Second Choice

The Basement Studio

Imogen Ashworth

The sketch on the table was worth more than the entire boardroom upstairs realized, and not one of them would ever know it came from a woman they'd forgotten owned a key to this building.

Imogen pinned the last swatch to the board and stepped back, arms crossed, studying the line the way she studied everything, like it might change its mind if she looked away too soon. The basement smelled like fabric dye and burnt coffee, which was exactly how she liked it. No one from upstairs ever came down here. That was the point.

"You're still here." Nora's voice came from the stairwell before Nora herself appeared, two coffees in hand, coat still buttoned from outside. "It's almost midnight."

"The Milan buyers want revised samples by Friday."

"The Milan buyers want a lot of things.

Doesn't mean you have to give up your entire evening for them." Nora set one coffee down in front of Imogen and dropped into the chair across the worktable like she owned it, which, in a way, she practically did. "Does your father know this collection is even close to finished?"

"My father knows the collection exists. He doesn't know it's finished, because he doesn't ask, and I've stopped volunteering."

"That's insane, you know that."

"It's efficient."

"It's insane to dress up as efficiently." Nora pulled the coffee toward herself before Imogen could reach it, a habit from college neither of them had ever bothered breaking.

"This line is going to be the reason Ashworth Group hits its numbers again this quarter. Again. Third year running. And your name is on none of it."

"My name doesn't need to be on it."

"Says the woman who files every patent under her own name at midnight so at least somewhere, on some government document nobody reads, it says Imogen Ashworth actually did this."

Imogen didn't answer right away. She reached for the second swatch instead, running her thumb over the stitching like it might argue back if she gave it the chance.

"It's not about needing credit," she said finally.

"It's about knowing it's mine.

That's enough."

"It shouldn't have to be enough."

"Nora."

"I'm just saying it out loud so someone does." Nora took a sip of her coffee, wincing at the temperature. "Your sister gets a magazine profile every time she shows up to a launch party in a dress you designed. You get a basement and a space heater that doesn't work."

"The space heater works fine."

"The space heater is possessed and you know it."

Imogen laughed despite herself, the tension in her shoulders easing a fraction. This was the only room in her entire life where she felt like she could take up space without apologizing for it first, and even that only worked because Nora refused to let her shrink in front of her.

"How's the Bennett Creative pitch going," Imogen asked, steering them somewhere safer. "Did the boutique group get back to you?"

"They loved it. Said my portfolio looked like it belonged to someone with real backing behind it." Nora's smile went a little crooked.

"Funny, considering my real backing is a woman who works for free out of her family's basement."

"I'm not free. I get a salary."

"You get a design associate salary for running an entire product line. That's not the same thing, and you know it."

"It pays for the studio."

"It should be paying for a house."

Imogen set the swatch down and looked at her friend properly, the way she rarely let herself look at anything for too long because looking too long usually meant feeling something she didn't have room for. "Why does this matter so much to you tonight?"

"Because I watched your father hand your sister an award last month for a company he thinks is thriving because of decisions he made, and I watched you stand at the back of that room in a dress you made yourself, clapping for her like the rest of them."

"It's easier that way."

"For who?"

Before Imogen could answer, her phone buzzed against the worktable, screen lighting up with her father's name. She stared at it a second longer than she needed to. Nathaniel almost never called this late, and when he did, it was rarely good.

"That's him," she said.

"At midnight?"

"I know."

"Don't answer it. Whatever it is can wait until morning."

"It's my father, Nora. It can't."

Imogen picked up the phone and answered, pressing it to her ear while Nora watched with an expression that said she already didn't like where this was going.

"Dad?"

"Imogen." Her father's voice sounded strange, tighter than usual, the kind of tight he got right before board meetings he hadn't fully prepared for. "I need you in my study first thing tomorrow. Before Celeste. Before anyone."

"Is everything all right?"

"It's fine. It's business." A pause, long enough that Imogen could hear him breathing on the other end, something he never let himself do in front of her when he was actually calm. "I need your help with something and I need it quiet."

"Quiet how?"

"I'll explain tomorrow."

"Dad, if this is about the quarterly numbers—"

"Tomorrow, Imogen. Eight o'clock. Don't be late, and don't mention it to your mother or your sister."

The line went dead before she could ask anything else. Imogen lowered the phone slowly, staring at the dark screen like it might still give her an answer if she waited long enough.

"What was that," Nora asked, already reading her face.

"I don't know. He wants me in his study at eight tomorrow. Before anyone else. He said not to tell Mom or Celeste."

"That's not normal."

"No," Imogen said quietly. "It's not."

"Do you think it's about the merger talk? I heard Cross Industries' name floating around the last vendor meeting."

Imogen's stomach dropped, though she couldn't have said exactly why. She thought of the quarterly numbers she'd noticed didn't quite line up two weeks ago, numbers she'd assumed were a rounding error and had let go because questioning her father's accounting had never once gone well for her.

"I don't know," she said again, quieter this time. "But he's never called me like that before. Not once."

Nora reached across the table and closed her hand over Imogen's, steady in the way she always was when Imogen's calm started slipping at the edges.

"Whatever it is," Nora said, "you're not facing it alone. You never have to, you know that."

Imogen nodded, though her mind was already somewhere else, already turning over every strange number she'd brushed aside these last few months, every late night her father had spent locked in that study instead of at his own dinner table. She'd told herself it was nothing. She'd told herself a lot of things lately.

She looked down at the phone still clutched in her hand and felt, for the first time in a long while, that whatever waited for her in that study tomorrow morning was going to change something she wasn't ready to lose.