“Whose dress?”
Eleanor stood slowly.
“Mine.”
The little girl stared.
“It’s old.”
“Very.”
“It’s pretty.”
Eleanor smiled.
“Not everybody thought so.”
The girl touched the glass.
“Why?”
Eleanor thought about Paige.
Brynn.
The salon.
The ring.
The brooch.
The police station.
The garden.
All the things that had happened because she wanted to know how one young woman treated a nobody.
Then she looked at Delia working quietly at her mother’s sewing machine.
“Some people only see what something costs.”
The girl looked confused.
Eleanor knelt beside her.
“Your Aunt Delia taught me to look at what it’s worth.”
Across the room, a customer entered carrying a torn jacket.
“Morning.”
Delia looked up.
“Morning.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t have much.”
Delia smiled.
Eleanor already knew what she was going to say.
“Sit down.”
The customer hesitated.
“Really?”
“Of course.”
Delia reached for her pins.
“Let me see it.”
And Eleanor Whitlow, billionaire, widow, grandmother, owner of half the street, sat quietly beside the window while Delia Banks did the same thing she had done the first day they met.
She saw something damaged.
And instead of asking what it was worth…
she asked how she could fix it.
