Chương 6
“I can go too.”
Emily nodded.
“Maybe.”
There was something careful in her face.
I squeezed her hand and walked toward Daniel.
I did not go far.
Mothers develop selective respect for privacy.
Madison approached Emily slowly.
“I’m sorry.”
Emily leaned against the edge of a table.
“For what?”
“For last week.”
“You didn’t say anything.”
“That’s why.”
Emily’s expression shifted.
Madison looked over her shoulder toward the door.
“My mom does that.”
“Does what?”
“Says something awful and then acts like everyone else made it awkward.”
Emily said nothing.
Madison rubbed the gold clasp on her bag with her thumb.
“I should’ve said something.”
“Maybe.”
“I wanted to.”
“That doesn’t really count.”
“I know.”
Emily’s answer could have been cruel.
It wasn’t.
She just looked tired.
Madison nodded.
“I know.”
For a few seconds they watched the room.
A waiter carried away empty glasses.
Someone near the display table laughed too loudly.
A photographer was arguing with a lighting assistant about a reflector.
Madison touched the Gucci bag again.
“I don’t even like this.”
Emily glanced at it.
“The bag?”
“Yeah.”
“Then why were you screaming when you opened it?”
Madison gave her a sideways look.
“Because it costs more than my laptop.”
Emily laughed.
“So that automatically makes it exciting?”
“At first.”
“That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“I know.”
Madison smiled.
It was the first normal expression I had seen on her all night.
Then she looked down.
“Mom does this thing where gifts become evidence.”
Emily frowned.
“Evidence of what?”
“That she’s a good mom.”
Madison said it quickly, then looked guilty.
“I shouldn’t have said that.”
Emily shrugged.
“I’m not recording you.”
“That’s exactly what somebody recording me would say.”
Emily laughed again.
Madison’s shoulders loosened.
Then her eyes moved toward the garment display.
“Did you really make all of those?”
“Most of the construction.”
“By yourself?”
“I had help with two fittings and the embroidery.”
Madison stared at her.
“How?”
“A lot of caffeine.”
“No, seriously.”
“So am I.”
Madison walked toward the miniature display of the charcoal suit.
She bent slightly to study the seams.
“I thought you were just drawing.”
“I was.”
“You never told us.”
“You never asked.”
Madison straightened.
That landed harder than Emily intended.
“I guess I didn’t.”
Emily looked at her.
Madison’s mouth tightened.
“I’m not blaming you.”
“I know.”
“No, I mean, I’m just realizing I’ve been kind of a jerk.”
“You’re not that bad.”
“That is not a glowing endorsement.”
“It’s what I have right now.”
Madison nodded.
“I’ll take it.”
I turned away before they noticed me listening.
Daniel had built a plate containing enough cheese to support a small agricultural economy.
“You heard all of that?” he asked.
“No.”
“You have your lying face.”
“I don’t have a lying face.”
“You have a face for everything.”
He handed me a cracker.
I ate it.
For a minute we stood beside each other without speaking.
The room felt different now that the initial shock had worn off.
Questions were replacing astonishment.
Where would Emily study?
What exactly had she agreed to?
How much of this life had already begun without us?
Daniel voiced the one I had been avoiding.
“New York.”
“I heard.”
“She’s seventeen.”
“For another six months.”
“That is not comforting.”
“I wasn’t trying to comfort you.”
He looked across the room at her.
Emily was showing Madison something on her phone.
They were both laughing.
“She’s going to leave.”
“Yes.”
Daniel took a piece of cheese from his plate, then put it back.
“She was always going to leave.”
“Yes.”
“I just thought it would be for something normal.”
“College is normal.”
“Not this version.”
I looked at him.
“What version did you have planned?”
He smiled faintly.
“One where she calls every Sunday because her roommate is annoying and needs money for textbooks.”
“She can still do that.”
“She’ll call us from Milan because some famous person ruined a sleeve.”
“That seems specific.”
“I’m spiraling.”
“A little.”
He rubbed his forehead.
Then he laughed quietly.
“Our kid did this.”
“I know.”
“We had no idea.”
“I know.”
“That bothers me.”
There it was.
The pride and the wound sitting beside each other.
It bothered me too.
Not because Emily had kept a secret.
Because she had apparently believed she needed to.
When the reception ended, we drove home in near silence.
Emily fell asleep twenty minutes outside Dallas with her head against the window.
Her phone rested loosely in her lap.
Notifications kept lighting the screen.
Daniel reached over at a stoplight and turned the phone facedown.
“She looks exhausted.”
“She is.”
“Should we wake her?”
“No.”
“She’ll complain about her neck tomorrow.”
“She complains anyway.”
He smiled.
The highway stretched dark in front of us.
I watched Emily’s reflection in the side window.
The girl in that reflection looked exactly like the one who had left home that morning.
That felt important.
By Monday, however, the rest of the world had started noticing.
A video of Emily’s runway speech appeared online before breakfast.
By lunch, it had been reposted by two fashion accounts with audiences larger than our entire hometown.
By three, the bridal shop where Emily worked had received eleven calls asking whether “the young designer” still did alterations.
Her manager, Denise, called me because Emily was in class.
“Is this real?”
“Yes.”
“You knew?”
“Not until Saturday.”
Denise laughed so loudly I had to move the phone away.
“That sneaky little thing.”
Then her voice softened.
“She used my back room for fittings.”
I sat up straighter.
“You knew?”
“Some of it.”
“How much is some?”
“I knew she was entering something.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“She asked me not to.”
“Denise.”
“She paid for her materials herself, showed up for every shift, and never asked me for anything except use of the fitting room after closing.”
May you like
I could hear a sewing machine running behind her.
“She wanted to know whether she could do it without her parents making it safe for her.”
