Seven Threadly Sins (3 page)

I was beginning to feel like one of Little Bo Peep’s sheep. But I wouldn’t look much like a sheep in the revealing gown that Antonio had designed, and if the next evening was cool, I’d be strutting goose bumps and wishing I had a woolly sheep’s coat.

Antonio added, “You’re probably wondering how to return your Glitzy Garb outfit to us after the reception. You can change in the TADAM mansion if you like.” His
leer warned me not to choose that option. “Or you can bring the outfit back here Sunday morning and leave it in your cubicle with your other outfits, along with a note about anything that needs repairs. Loretta will open the conservatory at nine on Sunday morning.”

Finally, Ashley, Haylee, her three mothers, and I escaped into the warm September evening. Above us, the sky was deep indigo velvet, sprinkled with diamonds.

I walked beside Ashley. Usually, she was exuberant, but tonight, the seventeen-year-old lagged as if something were bothering her.

H
ad Antonio’s behavior upset Ashley? I asked her, “Do you still want to attend TADAM?”

“It would be perfect.”

So that wasn’t what was bothering her. Still, I hadn’t appreciated the way Antonio and Paula had treated Macey, and the picture-taking teacher in the muscle shirt had freaked me out. “Going away to school could be good, too,” I suggested. “Though I’d hate to lose the best assistant I’ve ever had.”

Ashley stopped walking. “I don’t think I’ll be able to go away.” She gulped.

Hoping the women ahead of us wouldn’t hear, I asked quietly, “What’s wrong?”

She toed at grass sprouting between the concrete slabs on the sidewalk. “I haven’t told you this because, well, just because. My dad . . .” Her voice dwindled. She took a deep breath and started over. “My dad lost his job. My mom’s gone back to work and my dad is throwing himself into finding a new job. That means I need to spend more time looking after my little sisters and brothers. I don’t know how long it will take him to find a job. If I don’t get a good
scholarship to TADAM, I may not be able to go to school anywhere.”

I offered, “You always have a job at In Stitches. Or a reference if something better comes along.”

She started walking again and looked away from me as if studying the pretty Victorian homes on her street. “Thanks, Willow. It would be hard to think of a better place to work than In Stitches.”

The same was true for me. I had tried another career, investment management, before moving to Threadville and opening In Stitches. Ashley had more design talent than most of the Threadville tourists who came every day for workshops and classes. She was smart, helpful, and eager to learn. I imagined someday attending her college graduation, along with her parents and all of her little sisters and brothers.

Would TADAM be good enough for Ashley? In addition to Antonio’s and Paula’s strangely hostile treatment of Macey, the school had seemed to come out of nowhere and had opened in a rush in mid-August. I supposed we should give it a chance to prove itself.

At Ashley’s front walk, I impulsively gave her a raise. She thanked me. Head down, she moseyed toward her front porch.

I caught up with the others.

“What’s wrong with Ashley?” Naomi asked.

I told them the girl’s news. We all agreed that we would do our best in the next night’s fashion show. We would help TADAM raise scholarship funds in the hope that maybe Ashley would benefit.

“And there’s that Macey, also,” Edna said. “Why did Antonio and Paula pick on her?”

“Did they pick on other students?” Haylee asked.

Haylee’s birth mother, Opal, answered, “Only Macey, that I noticed.”

“And she seemed like such a sweet child,” Naomi said.

“She was.” I told them that she’d been helpful to me, and I also described the slap and a man’s amused response.

“Who was the man?” Haylee demanded. “That creepy guy taking pictures of us?”

I admitted that I wasn’t sure. “I’ve never heard that photographer speak, and this guy was lowering his voice artificially, probably trying to sound sexy.”

“And probably not succeeding.” Still walking, Edna held up her left hand, flashing her sparkly engagement and wedding rings under the streetlight. “Men who think they’re sexy often aren’t.”

Haylee and I grinned at each other. Edna might think of her new husband as the sexiest guy in Threadville, but Haylee and I each had our own ideas about that.

Unfortunately, however, Haylee’s heartthrob was still mourning his late wife. I hoped he would eventually notice Haylee.

And my nominee for the sexiest guy in Threadville? Clay Fraser, owner of Fraser Construction. We both worked long hours, and except for our usual Tuesday evening volunteer firefighting practices, I hardly ever saw him. With any luck, he’d been too busy to hear about the fashion show the next night and wouldn’t attend it.

Haylee and her three mothers and I said good-bye on Lake Street. They headed toward their apartments, which were above their shops in a Victorian building. My machine embroidery boutique, In Stitches, was across the street in an Arts and Crafts bungalow with deep eaves and a large front porch. I could have reached the apartment underneath my shop by going through In Stitches, but this time, I unlatched the gate and walked down the hill through one of my two side yards to the patio, where I opened the sliding glass door and let my pets outside.

Sally-Forth and Tally-Ho, both part border collie, were littermates. Sally always made it her duty to herd the two tuxedo cats, Mustache and Bow-Tie, during their short visits to the great outdoors. She did a surprisingly good job of it, and soon the young cats were safely inside again, and Sally and her brother were racing around my hillside backyard.

In Blueberry Cottage, lights were on and windows were open. Clay and his company had renovated the quaint wooden structure after moving it up the hill from its original position, too close to the river and occasional floods. Edna’s mother’s spinning wheel whirred. Edna’s mother had helped plan the renovations to Blueberry Cottage. Since she’d insisted there should be space for her loom and spinning wheel beside the hearth, I hadn’t been surprised when she’d asked to be my tenant.

She was a good one, though I had the feeling she was aware of everything I did, day and night, and I had finally installed drapes in my apartment’s wall of floor-to-ceiling windows facing Blueberry Cottage.

Edna’s mother living in my backyard was almost like having a mother nearby. Or a grandmother. However, as Dora Battersby liked to point out, Opal and her best friends, Edna and Naomi, had only been seventeen when Haylee was born, and Dora was in her early seventies, rather young to be the grandmother of a thirty-four-year-old. She did like to supervise both Haylee and me, however.

Sally and Tally ended their playtime and came in. The dogs and I went to bed. Mustache and Bow-Tie spent a good part of the night doing their best to remind us that cats were nocturnal creatures.

•   •   •

In my shop the next day, Ashley and I gave two machine embroidery workshops, one in the morning and another in the afternoon. One of my favorite hobbies, the one I’d built into an online business and this retail shop, was using sophisticated software to create original embroidery designs. Each year, the machines and software improved, and no fabric that sat still for longer than a few seconds was safe from the avid embroiderers of In Stitches. Many of our students lived in and around Threadville, while others came almost daily on buses from northwestern Pennsylvania and northeastern Ohio.

In machine embroidery, we used a stiff backing known
as stabilizer to keep the fabrics in our hoops from moving around or bunching up. Ashley and I demonstrated a new super-sticky stabilizer. We used sticky stabilizer so we wouldn’t have to insert thick fabrics like fleece, corduroy, and terry in our hoops. Instead, we clamped the stabilizer in the hoop, removed the non-sticky backing, and stuck the cloth onto the gummiest part of the stabilizer. With this new stabilizer and its fiercer-than-ever grip, there was no question of accidentally pulling the fabric loose. We placed water-soluble stabilizer on top of the fabrics to prevent our stitches from disappearing in the wales, nap, and soft cotton loops.

While we worked and experimented, some of our students teased us to model the outfits we would be wearing in the fashion show that night.

“You’ll have to come to the show,” I said.

“We are coming,” they insisted, “but we can’t wait. Describe them.”

Smiling, I shook my head. Ashley made a zipping motion across her mouth.

After we closed the shop and Ashley went home, I fed the animals and took them out, ate a quick supper, trotted to the Elderberry Bay Conservatory, found my cubicle, and put on the lurid purple and gold pants set.

The sun again reddened the sky above the glass roof as I joined the line of models waiting to march out onto the runway. Beyond the heavy blue curtains spanning the front of the stage, chairs scraped against the ornate tile floor, and people chatted and called to each other.

Her clipboard in one hand and a man’s suit jacket in the other, Paula, who was again wearing a dress resembling a stretched and shapeless burlap bag, burst between the closed blue stage curtains.

In navy suit pants, white dress shirt, and gold silk tie, Antonio surged through the curtains behind her, grabbed her shoulder, and demanded, “Give it back.” His pants were held up with the same belt he’d worn the night before, one with a large, shiny square belt buckle.

Antonio’s wife whirled and came close to bopping her husband with that clipboard. “No way. You’re not gobbling candy and who knows what else during the show.”

Loretta joined Paula and stood almost nose to nose with Antonio. Loretta’s outfit was similar to the flowing silk of the night before, but instead of plum and lime green, tonight’s was a richer silk, in ivory. “If you must eat candy during the next hour, Antonio, stay backstage to wrangle the models and
I’ll
narrate the show.”

Like Antonio and Paula, she looked about to sprout a smokestack from her head.

If anyone was going to “wrangle” me, I preferred Loretta to Antonio with the roving eye. Roving hands, too? Was he the man that Macey had slapped the night before?

Paula must not have liked the idea of her husband wandering backstage among the models, either. She turned on Loretta. “You? You couldn’t—”

Antonio interrupted her. “Who’s the boss here?” He glared at Loretta. “
I
am, and if
I
say I’m going to describe the fashions for our audience, then
I’m
the one who’s going to do it.”

He lunged for the jacket that Paula held.

She dodged him. “I’ll hang your jacket backstage. If you must feed your addiction, come grab a candy between segments. I took them off the podium and put them back in your jacket pocket.”

Addiction?

Antonio must have become aware of the silent line of models watching the argument. He smiled at us. “Giving up smoking is harder than you think.” He glanced at his watch. “Showtime!” Jacketless, he strode out between the curtains. The crowd hushed. He welcomed everyone, then the music began and the first model tripped out to the runway.

Antonio’s descriptions were no more specific than they’d been the evening before. Everyone was “lovely” and wore a “beautiful” outfit. When it was my turn, I was glad that the lights in the conservatory were limited to the spotlights on the runway and the teensy lights tucked among
the conservatory’s greenery. I didn’t see anyone I recognized. A video camera was on a tripod near the tallest of the palm trees, but no one was shooting flash pictures. Where was the sullen man in the muscle shirt?

Back in my cubicle, I changed into the brown dress-for-success outfit and carried the shoes to the line. Macey handed me tissues and pointed to the humongous brown shoes. “Stuff those into the toes of your shoes so you can keep them on.”

Shushing Macey, but speaking every bit as loudly, Loretta told Macey to pin my hair up again. She did, and then I headed for the spot where the stage curtains overlapped each other.

The tissues in my shoes cramped my toes. Stumbling, I brushed Antonio’s jacket off the chair, but when I stooped to hang it up, Paula nudged my backside with the clipboard. “Don’t worry about that. Just get out there!” Her whisper was urgent, as if we were in the midst of an emergency.

Out on the runway, I managed to smile despite fumbling with the necklace and the bright white briefcase, but this time, I looped the faux gold chain over my neck without tangling it in my hair.

When I came back between the curtains, Antonio’s jacket was hanging on the back of the chair again, but the chair was still in the way of models going to and from the runway. I silently moved it about a foot from the opening between the curtains, but not too far, I hoped, from Antonio if he developed a sudden desire for candy.

In my cubicle, I threw on the Bo Peep cocktail dress and gladiator sandals. I hoped that Loretta would leave my hair alone, but she again tied it up in ponytails high on the sides of my head.

Telling myself that my childish hairdo didn’t matter, I sashayed out onto the runway with an exaggerated sway of hips, turned, started back, and looked saucily over my shoulder. Who cared if everyone saw the ruffled bloomers I wore under the short dress? The outfit was ludicrous, and I saw no reason to pretend I took it seriously.

Applause, probably from our loyal Threadville tourists,
broke out from the audience. I was afraid that Antonio might disapprove of my dramatics, but he winked.

Maybe I should have been more sedate.

I was more of a performer than I realized. During the Glitzy Garb segment of the show, I didn’t exactly ham it up in the slinky, slit-up-to-here-and-back-down-to-there velvet gown, but I didn’t walk like a prim schoolgirl, either, and I couldn’t resist a second pirouette on my way back up the runway.

Whistles came from the audience. My customers and machine embroidery workshop students were obviously having fun.

As I pushed my way between curtains, I again bumped into the chair holding Antonio’s jacket. Someone had put it back after I’d moved it.

Antonio’s wife handed me an envelope with my name scribbled on it. “Change quickly,” she demanded.

I slipped off my heels and zoomed to my cubicle.

Inside the envelope were three pieces of paper. The full page was a typed letter, signed by Antonio, thanking me for participating in the TADAM scholarship fund-raiser.

The half page was a printed voucher for a discount on evening classes at TADAM. Fashion design courses? They could be fun, and I might learn new skills.

On a torn quarter page, someone—probably Antonio, judging by his signature on the letter—had scrawled my name along with the words
Distinguished Dressing
.

Great.
I had to go onstage during the awards ceremony, and I was supposed to wear that Little Bo Peep dress, the worst of all the outfits that I’d made and modeled.

Maybe I was winning a prize for the silliest cocktail dress? Or the most flirtatious look over my shoulder?