He retrieved the pocketknife, which was a businesslike size, from his pocket and opened the blade, sliding it gently into the seam. As I’d expected, in the middle of the seam he encountered a clasp of some kind. He pushed gently with the knife blade, first from one side and then another, but nothing happened.

Next, he began patting the woodwork all around the kneehole. There was a strip of wood at both points where the sides and top of the kneehole met. Donald pressed and pushed, and just when I was about to throw up my hands, there was a rusty click and the panel opened.

“Why don’t you do the honors,” Donald said. “Your desk.”

That was both reasonable and true, and as he backed out, I took his place. I lifted the door and held it up while Donald held his flashlight steady, but since my body blocked a lot of the light, I had quite a time extracting the contents.

I gently gripped and pulled when I felt the contours of the bundle, and then I had it. I wriggled backward on my haunches, trying not to imagine what that must look like from Donald’s viewpoint. As soon as I was clear of the desk, I rose and went over to the window with my dusty bundle. I examined what I held.

There was a small velvet bag with a drawstring top. The material had been wine red, I believed, once upon a time. There was a once-white envelope, about 6 × 8, with pictures on it, and as I carefully flattened it, I realized it had held a dress pattern. Immediately a flood of memory came undammed. I remembered the box that had held all the patterns, Vogue and Simplicity and Butterick. My grandmother had enjoyed sewing for many years until a broken finger in her right hand hadn’t “set” well, and then it had become more and more painful for her to manage the tissue-thin patterns and the materials. From the picture, this particular envelope had held a pattern that was full-skirted and nipped in at the waist, and the three drawn models had fashionably hunched shoulders, thin faces, and short hair. One model was wearing the dress as midlength, one was wearing it as a wedding dress, and one was wearing it as a square-dance costume. The versatile full-skirted dress!

I opened the flap and peered in, expecting to see the familiar brown flimsy pattern paper printed with mysterious black directions. But instead, there was a letter inside, written on yellowed paper. I recognized the handwriting.