For the first time since I entered, I let myself breathe.
Cosima came to stand beside the table. She wore her ordinary dark dress, her hair pulled cleanly back, her small notebook tucked under one arm. Her attention touched me only briefly before moving to the dress.
“The fitting may proceed,” she said.
Caswell’s mouth tightened.
I finally removed my coat.
Rev took it from me before either fitting woman could reach for it. Her fingers brushed mine, quick and warm.
“Awful room,” she murmured.
“Terrible flowers,” I muttered back.
Then she stepped away and became, with alarming ease, a girl holding a coat on the edges.
The taller woman lifted the dress.
“Arms.”
I raised them and the silk came down over my head.
For one second, everything went green and dark. The fabric slid over my hair, my shoulders, my wrists. It smelled faintly of cedar and something else less pleasant. The stale air of a closed trunk. A life folded away before it had finished being lived.
Then my head came through the collar and the room returned.
The dress was too long.
Too loose at the waist.
Too narrow at the ribs.
It remembered a body I did not have.
My mother’s shape.
The thought hurt in a place I hadn’t braced for.
The mirrors gave me back to myself three times.
In all three, I looked like a girl being dressed as a ghost.
Rev looked away from the mirrors.
She didn’t want to see it either.
“The brooch,” I said.
The shorter fitting woman had been reaching for the left sleeve.
Her hand stopped.
Caswell’s eyes moved to me.
“What brooch?” he asked.
“My mother’s.”
