Sterli

t in the cold air. Nob

I knew I was moving. "Watch how y

"Husband. He's a drifter with a truck and a shack.

looked

t someone who has just insulted you. He

o me. "They won'

ond clerk said. She was enjoying this. "

dollars," I said.

He read it once. Then he held it up t

said. "That's

ecause she thought that made her clever. "Old money, sir. Some of the o

looking past her, at the manne

il, gold thread worked through the bodice, cut stones

one,"

quiet in a d

laughed out loud. She was young

ike it belonged to her. "Sir. That's the Lamarre. Couture

said

real gown costs. Not thirty. You couldn't-" she looked him over, the holes in t

ap

sor

the fitting,"

ing and a deposit and a waitlist two years long, and non

a card out o

glass. It landed

, no bank. In the middle, in platinum, a crest: a

the corner of the slip I had carried out

d the card up w

is t

t answers that crest," Julian sa

n't j

whatever the number turns out to be.

stayed ope

she said at last, and hat

re's a fi

iped t

nd. Then it beeped, clean an

TION AP

the shop m

he wall behind her. She put her han

He leaned forward a little, and

ce at all. "The other one. The thirty thous

on't - it

ute ago." He straigh

pologized four times while she did it - for the dress, for th

," she said at the end, and pushed a copy

Chloe's n

t pass over me, because I had other things in my head that day. I took i

she said, t

a stranger begged me for something. Behind her

wa

rd back and put it

he said. The clerk wrote an address down and read it back

ing to carry o

ed for

e lea

ipt in my hand and no dress in my arms, and the