Page 41 of Don't Tell

My mother hasn't called.

That's the first thing I think when I wake up. Two days of silence from a woman whose entire personality is noise. She's planning something. I don't know what yet, but I know she’s coming.

I push it aside. I have a more immediate problem.

I pull the floral dress off the hanger and hold it up. It looks like I'm going to someone's outdoor wedding and brought a backup outfit in case I cry. It’s just too much. I put it back. I reach for my black pants, get as far as stepping into one leg, and stop. I wore these the day I cleaned vomit off a grand piano. I know I washed them. I step back out anyway and fold them onto the shelf.

I try on the gray blouse. I look like I'm going to work.

I take it off.

I sit on the edge of my bed in my underwear and look at the pile on the floor. The problem is, I don't know where he's taking me. I don't know what this is. There's no manual for what you wear the morning after a man kisses you against a dumpster and says, “I'll pick you up tomorrow,” with his eyes still dark and his voice still low.

If there were a manual, I wouldn't have it anyway.

Renée called twice this morning. I know what she wants. She’s probably trying to bug me into creating an online profile. The idea is as foreign as it is scary. What if it doesn’t work out? I’d end up hiding in a corner and licking my wounds. I’m not ready for that yet.

I look at the pile again. I pick the gray blouse back up. It's the least wrong thing I own.

My phone buzzes on the nightstand. Unknown number. I look at it for a moment.

Unknown Number

Car will be there in an hour. Go open your front door. — C

I read it twice and register the number. I put the phone down.

I think about how he got my digits. From Roger, probably. Roger would give him my shoe size if he asked. Roger is such a sexist wimp. I should be annoyed. I'm mostly just standing there in the gray blouse, trying to understand how this has become my morning.

I open the front door.

The woman on the other side is not what I was expecting, though I'm not sure what I was expecting — maybe a note or a second envelope I'd have to tear up. She's small, somewhere in her 40s, with dark hair cut sharp at the jaw. She has a garment bag over one arm and a rectangular case in the other, and she looks me over.

"Ms. Jenkins, I'm Gabrielle." She steps past me into the apartment before I have fully processed that she has arrived, sets the garment bag over the back of a kitchen chair and her case onthe table, and then turns and looks at me properly. Her eyes go to the gray blouse. "Absolutely not.”

"Excuse me?"

She's already unzipping the garment bag. "The blouse. No." She pulls out three hangers and fans them across the back of the chair. "Come here. Tell me what you actually like."

I cross my arms. "Cade sent you?"

"Yes, I’m here on behalf of Mr. Nightingale." She holds up two of the options, one in each hand, head tilting between them. "Which colors do you like? How much do you want people to look at you? Do you want to feel like yourself or like someone completely different?" She glances at me over the hangers. "Which one?"

I look at her. "Myself."

She puts both hangers down and picks up the third — deep green, wrap-style, a plunging neckline. She holds it out. "Try this."

I take it. I look at it. "Did he pick it?"

"He gave me a budget and a general direction. I made the actual decisions." She waves a hand toward the bathroom. "Go."

I go.

In the bathroom, I step into the dress. The fabric settles. I tie the wrap. I stand in front of the mirror and look.

I don't look like I'm going to work or like I'm going to someone's wedding. I look like a person who is going somewhere on purpose.

I come back out.