Vanessa’s perfume stood where my old pincushion had been before I spent 13 days in a coma. My sewing machine was missing, along with Walter’s cutting table and every hospice quilt. Then Sophie reached into her pocket, and her mother’s face told me she’d kept one thing Vanessa never meant me to find.
A bottle of Vanessa’s perfume sat exactly where my pincushion used to be.
Daniel, Vanessa, and Sophie had moved in with me a few months earlier after their rent went up, supposedly only until they got back on their feet. I’d given them free use of the house with one exception: my sewing room.
I’d given them free use of the house with one exception.
I’d told them plainly, “You can use anything in this house. Just please leave my sewing room alone.”
Vanessa had laughed and said she wasn’t interested in piles of old fabric.
Sophie was the exception.
“Just please leave my sewing room alone.”
At 16, she’d spent countless afternoons beside me in that room learning straight seams and hems while telling me things she wasn’t ready to tell her parents.
Now I stood staring at it from the doorway.
Inside, a lighted mirror covered the wall where Walter had built three long wooden shelves for my fabric.