CHAPTER TEN: THE NIGHT BEFORE THE SHOW

Vivian’s son, Nathan Price, knocked on our door shortly before eight.
He was thirty-two, wore an expensive wool coat, and looked as though he had been awake for several nights.
“I heard about the pipe,” he said.
“I came to apologize for my mother’s behavior.”
“She needs to apologize herself,” Adrian answered.
Nathan nodded.
“She says you’ve organized a campaign against the studio.”
“Ask the people who work for her,” I replied.
I showed him nothing without their permission.
Instead, I gave him Celia’s public office number and the event’s own promotional materials.


He read the catalog standing in our hallway.
“I wrote that introduction,” he said quietly.
I stared at him.
“You described a training program that the workers say doesn’t exist.”
“My mother told me the apprentices were paid and supervised.”
“Did you ever meet them?”
“I live in Seattle,” Nathan said.
He looked ashamed of how weak the explanation sounded.
He had returned because a major retail agreement depended on the next day’s presentation.
Nathan had a financial interest in the company, but he had never handled production.
“If the show fails, we could lose everything,” he said.
“The people who made the clothes have already lost part of their wages,

” I answered.
He ran a hand over his face.
“Can I speak to them?”
“You can ask, but they decide.”
Rosa agreed to a short conversation at the hall, and Hawa came with her.
Nathan listened as they described the deductions and unanswered questions.
Then he showed them a payment summary supplied by the workshop.
It listed amounts much larger than the women had received.
“Where did the difference go?” he asked.
“That’s what we’ve been asking,” Rosa said.
He studied the page.
“Trevor signed the figures.”
“Your mother approved every deadline,” Hawa replied.
Nathan did not defend her.
He took out his phone and asked his company’s accountant for the original remittance instructions.


The accountant refused to discuss them without authorization from Vivian.
Nathan looked at the women.
“I can’t promise to fix this tonight.”
“Then don’t promise,” Rosa said.
“Come tomorrow and listen when we speak.”

CHAPTER TEN A: THE REHEARSAL THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING

Keira called Maisie late Monday afternoon because she had been summoned to an additional rehearsal that was not on the published schedule.
She was frightened that speaking to us would cost her contract, but she was more frightened of repeating claims she knew were false.
“They’ve hired a presenter to interview us as though we are the seamstresses,

” she explained.
“They’re going to record our answers before the buyers arrive.”
Maisie asked her to describe exactly what she had been instructed to say.
Keira read a line from the script about learning embroidery from her grandmother in a village she had never visited.
“My grandmother was an accountant from Cleveland,” she said.
“I don’t know why they’ve invented an entire family for me.”
The script gave two other models histories of forced migration and poverty that belonged to neither of them.
Hawa listened when I called her, then asked that Keira make her own decision about what to do.


“She isn’t responsible for the lie merely because they gave her a script,” Hawa said.
“But she will be responsible for whether she says it.”
Keira decided to attend the rehearsal and tell the presenter she could speak only about the modeling work she had performed.
Mina went with her as a relative and waited outside the room.
I did not attend because the company had not invited me, and a crowd at the door would have done Keira no good.
At six twenty, Keira called again.
“Trevor says I will be replaced unless I memorize the biography,” she said.


“He told me nobody would ever know.”
“What did you say?” I asked.
“I asked him if he’d be comfortable telling the same story in front of the real maker.”
“And?”
“He told me to stop making trouble.”
She gave a small, shaking laugh.
“Then he handed the script to somebody else.”
I offered to take her to the bus stop, but Mina already had her car outside.
The following morning, Keira met Rosa at the community hall before the show.
She returned a scarf that the wardrobe assistant had given her to wear.
The scarf was still marked with Rosa’s chalk fitting lines.


“I didn’t want them to say I’d stolen it,” Keira said.
Rosa looked at the chalk and smiled without amusement.
“They can return everything else they’ve borrowed from our lives.”
Keira asked whether refusing the role had helped anyone.
“It helped you keep your own name,” Hawa answered.
“And now I know which part of the story is yours.”
They discussed whether the young model should speak publicly.
Keira agreed to describe only the rehearsal and her own experience.
She refused suggestions that she should accuse every employee of knowingly lying.
“Some people were just doing their jobs,” she said.


“I want to be fair even when I’m angry.”
That sentence changed how I understood her courage.

At the same time, Elise Grant was dealing with a separate problem at the Exchange.
Several promotional videos had already been loaded onto screens around the railway hall.
They showed the models sewing, but close inspection revealed that the needle movements were demonstrations rather than the techniques used in the garments.
Elise called Nathan and asked who had approved the videos.
He admitted that he had signed off on the final advertising budget but had not reviewed every caption.
“Then you share responsibility for how this was promoted,

” she told him.
Nathan agreed and requested an immediate correction.
Vivian answered by demanding that the screens remain active because sponsors had paid for visibility.
Elise refused to describe a disputed training program as verified merely because the advertising slots were sold.
“You can show the garments without telling false stories about who made them,” she said.
“The story is what makes them valuable,” Vivian replied.
“The garments have value because people made them,” Elise answered.
The exchange ended with Elise ordering the misleading captions removed.
Vivian walked away before the technician had finished changing the screens.
When Nathan told his mother that the alterations were necessary,

she accused him of betraying a business she had built for twenty years.
“I’m trying to keep the business from promising something it can’t prove,” he said.
“You can’t understand what it costs to make this company look successful,” she snapped.
“I understand that the people making the clothes should not carry those costs alone.”
Vivian slapped the folder against a table and left him standing in the empty hall.

At noon, a second buyer named Thomas Reeve entered the building with a production consultant.
He had prepaid for a private viewing and demanded to know whether the company could still supply the promised collection.
Nathan told him that the worker claims and payment questions had not been resolved.
Thomas looked at the racks and asked whether the garments themselves were defective.
“The quality is extraordinary,” Nathan admitted.
“The problem is what we’ve told you about the people who made them.”
Thomas folded his arms.
“If those people are owed money, I need that answered before I put their work in my stores.”
Vivian emerged from behind the curtains and accused her son of negotiating against the company.
Thomas interrupted her.
“Nobody is negotiating yet,” he said.
“I’m asking who stitched the pieces.”
Vivian tried to introduce him to the hired models, but Keira was standing nearby and refused to play her assigned role.
“I didn’t stitch any of them,” she said.
Thomas looked at Vivian without speaking.
For the first time, the room felt smaller than the woman who had spent years controlling it.

CHAPTER ELEVEN: THE SHOWROOM DOORS

Tuesday morning arrived clear and painfully cold.
The Fashion Exchange occupied a converted railway hall filled with expensive lighting and people carrying small cups of coffee.
Vivian’s presentation was scheduled for two, and the organizers had arranged chairs for buyers, journalists, and potential investors.
I attended as Hawa’s guest, while Adrian stayed home with Finn.
Rosa, Mina, and Keira entered together.
Nobody wore a hidden microphone or carried a secret camera.
They brought their own work samples and their own voices.
At one, a coordinator named Elise Grant met us by the loading entrance.
She had received Anika’s letter requesting that the event avoid presenting disputed worker biographies as established facts.


“We cannot adjudicate the entire dispute during a show,” Elise said.
“We’re asking you not to repeat claims you haven’t verified,” Hawa answered.
Elise glanced at the samples.
“Vivian says these are her original designs.”
“Then let her explain who made them,” Rosa replied.
Nathan appeared at the end of the corridor carrying a stack of pages.
He had persuaded the accountant to review payment transfers, and several entries lacked matching receipts.
“We have enough to suspend the collection’s payment claims,” he told Elise.
“I am requesting that the presentation pause.”
Elise’s expression changed.
“You’re part of the company.”
“That is why I’m making the request,” he replied.
A voice snapped behind him.
“You have no authority to stop my show.”
Vivian stood beneath a poster of her own smiling face.
She looked from her son to the women and finally to me.
“This is what you wanted,” she said.
“I wanted answers,” I replied.
“You destroyed my family’s water pipes to stop us asking questions.”
Several people nearby turned their heads.
Vivian’s face drained of color.
“Don’t turn a private disagreement into an accusation,” she said.
“You admitted damaging the second pipe to the police,” I answered.
“The first one is still being investigated.”
Elise raised both hands.
“We are not discussing vandalism in a loading corridor.”
“Then discuss what your guests are about to hear,” Hawa said.
She opened her bag and lifted out the embroidered cuff.
“I made this pattern at my mother’s kitchen table, and I was paid less than the cost of one meal in this building.”