The dinner was in the small dining room at Pryce House, under one chandelier that cost more than my shop.
Lucinda had put me on her right. Declan sat across from me, and Vivienne sat beside him.
Lucinda: I heard a man at the club say your name tonight. He said you were the only one who could have saved his watch.
Lucinda: I like hearing my family's name spoken next to good work.
Vivienne smiled at me over her glass. Every hair in place, gold at her ears.
Vivienne: She's talented. Declan always did pick the same look, though.
She said it like a compliment. It felt like being priced.
Declan: That fork on lot forty-one. You saw it in ten seconds.
Declan: Cleve says the Hargreaves balance took you four days.
He said it low, like a secret he was testing on me.
Isla: Three days, actually. Not that you ever asked.
His mouth opened. Then Vivienne touched his sleeve and he turned away from me.
Vivienne: A toast. To Declan.
Vivienne: Thank you for bringing back the real thing.
The real thing. Meaning her. Meaning the woman he was supposed to have chosen.
The table laughed and drank. My face went hot and stayed hot.
I kept my hands in my lap and counted the forks by my plate.
Declan didn't laugh. He looked at me over the rim of his glass, long and steady.
He didn't correct her. He didn't say one word.
Then she leaned in and kissed him on the mouth.
One hand on his jaw, slow, so the whole room could see it.
He didn't pull back.
Something in my chest went quiet. Like a screw rolling under a bench where nobody would find it.
The green coat was still hanging in my room. My own stitch was still in her pocket.
Was I ever the wife? Or just the woman with her hair and her coat and her hands?
The wine in my mouth tasted like being a copy of somebody better.
The room clapped. Lucinda's green eyes went from them to me and stayed there.
She didn't clap.
I stood up. My chair scraped the floor, and the clapping died.
My legs were steady. I don't know how.
Isla: I'll give one too.
Isla: To the work. It doesn't care whose coat you wore when you walked in the door.
I drank. My hand didn't shake.
Vivienne's smile went thin at the corners. Declan's jaw was tight.
Declan: Isla.
Just my name again. Like he was checking if it still worked on me.
I picked up my toolbox from behind my chair. It was heavy, and it was mine.
Declan: I'll walk you out.
Isla: No. You have a guest.
I looked back once from the bottom of the steps.
He was still at the table. Vivienne's hand was on his arm, and he was watching me go.
The cab smelled like pine and somebody else's cigarettes. I didn't cry.
I sat with the toolbox on my knees and watched Pryce House go small.
Gilt Row was dark and quiet. I unlocked the shop and put the toolbox down on the bench.
Then I turned the lamp on, and the room was mine again.
I'm not a copy. I'm the woman who cut that balance by hand, in four days, with nobody's coat on.
Let them keep their dinner and their real thing.
I'm done being quiet. Now they can hear what I have to say.