Scene 7¶
Scene 7¶
Lauren¶
Scene 6 Lauren [Celeste]
Lauren Rossignol didn’t come to Wardrobe like a mother arriving at a principal’s office.
There was none of that fragile anger, none of that flustered indignation. She came as if she’d spent a long time deciding what she would and wouldn’t say, and had finally settled on the only language style that always worked: calm, measured, consequential. She stood just inside the doorway with a canvas tote on her shoulder and her car keys in her hand, the metal biting gently into her fingers as if to keep her anchored. Her hair was pulled back too tightly for vanity. Her lipstick was absent. Her expression was not.
Mara looked up from the cutting table, pencil behind her ear, pattern paper spread like a map of intention.
“Can I help you,” Mara said, not quite a question.
Lauren’s gaze swept the room — rails, mannequin, the prototype jacket pinned in place — and landed on the mending corner that wasn’t a corner anymore. She took in the quiet speed of the women moving through tasks. The hush had weight. Not the hush of secrecy. The hush of work.
“I’m Charles’ mother.”
Mara didn’t move. But something in her eyes adjusted, like a lens clicking into focus.
“Right,” Mara said. “You’re... Lauren.”
Lauren blinked once, surprised that her name was known.
I had been at the rail, tagging garment bags. I didn’t look up immediately. I let Mara hold the centre. This was her room. Her rules. Lauren’s eyes found me anyway — quick, assessing — and then returned to Mara as if she’d already decided who mattered most here.
“My son told me he isn’t going back to school,” Lauren said, voice level. “He said he’s working here.”
Mara nodded once, as if confirming a fact rather than accepting a plea. “He is.”
Lauren’s jaw tightened. “He’s seventeen — ”
“Eighteen,” Mara corrected.
Lauren paused, then accepted the correction with a small exhale.
“Eighteen. He’s leaving Year Twelve. That’s not... smart.”
Mara’s expression didn’t soften.
“It’s not what you wanted.”
Lauren’s eyes flashed briefly — not rage, not tears — something sharper: the fatigue of a woman who has carried other people’s consequences for too long.
“No,” Lauren said. “It isn’t.”
Mara gestured with two fingers towards a chair near the table. Not inviting. Allowing. Lauren sat, carefully. She placed her keys on her knee instead of the table, as if not to take up more space than necessary. Her tote stayed on her shoulder.
“You’re running a studio, an atelier,” Lauren said, looking around again. “Not... a dressing-up shop.”
Mara’s mouth tightened. “Correct.”
Lauren nodded once. Then, with a steadiness that made me respect her, she asked the question that actually mattered.
“Is Charles hiding here?”
The room went even quieter, not because the women stopped working, but because they listened. Mara didn’t answer immediately. She turned her head slightly, eyes moving to where Charlie sat at the inventory drawer, sorting hooks and tapes with the same absorbed focus he gave to seams. He didn’t look up. He didn’t perform awareness. He simply worked.
“He’s not hiding,” Mara said at last. “Not the way you mean.”
Lauren’s grip tightened on her keys. “And the way you mean?”
Mara’s eyes returned to Lauren.
“The way I mean,” Mara said, “is he’s chosen a room that rewards him for being precise. School doesn’t.”
Lauren’s mouth thinned. “School is still school.”
Mara nodded once, like she conceded the fact without granting it authority.
“And this is still work,” she replied. “With deadlines. With consequences. With standards.”
Lauren’s gaze flicked again to Charlie, then back. “He’s not built for consequences.”
Mara’s eyebrow rose. “Oh, he is. He’s built for them more than most. He just doesn’t tolerate being mocked while he learns.”
Lauren’s throat moved. The sentence landed. It wasn’t sympathy. It was recognition. Her voice stayed controlled, but there was a tremor under it now — the tiniest crack in the armour.
“He’s always been... gentle,” she said, as if the word might be misread if she spoke it too loudly. “And the school... the school treats gentleness like weakness.”
Mara’s gaze held hers.
“School treats anything it can’t classify as weakness,” Mara said. “That’s what institutions do.”
Lauren’s jaw tightened again. She looked down at her keys, then up.
“I wanted him to finish. I wanted him to have that paper. I wanted him to not... make his chances in life smaller.”
Mara didn’t interrupt. She let the sentence exist. Lauren continued, voice still level but now carrying something deeper.
“But I also don’t want him to be eaten alive.”
Mara’s eyes narrowed slightly, and her tone shifted — not softer, but more direct, as if Lauren had finally spoken in a language Mara respected.
“I don’t run a sanctuary,” Mara said. “When he is here, he works. He doesn’t drift. He doesn’t sulk. He doesn’t disappear mid-task because he’s overwhelmed.”
Lauren’s eyes flicked to Charlie again, then back. “He disappears when he’s ashamed.”
Mara nodded, as if filing that away like a measurement.
“Then he must learn not to be,” Mara said coldly, “or he doesn’t stay.”
Lauren’s lips parted slightly. For a moment, Mara’s harshness irritated her. But she didn’t reject it either. I could see the calculation: harshness, at least, was honest.
“And so you’re quite... comfortable,” Lauren said carefully, “having him here? Around... around all this?” Her eyes moved, briefly, to the fitting curtains — to the private space that was controlled, not hidden.
Mara’s gaze sharpened. “You mean around women.”
Lauren didn’t flinch. She didn’t deny.
“Yes.”
Mara leaned forward slightly. Not threatening. Just clear.
“This is a women’s space,” Mara said. “It stays that way because we keep it that way. He is not entitled to anything in this room. He’s here because he is useful and respectful. If that changes, he is out. Immediately.”
“He wouldn’t do anything...”
“That’s not the point,” Mara said. “The point is that women in this space don’t have to wonder, to worry.”
Lauren’s shoulders loosened by a fraction, like the sentence had relieved her of some burden she hadn’t wanted to name. Mara sat back.
“Now,” she said, brisk. “What do you actually want.”
Lauren inhaled.
“I want you to tell me whether what Charles is doing here is... real!” She shook her head and placed a hand over her neck. “Not... a phase. This is not just my son hiding from school because it’s hard. He’s getting real training, for a real future.”
Mara’s eyes slid briefly to the prototype jacket again, then back.
“It’s real,” Mara said. “I make it real.”
Lauren held her gaze.
“And where does Celeste fit into this,” Lauren asked, and my name entered the space like a small blade.
Mara didn’t look at me when she answered.
“Celeste is the research,” Mara said. “The direction. The brain that won’t let the work get lazy.”
Lauren’s eyes came to me again.
“And you,” Lauren said to me, voice still calm but now edged, “are you rescuing him?”
I finally looked up.
“No,” I said. The word came out clean. “He’s working. Mara’s the one who decides whether he stays.”
Mara’s mouth twitched, almost approving. Lauren studied me for a beat, then nodded once, as if satisfied with the answer.
She stood. She shifted her tote from shoulder to hand and drew out a folded bundle of fabric.
“This is his,” she said, placing it on the table without ceremony. “He left it at home. I washed it. I pressed it. Whatever it is.”
Mara unfolded it: a linen apron, neatly hemmed, ties reinforced. Mara’s eyes flicked to Lauren.
“You sewed this.”
“I fixed it.”
Mara ran a finger along the stitching — precise, elegant, invisible.
“Good work,” Mara said.
Lauren blinked again, surprised by the praise. Mara didn’t offer more. She didn’t need to. She folded the apron and put it aside with the other issued items, as if it had been accepted into the system.
Lauren’s gaze went to Charlie one more time. He still hadn’t looked up. He was counting eyelets like counting was a form of prayer. Lauren’s expression shifted — not soft, exactly, but less braced.
“I’m disappointed,” she said, louder now. Clearly Charlie should hear it. Not accusation. Truth. “I wanted you to finish.”
Charlie paused. His fingers stopped. He didn’t turn around.
“I know.”
Lauren’s throat moved. She swallowed it down. Mara spoke, crisp, to cut the emotion before it bloomed into something messy.
“Rossignol,” she called. “Continue.”
Charlie resumed immediately. Lauren exhaled. She looked at Mara again.
“When he’s here,” Lauren said with a nod, “he works.”
“Correct.”
Lauren picked up her keys.
“And if the school comes sniffing,” Lauren added, and now there was a new steadiness to her voice — a mother’s protectiveness with a professional edge.
Mara’s gaze hardened.
“They can sniff elsewhere.”
Lauren’s mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. Something like relief. She turned to go, then paused at the door and looked back once more at Mara.
“I don’t do pity,” Lauren said, as if setting a boundary as well as a warning. “He won’t survive that.”
Mara’s response was immediate.
“Neither do I,” she said. “That’s why he will.”
Lauren left without flourish. The door clicked shut, and the room returned to its rhythm. Mara looked at me, pencil still behind her ear.
“Your friend.”
“She’s Charlie’s mother,” I said. “That’s not the same thing.”
Mara’s mouth twitched again.
“Good,” she said. “Keep it clean.”
Scene 6¶
Sewing as Physics¶
[ Published ]
Scene 6 ✨ Sewing as Physics ✨ [Celeste] Scene 6 Lauren [Celeste]
Lauren Rossignol didn’t come to Wardrobe like a mother arriving at a principal’s office.
There was none of that fragile anger, none of that flustered indignation. She came as if she’d spent a long time deciding what she would and wouldn’t say, and had finally settled on the only approach that always worked: calm, measured, consequential. She stood just inside the doorway with a canvas tote on her shoulder and her car keys in her hand, the metal biting gently into her fingers as if to keep her anchored. Her hair was pulled back too tightly for vanity. Her lipstick was absent. Her expression was not.
Mara looked up from the cutting table, pencil behind her ear, pattern paper spread like a map of intention.
“Can I help you.” It was not quite a question.
Lauren’s gaze swept the room — rails, mannequin, the prototype jacket pinned in place — and landed on the mending corner that wasn’t a corner anymore. She took in the quiet speed of the women moving through tasks. The hush had weight: not the hush of secrecy — the hush of work.
“I’m Charles’ mother.”
Mara didn’t move, but something in her eyes adjusted, like a lens clicking into focus.
“Right,” Mara said. “You’re... Lauren.”
Lauren's eyebrows rose, surprised that Mara knew her name. I had been at the rail, tagging garment bags. I didn’t look up immediately, letting Mara hold the centre. This was her room, her rules. Lauren’s eyes found me anyway — quick, assessing — then returned to Mara as if she’d already decided who mattered most here.
“My son told me he isn’t going back to school,” Lauren said, her voice level. “He said he’s working here.”
Mara nodded. “He is.”
Lauren’s jaw tightened. “He’s seventeen — ”
“Eighteen,” Mara corrected.
Lauren paused, then accepted the correction with a small exhale.
“Eighteen. And he’s leaving Year Twelve. That’s not... a good choice.”
Mara’s expression didn’t soften.
“It’s not what you wanted.”
Lauren’s eyes flashed briefly — not rage, not tears — something sharper: the fatigue of a woman who has carried other people’s consequences for too long.
“No,” Lauren said flatly. “It isn’t.”
Mara gestured with two fingers towards a chair near the table, not inviting: allowing. Lauren sat, carefully. She placed her keys on her knee instead of the table, as if not to take up more space than necessary. Her tote stayed on her shoulder. She glanced around her.
“You’re running a studio, an atelier. Not... a dressing-up shop.”
Mara’s mouth tightened. “Correct.”
Lauren nodded once. Then, with a steadiness that made me respect her, she asked the question that was actually on her mind.
“Is Charles hiding here?”
The room seemed to go even quieter, not because the women stopped working, but because they listened. Mara didn’t answer immediately. She turned her head slightly, eyes moving to where Charlie sat at the inventory drawer, sorting hooks and tapes with the same absorbed focus he gave to seams. He didn’t look up.
“He’s not hiding,” Mara said at last. “Not the way you mean.”
Lauren’s grip tightened on her keys. “And the way you mean?”
Mara’s eyes returned to Lauren.
“The way I mean,” Mara said, “is he’s chosen a room that rewards him for being precise. School doesn’t.”
Lauren’s mouth thinned. “School is still school.”
Mara nodded, like conceding a fact without granting it authority.
“And this is still work,” she replied. “With deadlines. With consequences. With standards.”
Lauren’s gaze flicked again to Charlie, then back. “He’s not built for consequences.” Mara’s eyebrow rose.
“Oh, he is. He’s built for them more than most. He just doesn’t tolerate being mocked while he learns.”
Lauren’s throat moved. The sentence had landed. What Mara had expressed wasn’t sympathy, it was recognition.
Although Lauren's voice stayed controlled, there was a tremor under it now — the tiniest crack in the armour.
“He’s always been... gentle.” She spoke softly, as if the words might be misconceived if she said them too loudly. “And the school... the school treats gentleness like weakness.”
Mara’s gaze held hers.
“School treats anything it can’t classify as weakness,” Mara said. “That’s what institutions do.”
Lauren’s jaw tightened again. She looked down at her keys, then up at Mara.
“I wanted him to finish. I wanted him to have that paper. I wanted him to not... make his chances in life smaller.”
Mara gave a small nod, but didn’t interrupt. Lauren continued, voice still level but now carrying something deeper.
“But I also don’t want him to be eaten alive.”
Mara’s eyes narrowed slightly, and her tone shifted — not softer, but more direct, as if Lauren had finally spoken in a language Mara respected.
“Look, I don’t run a sanctuary,” Mara said. “No one hides here: they work. When he is here, he works. He doesn’t drift. He doesn’t sulk. He doesn’t disappear mid-task because he’s overwhelmed.”
Lauren’s eyes flicked to Charlie again, then back. “He disappears when he’s ashamed.”
Mara gave another quick nod, as if filing that away like a measurement.
“And he must learn not to be ashamed,” Mara said coldly, “or he does not stay.”
Lauren’s lips parted slightly. I could see, even from a distance, that for an instant, Lauren found Mara’s bluntness confronting. But then, the look in Lauren's eyes signalled a calculation: bluntness, at least, was honest.
“And you’re good,” Lauren said carefully, “having him here? Around... around all this?” Her eyes moved, briefly, to the fitting curtains, to the private spaces: controlled, not hidden. Mara’s gaze sharpened.
“You mean around women.”
Lauren didn’t flinch.
“Yes.”
Mara leaned forward slightly.
“This is a women’s space by design,” Mara said. “It stays that way because we expressly keep it that way. He is not entitled to anything in this room. He’s here because he is useful and respectful. If that changes, he is out. Immediately.”
“He wouldn’t do anything...”
“That’s not the point,” Mara said. “It is this: women in this space don’t ever have to wonder... or worry.”
Lauren didn’t argue. She understood what Mara was building: not a mood, not a promise: a structure.
She let her eyes flick briefly to Charlie as she nodded before returning to Mara.
“Right,” she said softly. “So it’s not about him. It’s about the room.”
It was clear: Charlie wasn’t a problem to be managed. If he could meet the standard, he could stay. If he couldn’t, he couldn’t. Either way, the women wouldn’t have to wonder.
“Now,” Mara said briskly. “What do you actually want.”
Lauren inhaled.
“I want you to tell me whether what Charles is doing here is... real!” She shook her head and placed a hand over her neck. “Is there a real future in this for him?”
Mara’s eyes slid briefly to the prototype jacket again, then back.
“It’s real,” Mara said. “I make it real. We're expanding.”
Lauren glanced over to him.
“And who will be teaching him? You?” Lauren asked.
Mara answered the question with motion.
“Come on,” she said, already walking.
Lauren fell in beside her, stepping around a basket of offcuts and a roll of calico that had escaped its place like a small act of rebellion. The atelier had that "we're growing" feeling — more surfaces in use, more voices needed, more work trying to become a system. Lauren could appreciate the pressure. She also understood what pressure did to standards if you didn’t name a person to hold them. Mara stopped at the far table where I had a bodice piece laid out like a map. I watched them approach, my eyes on Lauren's face.
“Celeste,” Mara said calmly.
“Yes?”
“This is Lauren,” Mara said. “Charlie’s mother.”
The look of name recognition flickered in Lauren’s eyes. That’s the name he says... differently.
I extended a hand.
“Hi.” Firm. Warm enough. No theatrical sweetness.
Lauren took it. In the contact she felt a second reality arrive, sharp and immediate: I would be near her son every day. Close enough to change him. Close enough to steady him. Close enough to hurt him, if I chose.
Mara didn’t waste time.
“So, Celeste knows the ropes. She'll be teaching him.”
Lauren’s eyes flicked briefly toward the corner of the room where Charlie was, then back to me.
“Okay,” she said. No surprise, just acceptance. “What’s the standard?”
Mara’s mouth twitched. Approval, microscopic.
“The standard is our standard,” Mara said. “He meets it or he doesn’t. No special treatment.”
Lauren looked at me. There was a slight pause before she spoke.
“He talks about you,” she said, and then, because she was his mum, not foolish, she corrected the shape of it immediately. “Not to gossip. He... admires you.”
I met Lauren’s eyes with a steadiness that she must found unsettling.
“He may do so,” I said calmly. “But he's here to work. My job is to train him properly.”
Lauren exhaled, small and quiet, the way you did when you realised you’d just been handed a risk and a safeguard in the same breath. Mara turned to go, as if the matter were finished. But Lauren stayed half a second longer, looking at my hands on the cloth, the pin-cushion, the neat violence of a good seam.
She looked me straight in the eyes. Daily contact. Every day.
Then she squared her shoulders and followed Mara, because whatever else this was, it was real work, and real work had rules. She shifted her tote from shoulder to hand and drew out a folded bundle of fabric.
“This is his,” she said, placing it on the table without ceremony. “He left it at home this morning. I washed and pressed it.”
Mara unfolded it: a linen apron from our repair stack, neatly hemmed, ties reinforced. Mara’s eyes flicked to Lauren.
“And sewed it.”
“I fixed it.”
Mara ran a finger along the stitching — precise, elegant, invisible.
“Good work.”
Lauren blinked, her lips giving a slight twitch at the praise. Mara folded the apron and put it aside with the other repaired items, as accepted into the system. Lauren’s gaze went to Charlie one more time. He still hadn’t looked up. He was counting eyelets like counting was a form of prayer. Lauren’s expression shifted — not soft, exactly, but less braced.
“Look, I can't deny I’m disappointed,” she said, louder now. Charlie heard her — his shoulders tensed. “I wanted you to finish, Charles.”
Charlie paused. His fingers stopped. He didn’t turn around.
“I know,” he murmured.
Lauren’s throat moved. She swallowed it down. Then Mara spoke, crisply, cutting into emotions before they got messy.
“Rossignol,” she called. “Continue.”
Charlie resumed immediately. Lauren exhaled. She looked at Mara again.
“So when he’s here,” Lauren said with a nod, “he works.”
“Correct.”
Lauren picked up her keys.
“And if the school comes sniffing,” Lauren added, and now there was a new steadiness to her voice — a mother’s protectiveness with a professional edge.
Mara’s gaze hardened.
“They can sniff elsewhere.”
Lauren’s mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. Something like relief. She turned to go, then paused at the door and looked back once more at Mara.
“I don’t do pity,” Lauren said, as if setting a boundary as well as a warning. “He won’t survive that.”
Mara’s response was immediate.
“Neither do I,” she said. “That’s why he will.”
Lauren left without flourish. The door clicked shut, and the room returned to its rhythm. Mara looked at me, pencil still behind her ear.
“You know her?”
“As much as you do. I knew of her: Charlie’s mum,” I said.
Mara’s mouth twitched again.
“Good,” she said. “Keeps it clean.”
Scene 7¶
Lauren¶
[ Published ]
Scene 6 ✨ Lauren ✨ [Celeste]
Lauren Rossignol didn’t come to Wardrobe like a mother arriving at a principal’s office.
No brittle anger. No flustered indignation. She arrived as if she’d spent days deciding what she would and wouldn’t say, and had settled on the only approach that reliably moved outcomes: calm, measured, consequential. She stood just inside the doorway with a canvas tote on her shoulder and her car keys in her hand, the metal biting lightly into her fingers as if to keep her anchored. Hair pulled back too tightly to be vanity. No lipstick. Plenty of presence.
Mara looked up from the cutting table, pencil behind her ear, pattern paper spread like a map of intention.
“Can I help you.” Not quite a question.
Lauren’s gaze swept the room — rails, mannequins, the prototype jacket pinned in place — and landed on the mending corner that wasn’t a corner anymore. She took in the quiet speed of women moving through tasks. The hush had weight: not secrecy. Work.
“I’m Charlie’s mother.”
Mara didn’t move, but something in her eyes adjusted, like a lens clicking into focus.
“Right,” Mara said. “You’re... Lauren.”
Lauren’s brows rose — surprise that Mara knew her name. I was at the rail tagging garment bags. I didn’t look up immediately. This was Mara’s room; she held the centre.
Lauren’s eyes found me anyway — quick, assessing — then returned to Mara, as if she’d already decided who mattered most here.
“My son told me he isn’t going back to school,” Lauren said, voice level. “He said he’s working here.”
Mara nodded. “He is.”
Lauren’s jaw tightened. “He’s seventeen — ”
“Eighteen,” Mara corrected.
Lauren paused, accepted it with a small exhale.
“Eighteen. And he’s leaving Year Twelve. That’s not... a good choice.”
Mara’s expression didn’t soften.
“It’s not what you wanted.”
Something moved in Lauren’s face — fatigue, more than anger. The look of a woman who has carried other people’s consequences for too long.
“No,” she said flatly. “It isn’t.”
Mara gestured with two fingers toward a chair near the table. Not inviting: allowing.
Lauren sat carefully. She kept her keys on her knee instead of the table, as if not to take up more space than necessary. Her tote stayed on her shoulder. She glanced around again.
“You’re running a studio. An atelier. Not... a dressing-up shop.”
“Correct,” Mara said.
Lauren nodded once. Then she asked the question that had been there all along.
“Is Charlie hiding here?”
The room seemed to narrow, not because the other women had stopped working, but because they listened. Mara didn’t answer immediately. She turned her head slightly, eyes moving to where Charlie sat at the inventory drawers, sorting hooks and tapes with the same absorbed focus he gave to seams. He didn’t look up.
“He’s not hiding,” Mara said at last. “Not the way you mean.”
Lauren’s grip tightened on her keys. “And the way you mean?”
Mara’s eyes returned to her.
“He’s chosen a room that rewards him for being precise,” Mara said. “School doesn’t.”
“School is still school.”
Mara nodded — conceding the fact without granting it authority.
“And this is still work,” she replied. “Deadlines. Consequences. Standards.”
Lauren’s gaze flicked to Charlie, then back. “He’s not built for consequences.”
Mara’s eyebrow rose.
“Oh, he is. He’s built for them more than most.” Her voice didn’t warm: it sharpened. “He just doesn’t tolerate being mocked while he learns.”
Lauren swallowed. The sentence landed. Not sympathy — recognition.
“He’s always been... gentle,” she said, softly, as if the word might be misread if she said it too loudly. “And school... school treats gentleness like weakness.”
“School treats anything it can’t classify as weakness,” Mara said. “That’s what institutions do.”
Lauren looked down at her keys, then back up.
“I wanted him to finish. I wanted him to have the paper.” Her voice stayed even, but something deepened under it. “I wanted him to not... make his chances smaller.”
Mara didn’t interrupt.
“But I also don’t want him eaten alive.”
Mara’s tone shifted — not softer, simply more direct, as if Lauren had finally spoken in a language she respected.
“Look,” Mara said, “I don’t run a sanctuary. No one hides here: they work. When he’s here, he works. He doesn’t drift. He doesn’t sulk. He doesn’t vanish mid-task because he’s overwhelmed.”
Lauren’s eyes flicked to Charlie again. “He disappears when he’s ashamed.”
Mara gave a quick nod, filing it away like a measurement.
“Then he learns not to be ashamed,” Mara said, cold and clean, “or he doesn’t stay.”
Lauren’s lips parted, then closed again. For an instant she looked confronted by Mara’s bluntness — then something in her eyes recalculated. Bluntness was at least honest.
“And you’re... good?” Lauren asked carefully. She bit her lip. “I mean, having him here? Around... all this?” Her gaze moved briefly to the fitting curtains, the private spaces: controlled, not hidden.
“You mean: around women.”
“Yes.”
Mara leaned forward slightly.
“This is a women’s space by design,” she said. “It will stay that way because we keep it that way. He is not entitled to anything: he’s here to be useful and respectful. If that changes, he’s out. Immediately.”
“He wouldn’t do anything — ”
“That’s not the point,” Mara cut in. “This is: women in this space don’t ever have to wonder... or worry.”
Lauren looked thoughtful. Mara was not building a mood or a promise, but a structure.
She nodded and her eyes flicked briefly to Charlie.
“Right,” she said softly. “So it’s not about him. It’s about the room.”
Mara didn’t react to the phrasing, which was agreement, in her language.
“Now,” Mara said briskly. “What do you actually want.”
Lauren inhaled.
“I want you to tell me whether what Charlie is doing here is... real.” Her hand lifted to her throat, then fell. “Is there a real future in this for him?”
Mara’s eyes slid briefly to the prototype jacket again, then back.
“It’s real,” Mara said. “I make it real. We’re expanding.”
Lauren’s gaze went to him. Then back to Mara.
“And so who’s going to be teaching him?” she asked. “You?”
Mara answered with motion: she rose.
“Come on,” she said, already walking. Lauren fell in beside her, stepping around a basket of offcuts and a roll of calico that had escaped its place like a small act of rebellion. The room had that growing feeling — more surfaces in use, more work trying to become a system. Lauren, I could tell, understood what growth did to standards if you didn’t name someone to hold them.
Mara stopped at my table. I had a bodice piece laid out, pinned and marked, my hands already half in the next step.
“Celeste.”
I looked up. “Yes?”
“This is Lauren,” Mara said. “Charlie’s mother.”
Recognition flickered in Lauren’s eyes. Not familiarity — just the click of a name finally attaching to a face.
I offered my hand. “Hi.” Firm. Warm enough. No performance.
Lauren took it. Her grip was controlled, and the look she gave me was the look of a woman doing three calculations at once. Mara didn’t waste time.
“Celeste teaches,” she said. “I don’t have the hours.”
Lauren’s eyes went briefly toward Charlie, then back to me.
“Okay,” she said. Acceptance, not surrender. “What’s the standard?”
“The standard is our standard,” Mara said. “He meets it or he doesn’t. No special treatment.”
Lauren looked at me. A small pause — her mother-instinct checking the edges before she stepped onto them.
“He talks about you,” she said, then corrected the shape of it immediately. “Not to gossip. He... admires you.”
I held her gaze.
“He may,” I said calmly. “But he’s here to work. My job is to train him properly.”
Lauren’s breath went out — small and quiet. Not relief, exactly. Something like a risk becoming a rule.
Mara turned to go, as if the matter were finished. Lauren stayed half a second longer, watching my hands move over the cloth, the pins, the neat violence of a good seam. Then she squared her shoulders and followed Mara. Whatever else this was, it was real work, and real work had rules. At Mara’s table, Lauren shifted her tote from shoulder to hand and drew out a folded bundle of fabric.
“This is yours, I believe,” she said, placing it down without ceremony. “He forgot it at home this morning. I washed and pressed it.”
Mara unfolded it: a linen apron from our repair stack, neatly hemmed, ties reinforced. Mara’s eyes flicked to Lauren.
“And sewed it.”
“I fixed it,” Lauren said with a small shrug.
Mara ran a finger along the stitching — precise, elegant, invisible.
“Good work.”
Lauren blinked. Her mouth twitched at the praise — surprised by it, and not immune. Mara folded the apron and set it aside with the repaired items, accepted into the system.
Lauren’s gaze went to Charlie again. He still hadn’t looked up. He was counting eyelets like counting was a form of prayer. Her expression shifted — not soft, exactly. Less braced.
“Look,” she said, louder now. Charlie heard her; his shoulders tensed. “I can’t deny I’m disappointed. I wanted you to finish, Charles.”
Charlie paused. His fingers stopped. He didn’t turn.
“I know,” he murmured.
Lauren swallowed whatever tried to rise. Mara cut in before it could get messy.
“Rossignol,” she called, crisp. “Continue.”
Charlie resumed immediately. Lauren exhaled. She looked at Mara.
“So when he’s here,” she said, nodding toward him, “he works.”
“Correct.”
Lauren picked up her keys.
“And if the school comes sniffing,” she added — now there was a new steadiness to her voice, a mother’s protectiveness with a professional edge. Mara’s gaze hardened.
“They can sniff elsewhere.”
Lauren’s mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. Something adjacent to relief. She turned to go, then paused at the door and looked back at Mara.
“I don’t do pity,” Lauren said, as if setting a boundary as well as a warning. “He won’t survive that.”
“Neither do I,” Mara replied. “That’s why he will survive.”
Lauren left without flourish. The door clicked shut, and the room returned to its rhythm. Mara looked at me, pencil still behind her ear.
“You know her?”
“As much as you do,” I said. “I knew of her. Charlie’s mum.”
Mara’s mouth twitched.
“Good,” she said. “Keeps it clean.”