Chapter One

Annabel

Every job has its sweet spot. You know what I mean. When it’s all smooth sailing and the boss still thinks you’re a glorious shining star.

That’s the perfect time to quit.

Do it too early, and you waste that magic, the joyful enigma that makes it seem like you have the world by the tail. All those golden mornings when Marcella’s face lights up with a smile from behind the manager’s desk when you show up in the morning. Wait too long, and you won’t be able to use her as a reference. You don’t want too much of that stale time, with both of you waiting to get out, I tell you what. It makes it hard to take the next leap.

When you’re like me, there’s always a next leap. It’s a matter of letting go of the most recent one and jumping as far as you can, like a trapeze artist.

Though don’t trapeze artists usually have safety nets?

I always sense the sweet spot like a tingle at the base of my skull. It reminds me of a warm, plush blanket draped around my shoulders, so comfortable, but it’s all an illusion. It’ll sour sooner or later. Oh, how I hate to unscrew the cap on a job and find out that I missed the expiration date by a day or two. No, it’s best to move on before that happens.

I don’t always get it right. My mother, though, now she was the real genius. She could smell it in the stale cardboard boxes littering the warehouse she worked at in Columbus, which is why we landed in Mississippi. When that went rotten, we moved to Detroit. Chicago lasted long enough for me to graduate high school. That was a shitty two-room apartment off the Blue Line, but she loved the ride downtown every morning. A theater job. Ticket office. She liked asking everyone where they were visiting from. Always dreamed of taking her sewing machine in, but it was too big to haul anywhere.

I’ve felt it in the air since yesterday. I look around me, absorbing the here and now, and with a burst of energy zipping through my veins, I nod to myself.

It’s time.

“Mr.—” I look down at my screen for his name. It’s been a nice trip down memory lane, but I’m off script, and he knows it. “Mr. Rogers—” Really? “What can I do to make this right?” I feel for him. I do. But my shift ends in fifteen, and I’d like to make this a clean break.

“You give me your name, young lady,” he hisses into the phone. “I’ve never been so insulted in all my life. I want to speak to your supervisor. Get him on the phone now.”

“Annabel Forester,” I sing into the phone, already feeling free. “I’ll transfer you right over. ButIdon’tworkhereanymore.” I blurt the last bit into the phone as a race of words before I hit the transfer button.

Three desks down, I hear my supervisor, Martin, take the call. I pick up my bag, straighten my blazer, and head down the carpeted hallway to one of the coveted corner offices.

At the sound of the brisk knock on her door, Marcella looks up from her computer screen and beams at me. “Annabel. Heading home for the day?” Then her brow furrows. “It’s three forty-five.”

“Yeah,” I say. I do feel a little bad. “About that . . .”

*****

Out on the sidewalk, there’s a parade.

Not an actual parade—more of a procession—but it looks like a parade when I step out of the office building and throw my hands above my head in a gesture that could be mistaken for scoring the winning touchdown in the Super Bowl, “Eye of the Tiger” blaring in my ears. No one even glances at me. The line of burly men is busy rolling in big racks of insane clothing. Insane. I want to run alongside and bury my hands in their folds; the fabrics look so heavy and luxe. And . . . Italian. Renaissance?

A woman stands along the edge of the sidewalk shouting into a cell phone. She keeps grabbing at her hair—red and curly and barely contained by one of those clips that looks like a claw—and the expression on her face is so distressed that I pull out my earbuds to hear what she’s saying. “Eye of the Tiger” fades into a tinny version of itself as her voice cuts in.

“That’s bullshit, Evan. These people were supposed to be here last Thursday. You can’t tell me I don’t have seamstresses. Have you seen this cast?” She pauses, indignant. “No, Evan, have you seen this cast? I’m not Houdini.” Houdini was good at getting out of things, right? I’m not going to be the one to tell her that. “I need a full department behind me, or else the show—” With one hand, she waves the men past her, mouthing, Hurry, hurry. “Three weeks?” She holds the phone out in front of her lips and shouts into it, every word rounded. “I need seamstresses, Evan. At least one. And I need one now.”

Remember how I said I could sense the sweet spot in a job? I can also sense shiny new opportunities.

I glance down at what I’m wearing. Black dress slacks, a black scoop-neck tee that won’t draw too much attention on the train, and a heather-colored blazer I picked up at T.J.Maxx for a steal. I’ve had to fix a single tugged-out seam. More than presentable. In fact, sans blazer, my outfit is like Seamstress Woman’s.

Her day is a lot worse than mine.

The aura of bright, glowing possibility grows in my chest. The woman at the edge of the sidewalk—she could get killed, dangling over the curb like that—fumbles with her phone, stabbing at it with her thumb. “Damn it!” she screams into the sidewalk. None of the people hustling the garments past her flinches. So this is a fast-paced thing. My pulse quickens.

When the next gap between rolling racks of clothing appears, I dart across the sidewalk to where she’s standing, facing the traffic, both hands grasping her hair, phone pressed into the curls. “Excuse me.” I speak gently, because Jesus, she could be about to blow.

She whirls around, eyes unfocused. “What? What is it?” Then she blows out a breath through rounded lips. “I’m sorry, I—what can I do for you?”

I’m practically beaming, remembering that sewing machine. In a lot of neighborhoods, in a lot of cities, it was cheaper to pick up some discount fabric and make my own than to buy new clothes. Was my life made for this moment?

I stick out my hand to shake hers with a confidence honed from traveling city to city across the country. “I’m Annabel Forester,” I tell her, letting a tiny bit of pride seep into my voice. “I overheard that you might be looking to hire a seamstress.”