Tia had been standing in front of that mirror for twenty minutes, afraid to move, because the orange gown was the only beautiful thing she owned.

Tia stopped at the end of the corridor.

She had not been crying.

She noticed that about herself, distantly, the way you notice a fact about a stranger.

She was not shaking.

Her hands were loose at her sides.

She stood at the tall window at the end of the hall and looked out at the street below — taxis, a man walking a dog, a woman in a red coat moving fast — and she breathed.

Footsteps behind her.

She turned.

It was Elena.

Elena stopped a few feet away.

She had left her pale grey coat behind in the dressing room.

Without it she looked younger, less armored.

"You didn't have to follow me," Tia said.

"I know."

"I'm not going to fall apart in the corridor.

If that's what you were worried about."

"I wasn't worried about that," Elena said.

She came to stand beside Tia at the window.

She looked out at the street.

"I followed you because I didn't want to stand in that room with him."

Tia looked at her sideways.

"Fair enough," she said.

They stood there for a moment.

Below, the woman in the red coat had stopped at a corner and was looking at her phone.

"How long did you know him?" Tia asked.

"Two years," Elena said.

"We met at a conference.

He was kind to me in a way that I wasn't used to.

I held onto that." She paused.

"I held onto it longer than I should have, probably."

"Kindness is hard to let go of when you've been without it."

Elena looked at her.

"Yes.

Exactly that."

Another silence.

Comfortable, strangely.

"I want to ask you something," Elena said.

"And you can tell me if it's none of my business."

"Ask."

"Did he make you feel like you were the only thing that mattered?

Not occasionally.

Consistently."

Tia thought about it honestly.

"Yes."

"He's very good at that," Elena said.

Not bitterly.

With the tired accuracy of someone who has finished being bitter and arrived at something quieter.

"It isn't a performance, I don't think.

I believe he means it when he does it.

I just think he means it with more than one person at the same time."

Tia let out a breath.

It was almost a laugh.

Not quite.

"That," she said, "is the most precise description of the problem I have heard all day."

Elena smiled.

It reached her eyes, just barely.

Down the hall, they heard the dressing room door open.

Sayan's footsteps in the corridor.

Slow.

Unsure of the direction.

Neither of them moved.

The footsteps stopped.

Then, after a long moment, they went the other way — toward the main stairs, away from both of them.

Elena let out a slow breath.

"He's gone."

"Let him go," Tia said.

"Yes." Elena straightened.

She tucked a strand of hair back from her face.

"What will you do now?"

Tia looked out at the street.

The woman in the red coat was gone.

The man with the dog was gone.

New people had taken their places — a couple, a delivery driver, a teenager on a bicycle who nearly missed the curb and then laughed at himself as he steadied.

"I'm going to find the woman who made that dress," Tia said.

"The gown.

I want to see if it can be repaired."

Elena looked at her.

Something in her expression shifted — something soft and caught off guard.

"That's — yes," she said.

"That's the right thing to do."

"What about you?" Tia asked.

Elena looked down at her hands.

"I think I'm going to call someone I've been avoiding calling.

A friend who told me the truth about Sayan eight months ago and I didn't want to hear it."

"And apologize?"