The Wishing Thread (38 page)

She watched Vic turn off his saw, lift his safety glasses onto his head. Her belly ached and she worried she might be sick. How would she ever get through this?

“Hey! Look who it is!” He brushed off his jeans and walked toward her. Her heart sank. His eyes lit up, and his mouth, his mouth that had become such a revelation to her over the last week, pulled into a smile. If anyone else was about to hurt him like she was about to hurt him, she would have called out
Run!

“What are you doing here?” he asked. But he did not wait for her to answer. He stepped forward and kissed her right out in the open where any of his neighbors might see. She held his face when he tried to pull away. She kissed him long and hard. She wound her arms around his neck and clutched. She pressed her body as close to his as was possible, felt his vital response. Vic did not pull away until his palm came against her cheek; he must have felt tears there. He drew back and peered into her eyes. “Hey. What’s this? What’s going on?”

She leaned her forehead against his collarbone for a moment,
then painfully pulled away. “Can we go inside?” she heard herself say.

“What is it? Aubrey, is everything okay?”

“Let’s—let’s just go inside where it’s more private.”

He nodded solemnly, then they walked the few steps that led into his kitchen. He did not offer her a drink or a chair. “What’s wrong?”

She looked up at the ceiling. Where to start? Should she tell him that the Stitchery was the reason she was giving him up, because she saw an opportunity to help Tarrytown in a way that was bigger and more important than the two of them? Or would the truth—knowing that she’d chosen
him
to be her sacrifice—only make it worse?

“Here.” Vic pulled out a chair at the little kitchen table. “Sit down.”

She did. She folded her hands in her lap. If she told him that she was giving him up for a greater good, it might make his heart ache less to know she was not rejecting him. But she also knew she was dangerously close to wavering. If she told him the truth, he would try to reason with her, convince her of another path. And in her weakness and her love she might decide to agree with him. No—she could not tell him everything. When she spoke at last, her voice cracked. “I don’t—I don’t know how to say this.”

“When I can’t figure out how to say something, I just try to spit it out.”

She looked down at her lap. “Oh, God, Vic. I never meant for this to happen. I don’t want to hurt you. I just … I don’t see another way.”

Even without looking up at him, she could feel the change in his demeanor, the tension in his body that readied him for pain, for a fight. “What are you talking about?”

She began to cry; she couldn’t help it. She could see his
future and hers splitting off: Hers was full of the loneliness of life as a guardian. His was full of love—a wife, children, friends. “I just can’t do this anymore,” she said, her head bowed. “It’s wrong. It’s not going to work out between us. And we’re just kidding ourselves to think it will.”

He did not go to her, but his voice was soft. “Aubrey … It’s already working out between us. Everything’s been fine.”

“No.” She grabbed a paper napkin from the holder on the table, blew her nose. “It seems fine. But the Stitchery—I swear I hate it sometimes. It always finds a way to ruin things, to rope me back in.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” Vic said.

“I’m not allowed to have
anything
but the Stitchery in my life. It’s the same with all the guardians. The Stitchery just … finds a way to always take away anything that might distract us from doing our jobs.”

“You’re breaking up with me … because of the Stitchery?”

She looked up at him. His mouth was slack with shock, his eyebrows high. “I guess so.”

He gave a little laugh, then turned away and ran his hands through his hair. “This is ridiculous.”

“Don’t say that,” she said. “It was probably inevitable.”

“You really believe that?”

“I’m sorry.”

“No. No, I don’t accept this. The Stitchery is not a
real
reason to break up with someone. Something else is going on. Tell me what.”

She shook her head. She didn’t trust herself to say any more. She didn’t want to give Vic up: She wanted to marry him, and bring him bread and broth when he got sick, and rock his babies to sleep. Aubrey would have cursed the Stitchery with everything in her, would have burned it to the ground, if it wasn’t going to be the salvation of Tappan Square.

She had to focus on what was important. Not her, not him:
Tarrytown
.

She got to her feet. Vic was there in a moment, standing in front of her and blocking her way to the back door. “Last night you were in my bed. Right upstairs. And I didn’t get the sense that you were unhappy in the least.”

She couldn’t reply.

“Tell me,” he said. He took her shoulders. “What happened between last night and today? What changed?”

Her eyes brimmed over.

“You still want me. I can see it. Aubrey—tell me what’s going on.”

She dropped her head on his shoulder and cried. She couldn’t lie to him. She owed him that much, at least. She wished she had never known what it was like to rest her cheek against his chest and listen to the rumble of his laughter, or to watch while he sang into the end of a spatula while making dinner. She wished she’d never known the wondrous feeling that filled her up when he gripped her hips, and pressed her hard, and, finally, collapsed his weight against her. Because if she hadn’t known those things, or if she’d fallen in love with him a year from now instead of right at this moment when Tappan Square needed her most, her future would have looked a lot less desolate and barren.

He cradled her chin and looked into her eyes. “Don’t do this.”

“Vic—”

“You’re not alone here. We’re a team. If there’s a problem, we’ll work it out together. Aubrey …”

“Please stop. Please
don’t
,” she said.

“But—I love you,” he said.

She felt the words like a deep thud in her heart, the firing of a cannon or the explosion of an underwater mine. The
noise and pressure of it was so forceful, she swore it boomed out over Tarrytown, over the rolling hills and down to the mirror-flat river, which must have rippled a little with the sound. He loved her. Vic loved her. She wanted to crumple to the floor.

She pulled away from him. She knew her face was red and blotchy. Tears fell.

She wanted to say more, but she did not trust herself. Vic, she realized, had done something for her that no other person—not her mother, not her sisters, not Mariah, and not any other man—had been able to do. Because of him, she’d started to think of herself as more than just a guardian of the Stitchery. She was a woman, complete with a women’s talents and interests, a women’s needs, a woman’s quirks—Stitchery aside. She was just beginning to see glimmers of the person she might have been if she hadn’t been chained to the Stitchery from birth. She wished there was some way she could thank Vic for that—that gift—even while he stood looking at her, his eyes wet because she’d just broken his heart.

She leaned her body against his and put her arms around him. She felt the heartbreaking rightness of being in his arms. She pressed her nose against him and breathed in smells of sawdust and skin.

The temptation to scrap the idea of using magic returned, stronger now than before. Maybe … maybe there was a different way. Maybe she could give up something else, anything else. Maybe she could find a way to save Tappan Square without using magic at all. “Oh, Vic. I …”

Over his shoulder and through the haze of his screen door, she could see his equipment, his red toolbox of screwdrivers and hammers and wrenches, lumber leaning on a chain-link fence. He loved this house so much. He’d worked so hard on it already. He’d staked his future on Tappan Square. She
squeezed her eyes closed as tight as she could, not wanting to see any more. If she gave up her future with him, she would—in many ways—save his. He would be able to go on with his life, with the life he’d dreamed of building before he’d met her, here in Tappan Square.

She pulled away from him and looked into his eyes, knowing it was the last time. “I’m so sorry. I hope—I just hope that someday … I hope you’ll be happy.”

His face was like stone; all the softness, the kindness he’d given her, was gone. She rose on tiptoe and kissed him. His lips felt lifeless under hers and she wished she hadn’t done it. She felt the sting of new tears forming, and she turned away so he could not see them.
It sucks sometimes
, Mariah had told her,
to be a guardian
.

Vic did not stop her when she headed again for the door.

Back at the Stitchery, Aubrey gathered her sisters in the kitchen. She had to put Vic behind her for the moment: There was no choice. She had to not think of him. She mentally boxed up her feelings for him—all her love and regret—and she caught her sisters up to speed as if her heart hadn’t been crushed to pieces. She told them the parts she could bear telling—about Jeanette and Mason Boss and the Halperns. She did not tell them about her sacrifice. She knew with perfect certainty what she needed to do, what she had already done, and she did not want anyone else to complicate her doing it or make her second-guess.

“So what are we supposed to do now?” Meggie asked.

They were in the kitchen, none of them sitting, and Aubrey thought of how many strategies had been thought up and how many family battles had been planned right here next to the cutting board, and the oven, and the fridge that Mariah had
called an icebox until the day she died. Aubrey was never more grateful to have her sisters on her team than she was now. She would need them before this was over—and also after it was done.

“Do we have any proof of what the Halperns did? Can we get the vote delayed because of fraud or something?” Meggie asked.

“I doubt the Halperns left proof. And if there is any, I don’t know how we can get it by Monday morning. Plus, we
elected
Mason Boss. Willingly. Happily. We have to take responsibility for that,” Aubrey said.

“So that’s it?” Bitty said. “We lose Tappan Square?”

Aubrey could hear what her sister was thinking: Finally they were back. After so many years. They were all where they were supposed to be … And soon the Stitchery would be gone.

“No. We don’t lose anything,” Aubrey said.

“What do we do?” Meggie asked.

“We do what the Van Rippers have always done,” Aubrey said.

On Devil’s Night, all of the lights were on in the Stitchery, hard golden windows floating against the soft purple gloam. Jack-o’-lanterns sneered from their perches on porch stairs. Bats launched from crumbling chimneys to wing around the purpling dusk. Aubrey stood at the phone in the hallway, Mariah’s lace-edged address book open in her hands. The front door of the Stitchery was held open by an old brass doorstop in the shape of an angry hare, and Aubrey could see out through the screen door. She could distinguish the police cars from the civilians’ by the way the cops drove slowly, so excruciatingly slowly, down the streets, cruising for kids with projectiles like toilet paper or eggs. Normally Aubrey liked to see law enforcement at work on the night before Halloween. But for the first time in her life, she wished they would go away.

She picked up the phone’s fat white receiver. Her palms were sweaty. Her stomach was like twisted dough.
One call
, she told herself. She only needed to make one call to get the phone tree started. And then, once she made that one call, she would make another—just in case some of the branches in the phone tree broke down. Her palms were sweating as she dialed.

“Hello? Is this Mrs. Lippman?”

“Yes. And if this is a solicitor, I’m not interested.”

“No-no. Mrs. Lippman. This is Aubrey Van Ripper.” She waited a moment, and when there was no reply, she pressed on. “I’m Mariah Van Ripper’s niece. From the Stitchery. We live in Tap—”

“I know who you are,” Mrs. Lippman said.

“Yes, well.” She cleared her throat. “You know how people have always said things about my family and knitting and magic spells?”

Mrs. Lippman was quiet.

“Depending on what people told you, it’s probably true.”

“Oh, I know it’s true,” Mrs. Lippman said viciously. “I know it’s true for a fact. Your aunt tried to knit me a spell once to get my daughter off this toad of a fellow she was seeing.”

“Oh. Well … what happened?”

“She married him!” Mrs. Lippman said.

“I’m sorry to hear that. But here’s the thing, Mrs. Lippman. We have an emergency on our hands.” She proceeded to share what she’d learned about Mason Boss. And then, she offered her plan. Her risky, preposterous, shot-in-the-dark plan. “Call everyone you can think of. Everyone who can knit or crochet or who cares to learn. Tell them to come here, to the Stitchery, right away.”

She heard Mrs. Lippman sigh. “I don’t know about all that.”

“Please,” Aubrey said. “There’s no other way. It’s worth a try.”

The woman grumbled something Aubrey couldn’t quite make out.

“And one more thing,” she said. “If you could, it might be helpful to bring something with you. Something meaningful. Something that you’re willing to part with—to help Tappan Square.”