“Is this for that fancy wedding in Chicago next summer?” Ruby fingered the emerald silk with her thin hands. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite so lovely.”
“Can ye imagine being able to afford dresses like this for yer weddin’?” Aileen brushed her hand against the fabric. “Aye, I bet those ladies will only wear this once and then be done with it.”
Ruby dropped the fabric back to where it had been draped over the sewing machine. “A bolt of that fabric could feed my young’uns for a year.”
More like a bolt of that fabric could buy Ruby a house strong enough to withstand the winter winds, unlike the hovel she currently lived in with her eight children.
Jessalyn scanned the shop, her eyes sweeping over the various stacks of clothing. Where had she put the extra mending? Ah, yes, there on the back table.
“Do ye have a sketch?” Aileen asked. The Irishwoman had come up from Chicago with Lindy and Isaac’s twin sister Rebekah over the summer and didn’t seem to mind that she was the sole Irish person in a town full of English and Cornish. “I always like looking at yer dresses.”
“Yes, yes. It should be on the table there with the sewing machine.” She stepped around a basket of shoelaces on the floor, making her way to the back of the shop.
“This one?” Aileen held up a piece of paper, then scrunched her nose at it. “It’s for a shawl, not a dress, and I think ye showed it to us last time.”
Jessalyn looked back over her shoulder and blinked. The sketch of the new shawl was on the table? She could have sworn she’d filed that in her cabinet yesterday before she’d taken Olivia to the doctor’s.
“I’ll come look in a minute. Just let me get the clothes I set out for you first.” She scooted past another basket on the floor and a heap of the quilting scraps she saved for Mrs. Kainer, before reaching the piles she’d put little paper tags on. Who said she couldn’t be organized?
“Is this it?”
Jessalyn looked up to find Lindy holding up a sketch. “No that’s the bridal dress. Well, not really, because I can’t quite figure out what to do with the collar and sleeves.” But hadn’t she left that sketch beside the bridesmaids’ one and not next to the shawl one? “Are you sure there’s not another dress pattern by the sewing machine?”
Lindy shook her head. “Just these two.”
“Maybe the bridesmaids’ pattern is in the cabinet somewhere.” Though she didn’t remember filing it away. Andwhile she might have a host of sketches stashed in her shop, she usually didn’t have trouble keeping track of the ones she was currently using.
“We’ll let ye get it out, iffin ye don’t mind.” Aileen cast a wary eye at the cabinet.
Lindy waved her hand in the direction of her stash of sketches. “Last time you told me to open that, I ended up buried in a mound of papers.”
Jessalyn winced. That hadn’t been pretty, and it had taken her over an hour to reorganize the papers. “Just a minute.”
She shoved a pile of socks that needed darning under the table with her foot and moved another basket of lace.
“Can I get my things first? Ellie’s at the bakery, and I just have Leroy and Martin watching the little ones.” Ruby stepped around the pile of quilting scraps, carrying her basket. The woman’s graying hair, worn face, and shadowed eyes contrasted with an unmistakable lump in her belly.
Could she be pregnant again? Ruby could barely afford to feed the children she had now, and she seemed too old to bear another.
It’s not your business.Jessalyn drew in a breath. She’d started giving work to Ruby as soon as she’d had extra, had even taught the woman a little sewing so she’d have a way to provide for her family. With eight children and a husband who disappeared for months at a time, Ruby didn’t have an easy life.
But despite how much she tried to help, Ruby had never once shared a confidence with her.
“Here’s your pile.” Jessalyn lifted it in her arms and plopped it into Ruby’s basket.
“I was wondering, Mrs. Dowrick.” Ruby ducked her head and lowered her voice so it didn’t carry across the shop. “Do you have a few extra pieces I can take? Don’t give me none from Aileen’spile, you hear? That woman, she needs work too. But maybe if someone dropped off something extra you don’t have time for?”
“Yes, of course.” She had piles and piles of extra work, which went part and parcel with being the sole seamstress in a town full of men who didn’t have an inkling how to sew a button onto a shirt.
She spun around and found four pairs of trousers with the hems already marked. “Will these do?”
“Appreciate it. I was trying to save up, you see.” She rested a hand on her belly, which looked almost painfully distended given how thin the rest of her frame was. “But then with Leroy and Martin and Christopher all getting the diphtheria, well, I owe the doctor something, and?—”
“I’m sure Dr. Harrington will work something out about the bill.” Jessalyn rested a hand on the woman’s reedy shoulder. “He’s always been good that way.”
“It’s not that.” Ruby sniffled, and a tear plopped onto the brown trousers on the top of her basket. “Dr. Harrington says I don’t owe him nothing, but that just don’t feel right. I know that medicine he gave my boys cost money, even if I can’t afford to pay for all the time he spent tending them.”
“I understand.”
