The Disappearance of Astrid Bricard

by Natasha Lester

“Is there anything you can’t sell in Manhattan?” she says. “Just your morals.” Graham winks. “You give those away for free.”

“Show your cleavage if you want. Stand naked at the front of a room wearing a temptress’s smile. Screw around. But do it for yourself because it makes you feel good. Don’t do it to make a man great.

“Loving someone and making them feel loved are two different things. It’s easy to just love, but it takes effort to make another person believe in that love.

But nobody will ever celebrate, in two hundred and thirty feet of linen and crewelwork, the bloodless, everyday battles of women just surviving. So, since 1918, I’ve tried to make clothes in which every filament and thread can be a woman’s armor.” All Astrid could say, the first words she’d spoken were, “Make clothes?” Mizza smiled. “That’s a story for another day.

Women own forty-two percent of businesses but receive just two percent of venture funding, she reads. Businesses run by men attract five times more funds then female-led businesses.

What I want is for every woman who comes after Astrid to never have to read a McKinsey report saying that only fourteen percent of major fashion brands have a female executive in charge, that only five percent of Fortune 500 clothing companies have female CEOs. And I never want to read another hand-wringing report about a female designer taking over from a man at a famous fashion house that wonders how she’ll live up to the great genius who went before her.”

She kept chasing after the thing that broke her until I was the one who shattered. Just like Astrid keeps chasing after a life of abuse and lies and heartache. A life in which she’s the girl in the silver dress and Hawk is the one who made both the dress and Astrid too. If she keeps choosing that life, Blythe will be the one who shatters.