Chapter 2 — The Dress for the Wrong Woman

Three days later, Graham asked me to meet him at the Vale Hotel to choose a dress for the gala.

I arrived twenty minutes early.

The top-floor ballroom smelled of polished stone, cut greenery, and lilies. I stopped just inside the service corridor when the scent caught in my throat.

Lilies. Hundreds of them.

Graham had known me for seven years. He had watched me leave restaurants with swollen eyes after a centerpiece was placed too close to my table.

Or perhaps he had only watched Sloane.

Her voice drifted from the ballroom.

“You really think she’ll say yes?”

“She said she would come,” Graham answered.

Sloane laughed. “Maeve has always confused effort with love. You send a few gifts, kneel in the snow, and suddenly she thinks she has earned a place in your life again.”

“Don’t be cruel.”

“I’m being accurate. You’re doing this because I asked. She is doing it because she still wants you. We both know which one is more embarrassing.”

Graham did not defend me.

He only said, “It’s a transaction, Sloane. It ends at the gala.”

I waited until Sloane stepped away, then walked in.

Graham turned, his face rearranging itself into warmth. “There you are.”

Sloane wore cream silk and a smile that belonged in a magazine advertisement. “Maeve. I’ve heard so much about this dress.”

“That must be exhausting for you,” I said.

For one second, the smile slipped.

Graham moved toward a garment bag. “I had something made.”

The dress inside was ivory, beaded at the shoulders, exquisitely expensive and entirely wrong for me. It made me think of wedding photographs, of being positioned beside Graham as proof that he had made a respectable choice.

“It’s beautiful,” I said.

Sloane’s eyes narrowed, as if she had expected tears.

I walked slowly through the ballroom. The flower wall stood beside the stage, opposite the audio console. A smaller door led to a staff corridor. Two decorative screens blocked the far corner from the main floor.

I noticed where a phone could be hidden.

I noticed which lights would leave faces visible.

“Are you feeling all right?” Graham asked.

“Fine. The lilies are strong.”

“Sloane loves them,” he said automatically.

The words landed between us. Graham looked at me, finally realizing what he had said.

“I can have them changed.”

“No,” I said. “Please don’t disrupt the room for me.”

I took the dress and the velvet box of jewelry he offered. “I’ll see you next Friday.”

That night, Iris Bell came to my apartment with noodles, two portable chargers, and the expression she wore when a student had tried to paint directly on a radiator.

“Tell me again why we can’t throw his phone into the East River.”

“Because I’d rather make him talk.”

I played her the lounge recording and showed her the screenshots of Graham’s payments, his messages, and Sloane’s social posts from the exact days he claimed to be rebuilding our marriage.

Iris listened without interrupting.

“You want to record the gala,” she said at last.

“I want an original file with timestamps. I want no one to be able to say I invented it.”

“And if they deny it?”

“Then they can deny it while looking at themselves.”

Iris set a hand over mine. “What do you need?”

“A backup phone. A private stream. Someone outside the room who knows when to release it.”

Her mouth tightened. “Done.”

At 9:12 p.m., a message appeared from an unfamiliar number.

Sloane Mercer: We should have lunch. There are things you deserve to know.

I stared at the screen, then smiled for the first time that week.

“She thinks she’s inviting me to surrender,” I told Iris.

“And what are you going to do?”

I picked up the ivory dress and carried it to the closet.

“Let her explain the rules of the game.”

After Iris left, I tried the ivory dress on once.

It fit perfectly. Of course it did. Graham’s assistant had known my measurements better than Graham knew my allergies.

I looked at myself in the mirror and thought of every time I had mistaken being presented for being seen. Then I folded the dress back into its bag and opened my own closet.

At the back hung a dark-blue gown I had bought for a gallery opening with my first paycheck after college. It was simpler than the Vale dress, but it belonged to a version of me who had wanted a life before she wanted Graham.

I sent Iris a photo.

Her reply came at once: Wear that one. It looks like a woman who has a plan.

I smiled, then typed: She does.