Dire Threads

by Janet Bolin

  Rosemary looked skeptical. “Don’t we need special hoops for machine embroidery?”

  “Not for freehand embroidery.” I thumped a finger on the felt in the hoop. “Tighten the hoop, but don’t stretch the felt, and don’t tear it.”

  The women laughed and nudged each other, welcoming me into their jovial community. We had all experimented with threads and fabrics. We knew how adding one more layer to our creativity could lead to instant disaster.

  I held up a spool of thin nylon thread. “If the stitching on the back won’t be seen, you can save money by using lingerie thread in your bobbin instead of embroidery thread.”

  I touched the little teeth below my sewing machine’s needle and presser foot. “These are called feed dogs. Usually, they move the fabric. Today, we’re the ones deciding which direction the fabric should go, so we have to lower them out of the way.” With the machine I was using, it was easy. I pushed a button.

  “They don’t lower out of the way on my machine at home,” a woman in a beribboned sweatshirt commented.

  I beckoned her closer and popped my stitch plate out. “You can remove your feed dogs, but be careful. Don’t lose the screws.”

  She smiled happily. “I’ve got enough loose screws already.” When the laughter died down, she added, “Now I’m certain I need a new machine.”

  I snapped a spring-loaded presser foot especially suited to embroidery onto my machine, and everyone wanted to know where to purchase one.

  “From me,” I said. “Tell me your sewing machine’s model, and I’ll look for one or a method of adapting one.”

  I chose an ornamental stitch from my machine’s many possibilities. Five more women began murmuring about new machines.

  My students watched me guide the hooped felt so that the needle followed the lines I’d drawn. After a few changes of thread color and lots of stitches, the drawing became an embroidered motif.

  Enthusiastically, the women took turns at machines around In Stitches. The thin, sallow woman in black said nothing except to demur quietly when I asked her if she wanted to try, too.

  “Another time, then,” I said, in a hurry to help everyone finish before the group’s lunch at Pier 42, a restaurant overlooking Elderberry Bay’s broad, sandy beach.

  Chattering, the women donned coats and lined up to buy a surprisingly large amount of supplies so they could do their homework, creating an embroidered flower by stitching over floral fabric, carefully matching colors and contours. Many admitted that they probably had just the right fabric at home but would shop at The Stash before they left town for some of the lovely fabrics Haylee had on sale. Tomorrow morning’s class, when these ladies brought their homework back, should be fun. I’d heard that most of the same women came Tuesday through Saturday on the Threadville tour bus. The women could shop, attend classes, or both. Like the other Threadville proprietors, I offered a repeat of each morning’s class in the afternoon for those who had been attending other workshops or browsing elsewhere.

  After my customers went to lunch, I had to tell Haylee about my successful morning. I hung my Back in Five Minutes sign—red cross-stitches on white canvas—on my glass front door. It wasn’t that I had to surround myself with embroidery, it was only that I loved to create new designs and couldn’t help embroidering them on anything that stood still long enough.

  The other four Threadville boutiques were across Elderberry Bay’s main thoroughfare, Lake Street, in a perfectly maintained two-story Victorian edifice with apartments above the stores. Unlike buildings of a similar vintage in Manhattan, this one’s red-brick facade and carved limestone decorations had stayed clean and bright all these years in this village surrounded by forest and farmland on three sides and Lake Erie on the fourth. Haylee’s shop faced one of my next-door neighbors, the General Store, recently purchased by a couple I had not yet met. Opal’s Tell a Yarn was directly across from In Stitches. Edna’s Buttons and Bows faced my other neighbor, The Ironmonger. Naomi’s Batty About Quilts was across from a vacant building beyond the hardware store.

  Hugging myself in the cold air, I dashed to Haylee’s store. For anyone who loved to sew, entering The Stash was like coming home. The fragrance of new fabrics made me yearn to design and create. Dark wintry wools, corduroys, and fleeces beckoned, but I couldn’t help touching luscious spring cottons, especially the floral prints I’d asked Haylee to show my students. I loved the quality, sheen, and heft of Haylee’s fashion fabrics. They would drape beautifully. I wanted them all.

  Haylee wasn’t among the rolls of silks, satins, velvets, veiling, and lace for wedding and formal gowns, and I didn’t see her where faux furs and novelty fabrics made a playful display. She wasn’t paging through pattern books in one of the comfy chairs near the window, either.

  “Haylee?” I called.

  She charged out of her classroom, her long blond hair flying. Fury had replaced her usual calm amusement. “Willow! I was texting you.” She grabbed a fistful of paper from beside her cash register. “Did you see this?”

  “What?” I faltered, remembering my students studying Mike’s petition almost as raptly as they’d studied him. I’d been too busy ringing up sales to look at the pages he’d left in my store.

  “That sleazeball, Mike Krawbach, tricked ladies from the Threadville tour into signing some stupid petition while I was teaching them how to create burnout velvet. Why on earth would women from Erie want an ATV track to go through Elderberry Bay?”

  So their husbands would be glad to come here, too, Mike had said.

  Wait a second. An ATV track . . . “Let me see,” I said.

  Sure enough, Mike the sleazeball was petitioning the village to lift the ban on motorized vehicles on the riverbank trail, the one that ran behind Blueberry Cottage. My quiet life above the Elderberry River would be shattered by roaring engines and stinking fumes.

  Worse, he wanted Elderberry Bay to condemn Blueberry Cottage and appropriate the land it sat on for public restrooms.

  Mike wanted to bulldoze my cottage and steal my land so he could erect outhouses on it.

  Outhouses!

  Ten of Haylee’s students had signed the petition. Haylee and I looked at each other and raced outside.

  In Stitches was centered on its lot, with side yards sloping down to the back. The Arts and Crafts front porch and deep eaves made my store look especially welcoming and comfy. For once, I barely had time to admire it all. Haylee and I barreled inside.

  I grabbed the petition Mike had left in my shop. Nineteen of my students had signed, probably without reading it. They’d been swayed by Mike’s blue eyes.

  My eyes must have turned red at that moment, because that’s what I saw. I tore up Mike’s petition and threw the bits into the wastebasket behind the cash register.

  Haylee’s mouth dropped open. We’d known each other for years, and even at the most stressful of times—blowing the whistle on our boss, a corrupt, embezzling financial manager, and testifying against him in Manhattan—I’d been pretty easygoing.

  To my immense gratification, Haylee scrunched her petition into a tight ball and jettisoned it as well.

  An ancient red car spluttered past, driven by a woman so small that I couldn’t see much of her besides gray hair straggling out from underneath her wide-brimmed hat. I recognized her, anyway.

  “What’s she doing here?” Haylee asked.

  “She came to my class, didn’t socialize with the other women and didn’t want to try the embroidery exercise. Do you know her?”

  Haylee shook her head. “Not really, but there can’t be two cars like that around here. She’s the one Mike nearly ran off the road the one—and only—time I went out with him. She owns a farm east of the village. She hardly ever ventures into town.”

  I couldn’t help laughing. “Maybe she’s embarrassed about not giving you a ride into town after you slammed yourself out of Mike’s truck.”

  Haylee sighed in exaggerated dismay. “Ten miles of country roads. One p
air of shoes totally wrecked. They were brand new.” She faked a shiver. “It was pitch-black out, besides.” She cocked her head. “What’s that noise? Your dogs?”

  Sad whining came from downstairs. I’d taken my pair of one-year-old pups on a long walk before I opened In Stitches that morning, but I’d left them alone in my apartment for two entire hours. “Tally-Ho. And his sister is probably happily shredding her bed.” Only a week ago, I had rescued the dogs, who had more border collie heritage than was probably good for them, or for me, from a pound. We still had a lot to learn about each other. “I’d better take them out.”

  “And I should get back to The Stash.” Coatless and petitionless, Haylee jogged across the street.

  Leaving the door between the store and the stairway open so I could listen for customers who finished lunch early, I went down to my apartment. Sally-Forth had not shredded anything, but Tally-Ho was cuddling my white parka as if he were about to begin his own version of cutwork embroidery, without the embroidery. Both dogs wriggled with joy when they saw me.

  My building was on a hill, giving In Stitches and my apartment plenty of natural light from back windows. Like the shop, the apartment had been renovated exactly as I would have done it. The kitchen and living area offered great views of my backyard. My bedroom looked out on one side yard, while my guest room looked out on the other. En suite baths, large walk-in closets, and a small laundry room were sandwiched between the bedrooms. Mostly above ground and decorated in white, the apartment did not seem like a basement.

  Naturally, I’d embroidered everything possible. The bedroom curtains were white with machine hemstitching along the bottoms. I’d gone a little wilder with my linens and throw pillows. Actually, I’d gone a lot wilder, but I could change everything with the seasons or my latest whim.

  I had not yet decided whether to curtain the vast windows across the back. The view was calming. Dense rows of cedars lined both sides of my backyard, leading the eye to Blueberry Cottage, a pretty little building with teal siding and dark red trim. Above the cottage, branches traced charcoal lace against the sky. The hiking trail ran between the cottage and the river, where ice chunks bobbed along like merry little boats. Trees covered the far bank. It was all so beautiful that the only reason to add draperies to my back windows would be for the sake of embroidering more yardage.

  I made certain that the dogs noticed me sticking a handful of treats into my coat pocket, and opened the door leading outside from my open-concept great room and kitchen. Before I’d adopted Sally and Tally, I’d had a sturdy chain-link fence built around the property, with a gate near the front yard and another at the foot of the hill, beyond the cottage, giving us a shortcut to the hiking trail. The pups chased and wrestled in their large, safely enclosed space. Whenever they returned to me, they got a treat. Before long, we were all inside again, munching on peanut butter sandwiches.

  The chimes clashed together again. With Sally and Tally at my heels, I ran upstairs.

  Mike Krawbach was snooping around my fabric cutting table. My usually friendly Tally growled and barked. Above the din, I thought I heard Mike say into his cell phone, “Here she is.”

  I grabbed the dogs’ collars, pulled them to the stairway leading down to the apartment, and closed the door.

  Dropping his pens and cell phone into his shirt pocket, Mike tossed me one of his phony smiles, pretending he wanted my friendship when he really wanted my land.

  For his and hers outhouses, of all things.

  His smile became an accusing sneer. “Where did you put my petition?”

  2

  CHIN UP, FINGERS TENSED AT MY SIDES, I evaded Mike’s question. “I didn’t say you could leave a petition in my store.”

  “Then give it back. I just talked to the ladies in the restaurant. They said they signed it.” Those blue eyes seemed to cut through me.

  “Most of those women don’t live here. Their signatures don’t count.” I sounded as fierce as I felt.

  Haylee, her mother Opal, and Opal’s two best friends burst into the store. Throwing her arms around me, Opal smothered me in the bulky depths of her hand-knit sweater. “Congratulations, Willow! Your store was full of customers.”

  Opal was as tall as her daughter, not much older, and every bit as exuberant. I eased away so I could breathe. I liked Opal’s sweater, but I wasn’t sure about the slacks she’d knitted to match. Cables ran every which way over both garments.

  Naomi, in one of her amazing quilted jackets, patted my shoulder. “So glad you’re up and running, and one of us.”

  Behind the women, Mike fumed. Let him.

  Edna shook her head ominously. “I still don’t like the name you chose, Willow. In Stitches! Know what it sounds like?”

  Winking at me over Edna’s bright orange curls, Opal guessed, “An embroidery boutique?”

  I tried, “Stand-up comedy?”

  “No,” Edna said. “A hospital.”

  I asked, “What should I have called it?”

  “Embroidery Room.”

  “ER for short,” Haylee quipped. “Great idea.”

  Edna covered her mouth with her hand but rallied quickly. “The rest of you are just as bad at naming your stores. I don’t know why you chose The Stash, Haylee. It sounds like a drug dealer’s emporium, not a fabric boutique. And Naomi, what must customers conclude about a woman who names her shop Batty About Quilts and runs around in padded jackets? And Tell a Yarn, Opal? What were you thinking?”

  “That I was opening a yarn store,” Opal answered drily. “And planning sessions of storytelling and needlework.”

  Thirty-three years ago, when Haylee was born, Naomi and Edna had teamed up to help their teenaged friend, Opal, raise her fatherless baby. They had juggled childcare with degrees and professions. Then, after Haylee became disillusioned with the financial world and told them about the row of Victorian shops for sale in Elderberry Bay, they’d abandoned their careers and joined Haylee to convert their hobbies to businesses, and Threadville was born. The three women claimed they were having the time of their life. None of them had quite reached fifty. They jokingly referred to themselves as The Three Weird Sisters.

  Haylee, of course, called them The Three Weird Mothers.

  The moment I moved to Elderberry Bay, Haylee’s mothers had adopted me, too, and I was certain they had scurried to my store just now to protect me from Mike Krawbach. I didn’t like the smug smile that appeared on his face as they teased each other, though.

  Edna smoothed her jacket, decorated with ribbons and rhinestones from her notions boutique. “At least when they come to Buttons and Bows, they know what—” She was interrupted by an odd cacophony coming from outside.

  Elderberry Bay had only one police cruiser, so old that its siren mooed, which went well with the sheeplike bleating of its horn. The farmyard noises ended when the banged-up vehicle halted in front of In Stitches.

  Everybody around, from toddlers to ninety-year olds, called the village’s only police officer Uncle Allen. He’d been christened Uncle way back in kindergarten because of the way he always looked after everybody else. Nearly sixty years later, he had not lost the nickname. He unfolded himself from the driver’s seat and lumbered toward In Stitches.

  Mike must have been talking to Uncle Allen when I came upstairs with the dogs. Mike had called the police.

  Haylee inched past her mothers until she was with me behind my counter.

  Uncle Allen wended his way through the phalanx of protective proprietors. “What’s up, kiddo?” he asked Mike.

  Mike pointed at me. “That woman stole my property.”

  He was a fine one to talk, with his designs on my cottage. I argued, “His ‘property’ was only a petition he left here without my permission.”

  Mike puffed out his muscular chest. “Then give it back.”

  I tried my hardest not to glance toward the wastebasket at my feet. “I can’t. I don’t have it.”

  Uncle Allen figured it out. Leather g
un holsters creaking, he lurched forward and pulled Haylee’s crumpled petition out of the wastebasket. He handed it to Mike. “This your property?”

  “Hey, you can’t do that,” Haylee objected. “Where’s your search warrant?”

  “Don’t need one.” Uncle Allen said. “Been the law here for over twenty years.”

  Haylee opened her eyes to their widest, and I could tell she was thinking the same thing I was. Manhattan and our lawless boss there might have been more civilized than this Wild West type of policing in Elderberry Bay.

  Mike straightened the petition. “This isn’t the petition I meant.” He pointed at Haylee with his whole hand, palm slanted upward, all of his fingers except the middle one slightly curled inwards, a gesture he must have practiced to make its rudeness appear, especially to Uncle Allen, accidental. “This is the petition I left in her store.” He could not have sounded more derogatory. “I penciled your lot numbers on each petition.” The gathering now included the tour bus ladies, who must have run out of Pier 42 before they finished their dessert. Opal, Naomi, and Edna wore defiant expressions that should have made Mike apologize and slink out of the store. Instead, he threatened, “All you shopkeepers, you just better make certain I get my petition back in one piece.”

  That must have given Uncle Allen an idea. He leaned over and peered into my wastebasket. “There’s your other petition, Mike,” he said. “She tore it up and threw it away.”

  “Did she?” Mike’s attempt at a purr held a scissorlike edge. “Then I’ll just make another copy of the petition”— he grabbed my guest book from beside the cash register and ripped the first pages out of it, the signed ones—“and staple these to it.”

  I reached for the pages. “No!”

  Mike moved them away from my outstretched hand and turned toward the door.

  The artistic lady in mauve from this morning’s class fell into step behind him. “Taking those pages is theft! I signed her guest book. I live here in Elderberry Bay, and I have no intention of signing your petition.” Her enunciation was careful and clear.