He had lowered his voice and promised me the child was wrapped in this very satin dress when they set the little pine box down into the Texas dirt.

I reached into the green box and touched the lace edge of the skirt with my index finger.

My mother had sat at this same table under this same lamp and sewn fourteen tiny glass seed pearls by hand along the scalloped hem.

I remembered the steady tapping of her silver thimble on the needle while I lay on the couch in the back room, weak and sick from the hospital ether.

Not one grain of churchyard dirt had ever touched this white satin.