Threading the Needle (15 page)

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Authors: Marie Bostwick

BOOK: Threading the Needle
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21
Tessa
T
he night before, Friday, as we were leaving the quilt shop after my first night as a member of the Cobbled Court Quilt Circle (and a great night it had been, too! I'd already sewn my very first quilt block and couldn't wait to get started on the others!), Margot suggested we get together for breakfast the next day.
“It'll be fun!” she exclaimed. “We can talk about quilts and you can tell me the story of your life. Now that we're in the same quilt circle, I need to know absolutely everything about you!”
Of course, Margot was teasing. I'd never planned on telling her much about my past. Not so soon. Not until I turned around and saw Madelyn Beecher, and Madelyn Beecher looked up and saw me, then ran out the door of the Blue Bean without saying a word.
Margot laid her hand on her chest and blinked back a sheen of tears. “Oh, Tessa,” she whispered. “Tessa, that is just so sad. Poor thing.”
“I know. I don't blame Madelyn for bolting. We were friends, true friends. I wish I'd realized back then how rare real friendship is.”
I picked up my fork and moved my eggs from one side of the plate to the other. I'd lost my appetite.
“I just tossed her over. For what? The approval of a boy with wandering hands and bad breath? A bunch of cliquey girls? Sure, Madelyn was a little weird, but at twelve, who isn't? She didn't deserve to be treated like that. No one does, especially somebody whose only crime was trying a little too hard to be a friend. There are worse things, believe me.”
I laughed at my own stupidity. “Do you know how many times my old so-called friends from work have called me since I moved?” I held up two fingers. “That's it. And both of them phoned within the first three weeks after I left—and then only in response to the e-mail with my new contact information. I sent it out to about thirty people, my thirty ‘closest' friends. Two called me. That's all.”
“Do you ever phone them?” Margot asked.
“I did for a while. Not anymore.”
I bit my lip, wondering how much to share. This was just supposed to be a casual get-together for coffee and conversation, nothing more. I didn't want to scare her off by unloading my whole life story. Yet she didn't seem to mind. And I needed to talk.
“It must be hard,” Margot said. “You've had a lot of changes in a short period of time, haven't you? New home, new business . . .”
“Two new businesses,” I corrected. “For the Love of Lavender, plus the farm. Neither is thriving. Could we have picked a worse time to give up two steady but staid jobs and go into business for ourselves? Could our lives get any more complicated?”
I took another sip of coffee and thought better of what I'd said. “Don't listen to me. It's not like we're the only ones with financial problems. It could have been worse,” I said with a wry smile. “We could have invested our money with Madelyn's husband.”
Margot frowned, her expression still concerned. “Pity on the people who did. I just can't believe she's married to that terrible man. She has such a nice face.”
“After she left New Bern, I guess she started hanging out with the wrong crowd.”
Margot nodded. “I'll say.”
“But don't blame Madelyn for any of that. There's no way she knew what he was up to,” I said emphatically.
“How do you know that?”
“She was cleared of everything in the investigation. If they could have pinned anything on her, I'm sure they would have. But it's more than that. Madelyn is . . . well, she's just not capable of something that low.”
I couldn't explain it to Margot, but some things you just know. Some things don't change. Madelyn was the one who raced across the snow, swinging her book bag over her head, prepared to beat the stuffing out of the boy she thought was attacking me. She was the one who threatened to pound anybody who said anything bad about me. Madelyn had guts. And character. And for a long time, she'd been my friend.
“Did you see her face when she saw me?” I asked. “Like a stone. If she never saw me again, I'm sure it'd be too soon.”
Margot was listening intently, her head bobbing slowly, but when I stopped to take a breath she said, “That is sad, but that's not what I meant. I was talking about you. I'm sad for
you
. You've been carrying this around for all these years, haven't you?”
That pulled me up short. Sympathy was the last thing I expected, or deserved. I turned my head away and looked at the wall.
“You don't understand. I was so awful to her, so often. Not overtly, not the way I was that day in the snow, but over and over again, year after year.
“After I ended our friendship, she changed. Not in a good way. She started getting involved in all kinds of self-destructive behavior—cigarettes, alcohol, boys. Especially boys. She collected them like merit badges—trinkets she pinned to her chest to prove that she was . . . well, I don't know what she was trying to prove. Maybe that she was worth something to somebody?
“Teenage girls are always falling in and out of love, but this wasn't that. She didn't care about those boys. She tossed them aside as fast as she gathered them up. There was something frantic about her, like she was hoarding hearts. But those boys didn't love her any more than she loved them. They used her and she let them. I don't think anybody loved Madelyn—not ever. Her mother never wanted her, her father died when she was just little, and her grandmother was awful to her, cruel. Abusive, even.
“When I went outside, sometimes I could hear Edna screaming at her. Once, I looked out my window and saw Madelyn's stuff thrown out on the front lawn. Edna was out there, slapping her over and over again, and Madelyn was just standing there, taking it. Like she was used to it....
“I guess she was,” I whispered, wiping guilty tears with the back of my hand. “Somebody should have reported Edna. Somebody should have done something.
I
should have done something,” I said, finally turning to look at Margot's face, expecting to see the condemnation I deserved. It wasn't there.
“Like what?”
“A million things! Stood up for her. Told her I was sorry. Told her that Edna was wrong about her. I could have been her friend. How hard would that have been?” I asked. Margot didn't answer.
“Do you know something? When Madelyn dropped out of school I felt relieved that I wouldn't have to see her every day, relieved to be able to forget about her.”
Margot nodded understandingly. “But you never did.”
I let out a short, derisive laugh. “Oh, no. You're wrong. Once I left New Bern, I did a great job of forgetting about Madelyn. I stuffed that all into a closet, put a lock on the door, and resolved never to think of it again. Then I went on with my life and got a job in human resources, where you're pretty much paid to be a friend. There's a lot of explaining of benefit packages and administrative stuff, but mostly I just listened to people's problems and encouraged them to make good choices. I was a professional friend. Another irony.”
“Sounds to me like you might not be quite as good at locking the past away and forgetting it as you'd like to believe,” Margot said.
“Maybe not. Anyway, here I am, back at the scene of the crime. So is Madelyn.”
Margot picked up her cup and wrapped her hands around it, resting her elbows on the table. “So? What are you going to do about it?”
“About what?”
“All these ironies you keep talking about? What you call a coincidence, I call an appointment. Do you think it's possible that God knows about the anguish and guilt that you, and possibly Madelyn, have been laboring under all these years and has arranged for you two to come back to New Bern so you can do something about it?”
“Like what? Kiss and make up? You saw the expression on Madelyn's face when she spotted me. You can't possibly think she's going to forgive me.”
Margot's blue eyes bored into me as she quoted a verse I remembered vaguely from childhood Sunday school lessons. “ ‘If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with everyone.'
“So far as it depends on
you
. If you reach out to Madelyn and try to make amends, she may rebuff you. But then again”—Margot smiled—“she might surprise you. Either way, you'll have the peace that comes from knowing you did the right thing.”
“The right thing? What's that? How am I supposed to know what to do?”
With that calm, knowing smile still on her face, that smile that was starting to annoy me a little, Margot said, “The path to peace is paved with knee prints.” Then she took a sip from her coffee cup as though this explained everything.
“ ‘The path to peace is paved with knee prints'? What are you? The oracle of Cobbled Court? What the heck is that supposed to mean?”
Margot giggled and I smiled in spite of myself.
“Seriously,” I said, shaking my head. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means that we can know peace in every situation, no matter how difficult, by turning that situation over to God. The apostle Paul said not to worry about anything. Instead, he said we should let all our requests be made known to God through prayer and with thanksgiving. And that when we do, we'll know peace that passes all understanding, the peace of God.”
Margot was obviously very sincere, but this just didn't make sense to me.
“Margot, I believe in God, but I have a hard time believing He's personally interested in my little worries. I mean, doesn't He have better things to do? Famines? Wars? Natural disasters? That sort of thing? Who am I to bother God?”
“His child,” Margot said simply. “You've got a child, right? If Josh called you, worried, distressed, and sincerely seeking your advice, wouldn't you stop what you were doing long enough to help?”
“Yes, but that's different.”
Margot swiveled her head from side to side. “I don't think so. God cares about you just as much as you care about your son—more, even.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, summoning another verse from her memory. “ ‘Before they call, I will answer; while they are still speaking, I will hear.' Isaiah 65:24. That's not me talking. That's what God says about Himself. You believe in God; why not believe what He says?”
Margot was sweet and kind, and she made it sound so simple, but it couldn't be. Could it?
“I'm not sure. I'd like to,” I said cautiously. “But . . . what if it doesn't work?”
“Work as in, what if God doesn't patch things up between you and Madelyn? He won't. That's up to the two of you. He's just providing you with the opportunity. It seems to me that God wants you to at least
try
to reach out to her.
“And,” she said in a somewhat softer tone, “I think that's what you want, too, isn't it? Think. You've been sitting here beating yourself up over all the opportunities you had to reach out to your old friend and ease her pain, opportunities you ignored. God has gone to such a lot of trouble to give you another chance,” she said earnestly. “Are you going to let this one pass too?”
I looked down at my hands. “No. I don't want to let that happen. Not again.”
“Good. Good for you.”
“So . . . what should I do? Pray?”
“Good idea,” she said, then immediately closed her eyes and lowered her head.
She was going to pray here? Now?
I looked around nervously, afraid of being conspicuous, but no one was looking at us. Feeling a little awkward, I followed Margot's lead, closed my eyes, and ducked my head down.
Quietly, in plain language, as if she were speaking to someone she knew well and respected enormously, Margot thanked God for bringing us together that day, for bringing Madelyn and me to New Bern, for giving me the inclination and opportunity to set right an old wrong.
I prayed, too, not as eloquently as Margot, but I meant everything I said.
“Amen,” Margot said, and then looked up at me and smiled. “There. That wasn't so hard, was it?”
I shook my head. “So, now what happens? Should I be on the lookout for a burning bush or something?”
Margot laughed. “There
are
precedents, but I don't think you'll need something quite that flashy. Just wait and see what kind of doors God opens. It might happen quickly or it might take a while, but God will answer. Trust me.”
“Okay,” I said, but doubtfully. I was hoping for something a bit more concrete. I looked at my watch. “I've got to go and open the shop. Who knows? I might actually have a customer today. Or two!”
I smiled and stuffed my napkin into my coffee cup. “Thanks, Margot. It's been a long time since I've been able to just sit down and talk with a girlfriend. It was nice of you to take the time.”

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