The Quiet Room
Etta Hallow worked by a lamp that never seemed to mind the hour. Its glass was a little clouded from a dozen nights of steam and fingers, and it threw a soft, stubborn circle of yellow over her table while the rest of the shop dissolved into velvet dark. She kept her hands busy first because the night suited her—that slow hush where threads read like words and no one expected an answer—and second because her fingers remembered patterns when her mouth did not. The needle dug and rose like a small, punctual bird.
Around her, the room had the kind of order a person builds when they do the same careful thing for years. Baskets sat like small loyal animals on the floor: one for checked cottons, one for the bright scraps that had once been dresses, one for the odd, stubborn pieces no one could say no to. A spool rack lined the shelf and wore its colors like medals. The iron sat cooling on a scrap of wool, left there so it would be warm when needed. Against the far wall, a bundle of finished quilts leaned like a well-behaved audience, all folded edges and patient hems.
Pip, the cat, had an entirely different idea of order. He regarded the spools like an obstacle course and the polka-dot fabric like a delicious hill. Twice in the last half hour he had launched himself into a basket and sent a small avalanche of scraps cascading across the floor. Etta would look up, sigh with that particular amused exasperation that takes a lifetime to practice, and scoop him into her lap with one practiced hand. She threaded a needle with the other.
Outside, the town breathed a low, regular night. From the bakery three doors down came the sweet, warm smell of overnight buns; the baker insisted on baking a small batch of sugared rolls at dusk because he said moonlight made a better crust. From the river came the distant clank of a barge’s rope against timber; everyone knew whether the barge was in by the slant of that metallic note. These things had nothing to do with quilts, and everything to do with the shape of Etta’s evenings. She liked that—the world had little, reliable sounds she could stitch into her own rhythm.
Etta hummed as she worked. Sometimes she hummed an old tune she learned at her mother’s elbow, sometimes she made up nonsense about a ladybird who wore a hat. The hum kept the lamp company. The needle moved—snap, pull, tug—leaving a neat line where a child's sleeve met warmth. She examined the stitch, smoothed the fabric, and pressed the seam with a thumb that had the same stubborn shape as her jaw. "You’ll do," she told the sleeve, which did not answer but lay straighter for the confidence.