On the nightstand, the binder waits where they set it. Someone put a sticky note on it. Valentina’s handwriting, neat and practical.
No decisions tonight.
Another beneath it in Alessia’s loopy script.
Cake still an option.
I smile, small and private. Then I open the binder. Not to choose. To see how heavy it is when I hold it in my own hands.
The lace swatch slides out and hits my thigh. I pick it up. It’s soft and stubborn, edges raw where someone cut it down to something manageable. I press it between my fingers, and it stays warm the way fabric does when a person won’t let go.
My phone lights again, face-down, a square of glow against the table. It wants me to turn it over. I don’t.
Instead, I close the binder and shove it beneath the bed where I can’t see it. Duchess complains at the movement, paws flexing. I scratch between her ears until the sound in her chest smooths out again.
When I finally lie down and pull the duvet over both of us, the room goes dark enough that the city can’t find its way in. The quiet doesn’t feel like surrender. It feels like a room I locked from the inside.
There’s a future coming. People are building it for me in other rooms. Picking flowers. Measuring aisles. Scheduling fittings. I’ll meet it when I have to.
For now, I keep my hand on the cat and my eyes on the dark and let myself be the one thing I haven’t been allowed to be in weeks. At peace with everything. I’m so tired of fighting.
44
MARA
ONE MONTH LATER
The boutique smells like flowers that have been dying beautifully for hours.
Someone sprayed perfume in the air before we arrived, the kind that tries too hard to smell like roses. It lingers over the racks of white and ivory, over the mirrored walls, over everything I don’t want to touch. The sound of hangers sliding across metal is soft and constant, like the whisper of fabric trying to convince itself it’s special.
Valentina moves through the space with practiced ease, all poise and quiet grace. Her mother-in-law energy could tame lions. Or stylists.
Alessia, on the other hand, refused to come the second she heardOrlo’s motherwould be there. Smart woman. She texted me before we walked in.
Alessia
If she says the word “classic” more than twice, pretend to faint.
I might, actually.
Orlo’s mother, Vera Chernov, stands at the center of it all—tall, sharp, wrapped in fur even though we’re indoors. Her accent cuts every word into perfect shapes.
“We will start with silhouettes,” she says, as if commanding a boardroom. “Mara, dear, do you prefer structure or fluidity?”
I blink at her reflection in the mirror. “I’m sorry?”
She waves a jeweled hand. “The dress. You must know your own essence.”
Essence.I almost laugh. I barely know where I am half the time.
Valentina saves me. “Something light. Simple. Elegant.”
“Of course,” Vera replies, not listening. “Bring the couture rack.”
A woman in black scurries off. Another wheels in a line of dresses that look like ghosts waiting to be chosen.
Vera claps once, delighted. “Try these. We’ll see what speaks to you.”
