“Don’t distract me.” Betty folded her arms over her chest. “I saw your face when you exited the carriage. What did Mother do?”
Kitty grimaced. “She told me Father had died.”
Twin spots of red appeared on Betty’s cheeks. “She did not! Oh!”
Kitty twisted her hands in her lap. “I should have expected such a trick from her. After all these years, I still haven’t learned that she’ll never change.”
“Don’t do that,” Betty said sharply.
Kitty looked up. “What?”
Betty scowled. “You’re always putting yourself down. I hate that. Look at what you’ve accomplished!” She ran to the nearest trunk, threw it open, and tugged out the dress at the top of the pile, a deep-red evening gown Kitty had made for herself.
“Look at this,” Betty said, pressing it against her body. “Youmadethis, Kitty. That’s incredible. How could you give that up?” She spun in a circle, then stopped in front of a mirror. “I’ve always been jealous of your talent.”
Kitty joined her sister. “Do you want it? The color suits you.”
Betty dropped the dress. “No, see, you’re doing it again. I don’t know what Mother did to you, but my sister would never have given up her shop so easily.”
What hurt the most was that Betty was right. Between losing Cordon and being beaten down by her mother, she’d forgotten why she’d opened the shop.
“Katherine?” Kitty’s mother said, entering the room. “Why are you not yet ready?”
Betty hurried away, but Kitty remained still and summoned her courage. “Go to the ball without me.”
Mrs. Carter tutted. “My dear, you cannot mope forever. Don’t you want to marry before your younger sister?”
The words wrapped around Kitty’s neck like a noose, making it difficult to speak the words she needed to say to her mother.
“No, I don’t.” Kitty faced her mother. “Youwant me to marry. You have been pushing me to do your will from the moment I was old enough to obey your commands. All I ever wanted was to be a dressmaker.”
Mrs. Carter made a disparaging sound. “Come, dear, you cannot be serious. It is time to let go of this foolish obsession with sewing. You belong here, with us.”
Kitty wrapped her arms around herself. “That’s what you want me to believe, but I’ve never felt like part of this family.”
Her mother stepped forward, but Kitty shuffled back, keeping the distance between them the same.
“Do youwantscandal?” Mrs. Carter asked. “Is that what this is about?”
Of course, her mother would make this as difficult as possible. “Being a businesswoman isn’t remotely scandalous. Not for someone of our class.”
Mrs. Carter huffed. “We are certainly not of a lower class.”
Kitty did not bother to respond to that comment. For years, she’d fought to earn her mother’s approval, but in doing so, she’d maintained a dependent tether to her family that had prevented her from achieving her goals. Only by severing that tether would she finally be able to move on without constantly feeling the guilt and pain her mother insisted upon heaping on her at every moment.
Mrs. Carter opened a trunk and removed the top garment: a blouse Kitty had been working on for herself.
“Look at this,” Mrs. Carter said. “This is what you are choosing?” She shook the garment and scowled.
“Mother, I can’t—” Kitty started before her mother snatched the pair of gold shears sitting on Kitty’s dressing table. At that moment, Kitty understood exactly what was going to happen. The sequence of events unfolded in her mind like the pages of a children’s picture book, illustrated in colored pencils. First her mother lifted the shears, then she sent them flying through the garment Kitty had spent hours carefully crafting.
“There,” Mrs. Carter said, when the floor was littered with scraps. “Now, do you understand? If you will not be part of this family, then everything we’ve given you does not belong to you. I will not abide by my daughter obsessing overclothing.” She bent over, presumably to pick up another garment to destroy, but she didn’t get the chance because Kitty jerked forward and plucked the shears from her hands.
“Get out,” Kitty said.
“I beg your pardon?” Mrs. Carter asked. “This ismyhouse, young lady. You do not get to order me about.”
A bone-deep coldness settled over Kitty. Once, she might have cowered before her mother, begged forgiveness, agreed to do whatever her mother wanted to return things to the way they had been. But as her mother had cut her blouse, so had she cut through the tether that bound her to her parents.
