A Single Thread (Cobbled Court) (21 page)

“Liza…I…I’m so sorry for…” I didn’t know what to say, how to begin to apologize. It had been so long since I’d made an apology to anyone—for anything. Never complain, never explain. It was the rule I lived my life by. Finally, at a loss, I simply said, “You must miss her terribly.”

Liza’s jaw tightened. She swallowed hard. I could see the muscles twitch under the pale parchment of her long neck. “When I went into the quilt shop that day, I only went for one reason. To see you squirm. I didn’t care about quilting, or even raising money for breast cancer, but then I met Evelyn and Margot, and they were so nice to me, and the quilting part was fun. For a little while, I forgot to think about hating you. Then, when Evelyn fell apart…” Her voice trailed off for a moment, remembering that night.

“For a second, when Evelyn started crying so hard, I was really scared. It was like watching it happen to Mom all over again. But then Margot jumped up and took charge. Next thing I knew, everyone was helping her—even you. And it felt good. You know? It wasn’t like it was with Mom, when I was the only one she could count on. Everyone was pitching in, and Evelyn was getting better, and it felt so good! Like I was saying, ‘Screw you, cancer! You’re not going to win this time!’ And I believed it was true. I really did.

“You know, Evelyn is a lot like Mom was,” she said in a voice hushed with remembering. “Not the way she looks, but the way she talks and acts and everything, encouraging. She likes my artwork. She just let me have that whole window to do whatever I wanted with. Never told me what to do, she just told me to go for it,” she said, shrugging her shoulders ever so slightly, quietly amazed by this vote of confidence in her talent. And she was talented. I could see it. How hard would it have been to tell her that?

“You did a good job,” I said.

Her tears came faster now, streaming down her cheeks, drawing a transparent line from her lashes to the ledge of her jaw and falling, one after another after another, onto her jacket, turning the black fabric even blacker, blooming into an inky, indelible blossom of grief.

“When we went to the quilt circle that night and she told us the cancer was back, that she was going to have more surgery…I just—”

She covered her eyes with her hands. “I can’t…I can’t do this again. I can’t be around her. It hurts too much. I can’t be around her. Or you. I can’t,” she repeated and lowered her hands to look at me. Her tears fell like rain as she finally gave up her hopeless attempts at self-control.

“Who are you?” she sobbed. “All of a sudden, you can’t do enough to help Evelyn, or everyone else for that matter. When Mom needed you, you were nowhere to be seen. You never tried to help her! You never pulled strings to get
my
mother the best doctors in New England—the doctors that might have known how to save her life! Did you ever stop to think about that? You didn’t lift a finger to help your own flesh and blood, but when it comes to the needs of strangers, you suddenly can’t do enough! How did it happen? This amazing transformation? A magician waves his wand, the old Abigail disappears, and poof! Everyone gasps as the new Abigail, looking exactly the same but dressed in an entirely new ensemble, steps out. The audience is dazzled and bursts into applause.” She was looking at me again, staring right through me as if I were a ghostly presence, composed of nothing more substantial than vapor and suspect intention.

“You don’t fool me, Auntie. Not me. Not anymore. You haven’t changed anything but your tactics. You’ve just found a new way to impress everyone.” Her voice was thick with loathing.

“You don’t care about Evelyn,” she said. “You just want everyone to like you, preferably to adore you, without ever letting them get close enough to actually touch you. And the sick part is, they do! Your fancy friends around town, the elegant people who go to the right parties and sit on the right boards, are crazy about you because you’ve got what they want most of all—style. And just having you around makes them feel more clever and important than they really are. But when I forced you to step out of the boundaries of your little club, the crowd of sycophantic disciples who worship you, and into a world where people aren’t impressed by cocktail banter, or the number of zeros in your checking account, you didn’t know what to do. How would you make them like you? You must have wracked your brain trying to puzzle out that one, didn’t you, Abigail?”

She was wrong. I did care about Evelyn. Maybe not at first, but I did now.

Liza kept on without giving me a chance to defend myself. “But you’re no dummy,” she said. “Once you figured out what mattered in the new club, things like kindness and generosity, you adapted right away. Overnight you became kind and generous, because that’s what they wanted. You even started going to church. You’re such a hypocrite! You think you’re so special, but you’re nothing! You don’t care about anyone but yourself, not even your dying sister!”

“That’s not true. It’s not!” I insisted. “Things aren’t as simple and clear-cut as you’ve made them out to be. When you’re older you’ll understand.”

A sneer. A voice like ice. “Then I pray to God I never live to be that old.”

Her cutting remarks did just that, cut me to the heart, wounded me. But I realized that she was hurting too, far more than I. If I could only get her to calm down, to see how unreasonable she was being. I took a deep breath and tried again. “Maybe you’re right about some of what you’ve said. I’ve made my share of mistakes, but—”

She shook her head and said hoarsely, “Be quiet. I don’t want to hear it. If I didn’t hate you so much, I might almost feel sorry for you. You can’t even see how pathetic you are. God! How did you get this way?”

“Liza—”

“I ask myself that question all the time now. When I look in the mirror I see my face, I see you, how you must have looked forty years ago. Everyone says we look just alike.”

It was true. I had noticed.

“You were like me once. You couldn’t have been born this way. Something must have happened to you, but I don’t know what. I look at myself and wonder if it’s happening to me too. I’m so afraid….”

She hadn’t said as much to me in the previous seven months as she had in those few minutes. I didn’t know if she truly believed everything she’d said, but the last part was the absolute truth. She was afraid. She had been for a long time.

Liza was only sixteen when she’d found out about Susan’s cancer and eighteen when she’d died, far too young to have to known such loss. She’d had to face it all alone, with no more support or care from me than the cold comfort of a check. The things that had happened before, the events that had opened the terrible gulf between my sister and me, had swallowed up Liza too, the only innocent person in the whole awful scenario. No wonder she was so hard and mistrustful of me—and everyone else. She’d learned the hard way that even the people who should love you sometimes don’t, and even those who do love you will sometimes leave you. The poor child.

And now, just when she’d begun to open up, to trust a little, she was facing it all again. How could I not have realized? How could I not have said anything?

“Liza. Oh, Liza, come here. You don’t understand.” I reached out for her, opened my arms.

“Don’t!” She jumped back as if burned by my touch. “I told you. I can’t do this again. I hate you! I hate you!” she repeated, once for me and once for herself.

“I can’t stay here anymore!” She turned away from me, opened the door, and ran down the steps and across the back yard, leaving a cratered trail of footsteps through the deep drifts of snow.

I followed her to the door. “Liza, wait! Where are you going? Come back and we’ll talk about it. Come back! I need to explain some things to you!”

I was yelling as loud as I could, my words ringing through the thin, cold air, my mouth exhaling a frozen fog, but she didn’t stop. The snow was at least two feet deep, and I was in my stocking feet. I ran upstairs, pulled on the first pair of boots I could find and a warm jacket and gloves, then ran back downstairs and out the back door. But she was gone.

I followed her trail of footsteps around the side of the house, down the driveway, and onto the sidewalk. I’d come as quickly as I could, but she was nowhere to be seen, and the sidewalks had been shoveled, leaving only a thin dusting of new snow. The print of Liza’s boot mixed in with the prints of dozens of others who had walked down the street that day. There was no way to distinguish hers from anyone else’s or to tell which direction she’d taken. I ran to the corner, hoping to catch a glimpse of her, twice slipping and falling on the icy walkway and then scrambling back to my feet to continue the hunt, but it was no use. She’d disappeared.

I ran back to the house, laboriously making my way through the drifted snow. My heart was pounding in my chest as I climbed the back steps, realizing that I’d left the door wide open. I stood at the doorway, panting from exertion, and laid my hand over my pounding heart. Where could she have gone?

A voice in my head told me not to worry, that she was just being dramatic, manipulating the situation, trying once again to blackmail me with emotion. But I knew it wasn’t true. Not this time. I was worried, afraid of what she might do in such a state. What should I do?

Barely pausing to kick the snow off my boots, I walked into the kitchen, trailing snowy, melting footprints across Hilda’s clean floor, picked up the telephone, and dialed.

“Margot? It’s Abigail. No, we’re not coming now. Can you come over here? Right away? Please. It’s about Liza. I need your help.”

M
argot’s yellow Volkswagen, parked in Abigail’s driveway, appeared trifling and incongruous next to the patrician grandeur of the enormous colonial mansion with its three stories of white clapboard siding, four chimneys, and symmetrical rows of windows blinking in the winter sunlight like unseeing eyes. Someone had told me that Abigail’s house had once been an academy for young women from rich families. It was certainly big enough. Hard to believe that Abigail and Liza lived here all alone.

I parked my car behind Margot’s and went to the front door. Margot answered.

“Hi,” she said and gave me a welcoming hug. “Thanks for coming. Abigail is in the kitchen. I made her a cup of tea. She’s terribly upset.”

I followed Margot through a series of cavernous rooms filled with expensive antique furniture, rugs, and paintings. But I was so surprised by Margot’s assertion that I barely took note of the elegant surroundings.

Abigail was upset? That was hard for me to imagine. She always seemed so in control of every situation. I’d never even seen her flustered, let alone upset. But Margot was right. The woman sitting at the table sipping tea with the red-rimmed eyes, disheveled hair, and wearing no trace of makeup or lipstick was Abigail. And she was more than upset; she was absolutely distraught.

“Margot?” Abigail called. “Was that Liza? Is she back?” She looked up hopefully when Margot entered the room, but her face fell when she realized I was the only person following behind. “Oh. It’s you, Evelyn. What are you doing here?”

“I called her,” Margot said.

Abigail shook her head. “You shouldn’t have bothered Evelyn. She’s got enough problems without having to deal with the ones I’ve created.”

I pulled up a chair and sat down. “Don’t be silly. I’m glad Margot called. Now, what happened? Liza’s missing?”

Abigail dabbed her eyes with an already damp tissue. “We had a terrible argument. I knew she was upset about something, but I just kept trying to ignore it. This had been brewing for a long time, years really—even before she came to live with me.”

Abigail’s face crumpled, and she started weeping softly. I was amazed. In all the time I’d known her, I’d never seen her give way to any emotion stronger than carefully controlled disapproval. Now she was sitting here letting the tears flow freely. I barely recognized her. Whatever had happened between Liza and Abigail, it must have been something big. Otherwise, she would never have allowed herself to be so vulnerable.

Margot, normally so capable, was standing near the table, seeming as much at a loss as I was. I looked a question at her, but she just shrugged.

“Abigail,” I said, “you know that Liza’s an emotional girl. Whatever happened between the two of you is probably just a passing cloud. I’m sure she’ll come back after she blows off a little steam. Don’t worry.”

“No,” Abigail insisted, sniffing. “This wasn’t just some little spat. She was furious. We’ve had our moments, but I’ve never seen her like this. She walked out that door, and I know she’s not planning on coming back.”

Frankly, I didn’t know what to do. Perhaps what Abigail was saying was true and perhaps it wasn’t, but even if she had walked out the door with the intention of never returning, I didn’t see what any of us could do about it. Liza was a grown woman. If she didn’t want to live with her aunt anymore, then that was her decision.

“I can see how hard this is for you,” I said, “but Liza is of age. I’m sure she’ll come back once she cools off and thinks things over, but if she doesn’t, then that really is her choice. It’s difficult to let a child leave the nest, but sometimes that’s what we have to do.”

“You don’t understand,” Abigail protested. “Liza can’t leave my home. Not without the judge’s permission. If she does, she could end up in jail.”

Margot’s eye grew wide. “Jail? You mean Liza’s on parole? I didn’t know that.” Neither did I.

Abigail bit her lower lip. I could see she was struggling inside herself, wondering how much she should tell us and regretting what she’d already blurted out. Finally, she said slowly, “No. She’s not quite on parole. It’s just that…well…a few months after her mother died, she made a terrible mistake. And I said I’d be responsible for her. That is, the judge said I had to be responsible for her. I didn’t want to at first. I’d barely laid eyes on her before I saw her in Judge Gulden’s chambers that day. If I could have figured out a way to get out of it, I would have, but now…everything’s changed. Do you see?”

Margot and I looked at each other. We didn’t see. Margot pulled up a chair and sat down. “Maybe you’d better start from the beginning,” she said gently.

Abigail swallowed hard before speaking. I could see how hard this was for her. Abigail was used to relying on her own resources and, until this moment, had been more than equal to the challenge. There was so much to admire about Abigail. She was so competent—intelligent, well-read, well-dressed, socially capable, and quick to find the most direct solution to any number of problems. And in the last months I’d seen her grow in ways I would never have imagined. She was more giving, more sensitive to the needs of others, and, it seemed to me, happier because of it. But for all this, she was still lacking one important skill: the ability to trust. It obviously did not come easily to her. What had happened to make her so wary of others? Why, whenever I made even the most innocent inquiries about her past, did she so quickly and deftly change the subject? Even after all these months of working together and quilting side by side every week, she was obviously hesitant to open up to Margot or me.

Normally she was able to keep her feelings carefully concealed, but today her emotions were battling inside her. Could she trust us? Should she? She still wasn’t sure.

I leaned closer and took her hands in mine. “It’s all right,” I said softly. “You can tell us. After all, we’re friends. Aren’t we?”

Her eyes shifted and locked with mine. For one long moment, she searched my face, and then, after taking a breath, she began. “Yes,” she said tentatively and then with more conviction. “Yes. I believe we are.”

Winter days in northern Connecticut are short, and by the time Abigail finished talking, the shadows of evening were beginning to fall.

When she’d started speaking, I had determined to show as little emotional reaction as possible so Abigail would feel safe in opening up, but it hadn’t been easy. Though she refrained from explaining what caused the rift between them, she told us about her estranged relationship with her deceased sister and, by extension, with Liza. No wonder Liza was so hostile toward her aunt. Then she went on to share the truth about Susan’s death from breast cancer. It had been hard to hear, frightening. As soon as she’d said the words, Abigail looked at me anxiously, concerned about my reaction to this revelation. With effort, I urged her to continue. After all, I told myself, this wasn’t about me. Not that day. It was about Liza and Abigail.

In a strange way, this realization was something of a relief. For so many weeks and months, everyone had been trying to help me, worrying about
my
needs,
my
health,
my
fears, that it felt…well, not exactly good, but right somehow to be worrying about someone else. “Go on,” I said in response to Abigail’s worried glance. “It’s all right. Then what happened?”

She told us about how Liza had come to be remanded into her custody, about the tension that had been building between them ever since the day I’d told them about my upcoming mastectomy, and finally about the fight they’d had. Awful. Actually, awful didn’t even begin to describe it. It broke my heart to hear the hurtful things Liza had said to her aunt.

Liza wasn’t always pleasant to be around—in fact, she could be a real pain—but she wasn’t an intentionally cruel person. I’d always known that the death of her mother had been a terrible blow, but I’d had no understanding of the depth of her suffering. How hard it must have been for her, knowing that I was facing the same disease that had so recently claimed her own mother. A lot of people having been through what she had would have immediately backed away, but Liza hadn’t. She’d tried to help me in every way she knew how, but it couldn’t have been easy. Especially when Abigail had used her influence to help me get access to the kind of medical care Liza felt might have saved her mother. Abigail shared that Susan hadn’t found out about the cancer until the disease was in its latter stages and had progressed beyond the reach of medical intervention. But you couldn’t blame Liza for clutching at straws, looking for a miracle that could have saved her mother, and someone to blame when that miracle hadn’t come. Abigail made for an easy target.

Poor girl. She was so much kinder than I’d ever imagined and so much stronger. Still, even a strong person can only shoulder the secret burden of tragedy for so long. When she’d learned that my first treatment hadn’t been successful, that cancer was threatening to take someone else close to her, it had unearthed the grief and anguish she was trying so hard to keep buried. God alone knew the depths of pain Liza was going through.

Abigail wasn’t faring much better. As I said, there was a lot I admired about Abigail, but I wasn’t blind to her faults. Or at least, I hadn’t thought I was. Listening to her story, the broken relationship with her sister, the tearful admission that she’d never come to her aid, not even after she’d learned about Susan’s breast cancer, I was in shock. Of course, she had taken care of Susan’s medical bills, had kept tabs on Susan and Liza via the reports she received from her attorney, Franklin Spaulding, and taken financial and, eventually, physical responsibility for Liza, but still!

For someone like Abigail, writing a check was the easiest thing in the world, the equivalent of the average person tossing a quarter to a homeless person without ever bothering to look them in the eye, done more to assuage their own guilt than as an act of any real compassion. How could she have been so completely clueless when it came to the emotional needs of her own niece? How could she, knowing Liza’s background, have been so cold?

Part of me wanted to reach across the table and slap her. But when I saw her crying openly, bowed down by shame and remorse as she did what was, for her, the most difficult thing in the world, admit her faults to others, my anger subsided. It was true. The Abigail Burgess Wynne who had been dragged into my shop so many months ago wasn’t the same woman who was sitting next to me now. Somewhere along the way, she’d changed. Or at least she’d begun to. I’d always thought that somewhere, trapped underneath that hard, proud shell, there was a finer Abigail trying to get out. It seemed she had. As painful as it was, maybe this crisis with Liza and being forced to hear how much grief she had caused was the only hammer strong enough to break that shell and finally set Abigail, and Liza, free. Only time would tell.

“I ran as fast as I could,” Abigail sniffed plaintively, “but she was gone. That’s when I decided to call Margot, but I didn’t mean to bother you, Evelyn. You’ve got so much on your plate already.”

Margot broke in and said what I was already thinking. “Well, of course, I had to call Evelyn. She cares about you just as much as I do. And we all care about Liza.”

“I know,” Abigail nodded her head and whispered. “I do. I haven’t been very good to her up until now, but I do care. If she’ll only come home, I know I can figure out a way to make her believe it.”

I was pleased to hear a little of Abigail’s old determination return to her voice. If Abigail decided to do something, then she’d do it. Of course, that didn’t solve our immediate problem, as Abigail knew full well.

“But what if she doesn’t come home? I’m so worried about her. If Judge Gulden calls to check on her, or if she does something crazy again and the police pick her up, she’ll end up in jail. I was able to pull some strings to help her last time, but I don’t think the judge would be lenient if it happened again. It’s getting dark outside, and it’s so cold. She ran off so fast, she didn’t even take her pocketbook with her. I’m sure she doesn’t have any money.” Abigail buried her head in her hands.

“This is all my fault,” she said for the tenth time that afternoon. “I’ve behaved despicably. If only I’d taken the time to try to talk to her, to explain things. When she ran out of here, she was completely overwrought. I’m afraid for her. What if she does something crazy?” Abigail asked, and I knew she wasn’t talking about something as relatively innocuous as shoplifting a sweater in an unconscious cry for help. Abigail was worried that Liza might give in to her despair in a much more dangerous and permanent way. “What if she tries to—”

“No,” I insisted, pushing back my chair and getting to my feet. “Liza would never do something like that. Never.”

I grabbed my pocketbook and car keys off the counter where I’d left them. “Come on. Let’s go.”

“Where?” Abigail asked. Her eyes grew wide as she watched me put on my jacket. “Evelyn, we can’t go to the police and tell them Liza is gone! I told you, she’ll go to jail if they find out.”

“I know that,” I said. “We’re going to have to find her ourselves. She was on foot, and she didn’t have any money. She can’t have gone far.”

I zipped up my jacket and started giving instructions. “Margot, you and Abigail go together. Start on the east side of town. I’ll take the west. We’ll cover more ground if we split up.”