Hanging by a Thread (18 page)

I thought of mentioning the necklace, but I was afraid Rachel would shut me down if I pushed her too far. I tried to think of a way to guide the conversation. “Were you … jealous of her?”

Rachel raised her eyebrows. “Jealous? Why, because of Jack?” She laughed derisively. “Please. What’s with this weird fixation of yours, anyway?”

“Well, the other day you said you thought you were next. That you were afraid you were going to be killed. So, you know, I care about whether you live long enough to start junior year with me.”

Rachel blushed. “Forget about that, okay? I was drunk. I was just … messing around.”

“I don’t know, you seemed pretty scared to me for real. Look, Rachel, it’s
me
you’re talking to. If you’re in trouble, if something’s going on, you can tell me, okay?”

“I asked you to drop it.” Twin spots of color appeared on her cheeks as she bit her lip, staring at the floor. Whatever was going on, it had her shaken up.

“But it also turns out you knew Amanda a lot better than you said you did. Things aren’t adding up, Rachel.”

She looked up, her eyes boring into mine, sparking with
anger … and fear. “Okay, and you’ve been keeping things from
me
, too. What the hell is that about?”

“What do you mean?”

“With Jack? Lara said she saw you in his truck, over at the flea market. What were you doing there? With him?”

I sighed. “I like him, okay? I’m sorry I haven’t kept you posted on every little thing I do, but it has nothing to do with any of this.” Which wasn’t a lie. I hoped.

“But I keep telling you he’s trouble. He’s dangerous, Clare. You know those convenience store robberies last winter?”

“No, because I wasn’t here. I was living in San Francisco, remember?”

“I’m just saying, they never caught the guy who was doing it. It could have been Jack—it was right after he did all that other stuff. He had a gun, Clare.”

I laughed, because she was getting into ridiculous territory. “
Someone
had a gun, maybe. Not Jack.”

“He’s nothing but trash.”

Her words stung. I thought about how Winston was divided into haves and have-nots—maybe I could slum it with the rich kids, but there was no confusion as to which side Jack was on. “Well, you’re a snob,” I said. “And a liar, and a thief, so I wouldn’t be talking.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Nothing,” I said, avoiding her eyes. If I told her I knew about the necklace, I’d have to tell her about the visions, too. “Forget I said it.”

“You know what, maybe you should go,” Rachel said, getting to her feet. “Maybe you ought to spend a little time figuring out who your real friends are.”

I walked by myself to the front door of her house, my footsteps echoing on expensive marble floors. I’d never felt quite so alone.

T
HERE WAS ONE PERSON IN
W
INSTON
who I could count on to be honest with me, someone who hadn’t lied to me yet. Someone I’d been taking for granted for far too long.

After I left Rachel’s house, I pedaled my bike back across town and up Grover Hill, where the widow’s walk on top of my grandmother’s house rose high above all the other roofs in the neighborhood, a wooden structure with the ocean laid out below like a brilliant blue carpet dotted with fluttering white sails.

When we lived in the city, Mom would get irritable for days before one of Nana’s rare visits. She’d polish the silver and get the good china out, then disappear into the kitchen so she wouldn’t have to make conversation when Nana arrived.

I couldn’t say that things were ever exactly
good
between Mom and Nana as far back as I could remember, but they used to be tolerable. When I was little, Mom used to drop me off at Nana’s house a couple of days a week, and we
would spend the day playing together. It never seemed strange to me at the time, but now I realized that not every grandmother would be willing to get down on the floor and play with Play-Doh and blocks and dolls and Barbie castles, Playmobil pirate ships and dress-up clothes and toy kitchens. But Nana acted just like a kid herself, pretending to make grilled cheese sandwiches and serving them to stuffed animals, or tying gauzy scarves around herself so that she too could be a superhero and run around the backyard with me “rescuing” her spotted mutt, Peaches.

But best of all was “make-stuff time”—Nana’s term for it—when we went into the creative room, which was another one of her peculiar names for things, sat on the floor, and did crafts. My favorite was sewing. As soon as I got old enough to hold a needle and use sharp sewing scissors, I was making projects—an uneven pillow stuffed with shredded foam, a potholder made from layers of old quilts stitched together, a doll dress created from the sleeve of a blouse with holes cut out for arms. Nana always complimented my creations and put them into service. The leftover bits were pinned to the curtains in the creative room, until there were dozens of lumpy, odd little fabric treasures all the way to the floor.

I remembered those curtains when I hung my wares from the sides of the NewToYou stand. It was like being back with Nana on a lazy afternoon, without a care in the world.

Now, as I got off my bike and pushed, rather than struggle to ride up the last steep section of road, I thought about
the last time Mom and I went to Nana’s house, to say good-bye before moving to the city all those years ago. A big box waited by the door. Inside was Nana’s sewing machine, the wonderful old Bernina, though I didn’t know it at the time. But Mom must have known, because she tried to leave it.

“Well, I’ll let you know when I get the new phone number,” Mom had said, after an awkward good-bye.

Nana had nodded matter-of-factly, finally accepting that she’d failed to talk Mom out of moving. Whatever the nature of their huge fight—and Mom always refused to tell me, saying it was “private”—Nana must have known she would make things worse by continuing to beg Mom to change her mind.

She could not, however, resist pulling Mom into one of her bone-crushing hugs. I remember my mom didn’t hug back, which I thought was weird. Her hands, one of them tightly holding her car keys, hung at her sides as she squeezed her eyes shut, grimacing until Nana finally let go.

“This is for Clare,” Nana had said, picking up the box, which was obviously heavy. “I’ll just take it out to the car for you.”

“Mom, what on earth is that? I don’t have room—”

“Now, now, you can put it in a closet until she’s older,” Nana interrupted. “It’s just a few things she likes. It’ll keep her busy so you can get settled in.”

That had gotten Mom’s attention. I saw her hesitate, her eyes narrowed, considering. “Well … What’s in there? I definitely don’t need any more junk.”

Nana got most of her toys from garage sales. It drove
Mom crazy because Nana had plenty of money and could afford to buy all new things, but she felt it was irresponsible to buy more possessions that would just end up cluttering landfills when other people were getting rid of perfectly good things. Mom had always been leery of other people’s germs and I remember she would make me scrub my hands the minute I got home from a playdate at Nana’s.

But Nana had just laughed. “No, no junk, I promise.”

She’d won that round. Later, when Mom was busy unpacking and setting up our apartment, I opened the box myself and discovered that Nana had given me her sewing machine. By the time Mom found me, I was pretending to sew the towels from the bathroom—Nana had wisely removed the needle and presser foot and anything else I could hurt myself on—and I was so engrossed in it that she let me keep it in my room, where it would end up staying for the next six years. Other things changed—my walls were painted a few times and my ruffled Pocahontas bedspread was replaced with a coverlet of my own design—but the sewing machine was always there.

I reached the top of the hill and started down Nana’s street, wishing I’d told her how much that sewing machine meant to me. I supposed she probably knew, since I made every birthday and Christmas gift on it. I’d sent the last one on her birthday in March, a matching eyeglasses case and journal cover made from strips of colorful silk neckties, and she’d written me a gushing thank-you note in her looping handwriting on bright orange stationery.

Still, my steps slowed as I got close to the house. I didn’t
know where to start, how to apologize. I was struggling with my thoughts, taking my time propping up my bike against the trunk of a giant magnolia tree, when I heard her call my name.

“Clare! Precious! Is that you?”

She sounded so delighted that I felt my misgivings evaporate. I followed the sound of her voice, spotting her leaning out a second-story window.

“Nana!”

“Front door’s open, honey—I’ll race you!”

The front door was not only open, but ajar, so anyone could have walked in and robbed her blind, as my mother would have said. A canvas bag full of fresh-cut flowers was lying on a rusting round table on the porch, along with a pair of pruners and a single flowered garden glove. Nana had no doubt forgotten them there, and I picked up the flowers so they wouldn’t wilt in the heat.

Meeting me at the bottom of the stairs, Nana hugged me just as hard as always, and I breathed in her signature spicy perfume mixed with something salty and traces of sweat. Her T-shirt—“Save the Loggerheads!” printed on the front over a picture of a turtle—had rings of sweat under the arms, and when she finally pulled away from me she brushed dirt off the front. “Sorry, I must look like I crawled out of a barn. I’ve been in the garden. Peaches dug up a dead squirrel and lord, that was a mess.… Are you hungry?”

She was talking as fast as ever, grinning from ear to
ear, and it was hard to resist smiling back. For a moment I just looked at her, not worrying about what other people might think of her in her crazy shirt and flowing skirt that appeared to be some sort of sheer organza layered over a shiny fabric.

“Oh!” she said. “Lester brought the most delicious muffin. I don’t think I ate it all yet.… Come on into the kitchen.”

I followed her through the house, noting with relief that nothing looked very different. The furniture had been moved around, but that was nothing new—Nana was always deciding that the energies would be better if a sofa got the afternoon light or a game table was moved under a window to display photos. It was the same old mix of beautiful antiques from her second husband, and quirky pieces she picked up at tag sales. I could hear my mother tsking that there was way too much furniture in the rooms, and I had to agree—not just furniture, but knickknacks, paintings, photographs, books, and objects I couldn’t identify—but that was nothing new either.

The kitchen was tidy, a flowered cloth draped on the old wooden table. Nana got a plate from the white marble counter and squinted at it. “I’m afraid I took a bite, but it still looks pretty good. Wanna try?”

I was going to say no but the muffin looked amazing, crusted with sparkling sugar and studded with bright red raspberries, and I couldn’t resist. “Mmmm,” I said with my mouth full. “Lester can sure bake, whoever he is.”

“Oh, he didn’t make these. He bought them at Plaisir,” Nana said, naming the fanciest bakery in town. “He’s trying to impress me and I’m taking advantage of it.”

Mom didn’t like to talk about Nana’s gentleman callers, as she referred to them. I used to worry that they were after her money, and maybe Nana did too, because they never lasted long, but she did seem to enjoy their attention.

“So …,” she said, staring at me intensely. “What’s up?”

“Um … I kind of have a problem.”

“Mmm-hmm.” She waited, her eyes bright and crafty, giving me an encouraging smile. I heard Peaches somewhere far off in the gardens, probably barking at a bird or a rabbit.

“With, you know, the gift. I saw something.”

Now the mirth disappeared from Nana’s eyes and she was suddenly very serious. “All right. Tell me.”

“You know how you told me I could stop, if I wanted? That if I never did anything about the visions, never tried to make anything right, they’d go away?”

“Yes …”

“I wish I had.” I felt the start of tears, hot and stinging. If only I’d let it die away, I wouldn’t have gotten sucked into things that were over my head, that had nothing to do with me. I could be working on my tan and spending my time on my business and my social life, rather than trying to solve a mystery that kept getting more and more complicated.

“Oh, honey. I wish I knew what to tell you.”

“Do you ever wish you hadn’t let the gift go?”

“No,” Nana answered sharply. And then a minute later,
in a much softer tone, “And sometimes yes. You know, when you first told me you had the gift, I was so proud. Can you believe that? Something that bound you to me, my most precious grandchild …”

I automatically thought,
Your only grandchild
, as I had when I was little. She always called me her favorite, and I’d remind her I was her only one. Of course I liked it that way, liked knowing I got all of her attention.

“I never understood how it skipped my sisters, skipped your mother … I thought it had died out. I knew Alma’s death caused her descendants to inherit this strange gift somehow, but after two generations, I figured that would be it. Then when you used to grab your grandpa Quinn’s old coat and tell me you wanted to ride in the blue car … Well, that was when I suspected you had it.”

I didn’t remember a coat, didn’t remember a blue car. And I had never known either of my grandfathers, not Quinn—the love of Nana’s life, who died in Vietnam—or Doyle, the rich one who’d conveniently died after they’d been married thirteen years, leaving her the Raley mansion and the fortune that went with it.

Nana must have noticed my puzzlement. “Quinn had a Bel Air convertible he just loved … used to drive it along Highway One. Quinn drank too much and drove too fast and one Friday night he hit a man who was walking home along the side of the road, a laborer. There wasn’t anything for it, and Quinn was devastated. I always thought that would be what killed him, not the war—I sold that car to the first person who made an offer after he died, and
was glad to be rid of it. But the jacket—lambskin, soft as butter—I couldn’t bear to throw it out. Used to hang it by the back door, wear it if I needed to go out in the fog.… Anyway.” Nana shook her head as though shaking away cobwebs of memory. “You and the blue car. That was when I knew.”