By the following week, the fall had turned colder. The trees on the avenue near the boutique were mostly bare now, their branches sharp against the gray sky. The city had entered the kind of season where everything felt suspended. You could feel the waiting in the air. Not for snow, not for celebration, but for the shift that always came when people realized the year was closing in.

Inside the boutique, the rhythm held.

We worked. We revised. We took phone calls with lawyers and analysts. ...