Violetta Craft's Arc

Chapter 13 of 65

Violetta got home from her parents' house on Sunday night and went straight to her sewing room. The rose overlay was pinned to the dress form in the corner. She had eight days. She sat down, threaded a needle, and worked until the clock said one in the morning. Then two. Her back locked up around two-thirty, and a tight band pulled across her belly that made her drop the needle in her lap. She waited. The band eased. She picked the needle up and kept going until the cramp came back sharper. This time she counted to twenty before it let go. She went to bed without finishing the section she had promised herself. Monday morning she woke up late and stiff. Jordie was already in the kitchen with the puppy. She told him she felt fine. He looked at her hands and said her fingers were shaking. She said it was the coffee. She sat down at the machine anyway, and the band came back before she had sewn six inches. She set the fabric down and cried, quietly, so he would not hear. He heard. He called her mother without asking. Lymber pulled into the driveway of the small white house twenty minutes later with Missy in the back seat and Paul following in his own car. Jett came in last, holding a folding chair from their garage because Violetta's sewing stool had no back on it. Max carried a heating pad still in the box. Lymber made her lie down on the couch. Paul sat at the sewing machine and read the pattern notes Violetta had written on an index card. He was slow, but he was clean. He sewed the lining seam she had planned for that morning and then the second one after lunch. Jordie fed her toast and water and kept the puppy off the fabric. Missy sat on the floor and threaded needles for the hand work, holding them up one at a time like small trophies. Jett cut lengths of rose thread to the exact size his mother told him. Violetta did the overlay stitches herself, but only from the couch, with the fabric across her lap and the heating pad against her back. Every hour Lymber made her stand up, walk to the kitchen, drink a full glass of water, and sit back down. The cramps came twice more and then stopped. By evening she had finished the left panel of the overlay, which was the section she had planned for that day. She was not alone with the dress anymore. That was the trade. Paul would come back Tuesday. Jordie was staying home from work. Lymber had already texted Saddie to keep the twins later at the house so Missy could come help again after school. Violetta was on schedule. She was also on the couch, and she was not allowed off it.