I want to be this way for him.
I need to figure out how to get myself to that place.
Suddenly, the quiet of my house feels engulfing. Ever since Camila moved out, I have felt a loneliness in this place I can’t even comprehend. Now, with her moving away, the feeling punches me in the stomach as one final, devastating blow.
I shut the fridge, search for my phone in a panic to text Willthank youjust before a knock comes from the front door. My head snaps up, and I run across the hardwood floors of my house, peering through the tiny window as I stretch onto my tiptoes.
It isn’t him. It’s a delivery man, with a truck parked at the curb behind him.
I pull open the door. The man smiles at me. “Josephine Davis?” I nod hesitantly. “Sign here.” He hands me a tablet.
“I wasn’t expecting anything,” I say as I sign my name.
“Well, you should clear some space. There are a lot of bolts here that someone wants you to have.”
I tilt my head. “Bolts… offabric?”
The man nods, turning away to head down the steps.
He brings them in two at a time. I offer to help, but he shakes his head at me firmly and asks me where I’d like them. I clear a space in the living room so he can line them up on the floor. There are cottons, silks, polyesters, chiffons, satins, rayons.
“That’s the last of them,” he says, hands on his hips.
I fish a twenty out of my wallet and hand it to him. “Who are these from?”
The delivery man shrugs. “It was your name on the invoice.”
When he leaves, I crouch down on my carpet and start running my hands over the fabric. Already, my mind is spinning, inventing designs in my head.
Did you send the fabric?I text Will.
You once told me that if you had nothing to do, you’d start designing again,he replies.
I don’t have the energy to tell him he shouldn’t have. It just means too damn much that hedid.
Josie:Thank you. I don’t know how to repay you for this, but I’ll think of something.
Will:Is it okay if I swing by tonight to drop off one more thing? I won’t stay, but this is important.
Josie:Of course. I love you
Will:Love you too
I smile down at my phone screen, my heartbeat rocketing skyward.
All the things that mattered most two days ago seem inconsequential now. I have no craving to go online and read opinions about myself I know are untrue. I have no craving to overwork myself because I found five spare minutes to answer emails. The only thing I crave is tomake,with myhands.
I clear off my kitchen table for the first time in months, pull it into the center of the room, and line up my three sewing machines on it. I check the bobbins, dust off the dials. In the back of the closet in Cami’s old room, I still have all the patterns Mom gave me when Oma died. I pull those out, too, pick a few of the fanciest to experiment with.
This time, when my mom’s contact lights up my phone screen, I answer.
“I’m sewing,” I tell her.
I hear her breath audibly cut off, stopping whatever rant she was about to embark on in its tracks. Because what I meant but didn’t say isI’m healing.
And Mom remembers from years ago—right after Oma died, right after Zoe and I cut each other off—when I’d been slashed open twice and tried to sew myself back together. She remembersit wasn’t until I put my focus intothisthat I started to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
“What are you sewing?” she asks.
