A Thread of Truth. Marie Bostwick
I looked again and laughed. She was pointing to a smaller building. Two six-over-six windows sat on either side and slightly above a red front door with three bull’s-eye glass panes across the top. The second story had narrow eyebrow windows arranged in perfect symmetry over larger six-by-sixes on the main floor. I saw what Bethany meant; if you used your imagination, the door looked like an open, laughing red mouth and the windows like smiling eyes. “You’re right. It’s a happy house.”
Bethany pointed to the big white mansion next door. “Do you think the people who live here are happy, too?”
“Well, if they’re not, they ought to be. I could sure be happy living in a place like this.”
“But maybe not,” Bethany said sagely. “We lived in a big house before and we weren’t happy there, were we, Mommy?”
“No,” I whispered, remembering the four-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath ranch house in an upscale suburban neighborhood where we’d lived for eight years; the house where I’d become an expert in the art of using foundation and concealer to mask my latest bruises because I didn’t want the neighbors to know that our house wasn’t as happy as it looked from the outside. “No, we weren’t.”
“I like where we live now,” Bethany said, referring to our tiny apartment. “But it would be nice to live in a house that smiles.”
Abigail smacked the dashboard with her hand, startling me out of my reverie. “That’s it!” she exclaimed. “The perfect solution! Why didn’t I think of it before?”
“Think of what before?”
“A Proctor Street house! You’re right: If it was modeled into separate apartments, it could easily house ten families. The neighborhood is quiet, within walking distance to schools and the downtown area where most jobs are, and it’s just two blocks from the bus line! Brilliant idea!”
Beaming, Abigail unbuckled her seat belt and practically leapt out of the car. “Just lock the doors, would you? I’ve got to run to my meeting. I can’t wait to tell Donna about this! It’s the absolutely perfect solution to all our problems. Must run. Tell Bethany and Bobby I said hello. Thank you so much, Ivy!”
She slammed the door shut and scurried toward the front door without an umbrella, her high heels echoing definitively against the sidewalk, seemingly unaware that she was getting soaked.
I got out of the car. “You’re welcome,” I called after her, though I didn’t see what I’d said that was so helpful.
7
Evelyn Dixon
“All right, Wendy. The total is $126.75.”
Wendy opened her eyes wider and pushed her rhinestone-encrusted glasses up on her nose. “Really?”
“Well, that does include the forty-five-dollar class fee as well as your fabric. But, I understand. It does add up.”
“Could be worse.” Wendy shrugged as she riffled through her enormous handbag looking for her checkbook. “My ex-husband’s hobby was drinking and chasing women. Sweetie, compared to that, quilting is a bargain!” Wendy wrinkled up her nose, squashed her lips into an open O, and snorted with laughter, her tongue pushing out between the circle of her lips with each snort. I joined in. Wendy’s laugh was so unique and so comical that it was impossible not to.
“So, how are things going around here, Evelyn?” she asked as she bent over her checkbook. “How’re you feeling these days?”
“Couldn’t be better. I just saw my doctor last week. No signs of cancer anywhere. Of course, I’ll have to keep going back for regular checkups, but the doctor thinks I’m fine.”
“That’s great! Wonderful! And the shop? How’s business been?”
“Not bad. Not booming, but every month is a little better than the one before. Our Internet business is good and we’re getting more walk-in traffic, too. Somebody must be spreading the word. This week I had a group of three customers who were driving from Rhode Island to New York and took a ninety-minute detour just to check us out. Not everyone would go so far out of their way to visit a new shop, but if the word is getting out among the hard-core quilters, it’s a good sign.”
“That’s terrific,” Wendy commented, and handed me her check. “You’ve come a long way in two years. Remember when you found this place? I’d been going through the longest dry spell, hadn’t gotten a commission check in I don’t know how long, and there I was, getting ready to close up for the night and thinking that I’d just wasted another day of my life in the real estate business when the phone rang. It was you, saying you wanted to lease this old wreck of a building and would be over in five minutes to sign the papers. I was so shocked I didn’t know what to think! It had been so long since anyone had asked about this place that I had to dig through the archived files to find out what they wanted to rent it for. The paperwork was dated something like 1982! Back in the days when I still had all my own teeth!” Snort! Snort!
I put the check in the register and handed Wendy her receipt. “Remember how you tried to talk me out of taking out the lease? Some Realtor you are.”
“Well, I was worried about you. You’d just been through a divorce. I thought maybe this was your way of going on the rebound. That instead of taking up with another miserable man who would burn through your money and break your heart, you decided to do the same thing except with a quilt shop!” Snort!
“I didn’t see how you could make a go of it, not in this location, but I was dead wrong. Forgive me for doubting you.”
“That’s all right, Wendy. It isn’t like you were the only one who felt that way. Do you have your punch card with you? You get a fifteen-dollar gift certificate for every three hundred dollars you spend. You must be pretty close by now.”
“Hold on,” Wendy said, digging through her voluminous handbag. “It’s in here somewhere.”
The front door jingled. I looked up to see Abigail and Franklin enter with Liza following close behind. “Liza!” I ran out from behind the counter to give her a hug. “I didn’t know you were coming home this weekend! Does Garrett know?”
She looked wonderful. She’d gone back to her natural hair color, a deep chestnut brown with some reddish undertones. It was much more becoming than the dye she’d used when we first met. So much had changed since that day when she dragged Abigail into my first Quilt Pink event. The sullen, angry teenager, the girl with the darting eyes, slumped shoulders, and all-black wardrobe had been replaced by a smiling and confident young woman. Of course, she was still our Liza, artistic, a little edgy, blunt, and just as strong-willed as her aunt Abigail. The two of them could go ten rounds over the silliest things, but these days it was more just for her own entertainment than from any desire to really hurt Abigail. She still liked to wear clothing that got attention, mostly of her own design, like the black jean jacket she was wearing today, embellished with a line of bottle caps she’d grommeted to the shoulders like epaulettes on the uniform of a four-star general. It was an original, just like Liza.
“I didn’t have a chance to call him,” she said, hugging me back. “My Friday sculpture class was canceled, so on a whim I just hopped the next train headed north.”
“And she forgot her cell phone in the dorm,” Abigail interrupted. “Thank heaven there was a pay phone at the station and that I was home when she called to ask Franklin and me to pick her up. Otherwise, she’d have spent the weekend standing on the platform at the Waterbury train depot. Really, Liza, you must start planning ahead a little. What if I hadn’t been home? What if I’d decided to go out of town for the weekend?”
“Then I’d have called a cab to take me to New Bern, found the spare key you have ‘hidden’ under the flowerpot even though everyone in town knows exactly where you keep it, let myself in, and spent the weekend eating your food and swimming in your pool. Oh. And I’d have called Garrett to come over and spend the