The old ache came back so fast it took the air out of my lungs.
My gaze moved to Derek.
He was standing just beyond the fitting area, one hand in his pocket, the other curled uselessly around the stem of a champagne glass. Tall, handsome, expensively dressed, with the same polished ease that had first drawn me to him at a charity gala eighteen months earlier. He had one of those faces that photographed beautifully and apologized well. In another life, maybe that would have been enough.
But in that moment, while his mother’s words still hung in the air for everyone to inspect, Derek looked down at the carpet as though the weave of it had become unexpectedly fascinating.
He did not say my name.
He did not tell her to stop.
He did not step toward me.
His silence spread through my chest like cold water.
Constance smiled, almost sadly, as though she were the gracious one, the practical one, the woman willing to say what others were too refined to mention. She adjusted the cuff of her cream silk jacket and glanced around the salon with the faint awareness of an audience. She enjoyed an audience. Women like her always did. They called it poise when they possessed it and impropriety when anyone else did.
“I’m only trying to spare you embarrassment, Vivian,” she said. “These things matter in our circles. White has meaning. Tradition has meaning. One should be respectful of both.”
Tabitha, Derek’s younger sister, shifted her designer handbag higher on her arm and looked away before I could catch her eye. Aunt Margot gave a tiny, approving nod, as if Constance had merely corrected an error in place settings at a formal dinner.
Twelve strangers watched me decide what kind of woman I was going to be.
A sales associate with a name tag that read MIRANDA looked as if she might cry.
I climbed carefully down from the platform, because women in fourteen-thousand-dollar gowns do not stumble no matter how hard someone is trying to make them bleed.
“Okay,” I said.
Constance blinked once. “I beg your pardon?”
“You’re right,” I replied, and smiled. It was the smile I used in negotiations when a man across the table mistook stillness for weakness and confidence for permission. “I’ll change.”
For the first time since she had spoken, something uncertain flickered across her face. She had expected tears, perhaps anger, perhaps a pleading explanation about how I understood etiquette, how I meant no offense, how I wanted very much to do things the right way.
Instead, I turned, gathered a handful of skirt, and walked back into the dressing room.
Inside, the air smelled of perfume and steamed fabric and my own rising fury. The consultant who had zipped me in followed me with trembling hands.
“I am so sorry,” she whispered.
I met her eyes in the mirror. She looked young, maybe twenty-three, with soft brown curls pinned back at the nape of her neck and the expression of someone discovering in real time that wealth and cruelty often attended the same events.
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