"That's not untrue." Pearl smiled at the silk. "She bought this fabric at the Hutchinson fair. Did I ever tell you? Nineteen dollars a yard, which in 2013 was a crime. Your father nearly fainted. She said she was going to make herself something for their tenth anniversary, and then she said she'd make it for their fifteenth, and then—"
She stopped. Junie kept stitching. Neither of them needed to say the rest of it. Rose Hale had died on a Tuesday in October five years ago, at thirty-six, of something in her brain that had been waiting quietly since she was born. The bolt of green silk had sat on the top shelf of her sewing closet with the pattern pinned to it, her handwriting on the envelope: For me, eventually. Love, me.
For three years after the funeral nobody touched it. Then Junie's father remarried, and the sewing closet became Kenzie's walk-in, and Junie had rescued the bolt the afternoon before the movers came and carried it eight blocks in her arms to Pearl's house like it was a sleeping child.
"Done," Junie said, ninety minutes later, and bit off the thread.
They held it up together under the lamp. The beads caught the light and threw it back in little green flashes, like sun on a pond seen through trees.
"Well," Pearl said quietly. "Well, Juniper."
That was all. From Pearl, it was a standing ovation.
Junie folded the sash into a square of tissue paper and slid it into the front pocket of her backpack, between her chemistry notebook and a granola bar she'd been saving since Wednesday. The dress itself was at home, hanging on the back of her door in a dry-cleaning bag she'd taken from the bin behind Corbin Cleaners. It had taken her four months. She'd done the bodice twice and the zipper three times. Mrs. Delgado, who taught Family and Consumer Sciences and had once sewn costumes for a touring production of Oklahoma!, had looked at the finished dress in the classroom two weeks ago and said, "Who did your darts?" and when Junie said she had, Mrs. Delgado had gone quiet in a way that felt better than any grade.
"You'll come by tomorrow before?" Pearl said at the door. "I want pictures. I want to see it with the sash."
"Kenzie has a hair appointment at one. Dana's taking her. I'll come after."
Something passed over Pearl's face at the name. Junie had seen it before and pretended, as she always pretended, that she hadn't.
"How is Dana?" Pearl asked, the way you'd ask after the weather in a town you were glad not to live in.
"Fine. Busy. Kenzie's on the formal committee, so it's a whole thing."
"And she's all right with you going? With the dress?"