Read Chapter 7: THE LEAK

The story appeared online at 6:12 a.m.

BELLWETHER & ROWE IN TALKS WITH NORTHSTAR CAPITAL, sources told the fashion trade site Threadline. The article described possible asset sales, store closures, and "significant streamlining of creative operations."

By seven, everyone at Bellwether had read it.

By eight, the studio was louder than Camille had ever heard it.

Patternmakers asked whether they should be worried. Interns whispered in the supply room. Mara received six calls from recruiters before lunch.

Evelyn called an all-hands meeting.

"No agreement has been signed," she said. "The board is reviewing strategic alternatives. I will tell you what I can when I can."

A hand rose near the back. "Is Northstar planning layoffs?"

Evelyn paused.

The pause answered.

Afterward, Camille found Julian in an empty fitting room, staring at his phone.

"Press?"

"Board."

"Good news?"

"There's no such thing in a message beginning 'please refrain from external comment.'"

She closed the door.

"What can we do?"

"Build."

"That is not enough."

"It's the part we control."

Camille had always distrusted that phrase. Control what you can. It was often used by people who had more control than they admitted.

"What if we make Margaret public?"

Julian looked up sharply.

"No."

"Why?"

"Because we haven't finished the research."

"Helena has enough to establish she was a designer."

"And Northstar would love nothing more than a heritage story they can package into a campaign."

"Then we control how it's told."

"We don't control anything once it leaves this building."

She crossed her arms.

"So your plan is to keep quiet and make beautiful coats while bankers decide if the people sewing them still have jobs?"

"My plan is not to use a dead woman's erased work as a weapon because we're scared."

The words stung.

Camille turned toward the mirror.

Her reflection looked angry and tired.

Behind her, Julian softened.

"Camille."

"No. You are right about one thing. We are scared."

She left.

At lunch, she took her sandwich to Bryant Park, though February made eating outside ridiculous. She sat in a metal chair under a bare tree and called her mother.

Sophie Laurent answered on the fourth ring.

"You're awake early," Camille said.

"I have a daughter in America who calls only when something is wrong."

"Nothing is wrong."

"Then I have a daughter in America who has suddenly become a liar."

Camille smiled despite herself.

She told her about the acquisition. Not everything. Enough.

"Come home if they close it," Sophie said.

The suggestion irritated her immediately.

"I don't want to come home."

"I didn't say you should want it. I said you can."

Camille watched office workers cross the park.

"I don't want failure to be reversible."

Her mother was quiet.

"That is a strange ambition."

"If I can always retreat, I will never know if I stayed because I chose it."

"Your father used to say things like that."

Camille's father had died when she was nineteen. Sophie rarely invoked him casually.

"He also once tried to fix a boiler with a butter knife," her mother added. "Do not inherit everything."

Camille laughed.

When she returned to Bellwether, Julian was waiting at her desk.

He held a folder.

"Helena found payroll ledgers. Margaret was paid as head pattern designer from 1921 to 1928."

Camille opened the folder.

"You kept researching."

"Of course."

She looked at him.

"I thought you wanted to bury it."

"I wanted to get it right."

Her anger loosened, leaving embarrassment behind.

Julian sat on the edge of her desk.

"The board presentation is in three weeks. Evelyn wants us to build a creative case for independence."

"Us?"

"You and me."

"That sounds dangerously collaborative."

"I'll survive."

"What does the case include?"

"Collection direction, brand history, five-year design strategy, digital positioning."

"And Margaret."

"And Margaret, if Helena is comfortable with the evidence."

Camille closed the folder.

"Why me?"

"You see where the house could go. I know what it refuses to leave behind."

"That sounds like an insult to both of us."

"It probably is."

She looked at the folder, then at him.

"Three weeks."

"Three weeks."

"Then we stop fighting."

Julian raised an eyebrow.

"Temporarily," she said.

"No."

"No?"

"We fight better than we agree."

She considered that.

"Fine. We fight in the same direction."

This time, he smiled.

"That I can use."