Chapter 26 The Hidden Studio
Brittany's POV
The corridor was narrow and cold, smelling of old stone.
Sophia walked ahead of me with her cane tapping a steady rhythm on the floor, her pace unhurried, her back straight. The corridor ran maybe thirty feet before ending at a door, heavy wood with iron fittings and a lock that looked older than everything else in the mansion. Sophia reached into the pocket of her robe and produced a key on a plain ring, with no markings or label. She inserted it and turned it, and the lock released with a sound like something exhaling after holding its breath for a very long time.
She pushed the door open and stepped back.
"Go in," she said.
I stepped through the doorway and stopped.
The room was large. Much larger than I had expected from the narrow approach, running deep into the mansion's east foundation with a ceiling high enough to feel generous. The lighting was not the dim, dusty situation I had braced for. Someone, at some point, had installed proper studio lighting, long overhead panels that Sophia reached past me to switch on, and the room filled with a clean, even white light that showed everything clearly and truthfully the way good studio lighting was supposed to.
I stood in the doorway and looked at all of it.
Along the left wall, bolts of fabric were stacked on wide shelves from floor to ceiling. Silks, wools, structured canvas, sheer layers of chiffon still in their original wrapping, colors ranging from deep architectural blacks and navies to soft creams, and one extraordinary bolt of deep red that caught the light and held it. Dust had settled on some of the outer wrappings, but the fabric itself, I could tell even from the doorway, was protected and intact.
In the center of the room sat a cutting table. It was long, longer than any I had worked on before, a proper professional surface at the right height, with measurement markings along two edges and a surface that was still smooth and true despite the years.
Three industrial sewing machines stood against the right wall, covered in grey dust sheets that had completely protected them. A serger beside them. A pressing station with a professional iron still in its cradle. A dress form in the corner, adjusted to measurements I recognized after a moment as close to my own.
And at the far end of the room, spanning the entire width of the wall from floor to almost ceiling, was the mood board.
I walked toward it slowly.
The sketches were pinned in careful rows, not randomly arranged but organized with a designer's logic, grouped by silhouette family, by construction method, by the arc of a collection that had a clear beginning, middle, and direction. They were drawn on large sheets of cream paper in pencil and ink, some with color notes in the margins, some with fabric swatches pinned beside them, small squares of material that had survived thirty years in this sealed room in perfect condition.
I stopped in front of the board and looked at the drawings.
My mother's hand.
I knew it now from the photograph, from what Elena had described, from some deeper recognition I couldn't fully articulate. The line quality was distinct, confident, and fast, the same quality I had felt in my own hand last night at the desk. Not identical, we were different people with different visions, but the underlying quality of certainty was the same. The sense that the design already existed, fully formed, somewhere, and that the pencil was finding it.
She had been extraordinary.
I could see it clearly and objectively, the way you can sometimes assess things that belong to you without sentimentality getting in the way, because the grief was still there, but underneath it was something cleaner. She had been genuinely, significantly talented. Not just good. Not just promising. The work on this board was the work of someone who would have changed things, who would have built something that lasted, who would have put her name in the history of this industry in permanent ink.
They had killed her for it.
I stood in front of the board for a long time. Sophia was behind me somewhere, not speaking, giving me the silence because she understood what it required. I heard her cane shift once on the floor. Otherwise, the room was completely quiet.
I looked at the collection my mother had been building. I traced the arc of it, piece by piece across the board, following her logic, understanding her direction, seeing where she had been going. It was unfinished. Maybe sixty percent complete, enough to see the full vision clearly, but not enough to close it.
She had not had time to finish it.
I touched the edge of one sketch lightly, my fingertip at the margin where she had written a fabric note in small, neat letters. The paper was cool and slightly textured under my finger. Thirty years old. Still here.
I stepped back from the board.
I turned around.
Sophia was standing near the cutting table, watching me with those black diamond eyes, her hands folded over her cane, her face giving nothing away but her attention giving everything.
I looked at the fabric wall. The machines. The pressing station. The cutting table. The dress form was standing in the corner, as if it had been waiting specifically for me.
I looked back at my mother's sketches.
Something settled in my chest. Not gently. It settled the way a foundation stone settles: heavy, permanent, and load-bearing.
"I'm going to need thread," I said.
Sophia smiled.
It was the same fierce, certain smile from my bedroom three nights ago, the one that looked exactly like David's, and it transformed her face the same way it had then, not into softness but into something that had been waiting to feel justified for a very long time.
"Elena will bring supplies tomorrow morning," Sophia said. "I have a list already prepared. The machines were serviced eighteen months ago in anticipation." She moved toward the door, her cane tapping. "The dress form was adjusted to your measurements last week."
"You adjusted it before you even told me this room existed," I said.
"I adjust for contingencies," Sophia said. "I learned a long time ago that hoping is not enough. You prepare, and then you hope."
She reached the doorway and paused, turning back to look at me one more time. "Get familiar with the space today. Learn where everything is. Tomorrow the work begins properly."
I nodded.
Sophia stepped through the door into the corridor.
I turned back to the mood board to look at it once more, to fix the full image of it in my mind before I left, to carry it with me through the rest of the day.
And that was when I saw it.
Bottom right corner of the board. Below the last row of my mother's sketches. Something that didn't belong among the thirty-year-old drawings, aged paper, and preserved fabric swatches.
A note. White paper, recently printed, edges still crisp. Pinned with a single tack directly to the board.
I crossed the room in six steps and leaned in close to read it.
The handwriting was sharp and slanted and completely unfamiliar.
It said: "She's coming. Make sure she never leaves."
The date at the top of the note was three weeks ago.
Three weeks ago, this room had been sealed for thirty years, known to almost no one, holding my mother's work in careful darkness.
Three weeks ago, someone had been inside it.
And they had known I was coming before I had any idea this room existed.