Don, Your Regret Can't Keep Me novel · Chapter 11 of 32

Chapter 11: The Letter in the Hem

I didn't answer him.

I looked at his hand on the elevator door until he took it away.

The doors closed between us.

I rode down four floors with my forehead against the steel.

On Saturday a bride came in with her grandmother's gown in a hatbox.

The bride was twenty-six and taught third grade at the school on Morris Street.

Her grandmother was eighty-four and walked with a cane she mostly used for pointing.

"Nineteen sixty-two," the grandmother said, and pointed the cane at the box. "Peau de soie. My mother sewed it on her kitchen table, and I'll know if you ruin it."

"I won't ruin it."

"Everybody says that."

I lifted the gown out.

It had gone the color of weak tea, but the silk was sound.

The hand stitching was tiny and perfect.

Someone had loved every inch of it.

"She wants it taken in," the grandmother said. "She's skinny. We were never skinny."

"Nonna."

"What? It's a compliment. Eat something."

I turned the hem over to check the seam allowance.

In the back, along the left side, there was a stiff place in the hem that wasn't horsehair.

I ran my thumb over it.

Paper crackled.

"There's something sewn in here," I said.

The grandmother leaned in on her cane.

I picked out four stitches with my seam ripper, slow, and slid out a square of folded blue notepaper.

The ink had gone brown.

I held it out to the grandmother.

She didn't take it.

"You read it," she said. "My eyes are no good."

I unfolded it.

"If he's ever unkind to you, come home," I read. "Your room stays yours. Your mother."

The shop was very quiet.

The bride put her hand over her mouth.

The grandmother stood there for a long time with both hands on her cane.

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