Violetta Craft's Arc

Chapter 11 of 65

Violetta worked past midnight on Tuesday and pricked her thumb three times before she stopped. She had finished one side seam of the skirt. One. She looked at the pile of unsewn buttercream and did the math again. Two weeks and four days. Six panels left, plus the bodice attach, plus the hem, plus the rose overlay. Her hand could not move faster. She had already tried. She called her mother in the morning before school and said the word out loud. Behind. Lymber was quiet for a beat, then said she and Paul would come by after work. Violetta almost said no. She said okay instead and hung up before she could take it back. They pulled into the drive at six. Paul carried a large white box through the front door of the small house she and Jordie rented, and Lymber carried a bag of thread cones and a bottle of machine oil. Jordie met them in the hall with the puppy under one arm. Missy climbed out of the back seat holding a pack of new needles she had insisted on picking herself. "We are not letting you lose sleep over a hem," Paul said. He set the box on the sewing room floor. Lymber cut the tape with a seam ripper. Inside was a sewing machine, not new, but clean, with a foot pedal wrapped in its own cord and a booklet on top. Lymber said it had been Maggie's cousin's, barely used, sold cheap. Paul said they had split it three ways with Jordie's parents. Jordie shrugged like he had been holding the secret for a week. Violetta sat down on the floor next to the box. She put her hand flat on the top of the machine and felt the cool metal. Then she cried for about thirty seconds and wiped her face on her sleeve and asked Lymber to help her thread it. They set it up on the long table by the window. Lymber showed her the bobbin, the tension dial, the reverse lever. Violetta ran a test line on a scrap of buttercream. The stitches came out even. She ran another. Even. She fed in a pinned panel seam and watched the needle eat six inches in the time her hand would have taken twenty minutes. Missy clapped once and covered her mouth. Paul stood in the doorway with his arms crossed and did not say anything, which was how he smiled. By ten that night Violetta had finished all six skirt panels and pinned the bodice to the form. She turned the machine off and covered it with a clean towel. Two weeks and four days, and she was back on schedule. She looked at the pinned bodice under the lamp. The rose overlay still had to be done by hand, every stitch of it, because the machine could not do what she needed there. That part was still hers alone.