After I paid $77,000 for my brother’s wedding, he sent me to the wrong city in Italy “as a joke.” I landed in Naples while they were celebrating in Florence. The next morning, he texted: “LOL, I just didn’t want you there.” My mother added, “This is your fault.” I didn’t argue. I smiled… and sent her a gift—four feet tall, delivered by courier. She called me in tears: “Can I please pay you back?”

The pale silk dress inside it had never been worn for what it was meant for. It was still tagged under one sleeve. Soft, expensive, the exact shade of diluted champagne. Camille had helped me pick it. “Elegant but not attention-seeking,” she’d said, laughing like we were girlfriends.

I left the coffee untouched and unzipped the bag.

There are few things sadder than formalwear that never got its occasion.

The fabric slid cool over my fingertips. The room was quiet except for the refrigerator’s hum and the distant scrape of a garbage truck outside. I pressed the dress against my face, smelled cedar from my closet and the faint ghost of the perfume I’d sprayed on in that hotel bathroom in Naples, and something hot and ugly rose in my chest.

Not grief. Not exactly.

Waste.

I folded the dress back up so carefully it felt like violence.

Then I sat down with my laptop and started pulling records.