Chapter Two
Kaitlyn
An hour ago . . .
Actually, no. To understand the problem, I have to go back at least a week. Or eight years, depending.
A week ago . . .
Daisy Buchanan kneads my pregnant sister’s belly, and Madison lets her.
“Down, Daisy,” I tell my gray-striped cat. It’s a fitting name for a cat rescued from a club called Gatsby’s. She’s taken over Madison’s lap while my sister sits on my linen sofa, one of the few pieces of furniture I’ve ordered. Daisy pays me no mind. “Madison, push her off. You’re the boss.”
“She’s not bothering me.” Madison looks right past Daisy, as if my cat isn’t three inches from her face.
“I’m not worried about Daisy bothering you. I’m worried about her bothering . . .” I frown at Madison. “Does that baby have a name yet?”
She lifts her hand, a lazy gesture, as if naming her child is a minor matter. “I still have four weeks. You can call her Harper today, if you want.”
They’ve been trying names a few weeks at a time. Last month, it was Mae, and before that, Ivy.
Daisy deigns to give me a glance over her shoulder before she goes back to kneading.
“Doesn’t that hurt?” I ask.
“She’s keeping her claws in,” Madison says.
“Do your cats do that at home?”
“You know Tabitha won’t mess with anyone but Oliver. Smudge, on the other hand, won’t leave me alone. The second I sit down, he’s on his back with his ear on my belly. The theory is that he can hear Harper’s heartbeat.” She scratches Daisy’s head and offers me a tired smile. “You ready to do this?”
This being “take over Madison’s massive job” of being the interim director of our nonprofit, Threadwork, for seven months so she can have a long maternity leave. We’re meeting to go through her project binder. “I could have come over to you to review all this. I’m sure I have more energy than you do.”
She grins. “Can’t argue, but I wanted to see the progress on your new place.” Her smile fades as she glances around the bare walls of the house I closed on two months ago.
“An Armstrong with ulterior motives? Weird.” My tone is drier than the white paint she’s frowning at. “I’ll tell Mom to hire someone to decorate it. I don’t have time, and I won’t have time. Definitely not while I’m running Threadwork and studying for the bar exam. Maybe ever again, as long as I live. And I like it like that.”
She tsks. “Mom is too busy with the gala, and you will be too starting next week. But lucky for you, I’m about to have a month off before my life changes forever, and I can thank you for stepping in for me by spending this month on this nekkid house.”
Madison and I have been rebuilding our relationship over the last four years, and I’m used to her theatrics.
“Counteroffer: You’ve already said thank you four thousand times, so how about you worry about Christmas?” I say. “You have to make it extra special since it will be Harper’s first one.” I give her an angelic smile. “Doesn’t that sound like more fun? Establishing all your own Christmas traditions? Picking out her perfect stocking? Oh, and her Christmas dress? You should do that.”
“What am I, an amateur? Look at this!” She spends the next ten minutes showing me pictures of the stocking and dress she already ordered, plus an adorable tiny pink Santa hat and a small, flocked Christmas tree for the nursery already decorated with gold and pink ornaments for the baby. “I even have ones that say Harper, Mae, and Ivy so we’re ready to go as soon as we decide on the name.”
“I can’t. It’s so cute!”
“I know. Now about your house—”
“Yeah, but Halloween.” Still trying to divert her. “She’ll be a month old. You’ll need a costume.”
She shows me a picture of a baby in a hedgehog costume.
“Stop it.” It really is so cute, I can’t stand it.
“No, you stop,” she says. “Stop avoiding this. We’re talking about your house.”
“I don’t want to talk about wall paint. I want to talk about New Year’s and the gala. I want you to bring me up to speed, so I can tackle it now. ” I clap my hands on now to match her theatrics, and Daisy flinches and glares at me.
“Get off Harper’s head, and I won’t do it again,” I tell the cat.
“I think that’s her bum, not her head,” Madison says. “But believe it or not, because I’m brilliant even as this fetus drains my energy like an adorable baby vampire, your drab house and the gala are about to intersect in a way that can only be described as fate.”
See? Dramatic. “Is this a trick to make me talk about paint color?”
“Nope. In fact, let’s start with the New Year’s gala, and you’ll see.”
I flip open my portfolio—a ridiculous Tom Ford design, the leather embossed to look like crocodile—and pull out the Montblanc pen my parents had included when they gifted me the set after my law school graduation in May.
I settle into my chair and nod, ready to take copious notes. “Go.” I’ve been working part-time at Threadwork since the beginning of the year, but my focus has been on operations. Madison started Threadwork two years ago to rectify the wrongs done in the past by our family’s ready-made garment factories in Bangladesh, and that’s where I spent the summer, getting up to speed on what we fund, like microloans for entrepreneurs. But the biggest thing was learning the ropes at the Marigold Institute, our job retraining center for factory workers who want to advance or change careers.
“Mom is a beast,” Madison begins. It’s a compliment, something I wouldn’t have thought possible a few years ago. “She’s pulled in her best people from the symphony and museum boards. They’re busy making it the prestige event of the holiday season and selling out their hundred-thousand-dollar tables. Sami and Pixie Luna will do an acoustic set.” That’s her best friend whose band is wrapping up their first summer stadium tour. “You’ll never guess who we got to emcee.”
“Give me a hint.”
She puts on an announcer voice and says, “The star of stage and screen, she’s broken your heart performing her bluegrass-infused songs of love gone wrong on Austin City Limits and made you laugh from the soundstage of her smash sitcom, ‘Country Comes to Town.’ It’s—”
“Sara Elizabeth is doing it?” This is huge. Madison nods, and I cheer. “That’s amazing!”
“She said she owed us a favor for signing her as the spokesperson for Copperhead Boots.” That was the first and most iconic Armstrong brand, started over a hundred years ago.
“We probably shouldn’t tell her that she’s the one who did us a favor,” I say.
“Exactly. Let’s see . . . what else. Oh, do you remember the gala theme?”
“Discovery,” I say. It’s supposed to be Met Gala meets Austin, but Madison wants it to focus on a different area of fashion industry reform each year. Except make it glam. This year, guests’ gowns must be by designers from underrepresented markets.
“Yes, and you already picked your designer, right? Wouldn’t want you stuck in something off the rack,” she says, smirking.
We buy off the rack, of course. They’re just very expensive racks. Is it pretentious? Maybe. But it’s mostly the consequence of growing up in fashion.
“I went with Maheen too,” I say. Maheen Sultana is the Bangladeshi designer Madison and Mom had chosen. “Keep it in the family and all. She took my measurements when I was in Dhaka, and we did a pattern fitting before I left. She’ll come up a month early to do fittings for you and Mom.”
“Good, because I have no idea what size I’ll be in three months for the gala.” She rubs her belly again. “All our other spotlight designers are booked for couture dresses too.”
“Love it.” It means so much income and exposure for them. Couture dresses are handcrafted, taking anywhere from a hundred hours for simpler pieces to thousands of hours for a royal wedding gown. (When we went to Givenchy for one of my sorority formals, the designer who did Meghan Markle’s dress told us the train alone took five hundred hours.) Maheen had a small team of tailors and seamstresses working on my dress, all of them being paid from the ten thousand dollars I would have spent on a couture gown in Paris. “You mainly want me to focus on the silent auction?”
Madison nods. “And this is where your house enters the picture. The architect for the gala also makes upcycled custom furniture, and—”
“Madison, I don’t want to live in an arts-and-crafts project.”
“Baby sister, I am offended ,” she says. “As if I would ever suggest that for your fancy-pants sensibilities. It’s not what you’re picturing. This guy’s thing is reducing construction waste, so he reclaims things like wood and tile from construction demolitions to repurpose them into new pieces. You’ll understand when you see it, but his aesthetic is exactly right for your house. So congratulations on having a date with me to check out his showroom on Saturday.”
“I don’t have time—”
“You never do,” she says. “Yet when have I lost one of these arguments?”
I look at her like she’s grown a second head.
She is currently growing a second head, technically.
“You lose at least half the time,” I say. We’re equally stubborn.
“Let me rephrase. When have I lost one of these arguments since I’ve been pregnant?” As if she can sense another objection coming, she changes strategy. “I want to spend time with you while I still can. Let me do your house.”
I snort. “You’re having a kid, not defecting to North Korea.”
“My dearly beloved only sister, I am nesting. I have done everything I can in our house, and Oliver might short-circuit if I make one more change. Your place is the perfect project for me before I push this watermelon out of my—”
“Fine!” I shake my head, unable to fight a smile. If I’m going to carve out free time for anyone, it’s Madison. “Yes, you transparent puppeteer, you can do my house. I’ll go with you on Saturday.”
And that’s how I end up in Micah Croft’s showroom, staring at the pecs. The Pecs. The Pecs.