The Betrayed Genius Designer

Milan, late March.

Every light beneath the dome of Palazzo dei Congressi was blazing. Thirty thousand LEDs mimicked a star-filled sky, turning the entire exhibition hall into an upside-down night. Avery Sutherland stood at the center of the stage, a crystal trophy in her left hand and a microphone in her right. She was wearing a dress she had designed herself: black velvet pieced with white satin, an asymmetrical slit, and diagonal pleats at the waistline that had taken her three nights of sewing before she was satisfied.

"...Newcomer of the Year, Avery Sutherland!"

The host's voice came through the speakers, and applause flooded the hall.

She smiled out at the audience, eyes narrowing slightly, chin lifted. The judges in the front row, dressed in black suits, rose to applaud. A scatter of flashes lit up the press section in back. At the side of the stage, her assistant Eve clapped so hard her mouth opened into a round shape, silently mouthing, "Look at me, look at me!"

But Avery's gaze passed over all of them and settled on a seat near the aisle in the third row.

Empty. No one was sitting there.

A dark gray suit jacket lay folded over the backrest. Avery knew it was Grant's. He had come, then left. Or perhaps he had never sat down at all.

She drew her eyes away and faced the cameras. "Thank you to the judging panel. Thank you, Milan."

There were forty minutes left in the ceremony. She was pulled backstage twice for touch-ups, posed for three sets of photographs, and was stopped in the corridor by an Italian designer she had never met, who caught her by the wrist and said, "The way you handle pleats reminds me of my grandmother's curtains."

She smiled and eased her hand free. "Then perhaps we both had grandmothers with excellent taste."

By the time she finally returned to her hotel room, it was 1:20 a.m. in Milan.

She slipped off her heels, crossed the carpet barefoot, set the trophy on the windowsill, and stood with her back to the Milan night as she took out her phone.

Grant's last message was from three that afternoon: "I probably won't make it tonight. Something came up at the company, and there's a quality problem at the client's factory that I need to stay on top of. I hope the awards go well."

A sleepy-face emoji followed.

Her finger hovered over the screen. She typed and deleted, typed and deleted again. In the end, she sent only: "I got it. It went well. Get some rest when you're done over there."

A new message appeared at the top of the screen. Elodie Penhaligon's chat window lit up.

"Grant said an emergency came up at the company and he couldn't get away. Don't be mad, okay? I had dinner with him tonight and kept an eye on him for you." A grinning face with a hand over its mouth followed.

Avery sat on the edge of the bed, reading the message. Her eyes paused first on "I had dinner with him" and then on "kept an eye on him for you." She checked the time. 1:22 a.m. in Milan. 7:22 p.m. in New York.

"Thanks for keeping him company. I'll be back next week."

She set the phone facedown on the sheets, then went to the suitcase and began to pack.

Four sample garments from the show were folded neatly inside. She took the trophy from the windowsill, searched the room for something to protect it with, and finally wrapped it in three layers of hotel towels before placing it in the center of the suitcase. Beside it was a small velvet pouch containing a pair of silver cuff links she had bought that afternoon at an antique jewelry shop in the Brera district.

Three months earlier, at a party, Grant had pointed to the cuff of a man standing nearby and said, "Those metal cuff links are nice. That old-bronze finish is hard to find these days."

Avery had been talking to someone else, but she heard him. She remembered. It took her three weeks to find something similar in Milan.

She had planned to slip the cuff links onto the sleeves of the new shirt he was going to wear the next day, without telling him, and let him discover them only when he glanced down at his watch at the office. She imagined his reaction. He would probably laugh at her for pulling one of her little stunts again.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, she tipped the cuff links from the velvet pouch into her palm and studied them for two seconds. They were bronze-colored, their faces covered in fine hammered marks, the light breaking across them into tiny scattered glints.

She put them back in the pouch and zipped the suitcase shut. Her phone lit up again. Elodie: "He went back to work after dinner. I'm keeping an eye on him, so don't worry. Hope you're enjoying the awards over there! Remember to send lots of pictures!"

Avery opened her photo album and scrolled through several unedited backstage shots from that evening. She chose the least blurry one and sent it over. "Just finished accepting it. Haven't had time to retouch anything."

Elodie replied almost immediately. "Beautiful! You never miss when you look at the camera."

You never miss.

Avery stared at those five words for several seconds. Then she put the phone down and went to the bathroom to wash her face. The instant she turned on the tap, she had no idea why she suddenly wanted to call Grant, but she was already picking up the phone and dialing his number.

It rang three times before he answered.

"Hello?" His voice came through the speaker with a tired trailing note she knew too well, the thick, hoarse quality of someone who had spent too long making conversation at a function.

"Where are you?" she asked.

"At the office. I just saw the client out. What's wrong?"

Avery held the phone between her shoulder and cheek while she tested the water with one hand. "Nothing. I got the award. How's the factory problem going?"

"Still dealing with it. It may take until the weekend. Don't worry about it. Go relax."

There was a sound in the background as he spoke, faint and indistinct. Someone moving, perhaps, though no one said a word. The carpet swallowed half the footsteps, but she still heard them.

"When did your office get carpeted?" she asked.

There was a pause. "...Last week. How did you know?"

"Your footsteps sound different now." She turned off the tap. The moment the water stopped, the footsteps in the background stopped too. "Are you alone?"

"Yes. Elodie just left. She brought me back here."

"What did she eat?"

"What?"

"You said she had dinner with you. What did you have?"

Grant paused for a second. "...Chinese food. Why are you asking?"

"No reason. You might have sauce on your cuff. I was reminding you not to get it on the files."

A very soft intake of breath came through the phone, as if he had started to say something and swallowed it. Then he said, "...You sound tired. Get some sleep."

"You too." She ended the call.

Her face looked back at her from the bathroom mirror. The light cast a cold white sheen over her hair, and a little of her mascara had smudged. She stood there for roughly fifteen seconds, then bent over the sink, rinsed her face twice with cold water, dried it, and returned to the room.

Before turning out the light, she glanced through the window. Milan's night lay heavy and dark, while the distant spire of the Duomo glowed warm gold beneath the floodlights. She set her phone on the bedside table. The screen was still lit, frozen on her chat with Elodie. "Keeping an eye on him for you"—the words glimmered faintly in the darkened room.

She rolled onto her side and pulled the covers up to her chin. Just before she closed her eyes, she remembered something: from the stage that night, she had said, "He's in New York, busy building our new home."

Someone in the audience had laughed. Someone else had nodded. A woman reporter had written something in her notebook. Avery had thought of the sentence on the way to the airport. It was gracious, warm, the sort of thing that would leave everyone with a good impression. And it had done exactly that.

Everyone had been impressed.

Except her.

When she woke the next morning, fog pressed against the windows. March mist hung low over Milan, and the hotel glass was filmed with fine beads of moisture. Avery sat on the bed for a while, staring blankly, then opened her phone and found her team's work group chat.

She typed: "I'm not going on the Milan research trip. Change my flight. I'm heading back to New York this afternoon."

Eve replied instantly: "??? Weren't you staying three more days?"

Avery typed a response, deleted it, and revised it twice. At last, she sent only: "The work is done. Come back early. You all keep shooting your material."

She tossed the phone beside her pillow and got up to pull open the curtains. The fog was too thick to make out the church spire. Looking out at the gray-white world, she found herself thinking about one very small thing: before falling asleep the night before, she had changed her phone's new-message notifications so they no longer displayed previews.

She had no idea why she had done it.

At noon, in the taxi to the airport, she sent Grant a message: "I arrive tomorrow."

He replied at once: "Okay. I'll pick you up."

She looked at the word "Okay." She did not answer with any emoji that might suggest she was looking forward to it. She locked the screen and leaned back in the taxi, watching the scenery beyond Milan's outskirts shift from elegant little buildings to the gray warehouses of the industrial zone, then to the repeating road signs along the airport expressway.

Her phone's lock screen showed three faces: Avery, Grant, and Elodie. The picture had been taken on a rooftop on New Year's Eve the year before. The three of them stood close together, Avery's head resting against Grant's shoulder while Elodie stood on his other side, holding up a V with her fingers.

She turned the phone over and left it facedown on her thighs.

Before the flight from Milan to New York took off, she glanced at the team's latest message in the group chat: "We're going to Lake Como for research tomorrow. Are you sure you don't want to come?"

She typed: "I'm not coming. I have something to take care of at home."

"What is it?"

Before switching her phone to airplane mode, Avery looked at the question but did not answer. She powered it off, straightened her seatback, and fastened her seat belt.

Beyond the airplane window, Milan grew smaller and smaller. The buildings became grids, then specks, then vanished from sight.

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