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And she’s got that thing.

That thing my sister has.

It’s not the face, exactly. It’s the stillness of her hands, the total lack of apology in how she takes up space in a doorway. The bone-deep certainty that whatever room she’s in has been arranged around her arrival.

Vivian has been standing like that since she was six years old in a sash and plastic tiara.

And I know what happens when I come across women like her. I brace myself for The Shift—for the moment she looks past me at Kane and I recede into the background like the Ghost of Christmas Past.

“This is Ms. Dorsey,” Kane says.

Her eyes come to me, briefly, and then veer back to him. “Of course. Is she looking for evening wear, or something more day-to-night?”

I open my mouth. “Evening, I guess? I don’t really know what the⁠—”

“Evening it is,” she says to Kane. “And what’s our budget this evening, Mr. Makov?”

“There isn’t one.”

“Perfect.” She turns and starts striding away, hips whipping from side to side like she’s on a Paris runway. “Let’s get her into the fitting room and I’ll pull some things I think will work beautifully on her.”

With a nasty taste brewing in my mouth, I follow her back.

We emerge into a fitting room. In the center is a low, crushed velvet bench the color of oatmeal, next to an oblong side table with a bottle of sparkling water sweating on a linen napkin and a tray with chocolate truffles. A hyper-modern chandelier dangles overhead. It looks like a fistful of needles frozen after God threw them down at the earth.

And mirrors. So many of them.

I see myself from every angle, the ones I know and the ones I’ve never gotten to see before.

I’m usually not such a fan of mirrors. I know which ones in my life are safe and which are to be avoided at all costs. The one in my bakery bathroom is so chipped that it can’t possibly reveal all my flaws, so that’s fine. Back at home—well, the place that used to be my home—I keep the closet door shut so the full-length reflection can’t horrify me without warning.

Here, there’s nowhere to hide. It’s Front Delilah, Side Delilah, Three-Quarter and One-Quarter and Seven-Eighths Delilah. All my many stains and imperfections are on crystal-clear display.

I look down at the floor to avoid the barrage of badness, but even that doesn’t spare me. It’s polished stone, and like the floor in Kane’s house, I can see myself in it.

The woman comes back with five garments over her arm and hangs them on a brass hook. As she works, she starts talking to Kane, who is standing in the doorway of the corridor with his hands in his pockets.

“So I’ve pulled a couple of options,” she says. “This one’s gorgeous, very structured. It’s got a lot of internal engineering—” She turns a black dress on the hanger so he can see the back of it. “—and then these three are cut with a bit more forgiveness through the middle. Very flattering to Ms. Dorsey’s, ahem…” She offers a little smile. “Unique proportions.”

Nobody says anything for a second.

I’m not bothered. It’s a poke to the usual emotional scar tissue. After all, I’ve heard variations of that phrase since I hit puberty and all the other girls got boobs, but I just got a pooch belly. My mother’s version was about “your figure.” Vivian’s version was about jaws and jeans. This one has a dainty little cough in the middle of it, which is new, but it’s the same old barb no matter how you slice it.

My hands go straight to the tag on the black dress. I flip it over and…

It’s a size six.

The next one is a six, too. The next two are eights and cut like potato sacks.

If this woman thinks I can fit into a size six, she either has glaucoma or a time machine.

But that doesn’t seem to be the biggest issue. I look up and realize there’s a sharp animosity in the air—and it’s coming from Kane.

“Delilah’s what?” he says. His voice is stripped of all emotion, almost to a scary extent.

The saleswoman hesitates. “I’m sorry?”

“You said her proportions were ‘unique.’ I want to know what you meant by that.”