A Single Thread (Cobbled Court) (9 page)

But when I stepped through the door from the waiting room and Dr. Thayer himself was there to greet me, my heart started to beat a little faster. Something in his greeting, his solicitous tone as he asked how I was feeling today, and the weight of his arm across my shoulders as he escorted me into his private office rather than the examining room made a sick anticipation rise from the center of my stomach.

But it wasn’t until I was sitting in his office and Dr. Thayer folded his hands together, rested them on his desk, and said, “I’m sorry, Evelyn. The biopsy was positive. You have cancer,” that I understood what was happening.

He said those three words—You Have Cancer. And for a moment, everything stopped. My heart. My mind. My breath. Everything.

And when I took my next breath, everything had changed.

“E
xcuse me?” I asked, certain that I must have heard her wrong. “You’re going to get a what?”

Liza, who had broken with tradition by actually joining me at the breakfast table instead of pouring herself a cup of black coffee and going back to her room to drink it, stared at me over the edge of her cup.

“A tattoo,” she said. An inky ribbon of black eyeliner made her large brown eyes look even larger. She blinked them innocently but was unable to completely conceal her pleasure at my horrified reaction. The corner of her mouth twitched, threatening to split her lips into a smile as she went on.

“Nothing too elaborate. Not a drawing or anything, just two words. Lady Burgess. Right here,” she said, taking one finger and tracing an imaginary line from her jawline to her collarbone to indicate the proposed tattoo’s placement, “in black, gothic lettering. I spoke with a tattoo artist and picked out the design yesterday. My appointment is next week. It’s my birthday present to myself. It’s going to be incredible.
Very
striking.”

My stomach felt queasy, like I’d been poised at the top of a gigantic roller coaster that had suddenly taken a precipitous drop. “You can’t be serious.”

Liza was grinning openly now, not even trying to disguise her delight over my distress. “Of course I am. It’s no big deal, Aunt Abigail. Everyone gets tattoos these days; and besides, it’s my body,” she declared. “I’m an adult. I can do whatever I want with it, and there really isn’t anything you can do about it.”

She was right. For the hundredth time, I mentally cursed Harry Gulden. He’d foisted the responsibility for this delinquent monster of a girl onto me, and then he failed to provide me with any effective means of controlling her out-of-control behavior! If she’d been my daughter I’d have threatened to ground her, or eject her from my house, or my will, or something! But she wasn’t. And what’s more, no matter how immature her behavior was, she was right. She was of age. If she was determined to get a tattoo (and the steely glint in her eye told me she was), there was very little I could do to stop her—even if the tattoo she was determined to get was purposely designed to besmirch our family name and heap as much personal humiliation upon me as possible.

I remembered what I’d said to Franklin that day in the restaurant, my not-quite-joking declaration that I would not negotiate with a terrorist. Today it was even less funny than it had been at the time, because, as far as I was concerned, that’s what I was dealing with—a terrorist, or at least a blackmailer. If I didn’t negotiate with her, there was no question in my mind that she would do exactly as she threatened. She’d parade up and down the streets of New Bern in her horrible ripped jeans and tight black T-shirts with an enormous, hideously lettered tattoo that shouted our kinship emblazoned on her neck—her neck!

Liza stared at me, and I stared back. I blinked first.

“That’s right. It’s your birthday next week.” I tried to keep my tone casual. “Of course, you can get a tattoo…if that’s what you really want. You’ve such a pretty neck, Liza.” It was true.

Her neck was thin and elegant, a long, slender arc of white flesh that bowed gracefully from her jawline to her collarbone—a ballerina’s neck.

“Those tatoos are permanent, aren’t they? What if the design doesn’t turn out as well as you’d hoped? Or if the…the…artist”—it nearly choked me to apply that word to this situation, but if I had a chance of preventing this disaster, I knew I had to deal with Liza on her terms—“makes some kind of mistake?”

“Delilah is a famous tattoo artist. She doesn’t make mistakes.” That echo of a smile returned to Liza’s lips, but she still didn’t blink. She knew the game we were playing—and she knew that she was winning.

“Still. It would be a shame if it didn’t turn out as you’ve imagined. And there it would be. On your neck. Forever.” I paused. Liza said nothing. “Maybe there’s something you’d like more than a tattoo?”

A cashmere sweater? Legally obtained this time? A car? The Hope Diamond? She only had to name her price, and I’d pay it. Anything to keep my name—our name—from being immortalized in ink by a tattoo artist named Delilah.

“If you can think of another birthday gift you’d like in exchange for the tattoo, I’d be happy to get it for you. I was planning on getting you a present.” A lie, and we both knew it.

Liza’s eyes were triumphant. She had me where she wanted me—up against the ropes of social conformity.

“As a matter of fact, I did have something in mind.”

Of course she did. I’d known it from the beginning.

She reached into the back pocket of her jeans and pulled out a folded-up piece of newsprint. At first I was sure it was an advertisement, maybe for a computer, or the latest cell phone, or even a car, but when she unfolded the paper and handed it to me, all I saw was a picture of a middle-aged woman, slender with blue eyes and straight, sandy hair cut in an angled bob that mirrored the slant of her jaw. She wore a black sweater and trim blue jeans with chunky silver and turquoise earrings. A black, purple, and teal paisley shawl was draped over her shoulder, giving her a vaguely bohemian look, as if she’d once taught high-school art classes.

Now the woman obviously was involved in some sort of retail venture. She was standing in front of the old Fielding Drugstore. Dolly Chesterton had said that some woman from Texas had taken out a lease on the place, but I couldn’t recall the details. This must be her. Well, she’d certainly done a good job with remodeling the shop. The panes on the bowfront window were new and shining, but she’d been smart enough to retain the old woodwork, so the storefront kept the look and feel of an antique apothecary shop. She’d added another layer of crown molding around the doorframe to give it a more elegant appearance. The frame was painted black, and the sheen of it told me that she’d used an oil-based paint, certainly an extra expense, but the smooth, shining finish was worth it. The door itself was painted a vivid red that exactly matched the color of the potted geraniums on either side of the door. It was a charming effect. The door of the shop couldn’t have looked more welcoming.

Clearly, the owner of New Bern’s newest boutique had style, taste, and an eye for color. Either that or she knew enough to hire someone with those qualities.

What was this place, I wondered. A clothing store? In such an off-the-beaten-path location? Surely not. Perhaps an interior-design studio? I wasn’t exactly keen on the idea of Liza redecorating my guest room. Heaven knew what the girl would want, black wallpaper with white skulls, probably, but if the tasteful woman in the newspaper photograph was the one in charge of the design, it couldn’t be that bad. And even if it was, better skulls and crossbones in a back bedroom hidden from the eyes of my neighbors than “Lady Burgess” on Liza’s neck where everyone in New Bern would see it.

“It looks like a very nice shop. I’d been thinking myself that your room could do with a bit of updating,” I lied again. It was starting to become a habit. “New paint, wallpaper, drapes…whatever you’d like to make it reflect your own personality. How much do you think you’ll need?” I pushed the newspaper across the table and started to get up so I could go retrieve my pocketbook from the antique sideboard, but Liza interrupted.

“The story,” she said flatly. “You have to read it.”

The smile on her face faded as she handed the paper back to me. I felt a strange prickling on the back of my head, as if a migraine were about to come on. I retrieved my reading glasses that always hung on the chain around my neck, put them on, and began reading.

NEW BERN’S NEWEST ENTREPRENEUR IS FIGHTING THE ODDS

Quilt Pink. September 20. Breast cancer. I didn’t have to read more. I knew what Liza wanted.

When I looked up from the paper, Liza’s eyes were dry, but there was a rippling movement under the perfect, unblemished skin of her throat that showed she was swallowing back tears.

“What do you think? Does it ring any bells for you?” she asked. “When I read it, I figured it had to be some kind of omen. So that’s it. That’s what I want. On September twentieth, the anniversary of the day my mother died from breast cancer, you come to the quilt shop with me and make one of those blocks.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but Liza interrupted me.

“And don’t even bother to suggest that you make some big donation instead. You have to go yourself, in person, and I’m coming to watch you do it. It’s time you actually
did
something. Something besides writing a check.” Finally, she blinked, as if waiting for me to say something, but there was nothing to say.

“That’s the deal,” she said. “Otherwise, I’m getting that tattoo.”

“All right. I’ll go.”

“Good,” Liza said, but not convincingly. I got the feeling that she’d have preferred it if I’d argued, giving her an excuse to fight with me, but I wasn’t about to do so.

Liza took a final drink of the now-cold coffee, pushed back her chair, and headed toward the back door. “By the way, the quilting thing is for my mother. You still owe me a birthday present. I want three hundred and fifty dollars. You were right. My room needs redecorating.”

She let the screen door slam behind her as she stomped down the back porch steps and walked around the side of the house, not bothering to say where she was going or when she’d be back.

I dropped my head into my hands and rubbed my eyes. I’d been right. It was a migraine.