Vivienne's POV
My mother arrived at eleven.
She came through the door with her overnight bag and the specific purposeful energy she carried when she had decided that a situation required her physical presence and had arranged herself accordingly. She looked around my apartment and then looked at me and I saw her reading my face the way she always read my face and finding something in it she wasn't sure about.
She didn't ask immediately.
That was my mother's way. She received what she saw and held it and waited for the right moment rather than pushing toward it before it was ready.
She put her bag down.
She went to the kitchen.
I heard the kettle.
....
The dress was hanging in my room.
I had brought it home the previous evening from the studio, carried it in its garment bag with t
