Helen looked at the sky. “To the seams we don’t cut.”
In the empty tent, a single gold lamé scrap fluttered onto the judging table. Patrick picked it up, smiled, and tucked it into his pocket.
She ripped the gold out and replaced it with a scrap of the white shift dress from the first challenge—now yellowed, but soft. Regret, forgiven.
Helen’s voice cracked. “My regret is that I never learned to say ‘I can’t do this.’ So… I’m saying it now.”
He’d brought his own fabric: a scrap of his late father’s old waistcoat. He appliquéd a crooked house onto the dress’s heart—the home his father had dreamed of but they never built. “I regret waiting,” he said, stitching faster. “He never saw me sew.”
Helen smiled for the first time all day.