Page 121 of Dial F for Finance

“Bennett just moved the acquisition review up by forty-five minutes,” she announces, her voice clipped and back on the clock.

I slide my phone into my pocket, burying the evidence of my newly launched tactical operation. “Good thing you have a husband to expedite your commute, then.”

She finally stops walking, narrowing her hazel eyes at me. “Why are you looking at me like you just executed a hostile takeover?”

I close the distance to press a quick kiss to her damp shoulder. “Just admiring my favorite person, sweetheart. Let’s go conquer what’s left of Friday.”

CHAPTER 33

Jenna

“Idon’t think I’ve ever been to a literal gala before,” Nora says, turning from side to side as she studies herself in the full-length mirror. “I mean, I’ve been to plenty of functions and school events that called themselves a gala. But none of them required hand-beaded designer dresses because I’m expected to pose for pictures on a red carpet.”

“I wish I was posing for pictures on a red carpet,” Miranda says, leaning back on the chaise lounge and slurping down champagne. “The only gown I’ll be wearing is my dressing gown while I try to ignore my children’s screaming so I can watch the live stream on my iPad and grumble at my husband for not being a member of the billionaire club.”

“Your sacrifice is noted,” I tell her, “and appreciated. Hailey doesn’t know how lucky she is that you two share a size.”

“We don’t share a size. We share a silhouette.” Miranda sets down the champagne and stands, presenting herself with both hands like a game show prize. “Same rack, same hips, same fundamental distrust of zippers. It’s the closest thing I have to a twin, and I’ve never even met the woman. Now. Which one am I wearing first, goddess? I am your canvas.”

We’re running on a tight schedule with only two weeks until the gala—Hailey made it through Tuesday’s video interview with Field, and he wants her in Chicago for her final interview the Friday before the gala. The roadblock is her current boss, who refused to give her Wednesday and Thursday off and would only approve Friday. Hails is pretty sure he’s figured out she’s trying to leave. So she’s flying in Friday and going straight to the interview, which leaves exactly one emergency fitting between her plane landing and Saturday night. The dress has to be chosen, held, and mostly altered before she ever sets foot in Chicago.

Enter Miranda, whose measurements are almost identical to Hailey’s. She’s driven in from the suburbs with a diaper bag she refuses to explain, and has spent the last hour treating the boutique like a one-woman residency.

She is, I’m forced to admit, magnificent at it.

She doesn’t just try the dresses on. She auditions them. The burgundy one gets a slow, tragic walk and a verdict—“This is a dress for a woman who knows where her husband’s body is buried. Too much widow. Hailey’s more of a flight risk”—and goes back on the rack. The navy one is “gorgeous but it whispers, and from what you’ve told me, your sister has never whispered in her life.” A silver column gown gets four steps before Miranda shakes her head. “I look like a very festive thermos. Next.”

Layla is laughing into her champagne. Serena has given up pretending to answer work emails. Audrey has started writing the verdicts down so she can tell Logan verbatim later.

And then the gold one comes out of the back room.

Liquid gold, draped low across the back, cut for a woman with hips and zero remorse about them—and Miranda goes quiet for the first time all morning. She turns in the mirror. The whole fitting room lets out a collective breath.

“Oh. My. God,” Miranda says to her own reflection. “Look how amazing my ass is in this. If your sister doesn’t take this, I’m keeping it, and my marriage will simply have to survive what happens next.”

“She’s taking it,” I say, already photographing every angle for the world’s most aggressive group text. “That’s the most Hailey dress I’ve ever seen. She wore a sequined disaster to her prom that she still defends under oath. This is that dress after eleven years of therapy and a celebrity stylist.”

Hailey’s reply comes back in nineteen seconds: a voice memo that is entirely screaming, then a second one that is the word:

Hailey:

BACKLESS?!

And then a third:

tell Miranda I owe her my firstborn, or I’ll at least let her borrow my Metrocard.

The fitter takes the gold dress away with Hailey’s measurements and Friday night’s appointment, and Nora’s final alterations get pinned while Michaela’s texted objections are read into the record—she’s “rather perturbed that children and canines aren’t allowed to attend the gala, because she finally has Archie waltzing in a manner befitting his station.”

“I’m with Michaela on this one,” Miranda says as she exits the curtain, tucking her T-shirt into the waist of her jeans. “I’m rather perturbed too!”

Somewhere in the middle of it I sit on the chaise next to Miranda’s abandoned champagne and watch this room full of women who didn’t even hesitate when I asked if anyone was willing to help me dress shop for Hailey, and I do something I wouldn’t have done two months ago.

I take out my phone and ask for a favor . . .

Me:

Question. My seat at the Mercer table—I won’t be using it now that I’m at Willa’s. Any chance Miranda could have it? And is there room for one more chair? Her husband.