Wearing an Emerald Green Dress on My Birthday Cost Me My Husband

“Your family is planning a dinner, isn’t he?” she asked, adjusting a hanger near me. “I think it is time you did something just for yourself.”

The words felt heavy in the quiet room. I looked at the tag hanging from the sleeve: one hundred and forty dollars.

“The dressing room is right through there,” she said, gently taking the hanger off the rod and pressing the silk into my hands.

Inside the small curtained booth, the mirror was framed in warm yellow bulbs. I took off my denim jacket, unbuttoned my plain cotton shirt, and let the green dress slide over my head.

The silk was cool against my skin, fitting close around my waist before falling in soft folds to my knees. For a second, I did not recognize the woman in the glass; she looked taller, her shoulders straighter than they had been in years.

I smoothed my hands down my thighs, feeling the weight of the fabric.

“Yes,” I said, my voice barely louder than a whisper.

I took the dress off quickly, as if I were stealing it, and dressed in my own clothes again. My old shirt felt thin and stiff.

At the counter, I counted out seven twenty-dollar bills from the envelope in my purse, the money I had saved from selling my hand-knitted blankets at the autumn fair.

The saleswoman folded the dress into white tissue paper and laid it inside a glossy gray box with a silver ribbon.

The receipt she handed me read exactly one hundred and forty dollars, the ink still slightly damp.

The drive back to the house was quiet, the gray box sitting on the passenger seat like a passenger who knew all my secrets.

When I parked in the driveway, I looked at the front porch, half expecting to see Damon’s car already there, even though it was only three in the afternoon.