Chapter 8
Claire did not speak until they had driven three blocks. She kept her eyes on the road, one hand resting at the top of the steering wheel while the other adjusted the air-conditioning away from Miranda’s face.
“You do know you do not have to buy anything today,” she said. “Leaving the house was still a successful act even if all you purchase is an overpriced coffee.”
Miranda looked through the passenger window. The neighborhood thinned into wider streets lined with pharmacies, nail salons, and restaurants setting out metal chairs for lunch. “If I go home with nothing, he’ll think I came to my senses.”
“Garrett is going to think whatever version lets him remain the injured party for at least the next several hours.” Claire slowed at a red light and glanced over. “That does not mean you have to organize your purchases around defeating him.”
“I’m not.”
Claire’s look lasted long enough to make the denial useless. The light changed before she could answer, and she turned onto the road that ran beside the river.
Miranda rested her phone against her thigh. The shared banking app remained open to the savings account, the balance untouched and suddenly theatrical. She had never thought of the money as power. It had been patience converted into numbers, a private pleasure she expected to hand away in October.
Now even keeping it felt like a statement.
The department store occupied the corner of an old hotel block, all pale stone and brass-framed windows. Claire pulled into the garage beneath it and parked between a silver coupe and an SUV so spotless it looked borrowed for display.
Miranda unfastened her seat belt but did not open the door.
Her blouse felt too tight across her chest again, and the jeans she had chosen after Owen’s birth pinched when she sat.
She imagined walking into the beauty hall beneath white lights while saleswomen with perfect skin assessed the damp spot that might appear at any moment near her left breast.
Claire turned off the engine. “Do you want my jacket?”
“No.”
“You’re looking at your shirt.”
“It’s fine.”
“It is fine.” Claire reached into the back seat for her purse, then stopped before opening her door. “You are also allowed to buy a different shirt before we go anywhere near the perfume.”
Miranda looked at her sister. “I don’t need another shirt.”
“That answer has probably been true of every object you’ve bought for yourself since Owen was born.”
The remark irritated Miranda because it was close enough to the truth to feel rehearsed. She opened the door and stepped into the cool concrete air of the garage.
Upstairs, the beauty floor smelled like a dozen incompatible flowers layered over polished wood and expensive air-conditioning.
Miranda had worked on campaigns for cosmetics clients before and knew the decisions behind the lighting, the placement of mirrors, the measured distance between counters designed to make browsing feel accidental rather than directed.
None of that knowledge helped her decide where to put her hands.
The YSL counter stood near the center beneath a suspended black sign. Gold lettering reflected across glass shelves filled with products arranged in exact rows, each item facing forward as though already chosen.
A sales associate approached before Miranda could decide whether to browse alone. She was older than Miranda expected, perhaps in her late fifties, with silver hair cut bluntly at her jaw and lipstick the deep red of sealing wax.
“Are you looking for anything in particular?” she asked.
Miranda almost said no. The answer rose automatically, a polite refusal intended to protect everyone from the inconvenience of her uncertainty.
“I want to put together a gift set,” she said instead.
“For someone else?”
The question stopped her.
Claire moved half a step away, suddenly fascinated by a display of nail polish. She had always understood when presence became pressure.
“For me,” Miranda said.
The associate smiled without making the smile congratulatory. “Then we should begin with what you actually use.”
Miranda looked at the rows of lipsticks. “Very little right now.”
“That only tells me what your mornings look like. It does not tell me what you like.”
Something in the woman’s tone, practical and uninterested in Miranda’s reasons, loosened the embarrassment lodged beneath her ribs.
Miranda admitted she preferred lighter fragrances, hated anything powdery, and had once worn lipstick nearly every day but now found most formulas too dry.
The associate listened as though these were specifications with value rather than fragments of a former self.
They began with perfume.
Paper strips accumulated along the counter while Claire offered opinions only when asked.
One fragrance smelled like orange blossom and clean fabric; another carried a sharper note Miranda recognized from the lobby of an expensive hotel.
The third changed against her wrist after several minutes, losing its first sweetness and settling into something warmer.
“That one,” Claire said.
Miranda lifted her wrist again. “I think so.”
The associate wrote the name on a card and placed the bottle aside without assuming the sale. They moved to skincare, where Miranda rejected a jar after learning the price and accepted a serum after the associate explained that she could use two drops rather than a full pump.
“You do not need the complete routine,” the woman said. “Complete routines are useful for advertisements.”
Miranda smiled before she could stop herself. “I used to tell clients that.”
The associate looked up. “What kind of work do you do?”
The question was ordinary. Miranda still felt it land.
“I’m a senior account manager at a creative agency,” she said.
The present tense came without hesitation.
Claire turned toward her, but Miranda kept her attention on the serum bottle. The words had felt natural enough that for one second nothing at Halcyon had changed.
“What kind of clients?” the associate asked.
“Consumer brands, mostly. Beauty, hospitality, a few financial accounts when no one else wants them.”
“That sounds like everyone else’s problem until you make it yours.”
Miranda laughed. “That is more or less the job.”
The associate nodded and returned to the products, apparently satisfied. She did not ask about Owen, maternity leave, or whether Miranda planned to go back. She accepted the title as current because Miranda had offered it that way.
They chose two lipsticks, one in a muted rose and another deeper shade Miranda would have dismissed as impractical if Claire had not insisted she try it.
The color changed her face more than she expected.
Under the counter lights, she looked tired but deliberate, as though the fatigue belonged to a person who had somewhere to be afterward.
The associate handed her a mirror. “That shade requires no apology.”
Miranda turned her head slightly, examining the line of her mouth. She imagined Garrett seeing the purchases arranged on the bathroom counter and understanding only the total. The thought intruded so completely that the lipstick lost some of its pleasure.
Claire saw the change. “Do not invite him into the mirror.”
Miranda lowered it. “I wasn’t.”
“You were.”
The associate busied herself with tissue paper, granting them privacy without appearing to notice the tension.
Miranda looked at the products waiting beside the register: perfume, serum, two lipsticks, a mascara, and a small black cosmetic pouch with gold initials. The total would not reach the full savings balance, though it would come close once tax was added.
She removed the mascara.
Then she put it back.
The decision felt ridiculous enough that she almost laughed. Nothing about the object justified the weight surrounding it. It was only mascara, black pigment in a lacquered tube, but keeping it meant refusing to let Garrett’s anger determine whether she spent sixty dollars or six hundred.
Her phone vibrated inside her purse.
Miranda expected Garrett and felt her body tense before she checked the screen. The message came from Halcyon’s human resources director.
I received your email. I would like to speak tomorrow morning at nine. Dennis will join us.
A second message followed before Miranda finished reading the first.
Please do not access or forward additional internal correspondence until we speak.
The beauty floor receded around her. She read both messages again, noticing the formal tone, the absence of any reassurance, and the inclusion of Dennis without asking whether she wanted him present.
Claire came closer. “What happened?”
Miranda held out the phone.
Claire read the messages and looked toward the register, where the associate had begun wrapping the perfume in black tissue. “That sounds bad.”
“It sounds controlled.”
“That is usually how bad sounds when legal has been consulted.”
Miranda’s pulse had begun to pound beneath the fragrance drying on her wrist. She thought of the forwarded emails waiting in her personal inbox, the timeline on Claire’s legal pad, and Garrett telling her not to call until she was calmer.
The associate returned with the items arranged in a glossy black box tied with gold ribbon. It was smaller than the basket Garrett had given Willa, more precise and less festive, but the resemblance was close enough that Miranda felt the comparison immediately.
“Would you like to add a card?” the associate asked.
Miranda looked at the ribbon, then at the HR messages glowing on her screen.
“No,” she said. “It’s for me.”
She paid from the savings account.
The transaction alert appeared before the receipt finished printing. Seven hundred and ninety-two dollars and eighteen cents left the account, reducing seven months of intention to eighty dollars and change.
Miranda signed the screen and accepted the bag.
Outside the store, Claire took the handles when Miranda stopped beside a bench to read the HR messages for the fourth time. Shoppers moved around them carrying branded bags and paper cups, their Sunday unfolding without any visible evidence that their jobs might be disappearing.
“You should not answer until we get home,” Claire said. “We’ll draft something that confirms the meeting and asks whether you may have a representative present.”
“Garrett works there.”
“That does not make him your representative.”
Miranda put the phone back in her purse. “He’ll be furious about the money.”
Claire looked at the black-and-gold bag in her hand. “He was already furious before you spent it.”
“That won’t stop him from treating the charge like proof.”
“Then let him.” Claire handed the bag back. “You have a meeting tomorrow that may determine whether you still have the career he keeps telling you is waiting. His birthday present can survive being less important for one afternoon.”
Miranda tightened her grip on the handles.
The perfume on her wrist had settled into something soft and expensive, a scent she would never have chosen from a description online. Beneath it, her phone vibrated again.
This time Garrett’s name appeared.
Owen has refused both bottles. How long are you going to be?