My face soured, even though he hadn’t added “proper,” which to me was as bad as any profanity. It was one of those “lock and chain” words that restricted you to the point of screaming. I had been hoping to go shopping only with my father, who would stand on the sidelines laughing while I ran wild with my selections.

“Apparently, I have no choice but to do so,” my mother said, pursing her lips and narrowing her eyes with frustration. “Now that you’ve gone and done it.”

Despite her ugly faces of disapproval and what I believed were her efforts to hide her natural beauty out of some silly, stern modesty, my mother was an attractive woman with nearly perfect features. She was tall and regal and had hands as pretty as mine. When I would catch her sitting quietly by herself, her face was like one carved in ivory, a cameo, and her blue-gray eyes, not stained with anger or disgust, would be strikingly attractive. Why else would my father have married her? Her family hadn’t been as well off as his. As difficult as it was for me to believe, there must have been some iota of romantic love between them.

“What terrible thing have I done?” my father asked, obviously fighting a smile, the smile his eyes betrayed.

“You’ve opened Pandora’s box, Harrington Dixon. That’s what you have done.”

I hope so, I thought.

“Well, actually, there is something special that would require us to do some shopping for Corrine as well as you anyway, Rosemary,” my father said.

“And that is?” my mother asked, tucking in the right side of her mouth. If she only realized how ugly that made her and how it would eventually add more wrinkles in her face, she would stop doing it, I thought.

“Simon Wexler, the chairman of the bank’s board of trustees, and his wife have decided to celebrate their tenth anniversary with a gala at their home on May fifteenth. It will be a formal affair, of course. You two will need new dresses. For Corrine, it will truly be like her coming out. And it’s time she did.”

“Really, Daddy?”

Were my feet off the ground?

His eyes twinkled his yes, which made my heart race with the possibilities. I would be making a grand entrance at a gala attended by the rich and powerful, their wives wearing the latest in fashion. I would finally step onto the stage as a young woman and not a child tagging along behind her parents.