Threading the Needle Read online

  So far, I hadn’t found any riches among the refuse. I was about to give up when I stumbled upon something truly priceless—an idea—and it didn’t cost me a dime.

  As I walked by a table of children’s items, I heard a conversation between a young couple that piqued my interest. I drew closer and feigned interest in a pile of old toys.

  “It’s such a cute little village,” the woman said, looking around the Green as she absently leafed through a stack of boys’ shirts. “Too bad we can’t stay here.”

  The man, who I assumed was her husband, said, “I tried. But there’s no room at the inn. There’s no inn, period. You’d think that a town like this would have a ton of hotel rooms. The closest place I could find a vacancy is the Walden Inn, but the prices . . .”

  He let out a low whistle and I knew why. The Walden Inn is very beautiful and very, very expensive. Their “standard” rooms start at five hundred a night and junior suites can be double that. It is the hotel of choice among the Manhattan elite looking to spend a weekend in the country, but it is far beyond the means of ordinary mortals.

  “I wanted to stay in New Bern,” he continued apologetically, “but the only place with rooms available is that motel. If you want, I’ll call and cancel our reservation in Kent.”

  “No, no,” she assured him. “It’s worth driving a little farther to stay somewhere nice. If you’re having a romantic weekend in New England, you have to stay at a cozy, romantic little inn,” she said with a flirtatious smile. “Don’t you think?”

  “Absolutely.” He put his arm around her waist and they went off to investigate the used books.

  No room at the inn . . . No inn period . . . A town like this . . .

  The man’s comments played and replayed in my mind. How had I not thought of this before? New Bern had no inn!

  The only real lodging in New Bern was the Yankee Motel. Built in the mid-fifties and not refurbished since, it had all the charm of a cardboard box and was situated right next to the highway, three miles from the center of town. People only stayed there because there was nowhere else to stay.

  Beecher Cottage, on the other hand, simply oozed charm—or it would once it was fixed up. Best of all, it was in a great location, just a short walk from the Green, the shops, the museums—all the places visitors came to see!

  I opened and closed my fist, adding things up in my mind. Beecher Cottage had five bedrooms, two with private baths. If some work was done to the attic and the old guest apartment above the garage was fixed up, it would be possible to add two more. Maybe three. Eight potential rooms, each paying, say, two hundred dollars a night . . .

  Why, if I could fill those rooms even half the time . . . even a third! I could transform Beecher Cottage into a profit-making enterprise. And providing lodging could be just the beginning. Unlike many Victorian-era homes, the main floor had large public rooms that flowed well. Imagine the kind of income I might generate by hosting small weddings or conferences. Getting a zoning change shouldn’t be that difficult; half the houses on Oak Leaf Lane were already designated as commercial anyway. And once they realized that having an inn within walking distance of downtown could help support their enterprises, I was sure the other business owners would . . .

  Other business owners?

  What was I thinking? I didn’t know the first thing about business. I hadn’t punched a time clock in three decades. And when I had worked, I’d only been hired for my looks, not my brains. Even if I had the business acumen of Conrad Hilton, where would I get the money? Transforming Beecher Cottage into a bed-and-breakfast would require a cellar-to-dome renovation, and an even bigger loan than the one Aaron Fletcher had just turned me down for.

  No. It was a crazy idea—a pipe dream. Impossible.

  I clenched my fist in frustration. This time my fingers closed on something. I looked down and saw that I was holding a very small, very worn miniature sofa. It was Victorian in style, with a dark stain, ornately carved legs, and a curved back, upholstered in faded red velvet, the perfect size for a dollhouse—for my dollhouse. The dollhouse I hadn’t seen since I’d abandoned it in Edna’s attic all those years ago, leaving it to rot with the rest of the junk . . .

  I picked up the tiny sofa with both hands and stared at it.

  No, I thought. It wasn’t the same sofa. It couldn’t be. Not after all these years. And it couldn’t be a sign either. Could it? No. I don’t believe in signs.

  An older woman with iron gray hair, wearing a stick-on name tag with the church logo printed on it in blue ink and her name, Darlene, written in red marker, walked past.

  “Ma’am? Pardon me. Darlene?”

  Hearing her name, she turned around. “Can I help you with something?”

  “Yes, how much is this?”

  “Everything on that table is one dollar.”

  “I’ll take it.” I pulled one of my two remaining dollars from my pocket and handed it to Darlene.

  “It’s a sweet little sofa, isn’t it? Do you have a dollhouse?”

  “I do . . . I mean, I did. Not anymore.”

  Darlene smiled vaguely. “Oh. Well. With new upholstery and a little TLC, it’ll be good as new. It’s a shame the way people throw away perfectly good things without a second thought. We live in a disposable society. . . .” Darlene tsked her tongue in disgust. “ ‘Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.’ That’s what my mother always used to say. And back in my day, that’s what we did.”

  “Yes,” I said. “In mine too.”

  I thanked Darlene and headed across the Green with the little sofa clutched in my fist. I passed the quilts and gave a thought to the raffle, but only fleetingly.

  I had places to go, people to see, treasure to unearth.

  11

  Tessa

  Itold Emily that I’d be back at the shop as soon as my shift at the fair was over. Ivy and Dana, who also work at the Cobbled Court Quilt Shop, were right on time to take over from Margot and very excited about the apparent success of the fair.

  “Just look at this crowd!” Ivy exclaimed. “This is great!”

  “It is,” Dana echoed in a softer but no less enthusiastic voice. “Really great!”

  I’d never have guessed it if Margot hadn’t told me, but both women—Ivy, blond and blue-eyed, tiny in stature but big in personality, and Dana, dark of hair and complexion, even shorter than Ivy and definitely more timid—had been victims of domestic violence. Ivy and her two children now lived in a house on Proctor Street. Dana was still living at the shelter. What kind of monster could possibly hurt these two wonderful, intelligent women? It boggled the mind.

  “It was really nice of you to help out,” Dana said with a shy smile.

  “I was glad to. I only wish I could do more.”

  “You’ve done a lot,” Ivy said. “Everybody has. If the turnout stays this strong through the weekend, maybe we won’t have to cut back any education programs. I hope we can save the GED classes at least. Wouldn’t you know the year I finally have time to take my high school equivalency exam is the year they threaten to close the prep classes because of budget shortfalls.”

  “It won’t come to that,” Margot said brightly. “Look how well everything is going!”

  She got up from the table to make room for Ivy and Dana. “I’ve got to get back to the shop. You know how it is, the minute we’re shorthanded is the minute everybody decides they need fabric for a new quilt. Oh! Speaking of that! Tessa is the newest member of our quilt circle!”

  “Terrific!” Ivy exclaimed. “Have you decided what your first project will be?”

  I pointed to the raffle quilt. “That. Assuming my raffle ticket isn’t the winner. It looks pretty complicated, but Margot seems to think I can do it.”

  “Sure you can,” Ivy said. “Margot will help you. We all will. When you come in the shop to pick out your fabric, just holler if you need some advice.”

  “Thanks.”

  That was the second time someone had of
fered to help me pick out fabric. What was all the fuss about? How hard could choosing fabric be anyway? Especially since I planned on using the same fabrics as the raffle quilt. It was pretty just as it was. Why change anything?

  “See?” Margot said. “You’re already making new friends. I told you! Well, I should get back. Tessa, do you want to walk with me?”

  “Oh. Thanks, but no. There’s something I need to do first.”

  The wooden doors that separate the church vestibule from the sanctuary are thick and heavy. As they swung slowly closed, the voices, laughter, and bustle of the fair were muffled to a whoosh of white noise.

  I grew up in this church. So did my parents and grandparents and great-grandparents. Given that, you might suppose I made a beeline back to church as soon as I moved home, but you’d be wrong. It wasn’t that I had anything against church, quite the opposite. I have fond memories of this building, of stories told with flannel board figures, of singing and climbing Jacob’s ladder in Sunday school, of snuggling between my parents and falling safely asleep during long sermons, of Easter Sunday and new dresses with stiff petticoats and hats with daisies on the brim and white patent leather shoes with a purse that matched, of hayrides and bonfires with the youth group and getting my first kiss from Billy Jessup when the pastor wasn’t looking, and, of course, of my wedding day.

  But after that and in spite of good intentions to the contrary, I rarely went to church again—any church. I’d fallen out of the habit at college, as had Lee. After Josh was born, we’d started attending a church near our house, thinking that’s what parents do, I suppose. But we never felt comfortable there, so after a few months, we quit going.

  Still, you’d have thought that I would have gone back when I moved home, for nostalgia’s sake if nothing else, but no. Family tradition, fond memories, good intentions—none of that brought me back to church. Desperation did.

  When we decided to move to New Bern, the housing market was hot. Even though we weren’t going to move until Josh finished high school in Massachusetts, we went ahead and put in a nearly full-price offer on our farm in New Bern because we were worried that someone might buy it out from under us. By the time Josh graduated, the housing market was cooling—rapidly.

  We’d figured selling our house near Boston would take three weeks at most. After three months without an offer, our Realtor called to suggest dropping the price and burying a statue of a saint upside down in the yard. “I know it sounds crazy,” she said. “But I’ve been in this business a long time and I’ve never seen it fail.”

  We agreed to the price reduction but said no to burying a statue in the yard.

  “Was she serious? I mean, what’s next? Voodoo dolls and rabbit’s feet?” I asked Lee, sharing a laugh later that day.

  Lee grinned. “Now that the market is slowing down, maybe she’s taken up a side business selling religious artifacts to desperate home owners.”

  “Maybe. But I can’t imagine how desperate you’d have to be to consider entombing a plastic saint in the rosebushes a viable part of your real estate marketing plan.”

  Months later, after more than a year of making double mortgage payments, paying remodeling costs for the shop, which had gone twelve percent over our estimates, realizing that business was way below our projections and that our investments were going down even as college tuition was going up, I could imagine what that kind of desperation felt like. I was there. I was inches away from driving to Massachusetts with a ceramic saint and a shovel. But first I decided to try a more conventional method. I went to church and prayed that someone would buy our house.

  It worked.

  I went to church on Sunday. On Monday, the Realtor called with an offer on the house—not a great offer, but an offer. We accepted it.

  Now, was that a coincidence or an answer to prayer? I wasn’t sure; I’m still not. But I decided that it’d be ungrateful to show up at church, pray, get what I asked for, and then never return—somewhat akin to showing up for a dinner party empty-handed, then leaving right after dessert and never sending a thank-you note.

  And there was something else.

  That first day, I sat in the same pew my family had occupied for so many years, sixth row back on the left, and found something I never expected and still can’t quite explain. I suppose peace is the most straightforward description, but there’s more to it than that—refuge, sanctuary, awe. And thirst, the need for more.

  It was that need, more than obligation or gratitude, that drew me back a second time and draws me back today. I can’t pass by without entering in. Especially today.

  With the door closed in this hushed and empty space with its tall windows streaming sunlight, simple unadorned walls, and rows of high-backed pews, I moved instinctively to my accustomed place. My steps were muffled, nearly silent, as I walked up the carpeted aisle to the sixth row and knelt with my head bowed in the wooden pew that has been polished smooth and gleaming from contact with the arms and elbows and backsides and knees of generations of supplicants and seekers like me, and I prayed.

  There was so much to pray about.

  I prayed about the shop, the farm, the bills, and the mortgage. I prayed for Josh, for his protection and happiness and future. I prayed about missing him and for strength not to let him know how much. And I prayed for Lee, for his interview, that he’d get the job, and that this would somehow close the distance I felt growing between us. I prayed about everything. Not eloquently, and not with any great faith that my prayers would really change anything, but sincerely and, yes, a little desperately.

  I was so focused that I didn’t hear the door open or footsteps on the carpet. When Reverend Tucker touched me lightly on the shoulder, I jumped.

  “I’m sorry, Tessa. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  I laid my hand over my thumping heart and let out a little laugh. “That’s all right, Reverend. You just caught me by surprise. Hey, what happened to you?”

  His hair was plastered down on his head and his clothes were damp from his white collar all the way down to his black tennis shoes, which actually squelched when he took a step. I really must have been concentrating not to have heard that.

  He blinked a couple of times, as if wondering what I was talking about, then reached up to touch his wet hair.

  “Oh, that. I took a shift in the dunk tank.”

  “You should go put some dry clothes on. You’ll catch cold.”

  “I’m all right. It’s warm for September and I’m halfway to dry already. I’ll go to my office to change in a minute, but I wanted to check on you first. Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. Just had a few things on my mind.”

  “Then you’ve come to the right place. ‘Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.’ Matthew 11:28. I haven’t any advice or counsel that even comes close to that, but if there is anything I can do for you, you only need to ask.”

  “Thank you. I appreciate that.”

  He smiled gently and nodded. The movement made a drop of water drip from his hair onto the lens of his eyeglasses.

  “So?” he asked, taking off his glasses and drying them ineffectually with the tail of his damp shirt. “Is there anything I can do for you? Anything you want to talk about?”

  I pressed my lips together for a moment before answering. “Sometimes I wonder what God must think of me. I don’t darken His door for years and when I finally do, it was only because I had a cartload of problems to be solved. Don’t you think that ticks God off?”

  Reverend Tucker tipped his head back as far as it would go, as if the answer to my question might be printed somewhere on the soaring ceiling of the sanctuary.

  “There was once a man who had a thoughtless son who took his inheritance and wasted it all on foolishness. When the son had spent every dime, he became hungry, desperately so. Realizing how foolish he’d been, he was ashamed to go home. But desperation and hunger finally led him back to his father’s house, where he
hoped he might find work as a servant.

  “When he saw his son coming, the father’s joy was so great that he ran down the road to greet him. The father didn’t ask where his son had been, or what he had done, or why it had taken him so long to come to his senses. He didn’t care what had driven his child through the door. He was just happy to see him.”

  Reverend Tucker put his water-streaked glasses back on his nose.

  “That’s what I think God thinks of you. He doesn’t care what brought you here or what condition you arrived in—hungry, doubting, desperate, damp.” He glanced at his bedraggled clothes and shrugged.

  “Makes no difference to God. He’s just happy you’re home.”

  12

  Madelyn

  The railing was dusty and strung with cobwebs. How long since anyone had climbed these stairs? Opened this door? Entered this cold, dark, unfinished space? Years, certainly. Decades, possibly.

  I still remembered where the attic light switch was. I snapped it on and a naked overhead bulb, the old-fashioned kind with the glowing filament visible through a clear glass dome, pierced the darkness with bright light that faded to shadows near the edge of the room and severed at sharp angles near the sloping ceiling, a landscape of silhouettes and shadow shapes cast by forgotten furniture and relics of the past.

  It was quiet, eerily so. I stepped through the door, toward the light, and turned in a slow circle. There were no ghosts in the attic, but there was a claw-foot bathtub, two chairs with torn upholstery and sagging springs, an ornately carved armoire missing a section of scrollwork that, when opened, revealed a stack of fine-loomed linen sheets edged with lace and embroidered vines, and a half dozen round boxes each holding three or four hats trimmed with ribbons and feathers, peek-a-boo veils and clusters of fruit, and even a papier-mâché bluebird perched jauntily on the rim of a straw boater banded with a blue and white ribbon.