She only knew her dress fit like it had been grown on her, and that a shopful of people she half-recognized from the neighborhood were weeping and laughing at her, and she laughed too, and turned, and the light came through the bay window and lit the whole net of us at once.

I thought: this is what Franny saw, every Thursday, for thirty-one years.

This is what she had that I did not know to envy.

And now, God help me, I have it too.

Chapter 16 — Small Repairs

It is November again as I write this, a year on.

The bell over the door still goes clunk instead of ring, because I have decided, as she decided, that some broken things are only broken if you insist on measuring them against new ones, and are otherwise just themselves, and fine.

I am at the shop most days now.