“Because she’ll pull the gown, change three stems, call it something else, and launch anyway. And you’ll spend two years in court proving she copied a gown nobody saw.” He leaned back. “Or you can wait.”

“For what?”

“For her to stand up in front of three hundred people and the press,” Theo said, “and say it’s hers.”

There was one more thing I had to know before I decided. I’d been carrying it for two years. That night, I searched for the date.

The week of Sienna’s surgery. March, two years earlier. I scrolled back through her Instagram.

Nothing. She’d posted nothing that week. That was the week she’d been “recovering.”

Then I searched the other way. I searched the bridal industry. And on the third page of results, I found it.

The Lumière Bridal Market, in New York. The biggest bridal trade show on the East Coast. Every year, the third week of March.

I went to the market’s photo gallery. New designers. Emerging talent.

Day two. And there, in the background of a photo of a booth full of sample gowns, holding a clipboard and laughing with a buyer, in a black blazer and her hair in a sleek ponytail, was my sister.

The caption said: Sienna Hale, Sienna Rose Bridal (launching soon!), exhibiting at the Emerging Designers Pavilion. The emerging designers’ booth fee was listed on the market’s website. Twelve thousand four hundred dollars.

Due one week before the market. The week I’d wired her fifteen thousand dollars for her cyst. I sat at my desk and looked at that photograph for a long time.

Sienna, laughing, in a black blazer. On the day she’d sent me a picture of herself in a hospital bed. I took a screenshot.

I printed it. I put it in the folder with everything else. Then I called Theo.

“I’ll wait,” I said.

Eleanor Whitaker called me herself on Wednesday. I didn’t expect that. I’d met her a dozen times over three years.

She’s sixty-five, silver hair in a low chignon, always in pale linen, and she runs Whitaker Vineyards with the same quiet, terrifying calm that she uses to choose a wine.

“Juliet,” she said. “I’d like you to come to the house. This afternoon. Alone, if you don’t mind.”

The Whitaker house sits at the top of the vineyards, a long limestone villa with a red tile roof and a terrace that looks out over forty miles of vines. A butler showed me out to the terrace.

Eleanor was sitting at a wrought-iron table under a white umbrella, with a pot of tea and a plate of lemon biscuits, and a folder of her own.

“Sit,” she said.

I sat.

“Graham tells me,” Eleanor said, pouring me tea, “that you ended your engagement in February. That you’d grown distant. That you were consumed with your work and couldn’t make room for a marriage. That your sister was a great comfort to him in his grief.” She set down the teapot. “Is that true?”

“No,” I said.

“I thought not.” She slid her folder across the table. “This is Sienna Rose Bridal’s investor presentation. Three million dollars of my family’s money. I’ve been reading it again since Monday night, when Margot Lacroix at Atelier Fontaine called my assistant and asked, very politely, whether the Whitaker family was aware that the bride on our son’s wedding order had been changed.”

I hadn’t known Margot did that. I’d give her a raise. Eleanor opened the folder to a page near the back.

It was the photograph of The Rose. My gown. Underneath, in bold, the presentation said: Signature motif: original hand-embroidered lily of the valley design by Sienna Hale. Proprietary. Brand cornerstone.

“You made this,” Eleanor said. It wasn’t a question. “I’ve seen your hands work, Juliet. At Christmas. In the guest cottage. With that lamp.” She took off her reading glasses. “I’ve never once seen your sister hold a needle.”

I opened my own folder. I laid out the sketches, the photographs, the certificate. And the photograph from the Lumière Bridal Market.

Eleanor Whitaker read every page. When she was done, she poured herself more tea.

“Will you come to the launch, Juliet?” she asked. “With your folder?”

“I am going to that launch on May second,” she said. “As the lead investor, I’m expected to say a few words.” She looked out at her vines. “I’d like you to be there, Juliet. With your folder. And your lawyer.”

“Mrs. Whitaker,” I said. “Graham is your son.”

“Yes,” she said. “And I raised him better than this.” She set down her cup. “Somebody in this family needs to remember that the Whitaker name is supposed to mean something.”