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cool satin, the dizzying print starting to blur behind her clouding eyes. Her fingers caught in the hanging threads by the zipper, poking through the gaping hole down the side. All she needed now was a seamstress.
    Crawling to her feet, she brought the dress out in front of her, held the fabric against her skin.
    Of course.
    Violet had had the answer all along.

4
    T he rain just wouldn’t let up.
    It was a familiar refrain, and everyone from the punky receptionist at school to the perky weather blonde on the six o’clock news seemed to have an opinion about when the rainy season would finally end.
    Before the move, Olivia’s mother had enthusiastically reminded her daughter that they couldn’t be arriving at a better time of year. “You won’t see a drop of rain from March to October,” she’d said.
    So far, it had rained at least once a day. And not always just sprinkles. Heavy, sky-splitting downpours, the kind that made wearing jeans or getting out of the car a gamble.
    Olivia had left her stoop and started down Dolores just as Friday evening’s downpour was getting under way, a single, fat drop splattering on the sidewalk beside her boot. Almost an hour of sloshing through puddles of murky curb water later, she’d decided that searching for a seamstress in the rain wasn’t one of her most brilliant ideas. After trudging from onesoaked corner to another, scanning the hodgepodge of window displays—a cute little antique furniture shop, a watch repair store, and about ten yoga studios in a six-block radius—she was fairly certain that she wasn’t going to find a tailor in her neighborhood.
    She was pulling the collar of her black Windbreaker tighter around her neck when a dim light in a dark corner storefront caught her eye. It was in a building on the corner across from the manicured median of palm trees, a building she walked past every day on her way to the bus stop. A burgundy awning jutted out from the dirty concrete wall, and Olivia had always assumed the space was empty. There was even a laminated sign in the window, one that she could have sworn used to say for rent. But as Olivia walked closer, ducking under the awning, which flapped wildly in the wind, she saw that the sign was actually a handwritten note:
    Mariposa of the Mission.
    Olivia cupped her hands to the glass and peered inside. The glare from a yellow streetlight floating overhead made it hard to see anything, and she could just barely make out the hulking shadows of garment bags and sewing machines. It looked like an abandoned dry cleaner’s, minus the mechanically rotating shirts.
    Olivia blinked, her eyes traveling across the room. In the far corner, lounging on a threadbare divan, was a small, dark-haired girl. She glanced up from the paperback book open in her lap, and looked pointedly through the window at Olivia, almost as if she’d been waiting for her.
    Olivia quickly dropped her hands to her side and hopped back, startled. Was it possible that all this time, the very thingshe was looking for had been around the corner from where she’d started, just a few hundred feet from her own front door? Why hadn’t she seen it before?
    Olivia took a deep breath, remembering the dress she’d stuffed inside her purse, and pushed carefully through the heavy glass door.
    Tinny chimes rang out as soon as she stepped onto a straw welcome mat, and Olivia let the door shut quietly behind her. The girl in the corner had gone back to her book, and Olivia stood awkwardly at the entrance. Half-dressed mannequins haunted every corner of the small space, staring down from high perches with blank faces. Folds of fabric were layered on low wooden tables, and hidden in each nook and darkened corner were miniature glass butterfly figurines of varying shapes and colors. A soft yellow light fell in shafts from two tasseled lamps, cutting rays of swimming dust across the floor.
    Olivia cleared her throat, but the girl continued reading, her thick, dark brows