“Okay,” I said. “Half from each, when it’s there. Not a debt hanging over the relationship. Just an acknowledgment.”
“Yeah,” she said. “That.”
## The Dress Elise Found
Elise found a dress. She didn’t ask for my help, which I think was right — there was something she needed to do herself, in her own time, without me looking over her shoulder. She sent me a photo about three weeks after our coffee.
It was off-the-rack from a bridal shop that does samples and overstock. Simple silhouette, clean lines, ivory with a slight warm tone that works with her coloring in a way my gray-white silk might not have anyway. Not exactly what she’d planned on, but genuinely pretty. The kind of dress that doesn’t need to be anything else.
She paid nine hundred for it plus a hundred and fifty for alterations at a different shop. Eleven hundred and fifty total. Significantly under her original fifteen hundred budget, which meant she had money left for something else — shoes, a veil, whatever she actually wanted.
I told her I thought it looked great. I meant it.
## What My Mother Did
My mother called the family members she had misled — specifically my aunt Susan and my cousin Dana, who had apparently been told a version of the story in which I had enthusiastically offered the dress — and corrected it. She did this without being prompted by me, which is worth noting. It happened about a week after my conversation with Elise, so I think Elise may have said something to her, but I don’t know for certain.