The Wishing Thread (30 page)

“Jeanette,” Aubrey said when her friend had reached her. “I’m so sorry. I’m so so sorry.”

For a moment, Jeanette’s eyes were dim and still. They regarded Aubrey with banked disappointment. Then, at once, a great smile came over her face like the sun coming through clouds. “Kidding!” she said. “I’m totally kidding. The spell worked
perfectly
. Mason and I are going out for drinks as soon as everyone leaves.”

“Jeez, you scared me!” Aubrey laughed and put her palm on her heart.
Thank God
. She reached into her oversized bag and retrieved her friend’s purse. “Here. You can take this back now.”

“Take it back? But won’t that ruin the spell?”

Aubrey waited.

“Aubrey  …?”

Aubrey couldn’t help the small smile that curved her lips.

“Oh my God,” Jeanette said. “You never knit a spell?”

Aubrey grinned.

“I did that all on my own?”

“All’s fair in love and war.”

Jeanette took her bag, then threw her head back laughing. “Aubrey Van Ripper. Everything everybody says about you is true.”

“Uh-huh,” Aubrey said.

“And anyway, I told you I didn’t need a spell.”

Aubrey laughed as Jeanette sauntered across the room,
back toward her quarry. Aubrey raised her eyes to find Vic watching her.

“What?” she said.

“I can’t seem to get a handle on you,” he said.

She smiled and was glad for once in her life to feel a little mysterious. “Let’s get out of here,” she said.

After the Tappan Watch meeting disbanded, Aubrey was thrilled when Vic asked if she wanted to get a cup of coffee at his favorite place in Sleepy Hollow. He parallel-parked between a Toyota and a Mercedes, the shine of headlights glaring in the truck’s mirrors, and then they crossed the street to the café. Vic ordered two pumpkin lattes spiced with nutmeg and clove, and Aubrey breathed in the fragrant steam as he paid. She’d never had any luck with second dates—she’d never been on a third—but tonight, her heart in her chest was like a singing bird, and she breathed in the sweet smell of spiced espresso and believed that, for once in her life, she would go on a second date and nothing
—nothing
—would go wrong.

With one mitten curled around her cup, Aubrey followed Vic out into the bustling evening and across the street. They walked up the hill to the high school, where the football team was playing against a rival Aubrey had never heard of. They sipped their hot lattes and watched the field through a chain-link fence. Aubrey had never been to a football game; she didn’t know how to follow the action. But she loved the noise of the crowd, the roil of snare drums and brassy-voiced cheerleaders, the screech of the referee’s whistle and the salty smell
of the hot dogs. Vic did such an admirable job of explaining what was happening, and seemed so knowledgeable about the Fighting Horsemen and their coaches, that she knew this was not his first time keeping an eye on the game.

“Do you do this a lot?” she asked.

He smiled, embarrassed. “In the fall, yes.”

“Did you ever play football?”

“No. And I don’t watch any of the professional teams, or even college. But I like
this—
” He gestured beyond the chain links. “All the people. Families. For me, this is sports at its best. Homegrown and commercial-free. I just—I thought you might have fun.”

She stepped closer and he put his arm around her; even through the weave of her denim jacket, she could feel the warmth of his body and an answering warmth in hers. She might not ever learn to understand football, but she knew she could love this: the cold fall night, the exultations of the Tarrytowners in the stands, and Vic—giving her a safe little glimpse into a kind of life that she’d always wanted for herself but had always been afraid of wanting. She nestled in closer, dazzled by how natural it felt to touch him, as if they’d been standing just like this, with their arms around each other in casual closeness, all their lives.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go sit on the bleachers.”

She stiffened. “Now?”

“Why not?”

“I can see pretty good from here.”

He laughed. “You cannot.”

“Fine. You’re right.” She settled her hat closer on her head. She was being ridiculous; there was no reason to be afraid of the crowd tonight. It had been a long time since witches were burned at the stake or stoned. The worst Aubrey might suffer
would be a few dirty looks—and she could stand that, could stand anything, tonight. “Let’s go sit down.”

They crossed the field and shuffled into an open spot on the bleachers. The metal was cold on her rear end.

“Isn’t this great?” Vic said.

“It’s great,” Aubrey said.

The game went on. Aubrey’s coffee began to cool, and she finished it quickly. Vic answered football questions with patience and not even the faintest trace of condescension, and it wasn’t long before Aubrey was jumping to her feet and cheering. Little by little, her worries began to wane. She noticed that some of the students from the high school—these must have been the thespians—had gathered, and when halftime came, they did a rowdy little skit inviting the audiences to the annual staged reading of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” Aubrey wondered if the boy playing Brom Bones was Ruth Ten Eckye’s grandson. But she had never met him and couldn’t see any resemblance from this far away.

When the game was over—the Horsemen won and the crowd was electric, strangers giving high fives—Aubrey’s heart felt full and bright as the moon that hung above the tree line. No one had bothered them; no one had pointed or made the sign of the cross or the evil eye. Anxiety had siphoned away, and its absence felt weightless and fresh like the air after a summer storm. In the thick of the crowd, they shuffled away from the bleachers, people around them waddling side-to-side like penguins in a large clump. Vic took her hand, the connection secret and illicit, a low-voltage message passing between them. She felt the call of the autumn, the urge to run until she panted, to lie on her back between the grass and the stars, to spin in a circle until she fell down. But since the Van Rippers were already infamous enough, she only tipped
her face so Vic could see her, and she lifted the lid, just a little, on her smile.

“What?” he asked, but he smiled back as if he knew the secret—and that made her smile even more.

“I don’t know,” she said. She forced her lips closed.

She was still glowing, still holding Vic’s eye and his hand, moving forward in the depth of the crowd, her overwrought brain suddenly filled with different, more carnal, more primal ways of worshipping a wild fall night with a gorgeous man—when she bumped into Ruth Ten Eckye. The crowd had stopped, complete and unexpected, and Aubrey walked right smack into the gray fur of Ruth’s expensive raccoon coat.

“Ruth!” Aubrey said cheerfully. “I’m sorry. You okay?”

Ruth turned slightly to see who had addressed her.

“Was that your grandson I saw in the halftime show?”

Ruth drew her shoulders back; her eyebrows lifted in silent-movie drama. Understanding hit Aubrey like a stone between the eyes: Ruth Ten Eckye did not want to be seen talking to a guardian of the Stitchery. Of course.

Okay
, Aubrey thought.
That’s okay
. And yet, the question she’d asked hung in the air between them and there was no way to unask it, just as there was no way for Ruth to baldly ignore Aubrey without forfeiting her manners. On another night, Aubrey might have felt embarrassed—she’d forgotten herself, her place, to think she could address Ruth in public. But tonight, Aubrey decided she didn’t care. She was having a nice night, she was going to continue having a nice night, and no one—certainly not an elitist old lady who had no compassion for people outside her income bracket or apparently for raccoons—would get in her way.

She stepped a little bit closer to Vic. She expected Ruth to flee without deigning to recognize that Aubrey had spoken;
instead, Ruth turned a little, saw Vic, and then—to Aubrey’s bewilderment—her hard face lapsed into an involuntary smile.

“Oh, look who’s here!” Ruth said. “Well, hello there, Victor.”

“Mrs. Ten Eckye,” Vic said. His mouth turned up at the corners. The crowd thinned enough to let them stop walking. “You’re looking well this evening. Did you enjoy the game?”

“I don’t care for football,” Ruth said. “But my grandson was in the halftime show. He’s got an important part in the reading this year.”

“Great,” Vic said. And he smiled again.

Aubrey stood still. She noticed, quite suddenly, that Vic had let go of her hand, that he had let go of it some time ago, though she could not say when it had happened. She lifted a mitten—a purple-and-white Latvian-style mitten decorated with owls sitting in a tree—and pretended to scrutinize the design.

“How’s that new screen door treating you?” Vic asked.

“Like royalty,” Ruth said. “I understand you did some work for my friend Gladys.”

“Her window seat,” Vic said. “Thanks for the referral.”

“Oh, it was my pleasure,” Ruth said.

They talked for minutes that might have been hours, and Aubrey listened in silence. She began to feel more and more outside—of herself, of Vic, of everything and everyone around them. The crowd that had been like a plush spring creek dwindled into a trickle, and Aubrey realized that without the heat of all those bodies the night had grown brittle with cold. She shivered beneath the layers of her sweater and coat. She hadn’t expected Ruth to address her, and she tried to keep the surprise off her face when the old woman turned.

“Aubrey, dear,” Ruth said. Aubrey knew she’d taken a risk:
Ruth could be seen talking to Vic but not to Aubrey—not if she wanted to avoid becoming an object of speculation among her friends. “Vic’s been doing such wonderful work on my house. I do hope he’ll be able to continue.”

“Of course I’ll be happy to,” Vic said, laughing.

He did not hear what Aubrey heard: the veiled threat. The unspoken warning. Vic had been working for months to build up his business one client at a time. A venomous word from Ruth, carefully dropped before one or two of Tarrytown’s nice families, would ruin Vic’s chances of establishing himself with well-paying clientele.

Aubrey didn’t reply, but her silence didn’t seem to matter one way or another. Vic and Ruth said their pleasant good-byes, and once Ruth was gone, Vic started in the direction of the truck. He chatted pleasantly enough but did not take her hand again.

By the time Vic had parked in front of the Stitchery, with the engine idling and the hazard lights on, Aubrey had fallen into a deep silence, mired in the pit of her thoughts and searching for a way out of them. She looked out the window at the Stitchery and it struck her that while other people were decorating their houses with crooked shutters and cobwebs, the Stitchery already had them.

“Are you okay?” Vic asked.

“Oh—yes,” she said.

“What’s wrong?”

She sighed. The worrywart in her wondered: Had Vic let go of her hand because he realized that being with her in public could perhaps be a threat to his business—a consequence that Aubrey should have foreseen? Or had the withdrawal been nothing more than the need to scratch an itch or make some other use of the previously occupied fingers?

She leaned her head back on the seat. She didn’t want friction between them, not so soon. She’d relished every moment with him: she’d never been courted before, never wooed. She felt as if he’d been leading her down a long, narrow hallway, pointing out beautiful things, tempting, rare, and desirable things, showing her what was his, and she had a sense that if she continued along with him, deeper and down, the narrow passageway would eventually open up into a wondrous and cavernous palace, whole and wholly dazzling, all for the two of them. But there was a chance, she saw now, a very real chance, that they might never finish that journey. And in fact, it might be a better choice for both of them to turn back now.