“I don’t remember how,” she said.
“I know.
That’s why I’m going to show you.”
Her first attempt missed the eye.
The next tangled.
We kept trying until the thread finally went through.
Diane came back the following Thursday, and the Thursday after that.
She wasn’t naturally good at sewing.
Her first pillow fell apart in the wash, and we laughed until we cried.
It wasn’t a grand reconciliation.
We still had things to talk about, and I didn’t pretend the wedding hadn’t hurt.
But she kept coming.
Sometimes she brought the apron; sometimes she brought an old photograph of our mother.
Slowly, the space between us began to feel less like a wall and more like a room we could both enter.
CHAPTER 4
Last month, Chloe came into the shop with Sam.
She had a smile I recognized from the day she first asked me to make her wedding dress, but this time she was holding Sam’s hand so tightly that I knew there was news.
“Aunt Ruthie,” she said, “we’re having a baby.”
I put down my measuring tape.
For a moment I couldn’t speak.
Then she told me it was a little girl, due in the spring.
Sam was smiling so broadly that his cheeks looked sore.
Diane was at the second sewing machine.
She stood up and hugged her daughter, and I felt grateful that we could share the moment without pretending the past had never happened.
Sam looked at the machines and joked that the baby would be the only person in the family who didn’t know how to sew.
I told him there was plenty of time to teach her.
Chloe laughed and said she wanted me to make the christening gown.
“Something small and simple,” she said.
“Nothing too fancy.
I want it to feel like the dress you made for me.”
I promised I would.
After they left, I sketched a tiny gown with soft fabric and a simple shape.
It would be comfortable for a baby and beautiful enough to keep, not a miniature wedding dress but something with its own quiet character.
I saved a little piece of lace for the neckline.
I remembered Chloe standing on my wooden box for each wedding fitting.