The Oysterville Sewing Circle

by Susan Wiggs

  Wait. What? Sierra frowned at the screen, then lifted the frown with her eyebrows. “You’re in love,” she said, trying not to choke on the words. She tried to picture the two of them—together. In love. It was like trying to picture a chimera—something that didn’t actually exist. The image wouldn’t form. It was always Will and Sierra and Caroline. Not Will and Caroline in love.

  “I wanted to tell you before you heard it somewhere else,” Caroline said. “I didn’t want you to be caught by surprise.”

  Surprise? It was more like shock. Like a fist to the solar plexus.

  She took a drink. “I don’t know what to say.” She took another drink. “Congratulations for banging my ex?”

  Caroline winced visibly. “I didn’t plan it, Sierra. But when it started happening, I realized it was real, and it’s not going to stop. I mean, we . . . It’s not a fling. We’re getting serious.”

  “Serious.”

  “Like it could be permanent.”

  Permanent. Her best friend and her ex. Which left Sierra with . . . nothing. “What the hell do you want from me?” she asked. “My goddamn blessing?”

  “No. I mean, no. You’re entitled to feel however you feel about the situation. I wanted to tell you myself. We were friends once, as close as sisters,” Caroline said. “And when I moved back, we got there again. I wish . . . I don’t want to lose that, Sierra.”

  “Too late,” Sierra said. “It’s already gone.”

  She ended the call, freezing Caroline, openmouthed, on the screen. Glaring out at the sinking sun, she gulped at her drink. Now it tasted as bitter as regret.

  And that, Sierra knew, was on her. She had chafed with discontent in Oysterville. She’d panicked about the pregnancy, regarding it as a tether that would hold her there forever, when all she wanted was . . . everything else. Freedom and independence. A job that didn’t suck. The world.

  This, she thought, flinging the rest of the drink over the balcony railing.

  Chapter 28

  Caroline went to New York City with a heart full of hope, convinced that she was finally getting back on her feet. Back in the game. Back on track. As she and Willow got off the train at Penn Station and made their way to the Ace Hotel, she felt a whir of excitement.

  The hotel let them check in early. Willow wanted a nap. Caroline was too restless to sit still. “I’m going for a little walk,” she said, eager to reconnect with the place that had been her home for years. She went to the neighborhood she used to know like the back of her hand—the shops and bodegas, tiny groceries, modern buildings shoulder to shoulder with old brick and stone warehouses, newsstands, and street carts filling the air with a smoky, oniony scent.

  Unexpectedly, the city felt strange to her, disorienting. It wasn’t just the fact that she’d taken a red-eye and was operating on minimal sleep. It was that she was preoccupied with what she’d left behind in Oysterville. The kids—her kids, or soon to be hers—were back there. Will was back there. Her family. Lindy and the Sewing Circle, and C-Shell. Everything she cared about. In one short year, her entire world had shifted.

  And yet she cared about this, too. She had a lifelong passion for design, and her workshop created things that were beautiful and useful. The operation itself empowered the women who worked there, fostering their self-respect and optimism.

  How could she want both things at the same time? How could she want the love and joy of a family along with the fulfillment of a calling that fed her soul?

  She passed the kids’ old school, its play yard surrounded by a chain-link fence and crowded with running, laughing children. She wondered if Addie and Flick ever thought about their life here, what memories they held of Angelique. Caroline made a conscious effort to talk to them each day about their mother. She had thousands of pictures on a photo stream of Angelique, one of the most photographed models in the business. Yet despite the vast collection of shots in every variety, there would always be something mysterious and unattainable about her—secrets and hidden pain, unanswered questions.

  Maybe that was why she’d attended church at Saint Kilda’s, a couple of blocks from the school. Maybe it felt safe to her. Maybe there was a sympathetic pastor. It started raining, and Caroline put up the hood of her jacket, one of her own designs. She stood in front of the old Gothic Revival church, thinking about her friend and wishing she could talk to her, just one more time, even. Umbrellas popped up and pedestrians hurried by, but Caroline stood still, reading the schedule of services posted near the door.

  A woman brushed past her and went up the steps. Then she paused and came back down to Caroline. “You looking for the NA meeting?”

  Flustered, Caroline frowned. “No, I’m . . . A friend of mine used to attend church here.”

  The woman shrugged. “Oh, well. Just in case—there’s one at ten and another at noon. In the basement fellowship hall.”

  “Wait.” As an idea took hold, Caroline followed the woman up the steps. “Maybe . . . My friend’s name was Angelique. She, um, she died last year. Of an overdose.”

  The woman stepped inside the foyer. It was dim and close, and smelled of old stone and fresh flowers. “Angelique?”

  “Did you know her?” Caroline paused. “I mean, I guess you can’t really say . . . But she was my friend, and I’m raising her two little kids now.”

  The woman was in her forties or fifties. She was slender and well dressed, and had tired eyes. “Come on in. It’s an open meeting.”

  An hour later, Caroline sat in the nearly empty meeting room with a woman named Jody and a man she never thought she’d see again—Roman Blake. Jody had been Angelique’s sponsor in NA.

  “I thought it was you,” Caroline said to Roman as they put together the puzzle pieces Angelique had left scattered behind her. “She refused to say who was hitting her, and I thought . . .”

  “Understandable, I guess,” Roman said. “We weren’t good together. We fought a lot. But I cared about her. I cared about her staying clean.”

  She flashed on a memory. “I saw you fighting,” she said, remembering Roman reaching for Angelique and Angelique batting him away. “It was at Terminus, that club a lot of us used to go to.”

  He steepled his fingers together, staring down at his large, strong hands. “I remember that night. We weren’t fighting. Or maybe . . . we were always fighting. Both of us addicts, both messed up.” He looked up at her. “But the heart wants what it wants.”

  Jody vouched for him. “Everyone in the program knows it’s a bad idea to hook up, but it happens.”

  “Yeah,” Roman said. “I’m so damned sorry. Not sorry I loved her. Sorry I didn’t love her enough to walk away.”

  Caroline used to think he was brutish and mean, with his big muscles and tattoos. But maybe she should have looked past that rough exterior. “So that night?”

  “She . . . I figured out that she was using again, and I was trying to get her back into the program.”

  “Did Angelique ever mention other guys? Boyfriends?” Caroline asked.

  “When I met her, she said she wasn’t seeing anyone. Said she was too busy with her kids and her career. Said one of her exes went to rehab, and I got the impression she couldn’t stay away from him—or keep him away,” said Roman.

  “Angelique was my friend,” Caroline said. “She died in my home. I wish I knew how it happened. I feel so guilty not knowing that she was struggling with addiction. God, how could I not know?”

  “With a high-functioning addict, you can set aside what you think of when you think of an addict,” Jody said. “You won’t find them pushing shopping carts along the sidewalk, sleeping in recycled clothing bins, shooting up in alleyways. In fact, some of them seem incredibly successful. Maybe because they have to work overtime to keep up appearances and feed their habit.”

  A new picture of Angelique emerged. She was able to hide her demons from everyone—even herself. For a while, at least. Unfortunately, maintaining her facade came at a great price. It was
dangerous. She was trying to stay clean for the sake of her kids, but something pushed her back into using. Caroline again remembered razor blades missing from her sewing box and running out of foil. One time, she’d noticed tiny orange caps in the trash but never paused to wonder where they came from. Now they were puzzle pieces, falling into place.

  “I wish I could have helped,” she said, her voice rough with tears. “So her kids are doing really well. She never told me who their father was. Did she ever tell you?”

  They didn’t know any more about the situation than she did—Angelique had Flick at seventeen and Addie at eighteen, when she lived in Haiti. There were still so many unanswered questions, but the new glimpses into Angelique’s secret life filled in a few blanks.

  After leaving the church, she walked a few blocks to her former apartment building. She tried the door code in case it might be the same.

  It was the same. She looked around the foyer. There was the clanking radiator that used to steam and overheat the place in winter. The usual litter of junk mail on the floor. The pervasive smell of soup. The day she’d found Angelique dead came rushing back at her—the urgent phone call from the school. The dropped Con Ed bill marked with the tread of a shoe. The unlocked door, the preternatural stillness of the apartment when Caroline stepped inside.

  The next day, as the elevator in the Eau Sauvage headquarters whisked them skyward, Caroline felt giddy. “I used to fantasize about this moment,” she said to Willow. “I even had it all planned out in my head—discussing my work with a major firm, making a plan for a partnership. Now that it’s actually happening, I’m either nervous as hell or insane from sleep deprivation.”

  “It’s going to be fabulous,” Willow assured her. “Look at us.” She gestured at their images in the polished elevator mirror. They both wore C-Shell jackets, which were beaded with raindrops. “We’re fabulous.”

  She had sent off her samples, hopes, and dreams to the offices of Eau Sauvage. All that was left was to meet the team and discuss the launch. The conference room was filled with creative energy as the marketing team laid out their plans. They wanted to know about the journey that had brought her to this point. She talked about Oysterville and her struggle to launch her designs, and then she explained the Sewing Circle.

  “We love your story,” said one of the marketing experts. “A woman-owned business, helping other women.”

  She glanced at Willow and felt an unexpected surge of emotion. “Those women helped me just as much. I could never have done this without them.”

  There was a presentation of her designs on a big screen in the conference room. When a picture came up showing the nautilus shell detail, someone—a junior associate—said, “You used to work for Mick Taylor, isn’t that right?”

  Her stomach knotted. “I did contract work for his design house, yes. Why do you ask?”

  The associate, a young woman with cat’s-eye glasses and three smartphones, said, “It’s just . . .”

  Jeanine, the product developer who was running the meeting, stepped in. “We’re going to need to remove the shell logo,” she said. “We’re launching a line of Mick Taylor bags, and the nautilus shell is too similar. It’s a minor detail. Just to avoid confusion.”

  Caroline had heard the expression a head full of steam before, but she’d never actually experienced it until this moment, as she stared at a series of pictures of couture handbags featuring her logo. The pressure built as her thoughts raced. It was not enough that Mick had stolen her designs and accused her of copying him. Apparently he’d appropriated her logo as well. The sense of violation washed over her, as fresh as it had been the first time. She forced herself to take a breath. Looked at Willow, who was scratching notes on a yellow legal pad. Like Jeanine said, it was a small detail. But it was her logo. Her logo. A part of her identity. Her brand. And they wanted her to change it.

  “We have some ideas,” the junior associate said, clicking to the next slide. “It’s totally up to you, of course, but here’s an inspiration board.”

  Caroline could feel the color draining from her face. It took all her self-restraint not to go ballistic, trash the deal, and walk out. Somehow she managed to hold her tongue. Willow was the consummate professional, telling the group they’d be in touch about the final details.

  Caroline managed to contain herself until she and Willow left the building together. Then she blasted out her anger. “He took my career away, and now this?” she fumed.

  “That sucks,” Willow agreed. “Is keeping the logo a deal-breaker for you?”

  “I wish I could say yes, but this is still a huge opportunity for me. For us. When I look at the bigger picture, I have to think of Flick and Addie. They depend on me. And then all of us who work at C-Shell—we need our jobs. And then I think about all the effort I poured into this enterprise. My precarious bank balance. The truth is, I need this opportunity more than I need to keep a little detail on my garments. If I have to change the logo, it wouldn’t be the end of the world.”

  Willow regarded her thoughtfully. “This is how it starts. We settle. We make compromises. We let them whittle away, bit by bit, and don’t really notice the erosion, or we rationalize it away. We tell ourselves it’s for the greater good.”

  Caroline heard echoes of Willow’s story coming through. Although it was about a marriage, not a job, there were similarities—letting a man chip away at things that were rightfully hers. Accepting injustice because a fight seemed too hard. Shrinking from confrontation instead of standing up for oneself. These were all matters she’d heard at the Oysterville Sewing Circle. Now she had to ask herself—what had she learned, really?

  “I’ll meet you back at the hotel,” she said.

  Caroline walked into the Mick Taylor headquarters. It felt strange, being back here, where she had spent so many hours creating designs. She used to feel a sense of wonder, even a sort of reverence, that she had a coveted job here.

  Now she felt the clean, sharp edge of anger as she climbed the main stairs, strode past his bullshit mission statement written, Basquiat-style, on a long wall, passed by a protesting receptionist, and found Mick in his sleek glass-walled office. A small team was in the adjacent conference room, having a meeting with the design director.

  Mick looked up from his computer screen and regarded her with a slight frown. “Do you need something?”

  She couldn’t tell whether or not his ignorance was feigned. “Caroline Shelby. You know, the one whose designs you stole.”

  He gave a small shake of his head. “Sorry, what?”

  Rilla Stein came into the office. Caroline’s onetime mentor didn’t even acknowledge her. She leaned over and muttered something to Mick. Something that sounded like “I’ll call security.”

  “Ah, now I recall,” Mick said, offering his charming favorite-uncle grin. He dismissed Rilla with a wave. “Go back to your meeting,” he said. “I got this.”

  Rilla hesitated, her gaze darting at Caroline. “You’re sure?”

  He nodded. “Close the door behind you.”

  After she left, he regarded Caroline with a long, measuring gaze. “Hey, I thought we put that trouble to rest.”

  “I thought you were going to quit stealing from me, but you’re using my nautilus logo on a line of bags for Eau Sauvage,” Caroline snapped. “Who’d you steal those from? Need anything else, Mick? Some ideas for your next fall collection, maybe? My firstborn child?”

  He seemed startled by her, maybe because she was not the cowed and powerless young designer who had fled New York with her tail between her legs. His expression hardened and he leaned forward in his chair. “The people at Eau Sauvage know you used to work for me. They know you were laughed out of the business because you copied my designs.”

  “And yet I’m making a deal with them.” He blinked, and she could tell she’d startled him again. “Say what you will,” she added. “And so will I. I’ll tell them the truth.”

  “You should leave now,” sai
d Mick. “And it’ll be easier if you’d also walk away from whatever you think you have going on with Eau Sauvage.” Once again, he offered her his mild-mannered smile, a smile she now knew concealed a pit viper. With a relaxed air, he leaned back and crossed his ankles on the desk.

  As she regarded his posture, something niggled at her. A memory flitted through her mind and disappeared. Then it flitted back, hardening into sickening suspicion. “You came to my apartment the day Angelique died.”

  “No idea what you’re talking about,” he said. “And now it really is time for you to leave.”

  Caroline stood her ground. “She died of an overdose in my home.”

  Mick got up and came out from behind the desk. “A tragedy that has nothing to do with me.” He strode to the door and gestured for her to exit. “Find your way out. Now.”

  She noticed tiny beads of sweat on his brow and upper lip. She noticed his hand-tailored untucked shirt and his ultracool couture half boots from the Apiary Shoe Company. The tread on all their shoes had a honeycomb design. On the day Angelique died, Caroline had seen a piece of mail with the imprint of that distinctive shoe tread, a detail only someone in the fashion world might recognize. “You were the one who abused her,” she said, her voice low and trembling from the stunning realization. “After you got out of rehab. I saw what you did to her.”

  He took a step toward her, his eyes like shards of ice, and she felt a moment of panic. She flashed on Angelique’s bruises. He grabbed the door handle. Those hands, thought Caroline. Were those the hands that had battered her friend? Was that the anger that had sent Angelique fleeing in the night?

  “Get the fuck out.” The low command dug into her nerves.

  “Oh, I will,” she said. “I’m going to make a report.”

  “To whom? About what? You’re a liar, bitter against your employer. Who are they going to believe? Jesus, the whole city knows me. I’m Mick fucking Taylor.”

  He was too close now, crowding her against the door. “And I’m your worst nightmare. I said that before, but then I walked away. I’m not going to walk away this time.”