The small back room of Threadbare Alterations in Harrowby smelled of steam irons, damp wool broadcloth, tailor’s chalk, and lavender moth-balls. Rain drummed a dull, rhythmic pattern against the high glass skylight. It ran down the soot-streaked panes in steady rivulets. Along the wooden cutting table, rolls of heavy brown cotton duck, raw, unwhitened river flax, and heavy waxed harness webbing were laid out beside heavy steel shears and bone-handled bodkins. In the corner by the pressing board, a clay pot teapot sat cold, the faint aroma of boiled tea lingering in the air.
Jo Saye stood over the cutting table, her horn-rimmed glasses pushed up on her gray curls, a brass seam gauge in her left hand. Spread flat before her was the scorched left sleeve of the protective smock Ada Morland had worn into the Ferry Museum gallery. The heavy canvas was stiff, scorched a dirty amber-yellow. Then he crusted with white stone pipe lime from the river steam. Where the steam had struck the wrist, the cotton sewing thread along the cuff seam had fully crumbled. That turned to a powdery gray ash that drifted across the paper pattern.
Her fourteen-year-old granddaughter, Elsie, stood on the opposite side of the table. He held a small brass oilcan and a pair of pinking shears. “Look at the thread along the flat-felled seam, Gran. It didn’t tear. It melted.”
