Chapter 2

I hooked two fingers through Thomas’s sleeve before my husband could follow the applause back onto the stage. I pulled him behind the curtain and wedged my shoe against the gap so he could not close it between us.

Beyond the fabric, Rebecca, my husband’s childhood friend, angled the centerpiece toward the cameras. She kept my mother’s steel punch curled in her fist, hidden against the skirt of her white dress.

“What did you do?”

Thomas freed his cuff from my fingers and smoothed the crease I had made. “I changed the way the house presents itself. That is all.”

I took the showcase card from his breast pocket. My handwriting still ran beneath the printed description: eighteen-carat gold, hand-cut channel, twelve matched sapphires. He had left my specifications in place and removed the name that belonged above them.

“You gave Rebecca my mother’s mark. You let her ruin four months of my work in front of every buyer we have.”

“Keep your voice down.” Thomas glanced at the moving shadow beyond the curtain. “She is fixing the photographs.”

I folded the card through the house crest and pushed the hard edge back into his pocket.

“I want my mother’s property returned before she leaves that stage.”

A burst of laughter came through the fabric. Rebecca lifted her fist when someone asked to see what Thomas had given her, but she did not open it. The cameras flashed against her knuckles.

“Nothing about your actual work has changed,” Thomas said. “Your bench is still downstairs. Your tools are still there. You will make the same pieces tomorrow that you made yesterday.”

I caught the curtain cord and wound it once around my wrist, holding the fabric open by an inch. Rebecca had turned the damaged side away from the buyers. From that angle, the crushed gold vanished, and only her smile remained.

“She put a second edge through my centerpiece. She cannot even hold it straight.”

“She was nervous because you challenged her in front of the press.” Thomas pinched a thread from his lapel and let it fall between us. “Anyone’s first strike could slip.”

“Then give it back and let that be her last.”

I released the cord. The curtain snapped shut, cutting Rebecca’s face into strips before hiding her again. I crossed to the work crate, lifted the velvet insert, and took out the wax model that had guided every cut in the centerpiece. My correction lines scored its base. My thumb fit the shallow hollow I had worn into one side during the forty-three nights I shaped it.

Thomas watched the wax in my hand as if it were an inconvenience I had carried into his celebration.

“Audrey, you are being emotional about a branding decision. Customers do not buy the hand holding a tool. They buy the house name, the story, the woman they remember from the photographs.”

I slid the wax model into the inside pocket of my jacket. It belonged to my drawer, but I would not leave it where he could attach Rebecca’s story to that too.

“My work is the story. Her photograph is standing on top of it.”

Outside, a reporter asked Rebecca how long she had practiced the craft. Silence held for half a breath. Then she said she had grown up around the house and had always understood its spirit. Thomas listened with his head tipped toward her voice.

I pulled the curtain wide enough for him to see the centerpiece in her hands. Under the stage lights, the crooked impression cut across the crest like a crack. One buyer pointed at it. Another lowered his camera and spoke to the woman beside him.

“Customers care when the gold is damaged,” I said. “They care when the person selling the work cannot explain how it was made. And I care whose name you put on what came from my hands.”

Thomas looked at the piece, then at Rebecca’s closed fist. He did not ask her to return it. He reached past me and drew the curtain shut.

“You made it valuable, so you should be glad the right woman can sell it.”