“May I ask what you're checking?”
“Alignment.”
She lifted the garment.
“See this seam?”
He leaned closer.
At first, he saw nothing unusual.
Gloria turned the fabric slightly.
“Now?”
Evan noticed a tiny inconsistency.
“That would affect how it hangs?”
“Exactly.”
She nodded approvingly.
“Most people wouldn't see it on the table. But once somebody puts it on, the problem becomes obvious.”
Evan smiled.
“My mother used to say something similar.”
Gloria looked up.
“Was she a seamstress?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Newark.”
Gloria tilted her head.
“What was her name?”
Evan hesitated.
“Loretta Cole.”
The woman's hands stopped moving.
She looked at him.
Then at his face.
“Loretta Cole?”
Evan nodded.
Gloria stared for several seconds.
Then she whispered, “Well, I'll be.”
He frowned.
“You knew her?”
Gloria slowly lowered the jacket.
“Your mother used to help with our specialty alterations when the company had more work than it could handle.”
Evan stared.
“What?”
Gloria smiled sadly.
“She was one of the best finishers I've ever met.”
He felt something shift inside him.
His mother had rarely spoken about specific clients.
She described the work.
The fabric.
The difficult customers.
The endless pressure to finish orders on time.
But she never mentioned having contributed to Whitmore & Vale garments.
Gloria continued.
“She worked through a subcontractor. We used to send complicated corrections to her shop.”
Evan looked stunned.
“Why didn't she tell me?”
Gloria shrugged.
“Maybe she didn't think it was important.”
Evan laughed softly.
“She would have thought that.”
Gloria looked toward the garment.
“Your mother saved a major collection for us once.”
He stared.
“What happened?”
“A supplier delivered several hundred silk panels with the wrong dimensions. The launch date couldn't move. Your mother helped develop a correction that preserved the design without wasting the material.”
Evan listened.
Gloria smiled.
“She was brilliant.”
For a moment, Evan couldn't speak.
He remembered his mother sitting at the kitchen table late at night, her sewing machine humming while he struggled with homework.
He remembered how tired she'd been.
How careful her hands were.
How she always insisted that good work mattered even when nobody noticed.
Now he stood inside a factory he'd acquired through a multimillion-dollar transaction and discovered that his mother had quietly helped create the quality for which the company had become famous.
Gloria studied him.
“She'd be proud of you.”
Evan looked down.
His mother had died four years earlier.