking of, darling, I know it isn't. I just can't quite get her out of my mind. Shoving Elsa away, it was child's play, these days. But somehow, just a girl...Think, you foolish man. You've gotten yourself into this, are you going to fail just now?

What was there to do? Georg was already struggling to order it all in his mind, wondering where a piece of paper was to scribble it all down before he forgot. This to move here—that to move there—space to clear in the cupboard in the bedroom— His breath caught in his chest as his groin tightened. It did that more and more these days whenever his thoughts drifted. "Somehow, I don't think you'll have that much to bring beyond yourself."

And now, his hand was shaking as he flicked the grooved wheel around, the spark needing a few goes to finally appear and set the end of his cigarette aflame. "Though, really, if all you bring is yourself, I think that's what I need."

Georg dropped back into his chair, still glancing around the front room and wondering where everything would go when he finally had the brown paper torn from the boxes. He grabbed for another cigarette and the bronze lighter beside him, wincing as he shifted and the dead weight ever present in his pocket moved. You're all I have to have—need, really. If he was honest, Georg allowed, he didn't know much about her, and unless she had a scholar's mind like they had in all the old hallowed university halls where he had never walked, she probably knew even less about him. Everything would be different, Maria, so different.

What did he know about her, really know?An orphan. Recently moved from Vienna. A teacher. Passionately Catholic. Head in the clouds especially whenever music turned it. And I know...He released a first puff of smoke from this cigarette. You'll let me do whatever I want when I ask—I still don't understand quite why...Well, he did, all her little mentions of church and Mass and God. I'll try to break you of that soon enough, Maria. It's a horrid habit, always living for the next life and never quite living this one. Another mouthful of smoke. Why can't…

Georg had to stand, once again too restless to stay still. I meant what I said to you, Maria, and I don't know…A fresh gulp of of smoke burned through his throat, just as quickly released. But Christ, sometimes, I can't quite think what it will be like. It's just a moment, really, becoming something else, something...Yet another deep breath filled his lungs with smoke again, his fingers suddenly shaking around the very end of the cigarette. In just a few weeks—if that, even!—he would have a wife again, a woman huddled close to him through the night, probably almost as shy and embarrassed as…

No, it wasn't the time to to think about it, not when everything was still more like a breeze he couldn't quite grasp. The date still wasn't set, and Georg didn't yet have the heart to tell her it wouldn't be in front of an altar and God in one of Salzburg's churches, whether a cathedral like the one that abbey in the city wrapped itself around or the little parish church a short walk down the dusty road from the villa in Aigen.

It would take too long, darling, he thought as he turned around again, still wondering where everything would go. Agathe had always organized things like this before they had a proper staff to look after their home. And after a life on ships and submarines where personal possessions were few and far between amongst tiny hallways and doors, he honestly couldn't understand why anyone needed much more. But she was different, always loving all those little memories that I'm sure you do as well, Maria.

It would be disappointing for his fiancée, Georg knew with another puff on his cigarette, a wedding before a judge. But...she would have to understand eventually, simply signing the papers without waiting for it to be announced across the churches in Salzburg to be certain everything was fair and legal. "And you will," he muttered. He pushed one of the boxes aside with his foot, out of his way as he stalked to the other end of the front room, his fingers shaking. "I know you can't quite imagine it, what I told you. Having you in my bed right then—I would have done it with just the slightest chance."

He stubbed the cigarette out in the tray on his table. It would be so much simpler, he went on to himself as he reached for yet another. Everything you say about God, I'm sure he matters to you more than I can actually imagine. But if it's just going to be the two of us, day to day...A fresh flick on the lighter's wheel saw the new cigarette flare to life. Are you frightened of yourself, Maria? If what I saw in that clearing is right, it's just what I told you some time ago, you have a passion for life. All of it.

As the nights had worn on these last weeks, Georg sometimes found himself wondering what it would be like. He'd had more than his share of women in his bed before Agathe tamed him, though still far less than his fellow sailors if their stories of port harlots and local conquests were to be believed. He had never quite understood it, though perhaps he had been too young to...appreciate what the women who tarried in the coastal bars and taverns were selling. His few nights recently with Elsa aside, there hadn't been another woman for him since he first caught sight of her.

Sometimes, I don't know, darling, Georg thought as he poured a short glass of brandy. The tidying—the simple filling of his flat with the sort of things that most men never with a wife might have—it could all wait. The way you shivered there, I don't know if you could control yourself, even if all I wanted to do was have you here for a short while—and then never saw you again. Just like the smoke, the alcohol burned all the way down his throat as he took it in two gulps. But I think you'll be so—different than her, even if I can never quite say it aloud. Certainly not to you. And maybe…

Georg refilled his glass. I just don't know sometimes, Maria. I know your hands will be shaking when we sign those papers, and I fear mine will be, too. But you're entirely too enticing, too lovely. He needed a deep breath to calm the swelling in his groin. And I don't think I'll be like one of those women who lose their nerve in a moment, I can't imagine what my father would have ever thought of me, to know that I'm almost frightened of a girl like you. His next sip was slower. I was never frightened of life on the ocean. I couldn't stand it if you managed to terrify me, even if I'll hate myself the moment the pen touches that paper. He drained the glass. I know I will.

The third Saturday in May

It was the prettiest dress she'd ever had, Maria decided that as soon as she saw it, still not quite believing...anything. Beautiful white fabric that slipped through her fingers so quickly, she nearly dropped it when the dressmaker finally handed it to her to try on. A band of light blue fabric around her middle and a gentle spray of darker blue across the bottom of the skirt above the hem. The sleeves were shorter than the ones she had made herself before, but longer than the one she had made just for Georg's eyes. (It still made her blush,, everything that had happened that day, even before his hands began their sordid exploration of her body and thighs.)

Frau Eder was still barking out requests—almost commands as Maria scrambled out of her old dress and shift out of anyone's sight. The prior Saturday, it hadn't even been this much, only the cotton sample she had been measured for over the new linen slip being pinned here and there. They were for the same adjustments she was used to performing on her own creations, but hers were always laying on her bed as she tightened the seams little by little.

The zipper along her back would be difficult to reach herself; here, Frau Eder made short work of dragging it up along her spine, leaving the bodice closer to her chest than any she had ever made. I'm glad I tied my hair up today, Maria thought as the stitching tightened around her chest. Otherwise, I think I would be hoping for a comb to—

"Stand up straighter, dear."

The older woman's words had cut right through her thoughts."Oh—I'm sorry—"

"Don't say anything, Maria, please. Just a little straighter."

Maria pushed her shoulders back—

"Not like that, you won't stand that way when you're wearing it. Just no slouching."

"That's what I was—"

"You weren't." Maria felt the blue band tighten around her middle, a little sigh accompanying it along with a swish of something close to her skin. A pin, she supposed as the fabric suddenly tightened slightly. She must know much better than I would. I would never had touched fabric like this, even if I—

"Turn, please."

Maria didn't hesitate, just turning until the dressmaker's scarred hands caught her waist and brought her to a halt with a fresh mutter and another pin carefully woven into the fabric. And then, a tsk of the woman's tongue. "Really, you'll have to learn to eat at some point. Your husband will expect food on the dinner table." The band about her waist tightened even further. "A married woman can't be so thin—at all."

"I told you, I think—"

"You did."

Maria craned her neck back to the older woman, a pin caught between her lips, eyes narrowed. "You remember?"

"Of course." The pin was out of her mouth, though wherever Frau Eder intended it to go, Maria couldn't quite see, her neck already hurting. "You're not the first woman who has come to me for a wedding dress, not at all. And you're not the first with a date just a short time—"

"It's not like that!" Maria snapped, only the older woman's hands holding her still.

"I didn't say it was."

"Then why—"

"I've been making dresses for decades, Maria." Another movement of the fabric, this one tugging it a little toward her left. "I've seen brides come through here for every reason."

Maria bit her lip as the last alterations went on, trying not to think about...anything. I didn't think that anyone would think that about us— She gasped with another little tightening of the dress, though this was more like a handful of fabric caught along her back and pulling it all a little closer together. "What—"

"You've asked me to make a wedding dress, my dear, not a dress like the one you were wearing when you walked in." Maria held her tongue as best she could while the older woman circled her little by little, almost giggling once or twice. But then Frau Eder's experienced fingers were suddenly here and there, a pin placed through existing seams wherever they were needed, a little flurry of pinches and jabs into the fabric. She almost wasn't ready when the dressmaker finally stood straight—turned back to relinquish her pin cushion and tape—and at last declared, "There's not much more to do, I think."

Maria gasped at first, her belly falling a little loose, even though she hadn't meant to hold it. "Oh?" She couldn't quite see it in the warped mirror, at least not more beyond what she could notice when it had been in her hands.

"You did stand very still for the cotton form last week, so it was only ever to be a few adjustments on the final dress." Frau Eder turned around, her eyes running over Maria top to bottom. "You can…" She sighed with a little shake of her head. "Off with it and back into your old clothes. It won't be too long to finish the last details." Frau Eder sighed again. "He did demand quite the fast delivery."

"Was it so fast?"

"If you did work in a dress shop, you know it was. But do hand it back."

Maria was already twisting her arms around in a search for the zipper tucked into the curve of her neck as she blushed, just catching the very tip of it. The next time...She gulped as she tugged her hand back and hurried away—grabbing for her old dress as she did—hiding in the same corner she had earlier to peel the dress away and throw on her old one. (She folded it more carefully than the one she had run up herself.) Her old life, almost. It had been a silly question, she knew that as she she straightened the uneven seams of her dark green dress over her shoulders, asking if Georg had demanded Frau Eder finish everything quickly. Everything seemed to have happened that way.

Whether it was the months since they had met or just the conversations over the last two weeks...or maybe three, Maria had lost count. But it all seemed so fast as well. She ran her palms over the bottom half of her dress to smooth away wrinkles that weren't actually there—and her hands started to wander around to her side— She caught her fingers in her skirt before she let herself imagine what might have happened if she hadn't stiffened that afternoon, the tips of his fingers picking at the laces of her dress. She still didn't even know why she had sewn them in when she preferred dresses that could simply be pulled over her head.

It had disappointed her, Georg's decision to have the wedding in a courthouse almost as soon the ink dried on the certificate. But...She took another deep breath. Even yesterday evening, she had seen it his eyes, the hunger as he walked away as she prepared to tumble up the stairs to her room. I'm sure you know...Maria licked her lips as she wandered into the center of the fitting room again. But I'm not being honest with myself, am I, saying I want to wait for you much longer. The priest would want to lecture us, I'm sure, and there would be the banns. She caught her right hand in her messy knot of hair. And I don't know—but I know what I want, just like you said.

"But I do think that's you finally done, Maria." She stumbled over something—was there anything on the floor, or had she just scuffed the toe of her shoe again? Frau Eder just sighed with a shake of her head, now returning her gaze to her basket of pins and ribbons. "Oh really, child, I can't do much more...more for you."

"I'm sorry?"

"You'll find out soon enough. But you'll have to figure out the shoes on your own, I can't do those for you."

Maria grinned, the rising tension in her belly as she thought about...well, everything, though it was suddenly a little less worrisome. "I wouldn't expect you to know," she said as she glanced about for her coat. Even this late in the spring, the cold still sometimes bit at her arms and legs too much to tuck it into the cupboard at...home. I suppose it won't be that for much longer. "You aren't…" She couldn't stop herself laughing, now. "You aren't my fairy godmother, like Cinderella had."

The woman stood up, now turned back from her basket of notions. "Of course not! I wouldn't have the time even if they existed."

Maria bit her lip as she tossed her coat over her shoulders, finally finding it laying across the only chair in the room. Probably where mothers sit when their daughters are having a fine dress made. I just can't ever imagine it, not really. At least not during my childhood—and I don't even have memories of my mother to know if she would have wanted to do that alongside me. If Father could have afforded it. I suppose he must have been able to do, how he traveled—

"And my seamstresses wouldn't have the time, either."

Maria sighed, her fingers fastening a couple of the buttons around her waist. This morning had been too chilly, and nothing had probably changed in the last hour or so. "It's only been a few appoint—"

"And a number of long evenings in between." Frau Eder waved her hand toward the door back to the very front room. "You really don't understand."

"I told you, I did work in a shop like this—"

"And if that's all you can think, you've just told me how much you don't understand."

Maria caught her fingers in her coat, cringing against the worn fabric, though she supposed it had survived its years of wear well. "I must not."

Still in the middle of the fitting room that had been very nearly her home for years—watching the girl tuck a hand into this jacket pocket, then her other hand into the opposite like she was searching for something—Frau Eder sighed. It was a struggle not to click her tongue against the back of her teeth as though she was being frustrated by one of her own children. "I suppose you will the moment he has you alone," she murmured as she followed the girl through to the front room. The way you cringed that first day when I had to measure you so closely, you can't have any idea yet. "But…" She cleared her throat, now speaking louder. You'll learn soon enough. "My daughter will help you settle the account."

Maria turned around. She was certain she had heard something, like the dressmaker was talking to herself before she mentioned the account, though she still didn't know what that meant. "Settle it?" Everything she had ever paid for was just from the money in her pocket. Even her foster mother had never had an account.

Frau Eder shook her head again. "You really are young, Maria, and I think I can tell what part of Salzburg you hail from—"

"I'm from Vienna!" Maria half-shouted as she turned back. "And why does everyone think I'm so young—"

"It doesn't matter the city, if you don't quite know what I meant." She held her arm out, ready for the girl to finally head out. "But I do have to look for the fabric for the next dress I'm measuring."

Maria sighed, her arms crossed across her chest. "Of course."

The next wait seemed to last forever, the sun burning through the window, suddenly leaving her warm enough that she thought about stripping her coat away as she peered down. The minutes wore on a few out a time, Maria glancing this way and that as she wondered if she should have brought something to do. A stack of her papers to mark, though how she would have done so...Even a book to try to read, though her mind was always distracted these days by...everything. Just a few weeks and she would have a ring on her now bare hand, the same as her foster mother still did even though...She didn't know how long it had been since her husband—was it Leonard, she couldn't remember—had died, she had never even met the man.

A short commotion brought Maria's face up from the floor, the same woman she remembered from her last visits and just an hour before flicking through the pages of the ledger Maria had come to expect to see. "We don't have all day—Maria," she muttered, her pen in her mouth before it landed on the ledger.

"Oh!" Maria scrambled from the window, her coat flapping. "I didn't mean—"

"Well, don't take forever. There's someone else coming for their final fitting in ten minutes."

"But she said—"

"Can you only think on one thing at a time?"

"No, and I wouldn't dream—"

"Hmm?" The blue eyes came up.

Maria swallowed. No matter how she had been taken away by the little glimpses of glistening fabric she could never imagine stitching herself, something here had always unsettled Maria, like it was someplace she belong. "I wouldn't dream of slowing them, that's all."

The woman's eyes were down again. "I'm sure."

The silence was too much for Maria, just broken by the scraping of that pen's nib across the ledger and an occasional murmur as the ink seemed to be running low. A little whisper as the woman leaned down like she was peering at numbers, trying to do some maths in her head, not even looking back as Frau Eder—the younger woman's mother, Maria reminded herself—wandered back in, clearly in a quick search here and there for a new fabric she wanted behind those dresses on display. The next woman, she assumed as the dressmaker's daughter finally glanced up again. "It won't take that long," she finally said. "We always knew that we would send the bill, I just needed a few minutes to add it all up. Who is the account holder?"

Maria stepped forward to the counter, hands caught on the wooden edge. "My fiancé."

"Odd."

"How so?"

She shook her head. "We don't fill many...But I guess it doesn't matter that much. What is his surname?"

"Trapp." Maria smiled again. In just a few weeks—I think it's less than that—it will be mine, too. "Georg Trapp."

"I beg your pardon?"

The pen that had still been scratching along across the columns and rows dug down, hard and deep, and the happy churning in Maria's stomach suddenly turned sour. "Is something wrong?"

The woman shook her head—almost frantically. "No, nothing. I'm sure settling it with him will be fine."

"I'm sure there won't be anything wrong with it." Maria swallowed another laugh. "I complain so much whenever he gives me anything. I'm…" She couldn't look at the Frau Eder's daughter any longer. She spun around, just wanting another breath—

Even with his back to her, she would always recognize Georg. The dark hair combed back over his head—the grey stripes on his jacket she had come to know—the suit well set on his shoulders unlike her lumpy coat. Oh, you did come for me today. "I…" Maria glanced down around her feet: she hadn't dropped anything—but she hadn't brought anything, not even those papers she could have marked. "I'm sorry—" Her heart always began to race now as soon as she saw him. "I need to go. He's waiting for me."

"Of course," the woman muttered, a dark mark now across the page detailing the old von Trapp account. "As he asked, we will…Just like—"

"What?" Maria waved through the window, though Georg's back was still to her.

"Don't worry about it, it's nothing for you to be concerned about, I think."

Ingrid closed the ledger, not worrying about the smear of black ink she would see when they had to write the invoice and send the bill out to Aigen or wherever they always had. The telegram scheduling the appointment had asked for the bill to be sent to the same address, though neither she nor the young girl who received it had really paid attention to the name. "Some afternoon next week," she murmured as she tucked the book away, "or even next Saturday, you should be able to—pick it up." The girl wasn't even listening, she could see that. "Certainly by Saturday."

"Oh...thank you. But—I really must go."

The girl didn't turn back before hurrying through the door; really, she couldn't quite remember her name despite how it must have been scribbled to set the first appointment and subsequent fittings. She rose up on her toes, struggling to see through the glare. The girl was already in his arms—a kiss pressed to her cheek—a hand pushing some of the loosened hair back from her face. You don't know, do you? And the last Ingrid could see before she vanished, his hand around her back. "Mama!" she shouted.

The hiss was loud enough to hear from the fitting room. "I've plenty to do, getting ready for the next fitting and preparing—"

"I know, but I need you." As she heard her mother's puttering steps, Ingrid grabbed for the account ledger again, opening it as her fingers scrabbled to find the page she had just lost. No, that's too far. She flipped back—and finally there, the fresh smear of ink.

"What?"

Ingrid reached for her mother's arm, dragging her closer, her finger on the page with a fresh smear of black under the curve of her nail. "Georg von Trapp. We made so many dresses for his wife, even one she said was for their eldest daughter." She ran her fingertip down through the long list: dates and names and prices going back years ago.

"What?"

"Didn't you read the telegram when it came?"

Frau Eder shook her head, already turning back to the piled fabrics shoved as far back as they could be behind those dresses wealthy men finally realized they couldn't afford for their mistresses. "There are too many accounts to keep in mind, darling, and I don't look at them every day the way you do. And I can't even say who took it in."

Ingrid snapped the book closed again—shoved it back beneath the counter where it belonged. "But why was she here, then?"

A shake of the head, a ream of cloth gently pulled from the middle of one stack with a gentle thud as the rest sank down. "Life goes on, you know that as well as I do."

"She's just so young—and then what happened to her?"

"I still don't understand what you—"

"Come here!" With her clean hand, Ingrid knocked the bolt from her mother's hand, not worrying as it landed on the wooden floor, long ago scratched by shoes and cabinets moved here and there as the business grew too big for tiny stacks of silk and satin and lace from the far corners of the world.

She pulled her mother across to the door, half-dragged her onto the street. "There! I know you can't see quite what I saw, I think, when she was just out there." Even as the pair was walking away—Georg von Trapp's hand around her back, almost holding her to him as though he already possessed her—the dichotomy was clear to see. The suit that, even from here, Ingrid could see was properly tailored, cut for him alone. Shoes that would shine with just a moment's attention. Hair that probably saw a barber frequently. But then...All of you, Maria. You're not quite anything like him. "I know he wouldn't have been here—men never are—but—"

"It isn't our concern."

"But—"

"What are you worried over?"

"Even from here, you can see he could be her father, he's that old. Not even Papa was like—"

"Darling, there's nothing we can do." Her mother was already turning back into the shop. "And we have enough to do today, including the final adjustments on her dress."

Ingrid sighed as the door's hinges squealed, the click of the knob leaving her alone on the edge of the street. Leaning a little to the side, she could still see the pair of them as they walked away. "It's not right, something, I just can't say what." She frowned as the girl—Maria, she finally remembered—turned to him, a kiss of her own against his cheek. "I do hope you're careful with yourself, you seem nice enough. I don't think you know you're playing with fire."

A/N: I have no idea how you have a dress made, so I'm just running with it. Was Frau Eder inspired by Fairy Godmother from the 2015 Cinderella? 100%.