Page 5 of Tempest

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I? You’ve been making your own clothes for years and nobody has the style you do.”

We bought her a sewing machine when she was eight. It’s been upgraded twice over the years, and added to with other contraptions that I don’t understand the function of. She can make garments from scratch, but she prefers to dive through “the bins” at Goodwill. Tori enjoys finding that diamond in the rough, or whatever, and turning it into something on trend. Or ahead of it? I don’t know.

I do know that she is extremely talented, and I don’t think that’s my bias talking. The kid always looks amazing, her friends and random strangers we run into while out are constantly complimenting her. That’s got to count for something.

“But of course, you’d say that. You’re my dad, you have to.”

“Have I ever lied to you?”

“No,” she says thoughtfully. “Though, you could have, you know? It was fucking hard being the only kid that didn’t believe in Santa and the Tooth Fairy.”

“You survived it,” I say, laughing. That was more Caroline’s idea, but I backed the decision wholeheartedly.

“I did,” she agrees. “But still. I’ll be more convinced of my future if Odette likes me.”

Odette. That name. I haven’t heard it in years. I knew an Odette once. A long time ago, when I was young. When I thought I was free to know her. When I thought I’d finally had a chance.

Before Tori.

“Odette who?” I already know the answer, but I ask anyway. There is only one Odette in the industry who could cause this type of reaction from my daughter. There’s only one Odette in the world that could have my heart cartwheeling in my chest by just the mention of her name.

“Dad,” she sighs. “She’s only the hottest celebrity stylist. Like, ever. Odette Quinn.”

Fucking hell.

“That’s your new mentor?”

“Yes! It’s so exciting. Isn’t it?”

Yes. It sure is fucking exciting.

2

Odette

Success is a strange creature. Arbitrary and subjective, it’s different for everyone. I wonder how many people didn’t recognize it once they achieved it. I sure didn’t. After all my years of working endless hours to build a business, the moment I’d “made it” passed me by. It went entirely unnoticed. I didn’t see the numbers in my bank account for what they were, my friend list being mostly A-listers wasn’t impressive, it was part of the job.

The first apartment I bought in Manhattan cost me nearly a million dollars, but that was inexpensive by my peers’ standards. It was a two-bedroom housed in an old building where most of the residents had lived there for decades. Small and quirky, but it fit my personality and had a view of the Hudson. Tiny as it was, it was still a substantial upgrade from the fifth-floor walkup studio I had before in Bushwick. I loved it so much I never left it, even when my finances allowed me to purchase a much larger, sleeker place to live.

Perhaps it was because I came from such meager beginnings and something in my subconscious was telling me to be grateful for what I had. My parents were hardworking blue-collar workers. My mother was a hairstylist, my dad an insurance adjuster. We lived humbly so that we could enjoy the occasional meal out or road trip vacation.

When my net worth swelled, I didn’t see it as something to use for splurging. I did move my parents into a house eventually. Nothing new and flashy, they wouldn’t have liked that. But it was an upgrade that they deserved, and it helped to set them up for a comfortable retirement.

That was success for me. Mom and Dad moving into a home completely paid for by me was the moment I realized I had accomplished what I set out to do. It’s also the moment I decided I could ease back on how hard I worked. My fourteen-hour days dropped. At first, it was only a couple hours less a day, but eventually, I quit taking meetings on Sundays. I even started taking vacations, something I’d been very reluctant to do before.

If I traveled, it was for work, shopping all over the world for my clients. Trips to Paris and Milan were plentiful enough, but there wasn’t any downtime. Other than a nightcap and possibly a passionate one-night stand with a handsome foreigner. Rest and relaxation haven’t been in my vocabulary for the past twenty years.

Now I’m settled in my ridiculous seven-thousand-plus-square-foot Mission-style home on the Seattle historical registry. It’s all dark beams and intricately carved woodwork, but with feminine details like gold filigreed wallpaper and pretty green-tiled and copper-hooded fireplaces. It’s downright gorgeous and absolutely too fucking large for just me. I couldn’t pass it up, though. When Rhonda, my real estate agent, sent me the listing, I knew from the first external snapshot that this would be my new home.

My new schedule as mentor at the Fashion Institute will allow me for much more downtime, now that I’ve taken a liaison from styling. Well, mostly, anyway. I’m keeping a handful of clients, but the rest have been gently given over to my protégé, Fallon. He’s worked with me for years and is more than capable. In fact, he’s eager and confident in his abilities. I am, too, otherwise I’d never hand my small empire over to him.

Finding Fallon wasn’t easy. Most young ingénues in fashion are only focused on the most talked about, or the most unattainable fashion designers. It’s an industry built on expense and excess. But it doesn’t have to be. I’ve maintained my habits of taking something old and making it new and have been lucky enough to find people to work with that share the same drive. There’s room in the industry for folks like us now, and more and more sustainable designers are hitting the scene each year. Fallon wants to make responsible fashion waves just as much as I did at his age.

Now, I want to teach that to others. Seattle is a far better place to start than the designer-lined streets of Manhattan. I’d only visited here a couple of times. There’s a local designer who got her start thrifting for old designer items and reimagining them into something new. I’d come to her shows when it fit into my schedule. The city was always welcoming with its perpetually laid-back attitude. Seattle embodies the work hard, play hard attitude. Probably because it’s knee-deep in the tech industry, a sharp contrast from the world of fashion and celebrities that I’ve been swimming in.

Here, you put in the hours to get your job done and finish the day with some sort of outdoor activity. Even if it’s raining, you’ll see people casually outside. No one scurries from place to place to avoid it. When Vanessa Andrews, the director of the Seattle campus, first contacted me about this position, I laughed at moving to Seattle. She told me she’d felt the same when she first considered moving here. All the talk of rain was daunting. But she’s now found it to be therapeutic. Cleansing, she called it.

I get it now. It’s almost a natural reset, washing the day’s grit and grime away. Never in a million years would I have believed I’d be embracing rainy weather. I was never the woman who would walk to the office in tennis shoes and change when I got in. I couldn’t afford to be spotted in such a casual manner.

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