Threading the Needle

by Marie Bostwick

  This house, this town, this life—it isn’t my dream, but it’s somebody’s. My dream is to sell this house at a price that will let me get away from New Bern, the scene of all my failures, and never come back. But there’s a lot to be done between this and that, and today was all about writing my business plan, a task that required intense focus. Otherwise, I’d have looked at the caller identification before I answered the phone and let it go into voice mail—as usual.

  “Madelyn?” He paused for a moment, waiting for me to say something. “It’s Sterling.”

  “What do you want?”

  “To talk to you. I’ve been trying to get hold of you for days,” he said impatiently. “Don’t you ever answer the phone?”

  Not when you’re calling, I don’t.

  He’d called nearly every day since I arrived in New Bern. I never picked up. Why would I? It was his fault I was in this mess. But that didn’t stop him from leaving messages, make that commands, for me to return his calls. I ignored them. All of them.

  “I’ve been busy,” I said. “Working.”

  “Working? You?”

  I thought about hanging up on him. I should have. But in spite of the applause that had accompanied my speech and indignant exit from New Bern National, that smug banker’s rebuff still stung. People had dismissed and talked down to me all my life. I’d had enough.

  Maybe my plan would never come to fruition, but at least I had a plan, and I’d worked it out all on my own. I wanted someone to know that, even if it was only Sterling. Perhaps especially if it was Sterling.

  “Madelyn? Are you there? You said you’re working. Working on what?” he repeated.

  “A business plan.”

  He laughed. There it was again, the tone I knew so well—the sneer. Some people never change. I should have known.

  “You’re working on a business plan? Don’t tell me you found a job as somebody’s secretary, not after all these years.”

  “Not typing a business plan, Sterling. Writing one. I’ve decided to renovate Beecher Cottage and turn it into an inn.”

  “What?” Sterling laughed, not a polite chuckle but an incredulous guffaw. “Are you crazy? You’re not equipped to run a business, especially an inn. It’s hard work. And the profit margins are terrible even when times are good. Nobody is traveling right now, Madelyn. Everybody’s broke.”

  “Thanks to you!” I snapped.

  “Seriously, Madelyn,” he said, the laughter leaving his voice. “You don’t know the first thing about business. You weren’t even a very good secretary.”

  “How would you know? You were too busy running your hands up my skirt and down my blouse to find out.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re not smart enough to run a business.”

  “You’re one to talk. You didn’t run a business, you ran a Ponzi scheme! You never made an honest dollar in your life. You’re a thief, Sterling. Nothing but a thief!”

  “Hey!” he shouted before dropping his voice to a half-whisper. “Knock it off, will you? They could be tapping the phones.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You already pleaded guilty, Sterling. Remember? And even if you hadn’t, do you think they don’t have the goods on you already?”

  There was a pause. I waited for him to come back at me, the way he always did, to shred me with some scathing retort, but he didn’t.

  “I didn’t call to fight.”

  “Then why did you call, Sterling? Whatever you want, the answer is no.”

  “Can we stop this? Just for a little while could we call a truce?” His voice was laced with tension. Holding his temper was costing him some effort, I could tell. He did want something.

  “You may not realize it, Madelyn, but I’m trying to help you. Let me help you.” His voice softened; it was almost gentle. I wasn’t fooled.

  Sterling could be charming when he wanted to. No one knows that better than me. Before we were married, he wined me and dined me and so thoroughly dazzled me that even if I’d been inclined to resist, and even if I hadn’t seen marrying him as my only available path to security and survival, I would have succumbed to his charm. He was and still is a handsome man. When he gazed at me with that animal hunger in his eyes, I could not help but say yes. Yes to him, yes to everything.

  Not anymore.

  “Madelyn,” he said in a concerned, almost fatherly tone. “Running an inn is real work, not a hobby. I know you must be bored stiff out in the country, but surely you can find something else to do with your time. Take up bridge,” he suggested. “Or tennis. Maybe riding. I’ve heard there are some good stables out there.”

  “Bridge? Tennis?”

  Was he kidding? What kind of fantasy world was he living in? I wasn’t a bored socialite looking for ways to fill her time, not anymore. And he wasn’t a financial tycoon with a private plane and an estate in the Hamptons. After all that had happened, the lifetime of lies and insults and the public humiliation, he still had the gall to treat me like a big-busted, empty-headed bimbo? Maybe I wasn’t the sharpest pencil in the box. But at least I was smart enough to face the facts.

  “Or you could volunteer somewhere,” he continued without a trace of irony. “But an inn? Face facts, Madelyn. You’re beautiful. You were beautiful. But you’re no Rhodes Scholar. And you don’t have a head for business.”

  “Then I’ll damned well grow one! I have to! Sterling, don’t you get it? They Took The Money,” I said, enunciating each individual word so there would be no possibility of his missing my meaning. “You’re penniless and I’m near to it. I’ve got to do something to take care of myself, and what I’ve decided to do is open an inn. This isn’t some whim of mine, Sterling. I’ve spent the last week figuring out capital expenditures, operating costs, occupancy rates, and cash flow projections. I know what I’m doing!”

  Sort of.

  I’d learned a great deal in the last few days. The biggest lesson was that I could learn it. Capital expenditures, cash flow projections, operating costs. These weren’t just words I was tossing out to impress Sterling—though I admit that part of me did want him to be impressed—I actually knew what they meant! I wasn’t a moron. I never had been and I wanted Sterling to admit it, to show me at least a little bit of respect.

  Was that so much to ask? Apparently.

  “For God’s sake, Madelyn. If you wanted investment advice, why didn’t you pick up the phone and call me? I could have . . .”

  “You?” I laughed. “You think I’d take investment tips from you? What planet are you living on?”

  He made a choking sound, trying and failing to swallow back his anger. I’d gotten to him. I was glad.

  “I spent forty-one years on Wall Street, Madelyn. Forty-one years! I know everybody who’s anybody in New York.”

  “Been getting a lot of calls from them lately, have you?”

  Sterling went on as if he hadn’t even heard me.

  “The wealthiest people in the world came to me for advice. I managed one of the largest investment portfolios in the country. For forty years, my clients had returns of ten percent minimum. Minimum! I helped thousands of people. Back in the eighties—”

  “Sterling, are you crazy?” I asked, wondering if it might be true. “You didn’t help people. You took their money, raked a pile off the top for yourself, and then paid out that annual ten percent return with the money of the next poor sucker who came through your door. You didn’t invest money, Sterling. You stole it. That’s why you’re in jail. Remember? You’re one of the reasons everybody is broke!”

  He started to shout at me, spitting out all his favorite insults, names, denials, and epithets. Sterling Baron’s Greatest Hits.

  Everything was everybody else’s fault. Everybody else was inferior, wrong, clueless, and out to get him. It was a familiar playback; I’d heard it all before. But this time was different. This time I didn’t have to sit there and take it.

  I shouted back, determined to make myself heard over the tirade, telling him I
was hanging up and not to call me back—not ever. I stood up, ready to slam the phone down.

  Sterling stopped for a moment and then called out, “Wait! Madelyn, wait! Don’t hang up!”

  He was still shouting, but this time it was different. There was something in his voice that I’d never heard before—fear.

  “Madelyn. Please. I’m sorry. Please don’t hang up.”

  An apology? From Sterling? That was a first. I didn’t say anything, waiting for him to make the next move.

  “I need a favor.”

  Of course he did. I told myself to hang up. But his voice, the fear in his voice . . . I folded one arm protectively across my chest.

  “What?”

  “My sentencing hearing . . .”

  “I heard they’d put it off again.”

  “They did. But even Gene will run out of stall tactics eventually. He thinks it would help if you’d come and testify on my behalf.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “I’m going away for a long time. I know that. But if the judge is lenient, I might get as few as ten years. If you spoke at the sentencing, it would make me seem more sympathetic, more human. You know. Thirty happy years of marriage. A family man . . .”

  My breath caught in my throat. For a moment, it almost felt like my heart had stopped beating.

  “A family man? Our marriage, happy?” I choked. “Oh, Sterling. You really are deluded. No, Sterling. No. Some lies are just too big.”

  I couldn’t bear to listen to any more. I hung up the phone, leaned against the kitchen counter, and covered my eyes with my hand. Twin teardrops slipped out from beneath my palm. Two for Sterling. Two for me. Two for everything we’d done to each other.

  16

  Tessa

  Picking out the fabric took longer than I’d thought, and then there was that whole scene with Candy Waldgren. I should have gone straight home after I finished. Lee was waiting for me and he was making lasagna. He makes great lasagna. Instead, I drove to Oak Leaf Lane. I couldn’t help myself.

  Even in the dim light of the streetlamp, I could see that Beecher Cottage was badly in need of a paint job. And a new porch. The shutters were in terrible shape too. There was an expensive, cream-colored sedan parked in front of the house. It seemed like I’d seen it somewhere before.

  I pulled to the curb a few doors down from Beecher Cottage, turned off the car, and stared at the ramshackle old house. The living room window glowed with the light of a brass floor lamp that stood near the window. Who had turned it on?

  Someone turned on the porch light. The door opened and Abigail Spaulding walked out, looking tight-lipped and angry. She was followed by a woman, barefoot and wearing a baggy sweater, about my age, with beautiful sad eyes and an expression even angrier than Abigail’s.

  I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but the mute workings of her lips and the jagged movement of her right arm as she gestured toward the street and the way Abigail swiftly descended the porch steps and marched down the walkway gave me the general gist of the one-sided conversation. Abigail climbed into the big sedan and drove off. The woman smiled grimly and turned to go inside the house, slamming the door so hard that even inside my car, I could hear the reverberation.

  The whole scene couldn’t have taken more than a minute to play out. But even with her unkempt hair, her shapeless sweater, and with the evidence of time and troubles etched into her once smooth face, I knew that Candy Waldgren was telling the truth.

  Madelyn Beecher had come home to New Bern.

  17

  Madelyn

  If I’d slammed the door any harder it would have come off the hinges. Who did she think she was?

  Angry as I was, I almost laughed at that.

  She was Abigail Burgess Wynne, of course! And judging by the incredible gall she displayed in showing up uninvited on my doorstep, she had changed not at all. There she was, trying to run me out of town—again.

  When I answered the door, I’d stood there for a moment, absolutely dumbstruck. Though her appearance had changed so little in the years since I’d last seen her, it took a moment to convince myself that the woman standing there really was Abigail.

  She smiled and asked if she could come inside. In my shock, I let her—but only as far as the foyer.

  “I heard you were back in town, so I just thought I’d stop by and say hello.”

  “Why?”

  She frowned. “You needn’t take such a hostile tone, Madelyn. I know that our history together hasn’t been exactly . . . shall we say, cordial? But that was a long time ago. Things are different now. Water under the bridge and all that.”

  She looked down, fiddling with her gloves as she spoke, tugging at each leather finger and then pulling at the wrist and stretching them tight over her hands, smiling one of those obligatory smiles people paste on to help them get past awkward moments.

  “When I heard you’d moved back into Beecher Cottage and had plans to turn it into an inn, I just thought I’d—”

  “Drop by with a houseplant and a Hallmark card? Quit pretending, Abigail. You’re here because you want something. What is it?”

  She gave a quick, sharp tug on each of her gloves, then intertwined her fingers and folded her hands together at her waist. “I’ve heard about your troubles with Sterling.”

  “Really? I didn’t peg you for the sort of woman who reads the tabloids.”

  “I don’t.” She shot me a look, then went on. “Besides, one needn’t read the scandal sheets to know about your situation. The Wall Street Journal has done quite a few stories on you and your husband, you know. So have all the other financial pages. Anyway, when I heard tonight that you were planning on opening an inn I talked to a few people, made a few calls.... To get to the point, Madelyn, I understand that you’re in terrible financial straits. And, at least to some degree, I feel responsible for your situation.”

  You do? This should be interesting.

  “I don’t condone what went on between you and Woolley, but it wasn’t the first time he cheated on me, nor was it the last. You were so young and I knew what Woolley was like, how single-minded he could be when he wanted something.”

  Or someone. Oh, yes. Yes, he could.

  I had heard from Woolley’s own lips how, for nearly two years, he had wined and dined the beautiful Abigail Burgess. How he had wanted her and how she had resisted, he never giving up and she never giving in, which, of course, only inflamed his desire more. When he’d finally won her, she’d told him point blank that she’d marry him but never love him. He was convinced she was just being coy. He was wrong.

  I’d heard the tale a hundred times. It was Woolley’s favorite postcoital bedtime story. I’d lie next to him on the rumpled sheets, my skin still hot from the heat of his hands, and listen to him talk about her, how cold she was, how beautiful she was, and how he hated her.

  It wasn’t true, of course. No man talks that much and that passionately about a woman he hates, especially not when he’s in bed with another woman. Woolley loved Abigail and only Abigail. I was her stand-in in his bed, nothing more.

  Abigail played her hand well. Even after she’d told him she didn’t, couldn’t, and wouldn’t love him, he kept pursuing her. Abigail’s heart was the one thing Woolley’s millions couldn’t buy, but he never stopped trying.

  What if I’d played my hand differently? What if I’d made Woolley pursue me instead of allowing myself to be scooped up and taken home like some abandoned pup, grateful and fawning and oh so eager to please? If I’d been as clever as Abigail, would Woolley have loved me? Would Sterling? Would anyone?

  I don’t know. I never will. But one thing is certain, I won’t let it happen again. I’m not going to be pushed out or pushed around ever again, not by anyone, not even Abigail.

  Abigail swallowed hard before continuing. “I should have handled things differently, not taken my anger out on you. But Woolley’s unfaithfulness hurt me terribly. . . .”

  “You we
ren’t hurt,” I spat. “You were embarrassed. Worried that people would see through that little farce you played with Woolley.”

  “Maybe that’s how it looked to you, but that’s not . . . I’m not . . .” She stopped for a moment. I could see the muscles twitch near her jaw as she clenched her teeth together.

  “That was all a long time ago,” she said. “And I’m not here to talk about that. I came to talk about you.”

  I let my arms drop by my side and looked her straight in the eye but said nothing, enjoying the expression of discomfort on Abigail’s face and remembering one of Sterling’s maxims of negotiation—the first one to talk loses.

  Abigail licked her lips. “Later, after that day in Woolley’s office, I . . . well, I always felt bad about how I treated you. You were so young. I know all about how the schemes of powerful men can entrap a young and friendless girl. And then, when I heard you’d ended up with Sterling . . .”

  She waited a moment, hoping, I suppose, that by some word or movement I might acknowledge her comment.

  I didn’t so much as blink.

  “Even before his arrest, I knew what kind of man Sterling Baron was. Woolley liked him, but I didn’t. Woolley was never a good judge of character.”

  I smiled a little, realizing that her comment could easily be construed as insulting—to both of us. But Abigail didn’t seem to pick up on that.

  “When I heard that you’d married Sterling, I felt sorry for you. I saw pictures of you in the papers, at gallery openings and charity galas. You had money and jewelry and clothes and I suppose everyone thought you were the luckiest woman on earth. I knew better. Your eyes were so dead. You were just a fly in Sterling Baron’s web. And I always felt that I’d participated, at least in a small way, in your capture.

  “Diamonds are cold comfort, poor substitutes for love. I learned that too late. Almost too late.” Her voice dropped and softened until it was almost a whisper. “Franklin Spaulding showed me what I was missing.”

  Did she think I cared? Did she suppose that because we’d both held membership in the sisterhood of loveless marriages to wealthy men, that meant I was interested in hearing about her love life?