Love and Fate and a Little Black Dress by Susan McBride

Six years ago, my sister gave me a tarot card reading for my birthday. I was about to turn 41, and I was single. I’d dated plenty of frogs in the preceding months but there was no Prince Charming in sight. I was on the verge of ditching any dreams of ever falling deeply in love: true love, I mean. Maybe I was destined to be alone, which I didn’t consider a terrible crime. But back to the tarot card reading!

Julia had me shuffle the deck and then she arranged the cards and turned them over. “Ah,” she said, brightening when she got to my love life, “you’re going to meet your soul-mate and either be engaged or in a seriously committed relationship by February.”

“February?” I laughed. It was October. That was four months away. Did I mention all the frogs? “Not possible,” I said. “There’s not one guy I know who’s worth a commitment.”

Lo and behold, three weeks later, I met Ed. He’d come to a party sponsored by St. Louis Magazine, which was celebrating its annual issue featuring the city’s “Top Singles” (of which I was one). Ed gave me his card, and I lost it. He emailed an invitation to a hockey game. I accepted. He appeared at a charity auction where he bid to have another date with me, and he won. By January, we were inseparable. By February, we were talking about buying a house, and I knew he was The One. Two years later, we married and, in between, Ed held my hand through my breast cancer diagnosis and treatment.

When I think back on that tarot card reading, I get chills. Was Ed’s and my relationship fated? Was it written in the stars? Yeah, I think it was. We met at precisely the right time, just when I was happy and secure enough to open my eyes a little wider when it came to the people I let into my life. Ed had been going through years of graduate school, earning his doctorate, taking time off to work, and finally finding his place in a start-up company. If we’d met any sooner, our lives might not have clicked so perfectly.

That got me thinking hard about true love and destiny: themes that weigh heavily in my second women’s fiction book, LITTLE BLACK DRESS. The storyline involves two sisters, Anna and Evie, who have very different places in their family. Anna is the baby and the drama queen who attracts the most attention. Evie is smart and quiet and used to seeing everyone’s eyes on Anna. On the eve of Anna’s wedding in 1961, they come into possession of a black dress thought to foretell the future of its wearers. Anna dons it for her rehearsal dinner and, by the next morning, she’s vanished.

The note Anna leaves her sister says only this: I had to do it, Evie. I wasn’t meant to marry Davis. The dress showed me everything so clearly. How could I ignore my destiny?

Evie’s left to wonder what her sister saw that made her run, and she believes the dress is cursed. Trying to dispose of it only results in her glimpsing her own fate, one that involves a young man whom she’d never laid eyes on before. As Evie gets to know Jonathan, as he gently romances her and they find true love, she cannot imagine herself without him. Many years later, she wonders if they would have met without the dress. She wants to believe their paths would have crossed regardless.

Even Evie’s daughter, Toni, can’t escape the magic of the black dress a generation later. She thinks she’s found a good match with a man who is steady and reliable, who makes her feel content. But is he really The One? Once the dress shows her a vision of her future far removed from what she’d imagined, she begins to question their relationship and wonder if she was settling for a good man—but the wrong man—for all the wrong reasons.

As Bridget, one of the characters in LITTLE BLACK DRESS, advises Toni, “Sometimes you just have to accept the magic that comes into your life and leave it be.”

Amen to that, Sister. Sometimes you just have to believe.

Susan McBride is the author of Little Black Dress, on sale 8/23. Her past novels include The Cougar Club and the award-winning Debutante Dropout mysteries.

To celebrate the release of Little Black Dress, Susan is giving readers the chance to win a set of gorgeous freshwater pearls, and 5 lucky runners-up will win a copy of the book! Enter HERE.