You thank them because you are polite.
But you know what is happening.
They are not honoring the dress.
They are honoring the story attached to it now that someone wealthy and lovely has certified it worthy.
The realization should make you bitter. Oddly, it does not.
Because some forms of respect are counterfeit, yes, but even counterfeit money can buy you a little room to breathe. Besides, the only opinions that truly matter have already declared themselves. Marco cannot stop touching your shoulder as if checking you are still there. Lara keeps catching your eye from across the room and smiling like a daughter trying to reassure a mother, not the other way around.
And then there is Elena.
She approaches you while waiters glide past with trays of champagne and tiny pastry shells you do not know how to eat without looking foolish. Up close, she smells faintly of jasmine and expensive powder. For months you have assumed that if Lara respected you, it was in spite of her mother, not because of anything in that family’s example. Elena always greeted you courteously, but there was distance in it. Not rudeness exactly. More like a woman being very careful not to catch another woman’s life on the hem of her own.
