Patrice looks magnificent.
She’s standing in the corner of my office in a floor-length gown that catches the afternoon light and throws it back in shards of violet and gold, the silk shimmering with the kind of depth that only happens when you get the dye ratio exactly right. I spent three weeks on that color. Three weeks of samples and rejections and one very dramatic argument with my textile supplier in Milan who insisted the shade I wanted didn’t exist, to which I replied that it would exist when I was finished inventing it. He sent me fourteen test swatches. I rejected thirteen. The fourteenth was close enough that I could work with it, and what I built from that starting point is now draped across Patrice’s fiberglass shoulders like a second skin made of crushed amethyst.
I’m calling the color Regal Plum. Not because it’s regal or particularly plum-like, but because the name sounds like something a woman would wear to a gala where she intends tobe remembered, and that’s exactly the customer I designed it for. The gown is the centerpiece of the new fall collection, and it’s the first piece I’ve created since the relaunch that made me stand in front of the mirror in my office and think:there she is.The designer I used to be, before Greg hollowed out the company and my confidence in the same slow, methodical stroke.
Patrice wears it well. She always does. Fifteen years of standing in this corner, absorbing my best and worst ideas without complaint, and she’s never once asked for a raise. Employee of the century.
I ease down into my desk chair, one hand bracing against the armrest, my five-months-pregnant belly requiring a new choreography for even the simplest movements. My hand goes to my belly, where the bump is now undeniable, the kind of round that strangers feel entitled to comment on and touch, both of which I’ve discouraged through a combination of no direct eye contact and the specific tone of voice I reserve for people who reach for me without invitation.
My phone chimes from my desk, bursting with excitement.Celeste! Another message you’re too busy to respond to!
Raven, who became one of the most unexpectedly important people in my life, who texts me photos of Wren’s birthday gift options with the chaotic enthusiasm of a favorite aunt who has no concept of age-appropriate presents.
I pick up my phone. Her latest text arrived an hour ago: a photo of a tortoise at a pet store with the caption:Wren would love this. Please say yes.
Her most recent message is just a slurry of question marks.
Me
We are absolutely not giving a one-year-old a tortoise, Raven.
Her reply is immediate.
Raven
Turtles are educational.
Me
Perhaps. But what you’re looking at is a tortoise and a possible EIGHTY YEAR commitment. She already has a dog… That eats my shoes.
Raven
See? Dogs eat shoes. Turtles eat lettuce. Seems like an upgrade.
Sorry.
I mean tortoise. Just consider it!
I set the phone down and make a mental note to have Saylor intercept whatever package Raven brings to the party, because I know with absolute certainty that this woman is going to show up in two weeks with a tortoise in a box and a grin on her face, and Wren is going to lose her mind with joy. Powerless, I’m going to end up with a reptile in my kitchen and no one to blame but myself for befriending a woman whose approach to gift-giving mirrors her approach to surrogacy: excessive, generous, and completely impossible to refuse.
Heels strike the hallway floor outside my office—deliberate, rhythmic, unmistakable—the sound of someone who walks as if each footfall is punctuation at the end of a sentence. I know that walk. I’ve been hearing it for eleven months, ever since the woman attached to it signed the paperwork that made her my business partner. I have come to associate the sound with a very specific emotional blend of gratitude, affection, and the urge to hide under my desk.
Eleanor sweeps through the office door without knocking.
She never knocks. Knocking implies that the person on the other side has the option of saying no, and Eleanor has not recognized the word “no” as a valid response since approximately nineteen eighty-seven. She’s in a cream blazer with sharp shoulders, tapered trousers, and a silk blouse in a shade of ivory I have yet to name. But I will. Her hair is blown out with so much hairspray it has the architectural integrity of someone who considers her stylist a structural engineer. Her reading glasses hang from a gold chain around her neck, and she’s carrying a leather folio that I’ve learned to interpret as a warning sign, because the folio means she has notes, and Eleanor’s notes are never brief.
“The board meeting went well, I think,” she announces, settling into the chair across from my desk as if she owns half the furniture in this building. Which, technically, she does.
When Eleanor bought out Greg’s stake in the company, she gave him a choice that I will treasure for the rest of my professional life. He could accept a modest severance and walk away clean, or he could stay on in a newly created position she’d designed specifically for him: mailroom coordinator, reporting to a twenty-three-year-old named Benji who had been with the company for six months and already understood more about operations than Greg had absorbed in fifteen years.
Greg took the cash. He left the building in under an hour, and I watched him go from this window, and I didn’t feel triumph or vindication or any of the dramatic emotions you’d expect. I felt the same thing you feel when you finally remove a splinter that’s been embedded so long you forgot it was there. Relief. And the faint surprise of remembering what it feels like when something stops hurting.
“The members seemed quite pleased,” Eleanor continues, crossing her legs and opening the folio. “The quarterlyprojections exceeded expectations. The fall collection pre-orders are strong. And the department heads presented with confidence, which tells me morale is healthy.” She looks at me over her reading glasses. “You’ve done incredible work, Celeste. One year. This company was on life support, and you brought it back. I want you to know that I’m proud of you.”
The words land in a place I didn’t know was still tender. Eleanor says “I’m proud of you” the way other people say “it’s a nice day out”—factually, without fanfare, as though the information is self-evident and she’s merely confirming it for the record. But the fact that she says it at all, this woman who spent the first three months of our partnership communicating primarily through margin notes and disapproving sighs, means something I’m not equipped to process without my eyes doing something embarrassing.
“Thank you, Eleanor. That means a lot.”
