She dropped the grocery bags. A jar of pickles rolled under the car. She didn't hear it break or not break.
The door to the laundry room was open. The hook on the back of it was empty. The dry-cleaning bag lay crumpled on the floor like a shed skin.
The utility sink was full.
At first she didn't understand what she was looking at. The water in the sink was cloudy, faintly yellow, and something was in it, floating, a mass of fabric pushed down under the surface and held there by a five-gallon paint bucket turned upside down. A jug of Clorox stood empty on the dryer, its cap off. Another, half full, stood next to it.
Junie lifted the bucket off. She did it with her bare hands, and the water touched her wrists, and it burned. She did not care. She reached into the sink and pulled the dress out.
It came up heavy and streaming, and in the light from the high window it was not green anymore. It was not any color. It was the color of a bruise on its fourth day, a sick mottled yellow-white with rust-brown blotches where the dye had fought and lost. The silk had gone thin and slick and strange under her fingers, like the skin on top of scalded milk. When she lifted the bodice, a seam she had sewn twice gave way with a soft, wet sound, like someone taking a breath.
She stood there holding it. Water ran down her arms and off her elbows and onto her socks. She was aware, distantly, that she was making a noise. A low noise. Not crying yet. Something before crying.
"Oh, good. You're back."
Dana stood in the doorway. She had changed into jeans and a white blouse for the salon, and her makeup was already done, and she was holding a cup of coffee in both hands.
"What did you do," Junie said. It didn't come out as a question. It came out flat, like a word read off a card.
"Me?" Dana looked at the sink, at the dress, at Junie, as if seeing all three for the first time. "I did the whites, hon. You left the whites. It was on your list. I had to do it myself." She sipped the coffee. "I guess I should've checked what was in there. Was that hanging on the door? I thought it was something for the Goodwill pile. It looked like an old curtain."
"It was in a bag. It was on the hook."
"Well, I don't know, Juniper, I don't keep track of all your things. You leave things everywhere." Dana's voice stayed calm, almost kind. That was the worst part. It always had been. "These things happen. It's a dress. It's not the end of the world."
"You put a bucket on it."