13. Cassandra
— ? —
Cassandra
The building is perfect, and I hate that it’s perfect.
I’ve been telling myself for three weeks that I’m just looking - window shopping, entertaining a fantasy that will never become real because my life is too messy, too uncertain, too much in flux to start something new.
Three weeks since I drove away from Rome with a suitcase in the back of my car. Nearly two weeks since I stood at my parents’ gate and refused to let Antonio in.
Three weeks of sleepless nights and unanswered questions and the slow, painful work of remembering who I was before I became someone’s invisible wife.
But then Signora Benedetti from the real estate office called and said she had something I should see, and here I am, standing in the middle of an empty storefront on Via Garibaldi with afternoon light streaming through the windows and my heart doing something it hasn’t done in months.
Hope. That’s what this feeling is. I’d almost forgotten what it felt like - that flutter in your chest when you imagine something beautiful and almost believe you could reach it.
“The previous tenant was a seamstress,” Signora Benedetti says, gesturing at the built-in shelving along the back wall.
She’s a small woman in her sixties with silver hair and the kind of practical elegance that comes from decades of selling dreams to people who can barely afford them.
“She left most of the fixtures. The cutting table, the dress forms, even the mirrors. Said she was too old to move them and her daughter didn’t want them. Moved to Milan to work in finance, if you can imagine.”
“Her loss,” I say, running my hand along the cutting table’s surface. Solid wood, worn smooth by decades of fabric and scissors and careful hands.
The kind of thing you can’t buy anymore, only inherit. Someone loved this table once. Someone stood here for hours, measuring and cutting and creating things that didn’t exist before.
The ghost of all that work still lingers in the worn patches, the small nicks where scissors slipped.
“How long has it been empty?”
“Eight months. The landlord is motivated - he’ll negotiate on rent if you commit to a year.
He’s been trying to fill the space since Signora Moretti retired, but the young people these days, they don’t want to work with their hands.
They want computers, offices, air conditioning.
” She sniffs disapprovingly. “No appreciation for craft.”
A year.
A year ago I was still in Rome, still trying to have a baby, still believing that Antonio and I were going through a rough patch that would eventually smooth itself out.
A year feels like a lifetime. A year feels like nothing at all.
“Can I have a few minutes alone?”
“Of course, of course. Take your time. I’ll be outside - I have calls to make anyway. These properties don’t sell themselves.” She pats my arm in a way that’s probably meant to be encouraging. “It’s a good space, signora. Good bones. The right person could do something special here.”
She leaves, and I stand in the silence and try to imagine it.
My atelier. My name on the door - not Guerriero, but Acardi. The name I was born with, the name I carried before I traded it for a villa in Rome and a husband who forgot I existed. Bolts of fabric where those empty shelves are, arranged by color and weight and drape.
Dress forms wearing half-finished garments, pins bristling like armor. The hum of a sewing machine and the smell of pressed cotton and the satisfaction of building something that belongs entirely to me.
I pull out my phone and start taking measurements, falling into the familiar rhythm of numbers and spatial calculations.
The front room is larger than it looks from outside - thirty feet deep, maybe twenty wide, with ceilings high enough to make the space feel airy even though it’s technically small. I pace off the dimensions twice to be sure, then sketch a rough floor plan in my notes app.
The windows face west, which means good afternoon light for hand-stitching.
Natural light matters for color-matching - I learned that during my modeling days, watching designers curse at garments that looked completely different under studio lights than they had in the workroom.
These windows are generous, tall rectangles that would let the sunset pour in like honey.
There’s a small back room that could be storage, or an office, or both if I’m clever about shelving. I photograph it from several angles, already mentally arranging supply bins and filing cabinets and maybe a small desk where I could do paperwork after hours.
The numbers go into my notes app, next to the sketches I’ve been making late at night when I can’t sleep. Designs I haven’t shown anyone. Ideas that have been living in my head for years, waiting for permission to exist.
A structured jacket with hidden pockets deep enough to actually hold things. A wrap dress that doesn’t require safety pins to stay closed. Simple, functional pieces for women who have better things to do than worry about their clothes.
I’ve been sketching on napkins since LA, when I was still walking runways and dreaming of the day I’d be on the other side of the design process. But dreams are easy when they’re far away. Dreams get harder when they’re standing in front of you, asking what you’re going to do about them.
“This could work,” I say out loud, testing the words in the empty room. “This could actually work.”
My phone buzzes - a text from my mother. How did the viewing go? Your father wants to know if you’re staying for dinner.
I type back: Still here. Measuring. Will update later.
Her response is immediate: Don’t measure too long. You need to eat.
Mothers. Even when you’re thirty-two and your life is falling apart, they’re still worried about whether you’ve had lunch.
I’m measuring the distance between the windows, calculating how many dress forms I could fit along the wall, when I notice the small alcove near the back corner. It’s barely visible from the main room - you’d have to know it was there to look for it.
But when I step closer, I see that someone has built a tiny workspace into the recess: a narrow counter, a single shelf, just enough room for one person to work without being disturbed.
Signora Moretti’s private corner, maybe.
The place where she did the delicate work, the intricate embroidery, the repairs that required absolute concentration. I touch the counter and feel the same worn smoothness as the cutting table - decades of use, of care, of hands that knew what they were doing.
I could work here. I could actually work here.
The thought is so overwhelming that I have to stop and lean against the wall, pressing my palm flat against the plaster. My chest feels tight in a way that has nothing to do with the dust.
For so long, I’ve defined myself by what I’ve lost. My career. My marriage. My sense of self. But standing here, in this empty room with its good bones and its afternoon light, I’m starting to see something else. Not what I’ve lost, but what I might build.
The modeling savings I’d set aside years ago - the fund I’d nearly forgotten about - could cover a lease on a space like this. Small but real. Mine.
I straighten up and go back to measuring, forcing myself to focus on the practical details. Square footage. Electrical outlets. The condition of the flooring. I’m noting the location of the bathroom when the room tilts.
It’s subtle at first - just a slight wobble in my peripheral vision, like the floor has decided to become water.
I stop, bracing my hand against the wall, and take a deep breath.
Low blood sugar, probably. I skipped breakfast because I was too nervous about this appointment, and lunch was coffee and half a panino I couldn’t finish because my stomach has been off for days now.
The wobble gets worse.
“Okay,” I say out loud, because sometimes hearing my own voice helps. “Okay, just… sit down for a second.”
But there’s nowhere to sit.
The cutting table is too high, the floor is dusty, and the walls are suddenly very far away.
The light through the windows goes bright and then dim, pulsing in a rhythm that doesn’t match my heartbeat, and I think I should probably call for Signora Benedetti but my mouth doesn’t seem to be working anymore.
The room spins. The floor rises up to meet me - or I fall down to meet it, I can’t tell which.
The last thing I see is the afternoon light, streaming through those perfect west-facing windows, turning everything gold.