Chapter 5

I pulled open the bottom drawer of my mother’s cutting table and found the pattern envelope flattened beneath the wooden ruler.

It was empty.

Her pencil marks still dented the paper: my waist, my shoulders, the length from the hollow of my throat to the floor. I ran the envelope under the lamp, and each number rose from the paper like a scar. The folded pattern should have filled it. Her sewing notebook should have rested beside it, wrapped in the blue cloth she had used to keep chalk dust off the pages.

Both were gone.

Matthew stopped in the…