A Single Thread (Cobbled Court) Read online

  Over the years, I have met all manner of quilters. It is the kind of hobby that attracts all kinds of different people. But in my experience, women who could clearly afford to purchase anything their hearts desired seldom felt the need to make anything themselves, and, if they did, they generally went in for painting or sculpting, things that were considered more art than craft, though I consider quilting both. But that’s a subject for another time.

  What was she doing here? I couldn’t quite figure it out. When she looked up from her work, appraising me as I entered the room, I was sure of one thing: she and the teenager were somehow related. They had the same long neck, the same sharp jaw, and the same large brown eyes that held the same expression: a look of loss. They tried to conceal it, the older woman with distance and impeccable manners, the teenager with anger and a mutinous stare, but neither mask was entirely convincing.

  “Hi,” I said, trying to keep my voice cheerful as I spied pieces of fabric lying all over the table. They hadn’t even finished cutting out the pieces of their blocks, which meant it would be at least an hour and more like two before they were finished and I could finally lock the doors of the shop and be alone.

  “I’m Evelyn Dixon, the owner. Forgive me for not coming back to say hello before. It’s been an awfully busy day. How are you all doing here? Do you need any help?”

  “Oh, I think you could say that,” the tall brunette said with a self-deprecating giggle. “At least, I know I do. I haven’t touched a needle since I made an A-line skirt in my eighth-grade Home Ec class. The teacher gave me a C minus.” She smiled as she rose from the table and extended her hand. “I’m Margot Matthews.”

  The older woman smiled as well, lowering her reading glasses before reaching out to take my hand. “I’m Abigail Burgess Wynne,” she said in a voice that sounded like good wine and old money, bright and light but with a smooth finish. It was a voice that revealed nothing.

  Wynne. That’s who she was. Wynne Memorial Library. Wynne Museum. I remembered now. Charlie said she was one of the wealthiest women in the state.

  “And this is Liza Burgess—my niece.” She hesitated just a moment before declaring this last, as if reluctant to acknowledge their shared bloodline.

  “Nice to meet you.”

  Abigail peered past me. “Has everyone else gone? I’m afraid we arrived late.”

  “Yes, sorry about that,” Margot said. “I’m between jobs and had a three o’clock phone interview that was supposed to take fifteen minutes but went on for almost an hour.”

  “I wasn’t late.” Liza growled to her aunt. “I stood outside the shop for two hours waiting for you to show up.”

  Abigail went on, ignoring the girl. “You’re probably exhausted after such a long day. Perhaps we should just leave this for now and come back another time.”

  I was about to gratefully agree with her when Liza, whose single utterance up until now had been delivered in a mumble, shouted, “No! We have to finish today! That was the deal we made! If you don’t do this today, then it doesn’t count. The deal will be off! I mean it!” She glowered at her aunt, who glowered right back. Margot, clearly as stunned by the girl’s outburst as I was, just stood there.

  “That’s no problem,” I said, trying to get us past the moment. “I don’t have any plans for the evening. So you’re all new to quilting?” They nodded. “Well, I’ll give you your first lesson. It’s easier than it looks. All you’re doing is sewing straight lines. But first, I’ll give you a few tips on cutting your patterns. A nice-looking block begins with an accurately cut pattern.”

  I showed them how to use a see-through ruler to measure out precisely sized squares and triangles for the main part of the basket, then how to use a sharp pencil held at a sideways angle to trace carefully around the template for the appliquéd basket handle. It was a lesson I had given a dozen times already that day, and I could have delivered it while sleepwalking, which, in a way, was exactly what I was doing. As in any group of quilters, all of the women had different styles, but thankfully, all three caught onto the basic ideas quickly.

  Liza, the younger woman, said very little but seemed to have a real feel for color and a willingness to take risks. She quietly asked if it would be all right to make her block in a color scheme that was the opposite of everyone else’s, using the brown and mocha shades for her basket and doing the background in pink. I said that would be a good idea, thinking it might be interesting to place that one contrasting block in the center of the quilt as an anchor for the rest.

  Margot approached her task with a businesslike attitude, making quick, confident decisions about her color choices and not getting flustered by little errors. I suspected that, as time went on, she would be a good all-around quilter, able to master a variety of techniques quickly and always ready to try more challenging pieces, confident in her ability to puzzle out any problems that might arise.

  Abigail, in spite of giving the impression that she’d rather be anywhere but where she was, was a stickler for precision. It was a quality I would normally have applauded, but it was definitely causing her to lag behind the other two. I was so tired, and my head was pounding. All I wanted was for them to finish their blocks and leave so I could fall into bed and a dreamless sleep.

  Once the patterns were cut, I showed them how to mark a stitching line with a pencil, so they would understand how that was done, but gave them quarter-inch masking tape to mark their seams so they would finish more quickly. Margot was first to finish piecing her block. I asked if I could borrow it to demonstrate how to appliqué on the handle.

  By then, it was nearly dark outside, and I had to turn on the overhead lamps so there would be enough light to work by. My eyes were almost as tired as my body, and I rubbed them and blinked a few times before taking my first stitch, trying to regain my focus.

  “All right. Are you all watching?” They were.

  “The stitch I’m going to teach you is called the blind stitch, because, if you do it properly, you should barely be able to see the stitches. Now, in appliqué, unlike the running stitch we used to piece our block, we’re going to use a knot, but we’ll hide it here in the fold of the fabric.” I held the folded fabric strip out so they could see where to place the first stitch. Then I pierced the fabric with the needle while they watched.

  I don’t know how I did it. I’ve shown that stitch to hundreds of beginners without incident, but somehow or other when I pushed the needle through the fabric, I ended up driving it deep into the flesh of my finger.

  “Ouch! Dammit!” I dropped the block and instinctively put my finger into my mouth. I tasted blood on my tongue, sharp and metallic, like sucking on an old penny. It hurt, but it was far from agony and it certainly wasn’t the first time I’d pricked my finger while sewing. Still, tears pooled in my eyes. Margot saw them.

  “Evelyn, are you all right?” When I didn’t answer, she jumped to her feet. “Here. Give me your hand. Let me see.” She took my hand and unfolded my fingers. A bright, ruby drop of blood pearled on the end of my fingertip.

  “That really must have smarted,” she said sympathetically. She reached for a scrap of cast-off fabric and pressed it against my finger to stop the blood. “Don’t worry. It’ll be all right in a minute.”

  But it wasn’t all right. It wouldn’t be all right in a minute, or a month, or maybe ever. The words I’d been trying so hard to smother in my mind—cancer, chemo, radiation, drug therapy, survival rates, and mastectomy—boiled to the surface in a confused jumble. My body started to shake involuntarily as the tears came faster and harder. I couldn’t keep them back.

  “What am I going to do? What? I’m thousands of miles away from home. I’ve got nothing. I’ve got no one. Why is this happening to me! Just when things were finally starting to go right. I can’t have cancer! Not now!”

  I covered my face with my hands and gave myself up to despair, sobbing until I was dry. Long moments passed, and I finally raised my head to look at the three strang
ers standing witness to my collapse.

  Abigail was silent, her face still and unreadable. What little color there was in Liza’s cheeks had completely drained away. Her eyes were full of tears but empty of answers. Only Margot moved toward me, reaching out to wrap her arms around me.

  Turning to her, I whispered, “Please. Somebody please tell me. What am I going to do?”

  12

  Abigail Burgess Wynne

  While I was getting dressed that morning, I dropped the cameo brooch, the one Woolley bought for me in London. The fall chipped it. I knew it was not going to be a good day.

  Of course, I didn’t need a jewelry omen to tell me that. There was nothing about the idea of spending the afternoon sewing a quilt that appealed to me, especially sewing a quilt while Liza sat next to me glaring recriminations. But there was no way to avoid it, so I finished getting dressed and walked across the Green, slowly, to meet Liza.

  I was late, though not nearly as late as Liza claimed when she blurted this information out to two strangers. The girl dramatizes everything. Thinking that correcting her would only make things worse, I decided to ignore her, focus completely on the task at hand, and get through the ordeal without becoming engaged in some sort of emotional scene. But at the end of the day, it was unavoidable, though the drama erupted from an unexpected source—not my angry, bitter niece, but the owner of the quilt shop, Evelyn Dixon.

  When Evelyn entered the storeroom, where Liza, Margot Matthews, and I were seated, I was surprised by her appearance. Her newspaper photograph had made her appear so elegant and well put together, but today her clothes looked careless and rumpled, almost as if she’d slept in them. Perhaps someone else had supervised her wardrobe selection for the newspaper picture, I thought.

  In any case, I was glad to see her. My goal was to make the quilt block as quickly as possible, fulfilling my promise to Liza, and leave Cobbled Court Quilts, never to return. But I was getting frustrated trying to understand the instruction sheet that the frowzy woman with the horrible rhinestone glasses had handed out along with the kits. And Liza and Margot were just as confused as I was.

  In spite of Liza’s rude and embarrassing outburst, once Evelyn started showing us what to do, there was a definite easing of tension, and I began, if not to enjoy myself, at least to become more interested in what I was doing. In school, I’d enjoyed geometry, and as Evelyn explained the basic construction of a quilt and quilt blocks, I saw that the whole thing was based on geometric theories. After a time, I was so concentrated on my task and trying to make sure that all my angles and points were cut and sewn properly, so as to make a perfect square, I forgot why I was there in the first place. It was a pleasant distraction from tensions of the day. Time passed quickly, and, while focusing on the quilt block, it was easy to avoid making eye contact with Liza.

  By the time Evelyn began to demonstrate the appliqué technique, I’d started to think that the day might not turn out as badly as I’d feared and that, at least in terms of blackmail payments, I’d gotten off fairly cheaply after all. All it cost me was a half a day spent sewing a quilt block that was actually turning out rather nicely, and allowing Liza to repaint the walls of her bedroom, not black, but in shades of blue, gray, and green with a technique that made the walls look like Italian marble. It wasn’t a look I’d have chosen for myself, but she’d made a good job of it. If I had paid a decorator to do it, I’m sure it would have cost a fortune.

  All in all, I said to myself, this is a small price to pay to preserve your niece’s neck in its current pristine state, free of a family monogram.

  But I spoke too soon. Without warning, Evelyn Dixon’s calm veneer cracked. She pricked her finger with a needle, producing a few drops of blood, a veil of tears, and the shocking revelation that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer on the day before she was hosting a fundraiser to fight the same disease.

  Naturally, I felt badly for her. Who wouldn’t? However, it really was her personal business, not mine. Though the irony of the situation was not lost on me, any more than I’d missed the fact that her sobbed confession occurred in front of my eyes, and my niece’s, on the same day my own sister succumbed to her fight with cancer. Clearly, the world was full of ironies. Either that, or God had a cruel sense of humor. Or was there something else to all this?

  I didn’t have time to wonder further. The next thing I knew, Margot Matthews had taken charge and was ordering me about. Was there to be no end to the humiliations of this day?

  “Abigail, run get a glass of water, would you please? Better yet, make some tea,” she commanded. “Evelyn, do you have a teapot or a microwave around here somewhere?”

  Tears streamed through Evelyn’s closed eyelids. “Upstairs. In my apartment.” She sniffed loudly, making a sound I’d rather not describe.

  “You live upstairs? Even better. Let’s just take you home.” As if she were an invalid, Margot placed her forearm under Evelyn’s elbow and helped her to her feet, supporting her as she walked wearily toward the stairs. “Liza, would you turn off the lights and make sure the CLOSED sign is out on the door?”

  I stood there for a moment, uncertain of what I should do. I didn’t know Evelyn Dixon; none of us did. Did Margot expect me to follow her up the stairs into Evelyn’s home and actually make tea for her? Liza, having completed her assignment, hurried for the stairs, brushing past without looking at me, not even bothering to give me her customary glare. It felt silly, standing alone in the now-darkened shop, so I followed the others.

  Upstairs, in the small, neatly arranged apartment, Evelyn reclined on a narrow green sofa. Liza was tucking a quilt around her legs, and, though her eyes were red, she was actually smiling. In the time she’d been living with me, I’d rarely seen Liza smile. She was really quite pretty when she did.

  Margot emerged from another room carrying a box of tissues and handed some to Evelyn. I went into the kitchen, a galley affair separated from the living and dining area by a counter and stools, and started boiling water for tea. It felt odd, rooting around in a stranger’s cupboards and drawers, but I found the cabinet where Evelyn kept her teabags and sugar. There were some crackers as well. It occurred to me that, what with her shop being overrun by customers and the distress of her diagnosis, Evelyn might not have eaten. Clearly, she had bigger problems than an empty stomach, but hunger and fatigue certainly didn’t help the situation.

  I’m not much of a cook, but anyone can slice cheese. I found a block of cheddar and some grapes in the refrigerator and arranged them on a platter along with the crackers.

  “Here we are,” I said cheerily as I carried a tray with the food and four steaming cups of tea into the living area. “I couldn’t find any lemon, but there’s milk and sugar for the tea and a few things to munch on. Evelyn, may I fix you a plate?”

  “No, thank you. I’m not hungry.” Her eyes were dry now, but still rimmed in red, and I thought that it wouldn’t take much to bring on a fresh wave of weeping.

  “Why don’t you just have a little something,” Margot urged and, without waiting for an answer, put some cheese and crackers on a plate and handed it to Evelyn. “I bet you haven’t eaten all day, have you?” Evelyn shook her head. “On top of that, you’re probably exhausted. You can’t think clearly on no sleep and an empty stomach. You’ve got to come up with some sort of plan about how you’re going to live your life and manage your business while you beat this thing. And we’re going to help you.”

  We were?

  Margot Matthews was awfully free with her use of personal pronouns. Certainly, I admired her capability, her calm reaction in a difficult circumstance. In fact, I couldn’t help but wonder why any company would have let her go and why someone else hadn’t snapped her up, but she was going a little overboard. I’ve nothing against being a Good Samaritan; my involvement in local charity was certainly a testament to that, but hadn’t we all done our good deed for the day? After all, until this afternoon none of us had laid eyes on Evelyn Dixon.
>
  Evelyn swallowed the bite of the cracker she’d been dutifully chewing. “You are? But you barely know me. You never even met me before today.”

  My point exactly.

  “What difference does that make? God put us on this earth to help one another, didn’t He?”

  Oh no. She was one of those. A moderate amount of religious feeling never hurt anyone, but people who wear their faith on their sleeves are off-putting. Margot, I decided, was one of those people. Suddenly her long stretch of unemployment made sense. Perhaps her religiosity made her coworkers uncomfortable. Spying the silver crucifix she was wearing around her neck, I was certain that was what had happened.

  Margot smiled brightly and looked around at the rest of us, as if waiting for an actual answer to what I’d felt was a rhetorical question. Liza shot me a look, not her usual evil glare but a pointed gaze that elicited a sudden rush of heat to my face, and said, “Absolutely. No one should go through this alone.”

  I shifted my eyes away from Liza’s. “Yes. Of course,” I said. “Anything I can do to help.”

  Margot turned back to Evelyn. “You see? The three of us coming into the shop so late and sitting together, getting hidden away in the back room so you’d find us after everyone was gone—none of that was a coincidence. I’ve got a feeling we were all handpicked to be here today. You might feel like you’re alone in this, Evelyn, but it isn’t true. God knows you need some friends to help you through this. Well, here we are! You’ll see. We’re all in this together.”

  And, as suddenly as Margot the Cheerleader made this pronouncement, we all were in it—whether we wanted to be or not.

  Margot pulled a notepad out of her purse and started conducting a series of probing, fact-finding interviews. First, she began quizzing Evelyn, asking about her conversation with the doctor and what she knew about the details of her diagnosis, which wasn’t much. Apparently, the poor thing had lapsed into something of a state of shock upon hearing the news and either didn’t hear or didn’t comprehend much of what her doctor had said after giving her the bad news.