Chapter 66

• It began quietly, the way most things that matter do. There was no press release. No bold campaign rollout. No carefully worded email from the PR team. Just Claudia. Just one photo. She had posted it early in the morning, the kind of hour when the world is still shaking off sleep, and the feed is usually filled with soft lighting and coffee cups. But hers was different. It was from six years ago, taken in the back room of our original studio, before the walls had been painted over and the lighting fixed. We were both younger in it, with dark circles under our eyes and fabric dust on our clothes, surrounded by bolts of unfinished textiles and mismatched mugs. We were laughing in that picture, shoulders slightly leaned into each other, the kind of laugh that came not from something particularly funny, but from exhaustion and shared absurdity. Her caption was brief, but it cut deeper than any trending headline had managed to.
• “She gave me a place when no one else would. I’ll never forget that. #StillStanding.”
• I must have stared at the screen for five full minutes. My fingers hovered above my keyboard, the half-written email to a vendor blinking at me, completely forgotten. I kept looking at the photo, trying to remember that exact day. I think it had been a Friday. We had worked through the night before, trying to patch together a sample that kept unraveling at the seams. I had accidentally spilled coffee on one of the only working zippers, and Claudia had patched it with leftover tulle. I remembered laughing until I had to sit down, because it was either that or cry. And somehow, we had made it work. Somehow, we had kept going.