A Thread of Truth (11 page)

For years, every emotion I'd been entitled to—love, hate, fear, and joy—had been dehydrated, every bit of moisture and meaning sucked out of them until they lay faded and flat, tasteless as sawdust on my tongue. This undeserved kindness from Abigail, Evelyn, Franklin, and everyone else was a sweet and surprising infusion, pumping new life into all my old, petrified feelings, expanding them beyond my ability to contain them until they spilled from my eyes unbidden. I tried to hold them back, but it wasn't easy.

“Sorry,” I said to Abigail's back, sniffing again and wiping my eyes on my sleeve.

She paused at the door a moment, then turned around on her heel as sharply as a soldier performing an about-face, and approached me, patting my shoulder awkwardly and briefly, the way someone who was bitten by a dog as a child pats a schnauzer on the nose.

“It's all right,” she said quietly. “You're welcome.”

Abigail left. I pulled a tissue from the box on Evelyn's desk and blew my nose. Everyone was being so nice to me. I didn't deserve such kindness. I knew that. I'd known that since I was a little girl.

But, Evelyn and Abigail didn't know that, and I couldn't let them find out. If they did, they wouldn't want to help me, and I needed their help. They were our only defense against Hodge and, in spite of Margot's logical assurances that he hadn't seen the show and wouldn't come looking for me, I knew better. One way or another, he'd find us.

Abgail, Franklin, Evelyn, and the others were all that stood between my kids and Hodge. I didn't like it, but if I had to conceal things from them to keep that shield in place, then I would.

If that was the price of keeping my kids safe, I'd pay it.

E
ven though I had to resist the urge to ask the caller if they wanted “fries with that” every time I answered the phone, Garrett was right: Buying a hands-free telephone headset had been a good idea. Sure, it made me look like I was working the drive-through window at a fast-food joint, but it was worth it. Not only had the kink I'd gotten from constantly cradling the receiver with my neck gone, I could now simultaneously talk to one customer on the phone while ringing up the order of another standing in front of me. Multitasking is a beautiful thing. And if you own your own business, it's absolutely required.

“Hang on,” Charlie said. “I've got to put the phone down for a minute. I dropped one.”

“One what?” I asked. He didn't answer. He was already gone. When he came back on the line I repeated the question.

“One napkin. I'm sitting here folding napkins for the dinner crowd while I'm talking to you. Two birds with one stone, you know.”

I chuckled. “Well, that makes us birds of a feather. While you're folding napkins for the restaurant and talking to me, I'm folding fat quarters for the shop and talking to you.”

“Wonderful,” Charlie said flatly. “What a coincidence. We're practically twins. It's all just so eerie and intimate. In fact, it's probably the most intimate moment we've had in three weeks.”

He was trying to make a joke.

No, not quite. What he was doing was griping about the fact that he and I hadn't spent five minutes alone since the promotional video had aired three weeks before and then
pretending
he was teasing when he was really complaining. And if I called him on it, if I said he wasn't being fair and that none of this was my fault, he'd flap up his feathers like a wet rooster and give me a hard time for not being able to take a joke. Why do men do that? If they're irritated with you, then why not just say so? I wouldn't have blamed him for it.

The truth was, I
hadn't
had a spare moment to talk to Charlie for days. Now, during a brief and wholly unexpected afternoon lull in business and with the rest of the staff upstairs trying to help Ivy and the girls finish boxing and labeling the week's outgoing orders, I was happy to have a few minutes to chat without anyone listening in.

Yes, I was going to see him for dinner in just a couple of hours, right before the Planning and Zoning hearing that Abigail insisted I attend so I could lend my support to her proposal, but Abigail and Franklin would be there, too. With Abigail so wound up about the hearing and what she had recently termed the “vast, right-wing conspiracy” to stop her from going forth with her plans, this conspiracy taking the form of a petition circulated by her neighbors, it was unlikely that Charlie and I would have a chance to talk about anything personal. And, knowing Charlie as I did, he'd probably spend half the meal jumping up from the table to sort out some confusion with seating or brouhaha in the kitchen anyway. I understood. He had a business to run. So did I. That meant the time we had to spend together was limited, even more so in recent weeks.

Given that, the last thing I wanted to do with these private few minutes was argue. I changed the subject.

“Charlie, what is it about a television camera that makes normally intelligent people start acting like complete morons?”

“You mean like those eejits who stand behind the reporter who's live on the scene of some terrible house fire,” he asked, using his favorite Irish insult, “or freeway crash, or other frightful human tragedy and then jump up and down and waving their arms while they talk to people on their cell phones and say, ‘Look at me! I'm on the TV'?”

I started stacking the fat quarters into collections of six complementary colors and tying them with ribbons. “Well, them too, but I was thinking more about the eejit politicians. They're driving me crazy! I mean, these people are our elected officials! Don't they have better things to do than keep bugging me about getting to sit in the audience of a cable quilting show? Some of them would drop the baby they were kissing to get within five miles of a TV camera.”

“Well, every vote counts. It's going to be a tight race and you never know what might turn the tide. The quilters' vote might just be the difference between the state going red or blue. But publicity and goodwill aside, I'm a man who cares about the issues. What I want to know is, where do you suppose Porter Moss stands on the question of machine versus hand appliqué?”

I straightened the ribbon I'd been tying. This time Charlie was joking, sincerely, and it made me smile. That was one of the things I loved about him. He always made me laugh. That was also the reason I was never able to stay angry with him for long.

“Be serious for a minute, Charlie. This whole thing has been a nightmare from day one. Ever since Mary Dell's producer, Sandy, called up Porter Moss and told him that, no, they were not filming the show in the high school gymnasium and that, no, Dale Barrows was not going to direct it, that they already paid someone perfectly good money to do that job, things have gotten even worse. And did I tell you?” My voice dropped into a conspiratorial hush. “Just yesterday some slimy little assistant from the permit office called and hinted that if I couldn't find a seat in the audience for his mother-in-law, I might have trouble getting the permits we need to park the sound trucks. He actually threatened me! Can you believe that?”

On the other end of the line, Charlie howled.

“What's so funny?”

“You are. You've worked yourself up into quite a lather over this thing, haven't you?”

“Oh, fine. Go ahead and laugh, but I think it's disgraceful. A violation of public trust! I mean, these people are supposed to be intelligent and wise and humble, dedicated to the greater good, but this crowd we've got now…” I reached up and scratched my ear where the headphone was rubbing.

“Oh,” Charlie said sagely. I could still feel a smile radiating in his voice. “Intelligent and wise and humble, is it? So tell me, what eighth-grade civics book did you lift that from?”

“It wasn't the eighth grade,” I pouted. “It was the fifth. And it wasn't a civics book, it was a biography. Of George Washington.”

“Ah,” Charlie murmured. “Washington. Your hero. For me it was Michael Connelly, but I'm afraid they don't make them like that anymore, my love. You're taking this much too much to heart, Evelyn. It's pretty funny, when you stop to think about it.”

I shrugged and began piling the assembled fabric medleys into a display basket. “I suppose so, in a way. If I wasn't quite so overwhelmed right now, I'd probably have more of a sense of humor about it.”

“Well, what else is bothering you?”

“Nothing, really.”

“Evelyn Dixon, you're a terrible liar. Come on. Tell old Uncle Charlie what's on your mind. It'll do you good. As my mother always used to say, better out than in.”

I made a face. “Yech. Isn't that proverb supposed to be about belching and breaking wind?”

“The principle's the same. Go on. Tell me what's on your mind. Are you still nervous about going on television? Or maybe you're just feeling overworked? Every time Mary Dell says the words ‘Cobbled Court Quilts' on the air, you get a tidal wave of customers coming through your door. You must be dead on your feet.”

“I am, but you won't ever find me complaining about having too many customers. The memory of what it was like when we didn't have any is still too fresh in my mind,” I said. “We're all tired. We're getting so much traffic on the website that it keeps crashing. Garrett was up half the night getting it to work again. And I'm on the phone begging my vendors to ship more fabric and get it here faster, but for the first time in history, we're actually making money, so I'm definitely not upset about that.”

“Then is it this business with Ivy?”

I thought for a moment before responding. “No. That actually seems to be going well. At least I think it is. It's hard to know for sure. But, you saw how much fun she had when we all came to dinner at the Grill on Saturday. I don't think I'd ever seen her smile so much. She looks so pretty when she smiles, don't you think?”

“She does,” he affirmed. “You should have seen the time I had back in the kitchen. Jason and David got into an argument about who was going to wait on her.”

“Well, I can't blame them. She's a doll. And she looked great in her new dress.” I sighed as I cut a few more lengths of ribbon to tie the fabric with. “It's so hard for me to understand how such a kind, capable, and lovely girl put up with an abusive marriage for so long. I just don't get it.”

“Does she ever talk about it?”

“A little. I still get the feeling she's holding back. After what she's been through, it must be hard to trust other people. But I think she's feeling more comfortable with us every day. Last Friday she surprised everyone by showing up at the quilt-circle meeting and saying that, if the invitation was still open, she'd like to join after all.”

“That's good, isn't it? Ivy is doing well. You're making money. So what's the problem?”

I didn't quite know myself. I just had this feeling that something wasn't right.

Years before, when we'd first moved from Wisconsin to Texas, we adopted this cantankerous old tomcat, Arnold Palmer. We called him A.P. for short.

Rob, my ex-husband, had found him sleeping on the fourth green of the local golf course. Rob yelled at him to move, even tossed a club in the air, trying to get this cat off the green so he could finish the hole, but the cat just looked at him and went on napping. Rob finally gave up and decided to skip the hole. When he walked past the green, the cat got up and followed Rob through the whole rest of the course—five more holes. The cat didn't have a collar and no one at the pro shop recognized him, so Rob brought him home and named him Arnold Palmer, after the famous golfer.

Anyway, A.P. was the laziest cat on earth. He must have weighed twenty pounds. He slept all day and all night, never getting up except to visit the cat box or food dish. But, every now and then, A.P. would get up and start yowling and pacing back and forth across the kitchen with the hair on his back standing up on end. The first time it happened, I tried petting him, feeding him, but nothing could get him to settle down. Finally, a couple of hours later, black clouds started gathering and within a few minutes they let loose a huge, pelting rainstorm complete with booming thunder and lightning flashes so bright it was like we'd turned on every light in the house at the same time.

I'd never seen a storm like that and it caught me totally by surprise. The washing I'd put out to dry on the line was soaked, but A.P. had known it was coming.

After that, whenever I'd see him start to pace, I'd run outside to bring in the washing before the storm hit. Sometimes it took only an hour before it showed up, sometimes more, but one way or another and even if he didn't understand exactly what it was, Arnold Palmer always knew when something bad was brewing. He was never wrong.

That's how I felt now. Like there was a bad wind blowing. I didn't know exactly what direction it would come from or precisely what it would bring. I only knew it was on the way.

“It's hard to explain, Charlie. I just…” I faltered for a moment, and considered telling him about A.P. but changed my mind. Charlie loved to tease me, and if I told him my cat story, that is exactly what he would do, tease me mercilessly. Normally, I didn't mind but this was serious. Charlie might not believe in feline or female intuition, but I did and still do. Some things you just
know
. But I didn't expect Charlie to understand.

“It's complicated, Charlie. Not the kind of thing I can explain over the telephone.”

“Well, wait just a minute, Evelyn. Are you…”

The doorbell jingled and the door opened.

“Hey, Charlie, I have to run. I've got customers. See you at dinner. Bye-bye.”

I hung up before Charlie had a chance to say good-bye back, but I knew he'd understand. He'd had to do the same to me on other occasions. We were businesspeople and during business hours, customers came first. We both knew that.