J’ai passé quatre cents heures à broder ma robe de mariée. Puis je l’ai vu sur ma sœur, avec mon fiancé tenant son champagne.

The room burst into applause. My mother was crying. Graham kissed Sienna’s hand.

And Eleanor Whitaker, in the front row, set down her champagne glass and stood up.

“How lovely,” she said.

She didn’t need a microphone. Eleanor Whitaker has never needed a microphone. The applause faded.

“As your lead investor, Sienna, I’ve been asked to say a few words tonight,” Eleanor said. “So I will. I’d like to ask you a question about your gown.”

Sienna’s smile wobbled.

“Of course, Mrs. Whitaker.”

“You said every stitch was for your grandmother.” Eleanor turned and looked at me. “Juliet. Would you tell everyone how many stitches there are?”

Every head in the glasshouse turned. I walked forward to the edge of the runway, in my midnight-blue silk. Sienna saw me.

The color drained from her face so fast I thought she might fall.

“About two hundred and ten thousand,” I said. “I counted the first ten thousand. After that, I just counted the hours. Four hundred and six.”

A murmur rolled through the crowd.

“Jules,” Sienna whispered. “Don’t.”

“My sister didn’t design that gown,” I said to the room. “I did. I started sketching it two years ago. I embroidered every lily by hand, at Atelier Fontaine, where I’ve been a partner for three years.” Theo stepped up beside me and handed copies to the editors in the front row. “Those are my dated sketches. The workroom photographs. And the copyright registration for the embroidery design, filed ten months ago, in my name.”

“She’s lying,” Sienna said into the microphone. Her voice cracked. “She’s jealous. She’s always been jealous. Mom, tell them.”

Everyone looked at my mother. My mother didn’t say anything. She was staring at the gown.

“That gown was stolen from the vault at Atelier Fontaine at eleven-fifteen last night,” Odile Fontaine said, from beside me, in her low French voice that carries like a bell. “There is a video.”

The murmur became a roar. Graham let go of Sienna’s hand.

“It’s not stolen!” Sienna said. “It’s mine! I designed it! Every stitch!”

“Then you know what’s in the lining,” I said.

Silence.

“Inside the bodice,” I said. “Over the heart. Every embroiderer signs her work, Sienna. Nana Rose taught us that. Don’t you remember? You were sitting right there on her front steps when she taught me.” I took one step closer to the runway. “Turn back the lining. Show them what it says.”

Sienna didn’t move.

“Show them,” Eleanor Whitaker said quietly.

Sienna’s hand went to her bodice. She didn’t turn back the lining. She knew what was there.

She’d had it altered to fit her. She’d seen it. She’d worn it anyway.

So Margot did it.

She’d come up behind Sienna on the runway without anybody noticing, the way good salon managers can, and very gently, with Sienna too stunned to stop her, she folded back the silk lining at the left side of the bodice.

And forty cameras zoomed in. In tiny stitches of pale blue thread, over my sister’s heart, it said: For Nana Rose. J.H.

J.H. Not S.H. Juliet Hale.

The whole glasshouse went silent. Then a fashion editor in the front row, a woman in enormous glasses whom I’d been reading since college, read it out loud, very clearly. “For Nana Rose. J.H.” She lowered her camera.

“Well,” she said. “That’s that.”

Eleanor Whitaker turned to her son.

“Graham,” she said. “Did you know the gown was Juliet’s?”

Graham didn’t answer. That was an answer.

“Then you’ll understand,” Eleanor said, “why Whitaker Family Holdings is withdrawing its investment in Sienna Rose Bridal, effective tonight.” She picked up her champagne glass. “And why I’ll be asking the Ashcombe Glasshouse to return the June seventh date to the woman who booked it.”

Sienna looked at Graham. Graham looked at the floor. Then Sienna looked at me, and the tears came, real ones this time, running down through her makeup.

“Why?” she said. “Why couldn’t you just let me have one thing? Just one, Jules?”

“I gave you fifteen thousand dollars, Sienna,” I said. “For your surgery.”

I held up the photograph from the Lumière Bridal Market. Sienna, laughing, in a black blazer, with a clipboard.

“You were in New York,” I said. “At your booth. The day you sent me a picture of a hospital bracelet.”

My mother made a sound I’d never heard her make before. She sat down hard on a white chair by the fountain, her champagne glass tipping in her hand.

“Sienna,” she said. “Is that true?”

Sienna didn’t answer. She gathered up my lilies in both fists and ran down the runway, past the fountain, past the floating orchids, and out through the glass doors into the dark.