Chapter 6 - The Apprentice Who Took the Pictures
Kiki called me at six the next morning. I was still in Eli's kitchen, wearing his old college sweatshirt and eating cereal straight from a mug. We'd spent our first married night talking until two and sleeping like people who had carried furniture up six flights of stairs.
“I'm sorry to call so early,” Kiki said. “I remembered something about the pictures.”
“Tell me.”
“Sloane didn't photograph the templates when she visited. I did.”
I set down the mug.
Kiki was twenty-one, quick with a needle and nervous around anyone who could offer her a job. She'd spent the winter applying to bridal companies, hoping to save enough money to finish a design degree without taking out another loan. I knew Sloane had spoken to her about an internship. I didn't know how much.
“She said if I sent high-resolution photos of everything, she'd show them to her creative director. She said the workshop could get a paid collaboration.”
“Did you send the whole bridal file?”
“Yes.” Her voice thinned. “I thought I was helping.”
“Have you kept the messages?”
“Every one. Mara, I deleted the pictures from my phone when she asked, but the emails are still there. I don't know if that makes me part of it.”
“It makes you somebody who needs advice before anyone starts assigning blame. Come to Maya's office. Bring whatever you have.”
At nine, Kiki arrived with a laptop, a notebook, and a plastic grocery bag full of printed emails. She had written a date on the back of each page in pencil. The level of care made me want to cry.
Maya read through the messages while Kiki explained them. Sloane promised a paid internship if Kiki delivered the templates privately. After the pictures arrived, Sloane praised her, then said the internship had been postponed due to budget changes. She asked Kiki to delete the photographs because the bride wanted the design kept secret before the wedding.
“I did want that,” I said. “But I never asked her to make you delete anything.”
Kiki's eyes shone. “I should've checked.”
“Yes,” Maya said gently. “And she should not have used a job offer to get material from you under a false explanation. Both things can be true.”
One email contained a draft promotional image dated two days after Kiki sent her files. Its border was identical to my finished design, including a little broken curve I'd made when I miscounted stitches and Kiki suggested making the mistake intentional. Wynn Retail had received that image as a proposed exclusive pattern. The brand's polished launch presentation was built from a photograph of our worktable.
There was another surprise. In the message forwarding the image, Mason wrote to Sloane: DID YOUR MOM CLEAR OWNERSHIP? LEGAL WILL ASK. Sloane replied: DIANE SIGNED. THE REST ARE PHOTO CONSENTS. GET THE DECK OUT.
Maya read it twice. “This suggests Mason knew the distinction between the documents. It doesn't yet tell us exactly what the buyer knew.”
I remembered Mason reaching for the glue bottle. He hadn't just wanted to tidy a room. He'd wanted to take away the easiest proof of how desperately Sloane needed me out of her own gown.
At the workshop, we found a different problem. The story had escaped anyway. A guest had uploaded a cropped photograph of me in the damaged dress. It showed my face and Sloane laughing, but not the bottle. The caption said I had destroyed my gown to humiliate my sister at her big event. Hundreds of strangers were debating whether I was jealous of her success.
“Do we publish the video?” Lena asked.
I wanted to. Every cell in my body wanted to put the full clip online and watch the lies collapse. Then I looked at Kiki, who had been promised a job and had now confessed to handing over the photographs.
“Not until we've talked about who else gets pulled into it,” I said.
That afternoon we held a meeting where every worker could speak for herself. Several wanted immediate publication. Ruth worried her hospital employer would see her in a lawsuit and decide she was a problem. Celia wanted the truth out, but not if her home address or financial situation became online entertainment. Odessa argued we could release a short, factual statement now and keep the full video for the investigation unless circumstances changed.
“We aren't deciding whether Mara deserves to be believed,” Odessa said. “We're deciding how much of ourselves we're giving to strangers.”
We approved a statement explaining that the gown had been damaged deliberately, that the design’s provenance was disputed, and that the makers were seeking records and an accounting. Kiki asked to read the final wording aloud before we published it. When she reached the word contributors, she stopped. “Can we say makers instead? We didn’t just give somebody an idea.” Nobody objected. I changed the word while she watched. Maya reviewed it for accuracy. We published no personal details about Kiki or the other women.
Within an hour, the hotel confirmed it was preserving its available footage and incident report. Wynn Retail announced an internal review. Sloane posted a photo of herself in front of an enormous bouquet, writing that she'd always put family first.
Then Maya got a call from a contact who worked in textile compliance. An anonymous package had arrived at her office containing a sample gown ordered for Wynn Retail's upcoming collection.
Maya spread the photos across her desk. There was our river border, our curve, and the distinctive uneven stitch on the inside seam that Kiki had used to secure a broken thread in the original garment. Whoever made the sample hadn't merely redrawn the design from the published photograph. They had been given a production file detailed enough to reproduce an error that existed only in the working template.
The sample's production label showed a date four days before Sloane visited our workshop with pastries.
May you like
“How could they make it before she got the pictures?” I asked.
Kiki stared at the label. Then she said, very quietly, “Because that wasn't the first time somebody photographed our table.”
