The shop was dark except for the bench lamp. I locked the door behind me and stood there a second, coat still on.
The photo was in my bag. It felt heavier than paper.
I unfolded it on the bench under the lamp and held the corners down with two fingers.
A summer party. A young woman laughing at someone off camera. Long auburn hair.
And a green coat with three dark buttons and a tear at the pocket.
There was a small mirror over my sink. Cloudy at the corners. I used it for my hair and nothing else.
I walked over to it. My boots sounded loud in a shop with nobody else in it.
Dark hair, chin length. Brown eyes. A face with no makeup left on it.
Vivienne's voice came back to me, tidy as a bill. She'd said I looked familiar from a certain angle.
The coat was on the hook. I put it on.
It still smelled like the gallery. Polish, cold air, other people's money.
I looked in the glass, and the picture looked back.
Isla: There she is.
Not me. Younger. Happier. The one he never got over.
Same hair. Same coat. Same small tear, closed with my own needle and thread.
I wasn't imagining it. Somebody had already done the math for me.
I pulled my hands out of my pockets and held them up to the light.
Strong hands. A callus on the middle finger. A burn scar from a soldering iron.
Those hands were not hers. Nobody could copy that.
I took the coat off, slow, like it might bite me.
The photo went face down in the top drawer, with the dead receipts and the ring I hadn't looked at since spring.
At Pryce House, the lights were still on in Declan's office. He sat with the corrected card on his desk, her handwriting pressed hard into the paper.
He had looked at that case three times and missed the fork. She had seen it in ten seconds.
Vivienne: Still here? I thought you'd have driven her home.
Vivienne stood in the door with her wrap over one arm, easy as a cat in cream silk.
Declan: She drove herself.
Vivienne: Of course she did.
Vivienne: She's very good at what she does. I'll give her that much.
Declan: What did you say to her by the window?
Vivienne: The truth. You should try it. It's cheaper than what your lawyers offered.
He read her line one more time. Then he folded the slip and put it in his inside pocket instead of the bin.
He told himself it was evidence.
Back on Gilt Row I turned the bench lamp up and put the loupe in.
Lucinda Pryce's watch lay in the cradle, face up. Cleve had dropped it off in a paper bag with her card.
Twelve years of dust inside it, and a promise to keep.
I opened the case and the smell came up. Old oil, old dust, a hinge nobody had touched in years.
I laid the parts out in the order they came apart. Screw, screw, bridge, crown wheel, barrel.
Each part got cleaned, checked, and set down in its place. No shortcuts. Not tonight.
My hands knew what to do, and the rest of me went quiet behind them.
Then I opened the ledger and picked up my pen.
Every service gets a page. Every part, written by hand, in order.
Date. Case number. Part. Condition. What I did to it.
Balance staff, worn. Replaced. Pallet fork, cleaned and oiled. Two jewels re-set.
I wrote it all out until my wrist ached. Under the last line I wrote my name.
Isla. Just Isla, like before the contract and after it.
The photo stayed face down in the drawer. The coat stayed on its hook. Neither one of them was me.
I caught my own face in the dark shop window on the way out. This time I didn't look for her in it.
Let Vivienne keep the picture. The work had my name on it, and that was the part nobody could take.