4. Nell #2
The floor was loud through the door—machines running, voices calling out thread counts and panel widths, the steady rhythm of a mill that knew what it was doing.
I could hear Dorcas laughing at something Ray had said.
I could hear Kiana asking Hazel a question about the binding pass.
Normal sounds. Good sounds. The sound of work getting done.
I couldn't hear my phone.
I stared at it. The screen was dark. No notification. No dots to show he was typing.
Nothing.
I told myself it was fine. He was in a meeting. Or on a call. Or cutting something that couldn't wait, the way he did when a deadline was close. He'd see the messages when he came up for air. He'd read them and he'd answer.
I checked the time. Two-sixteen.
The floor went quiet for a moment, then started up again. Somebody called out a question about thread weight. Hazel answered. A machine stopped, then restarted.
I looked at my phone.
Two-nineteen.
I picked it up and checked the messages. They'd all gone through. All seven of them, sitting there in a row, unanswered. I could see that he'd read them. The little notation at the bottom said so. Read at 2:14.
He'd read them and he hadn't answered.
I set the phone down.
I told myself to give him time. He was thinking about what to say. He was working out when he could come home, checking his calendar, making sure he could keep whatever promise he was about to make.
Two-twenty-three.
Two-twenty-nine.
Two-thirty-five.
I heard footsteps in the hall outside. Hazel's voice, low and steady, saying something I couldn't make out. Ray's laugh. Then quiet again.
Two-forty-one.
Then my phone buzzed.
I picked it up so fast I nearly dropped it.
I can't. Maybe after.
No apology. No counter-offer. No date I could count to.
And not one word about the thing I'd made him.
I set the phone down.
He didn't know. That was the worst part. He wasn't lying. He really believed it calmed down after this, the same way he'd believed it before the last thing and the thing before that.
He was wrong.
I'd been waiting for six years and the finish line kept moving.
Seven messages. I'd sent him seven messages. I'd told him I'd counted. I'd asked him to come home. I'd told him I'd made him something.
And he'd answered with something that wasn't a no. Maybe after. After what? After the state visit? After the relaunch? After whatever came next?
I'd heard that promise before. After this launch. After this collection. There was always an after, and the after never came.
I pulled up the browser on my phone.
I typed in Crowe Sauveterre.
The first result was a press release, posted forty minutes ago.
Crowe and House of Sauveterre Announce Multi-Year Partnership.
I clicked it.
The photograph at the top was Beckett and Talia, standing in front of a backdrop with both logos. She was wearing something cream-colored and tailored. He was in the charcoal suit he'd had made last year. They were both smiling.
Crowe and the House of Sauveterre are pleased to announce a five-year partnership that will see the American heritage atelier become the exclusive provider of formal and state attire for the Sauveterre royal family.
Five years.
"This partnership represents a shared commitment to craftsmanship and heritage," said Beckett Crowe, founder and creative director of Crowe. "We're honored to work with the House of Sauveterre on something that will endure."
Something that will endure.
I checked the timestamp. Posted at 2:52. Twelve minutes ago.
I looked at his message again. I can't. Maybe after.
After.
After a five-year exclusive partnership. After half a decade. After something that would endure.
There was no state dinner to get through. There was no after. The date I'd been counting toward wasn't a finish line. It was the starting gun, and the man who'd just told me to wait for it hadn't even known he was lying.
He hadn't told me. I'd found out the way everyone else had, from a press release posted forty minutes after I'd asked him to come home.
I opened the browser again and pulled up flights out of Charlotte.
There was a six-fifteen in the morning. I booked it. One way. I didn't think about it. I didn't ask myself if I was sure. I just put my card number in and hit confirm, and then I stood up and walked out onto the floor.
Hazel looked up when I came out. Dorcas was at the binding table, and Ray was adjusting something on one of the machines. Kiana was folding finished work at the far end.
"I'm going to New York tomorrow," I said. "I'll be back Sunday night. If the hospital lot finishes early, hold it for inspection until I'm here."
She didn't ask why. She just nodded. "You want Ray to drive you to the airport?"
"I'll get a car."
"What time's your flight?"
"Early. Six-fifteen."
"That's four-thirty out the door," she said. "You book the car already?"
"Not yet. I'll do it tonight."
"You tell Beckett you're coming?"
"No."
She looked at me for a long moment. Then she said, "Good."
Dorcas glanced over. "You seeing him?"
"That's the plan."
"You want us to box up some of the good blankets?" Ray called from across the floor. "The ones from the run that didn't come back? He might want to see the quality."
"No," I said. "I'm not bringing work."
"Just yourself?" Hazel asked.
"Just myself."
Kiana looked up. "Is it nice this time of year? New York?"
"I don't know," I said. "I've never been."
I went home.
The house was quiet. It always was. I walked through the kitchen and down the hall to the workroom.
The shirt was still on the dress form where I'd left it, the cuffs pinned and the collar unset. I'd told myself I'd finish it the next time he came home.
I looked at it for a long minute.
Then I opened the drawer under the cutting table and pulled out pattern paper and a pencil.
I wasn't taking the shirt.
I was making something else.
I spread the paper flat on the table and started sketching. I didn't measure. I didn't need to. I'd made this shape before, a hundred times, for other people. Never for him. But I knew how it would fit.
I cut the pattern, then pulled fabric from the bolt I kept for samples—something sturdy, plain, the kind of thing that would hold a seam and survive being packed in a bag. I pinned the paper to the cloth and cut the first piece. Then the second.
I threaded my mother's machine and sat down.
The first seam was the hardest. My hands were shaking again, just barely, and I had to stop twice to rethread the needle because I'd pulled it too tight. But by the third seam they'd steadied, and by the fifth I wasn't thinking about anything except the work.
One seam. Then the next. The fabric moved under my hands the way it always did, clean and sure, the stitches forming a line I could have followed in the dark.
I didn't think about what I was going to say when I got there. I didn't think about what he was going to say back. I didn't think about the press release or the photograph or the five years I'd just found out about from a stranger's web page.
I just sewed.
By the time I looked up again, the windows were black and the clock on the wall said it was past midnight. The first piece was finished. I held it up and checked the seams. Clean. Even. Exactly what I'd meant them to be.
I set it down on the table and started the second piece.
The house was silent. No footsteps on the stairs. No key in the lock. No sound but the hum of the machine and the soft click of the needle punching through cloth.
I finished the second piece. Then the third. By two in the morning I had the whole thing assembled, pinned and waiting for the final pass.
I should have stopped. I should have gone to bed. But I didn't want to stop, because stopping meant thinking, and I wasn't ready to think yet.
I ran the final seams. Pressed them flat. Trimmed the threads.
Then I held it up and looked at it.
It wasn't beautiful. It wasn't the kind of thing anyone would photograph or write about or hang in a window. It was plain and practical and exactly what it needed to be.
I folded it and set it on the table, under the form where the shirt still hung.
Then I went upstairs. I didn't pack. I'd do that in the morning. I just lay down on top of the covers, still dressed, and stared at the ceiling.
I didn't sleep.
I watched the light change from black to gray, and when the alarm went off at four-thirty I got up, packed a bag, picked up the thing I'd made, and called a car.
By six-fifteen I was on the plane.