What We Had Left

My mother insisted on feeding me before she let me take the letters.

She reheated chicken and rice, set a plate in front of me, and sat opposite until I picked up a fork.

Neither of us mentioned that I had bought her the stove or that I could have ordered dinner from anywhere in the city.

I needed food made by someone who loved me.

While I ate, she told me about the winter the shop closed.

Dad had accepted the Delacroix commission because it seemed like the chance he had spent his working life preparing for. He rented extra space for cutting. He hired help for ordinary alterations so he could finish samples at night.

The promised balance would have paid those expenses.

Instead, the landlord took the keys in March.

"I remember the green boxes," I said.

Mom looked up.

"You sat inside one while we packed. You said it was a boat."

I put down my fork.

"Was I in the way?"

She reached across the table and touched my wrist.

"You were five. You made him laugh on the worst day of his life."

For a while, I could only look at her hand.

My father had worked another twenty years after that. Alterations, wedding suits, emergency hems for women who complained about rush fees. He had never again put his name on a collection.

"Did he stop designing?" I asked.

"He stopped showing people."

She rose and took a framed photograph from the shelf above the radiator.

Dad stood in the old shop with a tape measure around his shoulders. I was beside him in a yellow dress, holding a paper crown crookedly over my hair. Mom had taken the picture on a Sunday before we opened.

I remembered the dress itching under my arms.

I didn't remember the rest.

"Did he know it wasn't because he lacked talent?"

Mom took a long time to answer.

"Some days."

The word settled into me.

I wanted Henry in that kitchen. I wanted him to sit in my chair and hear it without an assistant or an agreement between us.

I wanted something I couldn't arrange.

Mom got up to clear my plate. I caught the edge before she could take it.

"Let me wash up."

She started to object, then handed it over. We stood beside each other at the sink, passing dishes without speaking. For once, there was something small I could finish for her.

"You don't have to turn him into a saint," Mom said.

I looked up.

"Your father was stubborn. He hated asking for help. He could spend forty minutes explaining why nobody else could press a sleeve properly."

I laughed, unexpectedly, and wiped my face.

"Forty minutes if he was in a hurry."

"He was a person. What happened to him was wrong even when he was difficult."

That helped more than she could have known.

I had begun to picture Dad as nothing but a victim. She handed me back the man who burned toast because he refused to turn up the toaster and called every scarf he disliked a table runner.

Before leaving, I asked what she wanted.

"I mean it," I said. "Not what you think would be good for me. What would you like to happen?"

She looked at the coat drawing.

"I want to stop having to explain that he was good."

I nodded.

"Then we'll start there."

On Tuesday morning, Elaine arranged for the letters to be scanned and cataloged. Mom kept the originals until an independent specialist could examine them. Helen's sketchbook stayed in secure company storage after I returned it, with a record of who handled it.

Those were useful, necessary steps.

They did nothing to satisfy the part of me that wanted to march into Henry's office.

Marcus found me staring at the old collection photographs.

"The staff are asking whether they're being paid through the review," he said.

I turned toward him.

"Why wouldn't they be?"

"There are rumors."

"From where?"

He placed his phone on the desk.

An account that covered wealthy New Yorkers had posted a clip from Friday night.

In it, I stood with my phone against my ear. Victoria was visible at the edge of the frame. Her raised hand and the blow were missing.

The caption described an aggressive investor shutting down a beloved family business after insulting its heir.

Below it was a second post: Delacroix employees fear workshop closure under new owners.

I watched my own face without the minutes that explained it.

I looked cold.

I looked exactly like the woman the caption wanted me to be.

"The boutique was closed for a morning inventory," I said.

"I know."

"The workshop isn't closing."

"I know that too."

I scrolled through the comments until I found the first one about my skin.

Then the next.

The familiar suggestions that I was too angry, too loud, undeserving, out of place. People had found a way to call a Black woman aggressive in a video where she barely moved.

I set the phone down.

"Do not show this to my mother."

Marcus's face softened.

"Someone else might."

I hated that he was right.

My own phone rang before I could call her.

Mom didn't bother with hello.

"I saw the video."

"It isn't the whole thing."

"I know. I raised you."

I closed my eyes.

"You don't have to read the comments."

"Neither do you."

After we hung up, I asked Marcus to arrange a meeting with the workroom and shop staff that afternoon.

"All of them," I said. "Paid time. No customers upstairs while we're talking."

Elaine joined us before lunch.

"We have the security recording," she said. "We'll prepare a factual response. Don't answer Victoria yourself."

"Has she said anything?"

Elaine showed me a message sent through Henry's representative.

The family believed an amicable resolution of historical concerns would help prevent further unfortunate publicity.

I read it once.

Then I slid it back.

"Tell them the authorship review continues."

At two, I went upstairs to face the people who were afraid I might take their jobs.

For the first time since Friday, I understood how easily the Delacroix family could make other people pay for a fight they had started.