Chapter 185

• The email came in just after nine on a Tuesday morning. I had been at the boutique for less than an hour, the scent of fresh coffee still drifting from the back room, when I saw the subject line: Delay in Shipment – Urgent.
• At first, I scanned it quickly, expecting a short delay, a matter of a day or two. Then I read it again, slower this time, letting each line settle. Our primary silk supplier had run into a production issue—something about a machine failure combined with a backlog from another client—and the shipment scheduled for this week would not arrive for at least another month. There was no mention of an alternative solution, only a neatly worded apology and the promise to “update you as soon as the situation changes.”
• I set my coffee down without drinking it. The Kyoto silk was meant for the spring jackets, a centrepiece of our upcoming line. Without it, the timeline would unravel.