"Oh," Brooke breathed, from the ironing board.
"She was taller than you," Pearl said, all business, "and broader in the shoulder, which you'll be too in about two years whether you like it or not. So we take in the side seams about an inch on each side, we raise the straps, and we take up the hem. That's it. That's an hour if nobody panics. Put it on."
Junie went into the bathroom and put it on. It was cool and heavy and slid over her like water. She came out holding the bodice up against herself with one hand, and her father was standing in the kitchen doorway in a too-small flannel shirt with his hair wet, and when he saw her he made a sound like he'd been hit in the stomach.
"Mark," said Pearl, without turning around. "If you are going to fall apart, do it on the porch."
"I'm fine."
"You are not fine and neither am I, and we're going to be not fine together later with a bottle of something. Right now I need you to hold this pincushion."
He held the pincushion.
Pearl pinned. Her hands shook, the way they did now, and she couldn't do the small work anymore, but she could still pin a seam faster and truer than anyone Junie had ever seen. Junie stood on the step stool. Pearl circled her, frowning, mouth full of pins, muttering. She chalked the hem. She pinched the side seams and pinned them so close to Junie's ribs that Junie could feel each cold point against her skin. Brooke ironed Walt's other good shirt for Mark, badly, and then again, better, while Pearl called corrections over her shoulder.
Then Junie took the dress off and sat down at the Bernina in her leggings, and Pearl sat beside her, and they did the work together, the way they had done all of it, the whole four months: Pearl talking and Junie sewing.
"Slow on the curve. Slower. Let the machine do it. There."
"I know."
"I know you know. I'm saying it anyway, because it's my kitchen."
Side seams. Straps. The hem, by hand, because there wasn't time to do it any other way and still do it right, Junie on one side of the skirt and Pearl on the other, Pearl's needle going in and out much more slowly than it once had, but going. Brooke sat across the table and watched and, after a while, took a small sketchbook out of her sweatshirt pocket and drew them, the two bent heads under the lamp.
At six-fifty Junie put the dress on for the last time.