Chapter 8
The fitting room stayed quiet for a few seconds.
The two women watched me with the smiles still sitting in their eyes.
Emily must have seen it too, because her voice dropped even softer.
"It won't take long.
"Go as soon as we're done. You won't lose much time."
I kept my head down for a long moment before I set the phone down.
Then I looked up and smiled at her.
"Okay," I said.
In that moment, I honestly wanted to slap myself.
But I sat back down anyway.
Emily kept pinning the waistline, while the woman next to her sipped her coffee, her smile sly and knowing.
"See? Ms. Winters knows how to behave.
"The people around Richard really are a different breed."
I didn't look at her. I answered quietly.
"Yeah," I said.
"Nobody behaves better than me."
The bridesmaid dress took forty minutes to alter.
By the time I reached the farm the sky had gone gray and the grass was soaked.
The farmhands were waiting outside the barn, and their faces changed when they saw me. Something was ready in their mouths, and none of them wanted to be the first to say it.
I pushed past them and ran in.
Clover lay in the straw without moving.
Her body still held warmth, and her eyes had already closed.
Rain hammered the barn roof outside.
I crouched and touched her ear.
It was soft.
It was cold.
It felt exactly like the other one, years ago.
When that lamb died, my sister and I dug a hole in the back yard after dark and buried it ourselves.
She cried in hitching breaths and held on to my hand while she asked me something.
"Stella, don't lose the things you love again. Promise me."
I promised without hesitating.
I lost them anyway, one at a time.
I lost that lamb.
I lost my sister.
And I lost myself too.
Now Clover was gone too.
One of the farmhands stood beside me and explained in a low voice.
"The vet said the tear got infected and the bleeding came on too fast. Even if you'd come sooner, there may not have been anything to do. You're here so often, we called you right away..."
I listened, and something in me let out a short laugh.
He was right.
The ending probably wouldn't have changed.
I had made it to the door, and one sentence I knew far too well had put me back in the chair.
I stayed crouched there and smoothed Clover's ear, again and again.
My eyes burned and my throat closed, and not one sound came out of me.
The rain came down harder.
Richard came back to me then, sitting up in that bed, calmly picking out the man who would take me next.
Emily came back too, telling me nothing could go wrong out there.
Then I came back to myself.
Even with this much pain in me, the fear of inconveniencing somebody had been enough to sit me right back down.
The phone buzzed in my pocket.
I didn't reach for it right away.
After a few seconds, I finally pulled it out and glanced at the screen.
It was Richard.
The message was three words long.
Richard: [Fitting done yet?]
I stared at those three words for a long time.
In the end I wiped the rain off my face and killed the screen.
I didn't reply.
That evening I sat on the bench outside the barn in the rain and called my investment team.
"Start the project we talked about."
There was a stunned silence on the line.
"Now?"