The repair required cutting out a section of drywall, fixing the pipe, letting the framing dry, and then replastering and repainting. It also turned out that the subfloor in one corner had absorbed enough moisture that it needed to be addressed. The whole thing took six weeks and generated the kind of low-level domestic chaos that involves dust sheets, strangers in your apartment at seven in the morning, and the constant low-key stress of coordinating schedules around contractors who work on contractor time.
The second bedroom is where I kept the dress box. During the original repair scoping, I looked at the storage situation and made the calculation: the box needed to go somewhere stable and dry. My mother’s guest room closet was twelve by eight and climate-stable in the way that older houses with good insulation tend to be. It was a reasonable choice. I did not anticipate needing to have a complex conversation about it.
I drove the box over on a Saturday in November. I put it on the shelf. I wrote the note on the box in black marker. My mother made tea and we sat in her kitchen and talked about something I don’t remember, ordinary family stuff, and I left. It was not a ceremony. It was the kind of errand that feels unremarkable at the time and acquires weight in retrospect.
## What Rosa Knew and When
When I called Rosa after I found out, she told me she’d had the dress for about six weeks. My mother had brought it in in mid-March, about three weeks after Elise’s viewing. Rosa had done an initial assessment, discussed the alterations with my mother and Elise, and begun the work.