Chapter 2 - My Shop Was Not the First
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Alessandro did not move for a long moment.
He kept looking at Patricia Bennett as if he were afraid one wrong word would break her.
Patricia held the photograph of her eleven women with both shaking hands.
Her voice came out barely above a whisper.
“There was Margaret O'Connell before me.”
A murmur moved down the long dining table.
Alessandro leaned closer.
“Who is Margaret O'Connell?”
Patricia wiped her cheeks with the back of her bandaged hand.
“She owned O'Connell Lace in South Philadelphia.”
“She made veils by hand.”
“She made lace so fine that brides came from three states to buy it.”
Vanessa Sterling let out a short and brittle laugh.
“Alessandro, you cannot possibly believe this woman knows anything about Margaret O'Connell.”
Patricia looked at her without blinking.
“I know her shop closed in March.”
“I know she was left with thirty-one thousand dollars unpaid.”
“I know her veils started appearing on your website two weeks after she begged you for her money.”
Vanessa's smile vanished.
Alessandro turned slowly toward her.
“Is any of that true?”
“It is a coincidence in a difficult industry.”
“That was not my question.”
Vanessa lifted her chin.
“Margaret O'Connell was careless with money.”
“She would have failed with or without me.”
Patricia's face crumpled.
“She cleaned her own shop out by herself on a Sunday night.”
“She folded every veil her mother had taught her to make.”
“She locked the door and sat on the sidewalk and cried because she had nowhere to store sixty years of family patterns.”
Mrs. Coleman pressed a hand to her mouth.
Another guest whispered behind her napkin.
Alessandro's jaw tightened.
“Patricia, who else?”
Patricia swallowed hard.
“Carmen Ortiz.”
“Carmen ran Ortiz Embroidery in Fishtown.”
“She is fifty-nine years old.”
“She embroidered christening gowns and altar cloths and wedding dresses for whole neighborhoods.”
Vanessa pushed her chair back.
“This has gone far enough.”
Alessandro did not look at her.
“Carmen was left with twenty-eight thousand five hundred dollars unpaid.”
“Her shop closed last year.”
“After that, nobody ever saw her patterns anywhere except on Sterling Rose.”
The name landed in the room like a dropped glass.
Sterling Rose Fashion House was Vanessa's company.
It was the company she had described at charity lunches as her great achievement.
It was the company Alessandro had praised in a toast only one hour earlier.
He looked at his fiancée with a new and terrible stillness.
“You told me Sterling Rose employed young designers in New York.”
Vanessa smoothed the red silk over her lap.
“It employs many people.”
“Did it employ Margaret O'Connell?”
“No.”
“Did it pay Carmen Ortiz?”
Vanessa hesitated for half a second too long.
“That matter was handled by operations.”
Alessandro turned toward the fireplace.
“Thomas.”
Thomas Reed stood at once.
He was fifty-two and careful and had served Alessandro for nineteen years.
He already held a pen in his hand.
“I am here, Alessandro.”
“I want the eviction against Bennett Sewing Studio stopped tonight.”
Thomas nodded.
“I will call Judge Harmon's clerk and the property manager and the sheriff's office.”
“I want it frozen in writing before midnight.”
“I want no lock changed on Monday.”
“I want no truck at that building.”
“I want no man standing outside that shop frightening those women.”
Vanessa rose so quickly that her chair scraped the marble.
“You cannot do that.”
Alessandro finally looked at her.
“I just did.”
“That property transaction is part of a larger plan.”
“Then the plan stops tonight too.”
Thomas was already dialing his phone as he left the dining room.
Vanessa watched him go with open panic in her eyes.
She turned back to the table and found twenty-eight faces staring at her.
She tried to recover the smile that had served her all evening.
“My fiancé is upset on my behalf.”
“He has misunderstood a series of business disagreements.”
Mrs. Coleman stood up slowly in her champagne gown.
“I did not misunderstand you this afternoon, Vanessa.”
“You told me my gown was handmade by your design team in Italy.”
“You told me you spent two years developing the embroidery.”
Vanessa's lips parted.
Mrs. Coleman touched the little flowers on her sleeve.
“This woman says her mother taught her that pattern.”
“Were you lying to me in my own fitting room?”
Vanessa shook her head.
“You are a guest in this house.”
“I am also a customer you used as a display.”
Another woman in emerald green rose from her seat.
“You told me the same story about mine.”
A third guest looked down at her pale blue dress in horror.
Alessandro raised one hand and the room quieted.
He did not raise his voice.
He never needed to.
“I owe every person at this table an apology.”
“This dinner was meant to celebrate an engagement.”
“That announcement is suspended.”
A gasp moved around the table.
Vanessa grabbed his arm.
“Alessandro, do not do this in front of everyone.”
He looked down at her hand until she let go.
“I will not ask these women to pretend they did not hear what they heard.”
“Patricia Bennett says she is owed forty-seven thousand dollars for twelve gowns.”
“She says her designs were copied and sold.”
“She says her building was bought under my company name and her shop was set for eviction on Monday.”
Every head at the table turned toward Vanessa as he spoke.
“I do not yet know every fact.”
“I will know them.”
“Tonight I know enough to end this dinner.”
Servants began moving quietly along the walls at a signal from Mrs. Carter.
Guests rose in small and stunned groups.
No one reached for Vanessa's hand.
No one congratulated her.
She stood alone beside her untouched dessert while the room emptied around her.
Her eyes found me where I stood beside Patricia.
“This is your doing, Claire.”
I felt every drop of blood leave my face.
“You could not stand to serve a woman better than you.”
“You fed her a story and put her in that chair.”
Patricia caught my sleeve with surprising strength.
“No.”
Her voice shook but it carried.
“Claire found me crying by the service door.”
“Claire put a napkin around my hand when you told her to take it away.”
“Claire paid for my sandwich today because your kitchen would not feed me.”
Vanessa stepped closer.
“You will regret opening your mouth in this house.”
Alessandro moved between us without touching her.
“Do not threaten my staff in my dining room.”
“She is not staff to be loyal.”
“She is a maid who forgot her place.”
My father flashed through my mind in that instant.
I saw his little house outside Pittsburgh.
I saw the mortgage notice on his kitchen counter during our last video call.
I saw myself losing the paycheck that kept that roof over him.
Then I saw Patricia's cracked fingers wrapped in white linen.
I stayed where I was.
I did not apologize.
I did not lower my head.
Something in my silence seemed to frighten Vanessa more than any answer.
Alessandro turned to Mrs. Carter.
“Please have the driver bring every guest home safely.”
“Then have Dr. Ellis come to the blue sitting room.”
Mrs. Carter nodded at once.
“Patricia needs food and she needs that hand examined properly.”
Patricia shook her head weakly.
“I do not want any fuss, sir.”
“You have not eaten since breakfast.”
“You have worked fourteen hours a day all week.”
“You are getting fuss whether you want it or not.”
For the first time that night, a tiny and tired smile touched her mouth.
Then her smile faded.
Her face went gray under the chandelier light.
She reached for the edge of the table and missed it.
I caught her arm as her knees gave way.
Alessandro caught her other side before she could fall.
“Patricia.”
Her head tipped against his shoulder for one frightening second.
“I am sorry.”
Her words slurred with exhaustion.
“I just need to sit down.”
“You are sitting down right now.”
We lowered her into the chair together.
Mrs. Carter arrived with water and a plate someone had filled in the kitchen.
There was warm bread and soup and sliced turkey from the dinner Patricia had never been allowed to touch.
I held the water glass while she drank in small sips.
Color came back slowly into her cheeks.
Dr. Ellis arrived within twenty minutes and examined her finger under a lamp.
He cleaned the wound again and replaced my napkin with a proper bandage.
He checked her pulse and her blood pressure and asked when she had last slept through the night.
Patricia laughed once without humor.
“Monday, I think.”
Alessandro stood beside the sitting room door with his arms folded.
He listened to every answer.
He asked the doctor to bill the estate directly.
Patricia tried to protest and he shook his head.
“You will not argue about a doctor while your hand is still bleeding through cotton.”
She ate half the soup because I sat beside her and would not move.
She ate the bread because Alessandro told her the conversation would not continue until she did.
By ten o'clock her hands had stopped shaking quite so badly.
Thomas returned with a folder and a grave expression.
“The building manager has confirmed the eviction in writing.”
“It is paused.”
“No entry will be permitted on Monday except by Patricia and her employees.”
Alessandro took the folder.
“Who signed the purchase?”
Thomas hesitated.
“The signature page bears your electronic signature.”
Vanessa stood in the doorway behind him.
Her red gown looked suddenly too bright for the quiet room.
“I told you I was building something of my own.”
Alessandro did not turn around.
“We will discuss your building tomorrow.”
She left without another word.
The click of her heels faded down the hall.
Patricia stared at the folder as if it might burst into flame.
“Then my women still have a shop on Monday?”
“They have a shop.”
Alessandro said it like a vow.
“They have a shop until a judge hears every word of this in daylight.”
Tears filled her eyes again but she did not look away.
“Margaret thought no one would ever believe her.”
“Carmen thought no one would ever care.”
“I believed them until tonight.”
My phone buzzed in my apron pocket at that moment.
I almost ignored it.
Then Patricia's own phone lit up on the table beside her soup bowl.
She picked it up with her uninjured hand.
Her brow furrowed as she read.
“Emma.”
Emma Walsh was her twenty-four-year-old apprentice.
Emma was the one who had found the copying website in the first place.
Patricia held the phone out to me because the text made no sense to her tired eyes.
I read the message twice before my heart started pounding.
Emma had written that she had kept digging after Patricia left for the mansion.
Emma had found a hidden photo album on the Sterling Rose press site.
Emma had found pictures of Vanessa posing proudly in front of a wall of framed designs.
Behind Vanessa in one picture was a small brass shop sign under a glass cover.
I enlarged the photograph with two fingers.
The sign was tarnished and beautiful and easy to read once you knew what you were looking at.
It said O'Connell Lace.
Under it in smaller letters it said South Philadelphia.
Patricia covered her mouth with her bandaged hand.
“She kept Margaret's sign like a trophy.”
Alessandro took the phone and studied the photograph in silence.
When he looked up, his face had changed again.
“Claire, call Emma back.”
“Tell her not to delete anything.”
“Tell her not to go anywhere alone tonight.”
I dialed with shaking fingers.
Emma answered on the first ring.
Her young voice was breathless in my ear.
“Claire, there is more in that album.”
“There is a picture from last year that Vanessa's manager Derek Lawson posted and then removed.”
“I saved it before it disappeared.”
“What is in it, Emma?”
She swallowed audibly.
May you like
“It is Carmen's shop door with a Sterling Rose banner over it.”
“And Carmen is standing under it crying.”
