Chapter Three
The Weill Cornell Hospital waiting area is chaotic. Maggie is just thankful Piper’s location is still trackable on her phone
or she wouldn’t have known where the ambulance took her. The thought makes her shudder.
Maggie hunkers down in an uncomfortable plastic seat waiting for an update on Piper’s condition from the medical staff. She
wishes she had something to do with her hands, but she left her knitting bag at work. Usually she has it with her, but she
didn’t want to schlep it to the fashion show.
It’s been at least a half hour since Piper was taken by ambulance to the emergency room. Even though she’s already texting
Maggie, telling her she’s “fine,” Maggie won’t exhale until she gets to see for herself, to talk to her face-to-face.
“Mrs. Hodges?” A nurse in blue scrubs appears. “You may go back and see her now.”
Maggie is not a Mrs., but it’s an irritating assumption she’s been dealing with for twenty-three years now. No matter. The
important thing is that she’s finally getting to see Piper.
A different member of the nursing staff shows her through two wide doors that require an electronic pass.
Inside is a large pen buzzing with voices and the beeping of machines and curtained-off partitions.
Behind one of these, she finds Piper sitting on a cot wearing a pale blue hospital gown.
Her golden-blond hair is slicked back, her blue eyes rimmed with a shimmer of black shadow.
The pronounced cleft in her chin and small bump in her nose give her face just enough character to go from blandly pretty to striking.
She looks just like her father, a man Maggie hasn’t seen since the night Piper was conceived.
It’s a strange thing, having a beautiful daughter. Especially now, when the nurse looks at her skeptically when she declares
she is, in fact, this young woman’s mother. Part of the reason it seems unlikely is how close they are in age. (Many of Maggie’s
peers have children in elementary school.) But also, Maggie doesn’t look like Piper. She’s only medium height, with light
brown hair (still no gray) she wears straight to her shoulders, passably slim though not without increasing effort. Still,
she always felt attractive enough. She wants to believe all that stuff about beauty coming from the inside, and having a positive
attitude, and eating right so her skin has a glow. But when she walks down the street next to her daughter, she knows it’s
all nonsense. Some people are just born beautiful.
Maggie swoops in to hug Piper. She smells like antiseptic. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Piper says, pulling back. “Just totally humiliated.”
“Piper?” a male voice calls from outside the curtain.
Maggie closes her eyes. She knows that voice. It’s Ethan Brandt, Piper’s boyfriend.
“In here!” Piper calls out. “Mom, can you get him?”
Maggie steps outside the curtain and waves him over. Ethan is tall, taller than Piper, and he bends down to give her a hug
as she rises awkwardly to meet his embrace.
“Thanks for holding down the fort,” he says, turning to Maggie. “I got here as soon as I could. I thought an Uber would be
faster than the subway but the traffic . . .”
He frowns, his brows furrowed, his big brown eyes concerned.
Ethan has glossy brown hair and cheekbones Maggie herself would kill for.
He’s adorable. She can’t blame her daughter for falling for him.
After all, she’d fallen for a gorgeous guy once.
Once, and never again. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
“You didn’t have to rush down here,” she says, fighting her annoyance. She likes Ethan, but at the same time she thinks her
daughter is too young—and has too much going for her—to be tied down in a serious relationship. Maggie learned the hard way
that nothing could derail a career like the distraction of a romance. And she’d been younger than Piper when she learned it.
“Of course I rushed down here.” His face is pinched with worry. “So what happened? Are you sure you just fainted?”
That was more information than Piper had given Maggie, and this hurts her feelings. It’s irrational, she knows that. But it’s
difficult to be the parent of a grown child. It’s cruelly ironic that for the first eighteen years of Piper’s life she was
the most important person in it: She was the authority, the point person. Now, suddenly she’s an afterthought. Extraneous.
And it’s a painful adjustment.
“We’re still waiting to hear what the doctor has to say,” Maggie says.
An older man in a white coat steps into the little area.
“Piper, you’re just fine,” he tells her. Maggie has questions and doesn’t hesitate to jump in. She’s aware that Ethan is waiting
to say something, but she doesn’t bother including him in the conversation. He’s crowding her.
“People faint,” the doctor says. “The room might have been overheated, her clothing might have restricted her breathing. Maybe
she was light-headed from not eating all day?”
“My daughter eats! She’s naturally thin.”
“Mom,” Piper says. “I’m fine.”
“I know you’re concerned, Mrs. Hodges,” the doctor says. She resists the urge to correct him: Mrs. Hodges is her mother, the
last person she wants to think about at that moment. “The best thing you can do is take your daughter home, make sure she
keeps that ankle elevated tonight. If she experiences nausea or a headache, call us.”
Piper stands up and starts looking around for the hospital-issued plastic bag holding her clothes—the Betsy Toledo trench,
now all balled up. The doctor issues the discharge paperwork, and Ethan helps Piper with the bundle of clothes. Maggie starts
to say something about the logistics of finding a cab, but Piper’s not listening. Ethan’s hugging her and they kiss and now
Maggie feels like an interloper.
“Let’s get you home,” he says, then turns to Maggie. “I’ve got it from here.”
Piper leans against Ethan in the back seat of the cab, where she is sandwiched between him and her mother. Despite the professional
humiliation of the evening, Piper feels physically fine—a few bumps and bruises, but no real damage. Except to her pride.
Still, Maggie insisted on seeing her back to Ethan’s apartment, and Piper figures if it makes her mother feel better, why
not just indulge her? After all, she can imagine how much she’s disappointed her tonight. But Maggie is doing a good job of
pretending everything’s fine.
“It’s actually very fitting that you fainted at a collection dedicated to Vivienne Westwood,” Maggie says with forced cheer.
She reminds Piper that one of the most famous runway falls of all time was when Naomi Campbell stumbled and fell at the Vivienne Westwood show in 1993.
Her mother is a walking encyclopedia of fashion history.
But this little bit of trivia doesn’t make her feel any better.
What on earth happened back there? She doesn’t remember stumbling or falling. She felt hot and dizzy and the next thing she
knew she was looking up at the ceiling with people hovered around her. Now all she can imagine is her mother watching her
live from the audience. It must have been horrifying.
Her phone buzzes with a call from her manager, and she lets it go to voicemail.
“Is that Gretchen?” her mother says.
Piper nods. “I’m too tired. I’ll call her in the morning.”
She’s not looking forward to the conversation. This is bad. Her career was at a crossroads before tonight’s epic fail. She can’t admit this to her mother, but in Milan, at every go-see, she was surrounded by models who
were taller, prettier, with bigger Instagram followings. It’s ironic that she’s never felt more unattractive than since she’s
become a professional model. And she’s had the limited bookings to show for it. But then, the Betsy Toledo show—it was supposed
to change everything.
Beside her, she can feel her mother watching her, looking for signs that she’s upset or not feeling well. Piper regrets letting
her join them in the cab. She needs some space.
It’s a relief when they finally reach Ethan’s building. Piper shares his third-floor apartment in a brownstone between Amsterdam
and Columbus on 82nd Street. On their first date, they discovered they’d grown up directly across Central Park from each other.
The realization seemed like something out of a romantic comedy. It felt like a sign.
They’ve been living together for a year, but she still can’t get used to using her own key. The apartment still seems like
his place, and she wonders if that will change once they’re engaged. If they’re ever engaged.
For months now, she’s felt certain Ethan was on the verge of proposing.
It’s embarrassing how much she thinks about this, how weighted every little suggestion to go to dinner or away for the weekend has become.
But in her defense, he brought it up first by asking what type of rings she liked.
And ever since that conversation, she can’t put it out of her mind.
(And even if she could forget about it, her phone keeps bombarding her with ads for engagement rings.)
And then, over Labor Day Weekend, she accidentally found It: An antique diamond in a white gold filigree setting. It was in
a small box underneath the bedroom dresser, where a ball of yarn had rolled after falling from her lap.
She did what any sensible person would do under the circumstances: She shoved it right back under the piece of furniture.
And she didn’t tell anyone—not her closest friends, not even her mother. Now, she’s thankful she kept it quiet.
So much time has passed, she’s starting to think he’s changed his mind.