I took a breath.
"There's a dress in my mother's attic," I said. "From 2008. From here. Mrs. Kibler sold it to her. It's got lace over the whole thing. The satin's gone yellow, but the lace — you saw a picture of it. My mom showed you. You said it was good lace. You said you can't get lace like that anymore."
Oksana's face did something then that I'd never seen it do, which was soften, for about a second.
"The vines," she said. "With the little leaves. French. Calais. Yes. I remember."
Mrs. Kibler had taken her glasses off and was holding them by the chain. "Tricia's dress," she said, very softly. "I remember Tricia's dress." She didn't say anything else about it. She didn't have to. She'd let the bodice out an inch eighteen years ago without asking any questions. She'd known. Of course she'd known. Half of Bramwell must have known, and I'd gone eighteen years without anybody telling me.
"It's not mine to cut up," I said. "I have to ask her. I haven't asked her yet. But if she says yes — could you do it? Take the lace off her dress and put it over my skirt? Over the seams?"
Oksana looked at the dress on the table for a long time. Then she looked at me.
"I can do it," she said. "I can do it in eighteen days if I do nothing else, and I have nine other girls with hems. So I will not do it." She held up one finger before I could say anything. "You will do it. I will show you. Machine work, I do, the long seams. The hand work you do. Taking the lace off the old dress, every stitch, by hand. Laying the lace, pinning, hand-sewing it down to the crepe so it doesn't show. Rebuilding the straps. Hemming. Forty hours, maybe. Maybe more. Every night, here, after we close. Six to ten." She looked at Hadley. "She can help. It goes faster with two."
"How much," I said.
Oksana looked at Mrs. Kibler. Mrs. Kibler looked at me.