The sash was the last piece, and Junie Hale had saved it for last on purpose, the way some people save the best bite of a meal.
It lay across her grandmother's kitchen table under the hanging lamp, three and a half feet of emerald silk folded into a soft tube and finished at both ends with points so sharp you could have threaded them through a needle. Along one edge, in a line no wider than a pencil, Junie had stitched tiny glass beads the color of creek water. One bead, one stitch, one knot. Then the next. She had been at it since four o'clock, and outside the window over the sink the Kansas sky had gone from white to apricot to the deep, bruised blue that meant her grandmother would soon start making noises about headlights.
"You're going to go blind," Grandma Pearl said from the stove.
"You said that about the hem."
"I was right about the hem. Look at you. You're squinting like a gopher." Pearl set a mug of cocoa at Junie's elbow, well away from the silk, because Pearl Ostrander had been a seamstress for forty-one years and had seen what one tipped mug could do to a wedding. "How many left?"
"Eleven."
"Then drink that while it's hot, and then do eleven, and then I'm driving you home."
"I can walk. It's eight blocks."
"It's eight blocks in the dark."
"It's Corbin," Junie said. "The most dangerous thing in Corbin is Mr. Feeney's goose."
Pearl laughed despite herself, the big surprised bark she'd always had, the one Junie's mother used to say could clear a church. She lowered herself into the chair across the table and watched Junie's hands. Pearl's own hands were spotted now and knuckled with arthritis, and she could no longer manage the fine work, but she could still look at a seam and tell you who had sewn it and whether they'd been in a hurry.
"Your mother," she said, "would have done that edge in satin stitch and called it good."
"Mom would've done it in hot glue and called it good."