A Thread So Thin (24 page)

I said nothing.

“Or,” she went on, taking another tack, “perhaps you could even change into it for the reception. Yes! That would be lovely. So much more appropriate, don’t you think?”

She looked to Byron for support. He smiled a diplomatic, peace-keeping sort of smile.

“No, I
don’t
think!” I shouted and stomped my foot. “You keep telling me that this is my special day, that you want everything to be perfect for me. Well, this
is
perfect for me! For
me!
” I grabbed the necklace away from Abigail and held it up high.

“Up till now, I have gone along with everything you wanted, everything. But this is
my
wedding, and I think I should get to have at least one thing exactly as
I
want it! More importantly, I should get to have one thing exactly the way Garrett wants it. This is supposed to be about me and Garrett—not you!”

Abigail’s expression was implacable and cold. The louder I shouted, the colder it became until, by the time I finished speaking, her face seemed to have been chiseled from marble, smooth and flat, incapable of feeling. When she spoke, her voice was low.

“Is that what you think? That I’m doing this for myself?”

I nodded.

She closed her eyes, as if the effort to keep them open was suddenly too much to bear. The tendons under the flesh of her neck twitched ever so slightly and she winced as if some secret pain had pierced the marble mask.

Abigail lifted her chin and opened her eyes, revealing a sheen of unshed tears, something I had seen there only once before, on that day when she told me about herself and my mother and the lover’s betrayal that had torn them apart, forever separating sisters who once had been inseparable.

“Is that what you really think?” she repeated and then turned her head away, looking up toward a far corner of the room, her gaze focused on some distant point in the beyond.

“I just want to make it perfect for you, to make it up to you. But if that’s what you think…that I’m doing this for myself…” She lifted her hand, blocking my face from view, weakly warding off the possibility of any backpedaling on my part.

“Then there isn’t much point, is there, Susan? It will never be enough, will it?” She closed her eyes for a moment. “It’s just as well, then. Do as you like. I don’t care anymore.”

Without looking at anyone or stopping to reclaim her coat from the rack in the corner, she walked out, ignoring Byron, who trailed behind her, pleading with her to come back. Olga sat on the edge of the platform, hunched and frowning. I stood dumbstruck in my bare feet, dressed in my too-big wedding gown with the half-pinned hem, my mother’s name a question in my mind.

I
shivered and Garrett put his arm around my shoulders.

As we walked down Fifth Avenue past the store window displays filled with faceless mannequins dressed in spring skirts and short-sleeved cotton cardigans, ignorant of the chilly April wind, I indulged in a little fantasy. What would it be like to live in that window world? Inhabiting a climate-controlled paradise, peopled by cheerily clad dressmaker’s dummies where, accessories excepting, everyone was pretty much alike, had nothing much to think about, and all the time in the world not to think about it?

“A terrarium for human beings,” I said.

“Didn’t somebody already invent that?” Garrett asked. “I think they did. I think it’s called Miami.”

“Ha.” I tipped my head, gently butting his shoulder.

“Do you want to get some dinner?”

I shook my head. “Not hungry.”

I pulled my cell phone out of my coat pocket, checking to see if Abigail had answered one of my calls. The ringer was turned up as high as it would go, but with all the noise from the traffic—the honking horns, and the rush-hour hum of engines—you never knew.

Garrett tightened his grip on my shoulder and stopped on the sidewalk, turning my body toward him. “Liza, she’ll call when she calls. Stop punishing yourself. Let her stew for a while. After all, you didn’t do anything wrong. All you wanted was the right to wear the jewelry you wanted at your wedding. What’s the big deal? It’s about time you stood up to Abigail. I’m proud that you finally did.”

I pressed my lips together. I hadn’t told him what happened next, that after Abigail stormed off I told Byron that I’d changed my mind. I would wear the diamonds after all.

“Abigail is my only family. I don’t want to…”

Garrett frowned. “To what?”

“I don’t want to lose her!” I covered my mouth with my hand, a dam against tears. I didn’t want to cry. Not again.

“Liza,” Garrett whispered. “Liza, baby.” The frown disappeared, the line of misunderstanding between his brows flattened out, smooth again, and it annoyed me. He didn’t understand, he couldn’t. He’d never been alone, not like I was. Not like Abigail had been. We knew what it was like, she and I. And we knew it could happen again.

Garrett took a step toward me, but I pulled back, wrenching my arm from his grasp.

“I know what Abigail is! And how she is. But she’s all I have, my only family. I don’t want her to be mad at me, to cut me out of her life, like she did my mom.”

Garrett’s mouth opened incredulously. “Is that what you think? That she’ll get mad and never speak to you again?”

I curled my hand into a fist, pressed it against my lips. My heart was pounding in my chest and suddenly, instead of the cold April wind, I felt a flush of heat and fear. There was a knife-sharp pain between my eyes. I couldn’t answer him. I couldn’t say anything. I was afraid to speak, to think, knowing some unnamable awful something could happen if I acknowledged, even in thought, the fears that washed over me.

But Abigail’s voice, the way it sounded when she said my mother’s name, breached my refusal to think, filled my brain, crowded out everything else, even Garrett’s face and the last light of the day, until I couldn’t see anything or hear anything but the sound of my mother’s name and far in the distance, Garrett’s voice, calling to me, in words that sounded like fear feels.

W
hen people fantasize about opening their own business, part of the dream is often a vision of being their own boss, which generally translates into some wholly misguided notion of longer vacations, shorter workweeks, and setting their own hours.

As just about any small business owner can tell you, it almost never works out that way. In point of fact, most people who exchange salaried jobs for the joys of being their own boss quickly discover that while business ownership does mean setting your own hours, those hours are basically twenty-four/seven. And vacations? Those are a thing of the past.

When two small business owners fall in love, carving out time for togetherness can be a real challenge. Early on, Charlie and I established a habit of meeting every morning for coffee at the Blue Bean. We don’t manage to keep those appointments every day—business does interfere—but we try. And whenever one of us has a window of opportunity, maybe on a day when business is a little slow, we’ll call to see if the other can sneak away for a quick bite, or a walk, or whatever.

Today “whatever” constituted a late lunch/early dinner, not at the Grill because whenever we eat there Charlie is forever getting up and down to answer the phone, or seat a customer, or settle some dispute in the kitchen. Instead, we snuck away to our favorite pizza joint, Di Luca’s, to split a salad and a large basil and buffalo mozzarella pie.

Understand that splitting a pizza means I eat two slices and Charlie, who at fifty-plus years of age still has the metabolism of a teenager, eats the other six, crusts and all.

“Good?” I asked as I watched Charlie attack slice number five with no less relish than he’d displayed for slice number one.

“I’d give my right arm to know how Tony makes this crust, but he won’t share the recipe with anybody, not even his staff. He told me that when he takes the family on vacation, they have to stay within a couple of hours of the restaurant. That way he can drive back twice a week to mix up the pizza dough.”

Charlie took another bite and then nodded toward the last slice of pizza on the tray. “Sure you don’t want another piece?”

“You go ahead. I’m stuffed.”

I rested my chin on my hand, watching Charlie eat and thinking what a good man he was. Charlie is very serious about food in general and Di Luca’s pizza in particular, but if I’d wanted that last slice of pizza, he’d have happily given it up, pleased to see me enjoy something that he enjoyed so much himself.

It’s a little thing, but in my book it’s the little things, like giving up the last slice of pizza, or offering to return the chairs and tables to the rental company, or showing up unannounced on a Saturday morning with a tire iron in hand to change out my snow tires, that count. My ex-husband, Rob, was all about grand gestures. He liked sending floral tributes that would have done the winning horse at the Kentucky Derby proud, presenting me with beribboned boxes from the jeweler every birthday or anniversary, that kind of thing. But when it came to things like helping with the dishes after we’d had a crowd over for dinner, or dropping off the dry cleaning, or taking a turn at the baby’s midnight feeding, Rob was nowhere to be seen.

Please understand, I’m not bitter about Rob. He was generous and we shared some happy years, but since I’ve met Charlie, I’ve come to realize that small, daily acts of love matter more than all the grand gestures in the world. At least to me.

Charlie stopped chewing. “What are you grinning at? Have I got marinara on my nose or something?”

“No.” I laughed. “I’m just thinking how lucky I am and how much I love you.”

Charlie’s eyes twinkled, the way they do when he’s thinking up a witty retort, but instead of launching into a bit of banter about his irresistible Irish charm, he just smiled and said, “Me too. And twice again as much.”

We were quiet for a moment, just enjoying each other’s company, before returning to an earlier topic of discussion.

“So,” Charlie said after swallowing his last bite of pizza, “it’s on for tomorrow then? The Intervention?”

I rolled my eyes. Every time we talked about this, Charlie insisted on calling our upcoming discussion with Abigail “The Intervention,” highlighting it with hand-signaled air quotes and an ominous tone of voice.

“Stop that.”

“Stop what?” he asked, feigning innocence.

“You know what. Stop calling it ‘The Intervention.’ And quit using that creepy voice. I’m nervous enough about this as it is.”

“Fine. How shall I refer to ‘The Intervention’?”

“I don’t know, but not like that. Why do we have to refer to it as anything? We’re going over to Abigail’s to have a quiet little talk with her, that’s all.”

“Uh-huh,” Charlie said skeptically. “A quiet little talk. A nice in-your-face confrontation would be more like it.”

I shot him a look.

“All right,” he said, raising his hands. “You don’t have to give me the eye. I’m just expressing my opinion. So when does this quiet talk take place?”

“Tomorrow afternoon. After Abigail and Liza wrap up their trip to New York. Franklin thought it would be best to speak to her right away. No point in putting it off.”

“Good idea. Grab the bull by the horns, I always say. And in that spirit…” Charlie shifted in his chair, squared his shoulders, and cleared his throat.

“Evelyn, marry me.”

“Oh, Charlie.” I looked away.

“I’ve asked you to marry me at least a dozen times. When are you finally going to say yes? You say you love me, so why not marry me?”

I took a long drink from my water glass, buying myself time to collect my thoughts, but Charlie was not in a waiting mood.

“Why not, Evelyn? Unless you’ve just been saying you love me and don’t mean it? Or maybe you mean a different kind of love?”

He drew his brows together, his frown clouding his previously sunny smile. There was a sliver of sneering in his voice. “Maybe your love is the platonic sort—the kind you feel for an old school chum or a faithful spaniel? Because if that’s the deal, Evelyn, tell me now and I’ll quit making a fool of myself. Is that all I am to you? Your faithful spaniel?”

I reached across the table and grabbed Charlie’s hands. “Of course not, Charlie. You know that. When I say I love you, I mean I
love
you. I do. I love everything about you. Well, everything besides your tendency to be pushy,” I teased, smiling.

Charlie was not going to be jollied out of his mood. He wanted answers.

“Is there someone else, then?”

“Someone else? How can you even ask that? I love you and only you. You know that. But, Charlie, it’s not as easy as you make it sound. Once upon a time, I only loved Rob Dixon. And he only loved me. And then one day, after twenty-four years of marriage, he decided to love someone else. That broke my heart.” I pulled my hands away from his and stared down at the leftover pizza crusts littering my plate.

Charlie crossed his arms over his chest and jutted out his chin. “So because Rob Dixon turned out to be a faithless, heartbreaking adulterer, that means you’re afraid to marry me? After all this time and all we’ve been to each other, are you saying that deep down you think I’m just like Rob?”

Of course I didn’t. Charlie is nothing like Rob. In fact, Charlie is nothing like anyone I’ve ever met.

I do think about marriage sometimes. On those days when I’m tired of eating yet another meal alone, standing over the sink because it seems pointless to set the table for one, I dream of how nice my table would look with two white plates and a little vase of flowers in the middle. I dream of small talk about the news and weather, of private jokes and easy silences. I dream of arguing fearlessly with my beloved because I know that, in the end, we always make up. I dream of a man coming up behind me as I rinse dishes, twining his arms around my waist, of lips brushing the curve of my neck, telling me how delicious everything was, and then smiling that private, knowing smile, reaching for my hand, and leading the way up the stairs. I dream of cool white sheets, and the press of a masculine hand on the swell of my hip, of an outline of suntanned fingers spread fanlike against white skin. I dream of lips and fingers and secret sighs, of two heavy breaths sharing one rhythm, of bodies arcing toward one another, urgent and impatient. I dream of longings fulfilled, of release, of the comfortable weight of a torso resting on mine, covering me like a blanket, of falling asleep and waking to find that it wasn’t a dream at all, that he is with me still, husky-voiced after endearments murmured in a room lit by moonlight.

And when I dream this, when I dream of caresses and kisses and quiet talk, of being there for someone I love and him being there for me, and our being together lasting until we draw our last breath, the only hands or lips or voice I imagine is Charlie’s.

There is no one besides him.

When I do imagine marrying again, I can’t imagine being married to anyone but Charlie. But my imaginings are just that: flights of imagination, dreams that feel far removed in some distant someday, a thing too lovely, too perfect to ever really happen.

I have been alive a long time now, five decades and more, long enough to know that when dreams come true, they never come true in quite the same way you dreamed them. I also know that dreams don’t last forever, not always. And I guess that’s what I want. I guess that’s what is holding me back. I want forever. I want always. I want a guarantee. And I’ve lived long enough to know there aren’t any.

Why is Charlie pushing? Why risk spoiling a perfectly perfect dream by dragging it away from the soft-focus, pastel world of the imagined into the cold light of reality? I do want to marry Charlie. Someday. But now isn’t a good time and I tell him so.

“Why not?” he growls. “Now seems as good a time as any to me. In fact, now seems like the perfect time.”

I shook my head. “There’s too much going on, too many things up in the air, especially this wedding. I can only deal with one at a time, and right now the wedding I’m dealing with is Garrett’s to Liza. That’s drama enough for the moment.”

“Who says there has to be any drama? We could keep it simple. You. Me. A minister. Done. If we need witnesses, we can ask Garrett and Virginia. Keep the folderol and frippery to a bare minimum.”

“Gee,” I said. “You make it sound so romantic. Speaking of Virginia, there’s another problem. What am I going to do about Mom? She’s still upset with me. I’ve tried and tried to patch things up with her, but she’s so stubborn.

“She loves New Bern, I know she does. Everyone at the shop is crazy about her, staff and customers alike. Did I tell you? One of the women from her Mothers-to-Be quilting class had a little girl and named her after Mom. All her students just love her, and not just the ones in the shop,” I said, thinking of Mom’s Stanton Center students. Ivy had finally talked Mom into teaching a Mommy and Me beginner’s quilting class at the shelter. All those new quilters, from ages seven to thirty-seven, had already fallen in love with Mom and had dubbed her Grammie Ginny. To them she was more than just a patient teacher; she was a wise friend and, for some, a substitute grandmother.

“Between the wedding and the situation with Mom, I just don’t think it’s a good time to take such a big step.”

Charlie gave his chin a jerk. He thought I was inventing excuses to put him off, but I did have some legitimate concerns about the possibilities of a successful union between Charlie and me, now or ever.

“And it’s not just Garrett and Mom I’m worried about,” I said. “Charlie, when is the last time we were able to get away like this? Just take the afternoon or evening off for a real date?”

His gaze shifted from mine. He knew what I was getting at. “A week ago.”

I shook my head. “Nope. Nine days. Not counting quickie coffee dates before we dash off to work, you and I haven’t been able to find a spare moment to spend with each other in the last nine days. Nine. And this is the slow season! Come summer, we’ll be lucky to see each other every nine days, and you know it. I love you, Charlie, and I know you love me. But we both know that making a marriage work takes more than love. It takes time. And that is something you and I have very little of.”

“Well…” He scowled, thinking. “We could try harder to carve out time for each other. Maybe we could bring in some more help—hire managers or assistants or something.”

“Charlie,” I said softly. “You’ve tried that before. It never works. Every manager you’ve hired you’ve ended up firing within three weeks, sometimes within three days. The Grill is the love of your life, your baby. You’re no more able to hand over the running of the restaurant to a stranger than you’d be able to hand over your child to someone else to raise.” He opened his mouth to argue with me, but I raised my hand. “You know I’m right. And as far as me hiring a manager, I can’t afford to hire any more help. Not right now. The shop is doing much better financially, but I’ve got a lot of debt to pay off. I’ve only just been able to give Margot a long-overdue raise.”

“Well, what about Margot?” he asked. “Why couldn’t you promote her to manager? She’s a smart businesswoman.”

“She is,” I agreed. “I’d be lost without her. When it comes to marketing, accounting, and general organization, I couldn’t ask for a better partner. But she just isn’t the quilter that I am. Maybe she will be someday, but not now. She wouldn’t know what fabrics to order or how much, which patterns will be in demand next season, and, most importantly, she doesn’t teach. Half my job is teaching classes. The rest is divided up between ordering and keeping an eye on the inventory, helping customers choose fabrics or answering their questions about techniques, and sewing up class samples. Actually, sewing samples is about half a job all by itself. When you add it all up, I’m doing the work of at least a body and a half. Who could I find who’s crazy enough to take a job like that at a salary I could afford to pay?”

Charlie balled up his fist and tapped it on the point of his chin, as if trying to jar loose some brilliant solution to our problem, but it didn’t seem to help. He offered no answer to my question.

“Face it, Charlie. You’re too much of a control freak to leave the care and feeding of your customers to a hired gun. And at the risk of sounding egotistical, I’m the only one around here who is quilter enough to actually run a quilt shop.”