Vivian answered the next call because she was tired of watching the phone light up.
Claire was near the doorway, helping Evan fold the sheet he had brought the rail in. Beth sat at the cutting table with the invitation list. Vivian remained by the sample shelf while she said hello, her back straightening before she had heard anything.
“No,” she said after a while. “I'm not doing that.”
The sheet stopped moving between Claire's hands and Evan's.
“I canceled the order because I'm not making the collection. I told you.”
Beth put down the pencil.
“It isn't a few days anymore,” Vivian said. “I'm not coming home.”
The reply at the other end was inaudible. Claire could hear only the little changes in Vivian's breathing, the moments when she prepared to interrupt and didn't.
“Saturday is Beth's preview,” she said. “You haven't been invited.”
Evan looked toward her.
“I know you're my husband.” Vivian moved away from the shelf, as though the phone had become someone she needed room to face. “I haven't forgotten. I'm still leaving.”
She listened again.
“No private talk. I've tried private talks. You tell me afterward what I meant.”
Her hand shook, slightly. She changed the phone to the other one.
“You can write what you need to say. I will read it. I'm not promising to agree.”
She ended the call and put the phone on the table. Nobody immediately asked what Graham had said. Claire was trying to let Vivian decide which parts entered the room.
“He thinks he can come Saturday,” Vivian said. “Bring some papers about the line. Speak to me there.”
“You told him not to,” Beth said.
“Yes.”
“Will he listen?”
Vivian looked at the price cards beside Beth, then picked up her phone again. Lewis answered her call. Claire heard Vivian say Saturday, the studio, that he'd already hit Evan and pushed Beth.
Vivian read her the message Graham had sent about bringing papers and asked whether someone could be there.
“She can't promise that,” Vivian told Beth afterward. “She wants the messages kept. She said to call at once if he threatens us or won't leave. Not wait for him to hit someone.”
Evan let go of his end of the sheet. Claire gathered it against her chest, badly folded now.
“If he comes, there will be people,” she said.
“There were people at the hotel,” Vivian replied.
Claire pressed the crumpled sheet flat against herself.
“We should tell Maris,” Beth said.
“I will,” Vivian answered.
They went upstairs together, leaving Claire and Evan in the workroom. Claire refolded the sheet against the table. Evan stood beside the front window, looking at the road.
“You wanted him to know,” she said.
He turned. “Yes.”
“Do you want him to come?”
“Part of me does.”
She stopped folding.
“So he can hear her,” Evan said. “So he can stand in a room where people know what he did.”
“And you?”
He looked at her for long enough that she knew he understood the question.
“I want him to look at me.”
Claire put the sheet down. “If he comes, let her finish. Before you ask him anything.”
“I can do that.”
She had meant to ask for more. Evan turned back toward the window, and she picked up the sheet instead. One corner had been folded into the middle; she pulled it free.
Upstairs a chair moved. Vivian was speaking to Maris, her voice low, Beth's answering once. Maris came down first. Her face was pale, the practical briskness stripped from it for a moment. She looked at Evan and began to say something, then stopped.
“I'm sorry about your brother,” she said.
He nodded. “Thank you.”
“I don't have anything good to add.”
“No.”
Maris reached for the chair Beth had moved. “Where do you want me if he comes?”
“By the door,” Beth said. “Tell him it's private.”
“And if he walks past me?”
“Call,” Vivian said. “Lewis said not to wait for him to use force.”
Maris put the chair down without sitting. “Good. Because he's already hit one of you and pushed another.”
“I know,” Beth said from the stair. She looked at the fitting corner. “I want them to come here for the clothes. I'm tired of him being what happened here.”
Vivian came behind her. She looked tired but not relieved. Telling another person did not seem to have become easier.
Beth took the list and marked three names. She would speak to Ruth, the jewelry maker, and one of Maris's former clients, women who could be asked to stay nearby without having the whole story handed to them as gossip. Vivian took her own phone and wrote to the two people she had invited from the wedding. Claire did not read the messages over her shoulder.
They agreed not to let Graham turn a request for privacy into leaving the room with Vivian. If he arrived, Maris would tell him the preview was private. Beth would keep the side route free, and no one would assume his first pleasant words settled what he intended.
“I'm still coming,” Vivian said.
Beth looked at her. “I know.”
“I don't want you thinking I am because all of you did this.”
“I don't.”
Claire finished folding the sheet. She put it beside Evan's tools for him to take home.
They finished closing up. Evan moved the trolley away from the side path, then asked Beth where she wanted it tomorrow. She said beside the stair until the dresses came down. He put it there, checking that the wheels weren't sitting in the shallow drainage channel.
At the gate Claire put her hand on his arm.
“Will you come over?” she asked.
He looked at her, then toward the studio where Beth was still checking the window latch.
“Not tonight. I need to finish something.”
She let go of his sleeve.
“Tomorrow,” he said.
“All right.”
He kissed her, not briefly, and she held him close enough that he felt how difficult letting him go had become. Then he went to his car.
Claire helped Beth switch off the last lamp. The room was ready for its next ordinary day. She had to leave it without knowing how much of Saturday they had changed.