It was below freezing in the storage unit, so cold Allegra could see her breath.

What was I thinking? she wondered as she sorted through the plastic bins looking for her mother’s crocodile-skin boots.

She saw something brown through the side of one translucent storage container but when she removed the lid, instead of what she was looking for, she found the prototype of the first shoe she’d ever designed, a pair of flats with an upper that was made to look like lace. She’d asked Gary Wisnicki to make the lace with the shop’s laser cutter and she’d glued it to a wooden sole. Her father had been delighted by it and praised her creativity lavishly, withholding comment on her actual craft.

Mariella, though, had been utterly dismissive, telling her it looked like s...

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