Let it Sew (5 page)

Tori shook her head in amusement as Debbie reached across the table and helped herself
to a bite of Dixie’s scone, too. “Wrong?”

“With the four of you.”

“Oh.” Reaching onto Leona’s plate, Tori liberated the block of fudge she’d been trying
to resist all evening, stopping every few bites to bring Debbie up to speed on Maime
Wellington and the changes in store for Sweet Briar in the weeks ahead.

When she was done, Debbie could only release a disbelieving sigh. “We can’t let this
happen.”

“I’m not so sure we have a say,” Tori said. “But whatever say we
can
have, the four of us will most certainly voice.”

“Good.” Debbie pushed the pie plate beside the one containing the half-eaten scone
and propped up her chin with her hand. “I can’t imagine what this town will look like
without the garland-wrapped light poles and their great big giant red bows. Suzanna
and Jackson equate that with Christmas in Sweet Briar almost as much as they do the
big tree in the center of the Green.”

She closed her eyes against the mental image of the large pine tree being replaced,
instead, by a dozen or more aluminum trees and opted not to share that change with
Debbie. Her friend would find out soon enough, as would the rest of the town.

“Makes me wonder if maybe Charlotte Devereaux drew any pictures of Sweet Briar at
Christmastime. You know, just so we can remember the way it was . . .” Her words trailed
off as she thought back to the photographs she’d seen in the background of the deceased
woman’s sketch, the pristine detail and care still mind-boggling twenty-four hours
later.

Debbie sat up tall, any hint of melancholy being shoved to the side by one of her
megawatt smiles. “Oooh, did Georgina find you?”

“Georgina?” she asked. “No. Why?”

“Frieda wants you to have that framed sketch of the library that was on Charlotte’s
mantel!”

Tori felt the crackle of excitement as it skittered up her spine. “She does?”

Debbie nodded. “You’ll probably want to double-check the details with Georgina, but
apparently, Frieda wants you to come by Charlotte’s tomorrow so she can give it to
you in person.”

And just like that, all remaining Maime Wellington–induced stress was gone, in its
place the same calming sense of peace she got whenever she thought of the library.

“Maybe, while you’re there, you can see some of the other sketches that were in that
book Frieda gave her,” Debbie continued. “Then you can tell us.”

Surprised by the unchecked curiosity in her friend’s voice, Tori drew back a little.
“Why is everyone so curious about Charlotte’s sketches?”

A hint of crimson rose in Debbie’s cheeks. “I can’t speak for Margaret Louise or Georgina
or any of the others. Their reasons might be different. But for me? Well, I guess
I was shocked by just how untouched Charlotte’s ability to draw was despite her Alzheimer’s.
My great-aunt died of that when I was a teenager. Most of the time, at the end, she
was out of it. She didn’t know my name, didn’t know her husband’s name, didn’t know
her own name. But one day, when I stopped by for a visit, she was able to recall every
detail of a luncheon she’d had with a friend four years earlier. I tried to tell her
husband, my mom, my cousin, and anyone who would listen. But everyone discounted it.
Almost as if the Alzheimer’s had forever tainted everything that came out of her mouth.”

Debbie clasped her hands on the top of the table and shrugged. “That always bothered
me. It was like her words meant nothing any longer.”

“You could come with me,” she suggested. “That way you could see the sketches with
your own two eyes.”

Despite her best efforts, Debbie’s squeal still managed to turn the heads of more
than a few of her customers. “Oh, Victoria, thank you. I’d love that.”

“Good. Then it’s settled.” Leaning to her left, Tori retrieved her backpack purse
from the floor and hoisted it onto her shoulder. “And maybe, just maybe, Charlotte
can rest easy knowing that someone saw what she saw at the end even if she couldn’t
always put it into words.”

Chapter 5

Despite the fact that Charlotte Devereaux’s address had them standing mere blocks
from the town square, Tori couldn’t help feeling as if she were standing somewhere
a lot closer to Beverly Hills, California, than Sweet Briar, South Carolina. The home
itself was southern in so far as it was more plantation than modern mansion, but regardless,
it was huge.

The front columns that seemingly rose from the ground to support the two-story overhang
were pristine white, gleaming against the brick exterior of a house more suitable
for a family of ten than the four that had lived here for the better part of five
decades.

Yet as breathtaking as the home and the spacious grounds were, Tori couldn’t help
feeling a sense of sadness for the woman who had died inside these walls, held captive
until the end by a brain that had become traitorous.

Tori lifted her finger toward the doorbell, only to let it drift back to her side
without pushing the button. “Did she live here alone at the end?” she asked, turning
to look at Debbie.

“No. Both boys still live here from what I gather. Brian lives in one wing with an
array of staff assigned to meet his needs, and Ethan pretty much rules the rest of
the roost.”

Inhaling a measure of comfort into her lungs at the news, Tori looked out at the line
of oak trees that bordered the driveway and commanded the sight to memory so she could
share it with Milo later that evening. “At least she wasn’t alone in this huge house.”

“Mizz Devereaux may as well have been alone for as much time as those boys spent with
her at the end.” Tori and Debbie looked to the left in time to see Frieda ascending
onto the porch from a side staircase not more than ten feet from where they stood.
Holding a bouquet of wildflowers to her nose, the nurse took in their fragrance before
offering a sniff to Tori and Debbie. “Brian did what he could, but his mother’s condition
tended to leave him agitated and out of sorts, prompting his caregivers to earmark
his visits for those times when his schedule matched with Mizz Devereaux’s periods
of lucidity.”

“And Ethan?” Debbie asked as she handed the flowers back to Frieda. “He didn’t spend
time with his mother?”

A low, mirthless laugh escaped through Frieda’s expansive mouth. “His version of spending
time with Mizz Devereaux extended to asking for larger and larger handouts. Only he
timed
his
visits for the times when she
was
foggy and confused. That way she wouldn’t ask questions and he could get away with
what he wanted.”

“And that was different . . . how?” As soon as the words were out, Debbie held up
her palms in surrender. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. It was out of line.”

Frieda shifted the bouquet to her left hand and touched Debbie with her right. “It
was also the truth. Mizz Devereaux had a weak spot for Ethan, and he took advantage
of it every chance he could. Funny thing was, she knew it. But with Brian the way
he is and her husband gone, I think she was just too tired to try and change the way
she’d done things for so long. It wasn’t worth wasting her rare bursts of energy.
Besides, he avoided her at those times.”

“Do you think she knew what was happening to her?” It was a question that had been
circulating in Tori’s thoughts ever since the viewing but wasn’t one she necessarily
planned to voice aloud. As she stood there, however, on Charlotte’s front porch, listening
to how alone the woman must have felt, it was all Tori could think about, let alone
ask.

A dark cloud passed across Frieda’s face, sparking an inexplicable chill down Tori’s
spine. “In the beginning, I didn’t think so. But as time went on, I began to suspect
maybe she did.” Then, with a quick glance from side to side, the nurse took a step
closer and lowered her voice to a near whisper. “I even felt like she was trying to
tell me something. Something important. But the harder she tried, the less I understood
and the more frustrated Mizz Devereaux seemed to become.”

“What kinds of things would she say?” Tori finally asked.

The tips of Frieda’s fingers paled as she pushed her hand to her mouth. “It wasn’t
one single thing, but rather more of a bunch of little things that always made me
feel as if there was something she was trying to get off her chest. I’d reassure her
that she was a good person when she got like that, but it never seemed to help. That’s
when I got the sketchbook. That seemed to help for a while. And then, one day, the
fervor she drew with began to feel more like”—Frieda craned her neck toward the empty
driveway to the side of the porch—“
fear
. Like she was in a race of some sort.”

Debbie gripped Frieda’s hands and held them until they stopped trembling. “Fear about
what?”

Frieda closed her eyes and sucked in a deep breath before releasing it into the clear
November day. “I don’t know. At first I thought she was simply afraid of dying. But
I think it was more than that. She seemed more desperate for me to understand whatever
it was she was trying to say. And then it was too late. She—and whatever she was trying
to tell me—was . . .
gone
.”

With a shake of her head, Frieda brought the bouquet of flowers to her nose once again
and inhaled slowly, deliberately, before meeting Tori’s gaze. “I’m sorry. I—I didn’t
ask you to come so I could unleash my regrets on you. I asked you to come because
I thought you’d like to have Mizz Devereaux’s sketch of the library. I noticed how
much you enjoyed the miniature version in her sketchbook last night, and I want it
to go to someone who will appreciate it.”

Pivoting on her soft-soled shoes, Frieda motioned for them to follow her into the
house. Once inside, she bypassed the center hallway in all its gleaming glory and
led the way down a side one instead, her footsteps nearly silent against the lush
carpet. “Despite the fact that virtually every room in this home looks like something
out of a high-end decorating magazine, Mizz Devereaux preferred to spend her days
in her husband’s study. She said it was where she felt closest to him.”

Tori felt the catch in her throat as their feet left carpet in favor of wood as they
stepped into the room she’d seen through Charlotte’s eyes just the night before. In
fact, the woman’s drawing had been so accurate, it took Tori all of about a second
to locate the chair that had been the vantage point.

She ran her hand along the back of the upholstered recliner, the pull to sit far stronger
than her will to resist. “May I?” she finally asked.

Frieda nodded. “Of course.” Then, without missing a beat, the woman pulled Charlotte’s
sketchbook from a desk drawer and opened it to the first page before setting it in
Tori’s lap. “It’s amazing, isn’t it?”

And it was.

Because as skillful as the picture was when observed out of context, it was mind-blowing
when given the bird’s-eye view from which it had been executed. “Wow.” Slowly, she
looked from the book to the room and back again, a series she repeated over and over
as she compared the two. “Look at this,” she called to Debbie, who was making the
rounds of the room on foot. “Look here, at the fireplace”—her finger tapped the sketch,
drawing her friend’s eye to the spot in question—“do you see that crack in that brick
right there? Now remember where it is in the drawing—third row of bricks from the
bottom, fourth brick in from the opening of the hearth, right?” At Debbie’s nod, Tori
pulled her finger from the book and pointed it toward the correlating brick in the
actual fireplace. “She not only put it in, she got it exactly right. And look at the
clock. It must be broken because it shows the same time now as it does in the picture.”

“It’s been broken for as long as I’ve been here,” Frieda volunteered from her spot
in the rocking chair forward and to the side of where Tori sat. “Mentioned it a time
or two to Ethan, but he didn’t care. He had an array of Rolexes he’d gotten from Mizz
Devereaux and his father over the years, so he wasn’t too concerned about the clock
in here.”

She heard Frieda, even registered what the woman was saying on some level, but her
focus was on the picture and the extraordinary detail that had come from the mind
of an Alzheimer’s patient. Charlotte was present in the room every time she drew a
picture.

“I mean, look at this.” Tori held the sketchbook out for Frieda to see. “Charlotte
even put a piece of scrap paper on the mantel and made it look as if it was going
to fall off.”

“Because it was. Sticking things in places where they didn’t belong was always Ethan’s
way of cleaning up.”

“I thought you said he didn’t come in here often,” Debbie reminded her from somewhere
behind Tori.

“He didn’t. Not unless he wanted something. And even then, it didn’t matter how she
was feeling or what she was working on in her book, he just wanted to ask whatever
he wanted to ask and hightail it out of here as quickly as possible.” Frieda sighed
in disgust. “Right after I gave her that book, she drew a picture for him. Even ripped
it out of her book so he could keep it. But he barely even looked at it, opting instead
to shove it on the mantel like you see in that picture.”

Tori looked again at the picture, at the scrap paper dangerously close to the edge
of the mantel, and realized Frieda was right. “Wow, if you look close, you can actually
see the torn edges of the paper,” she mused in an awed whisper before Frieda’s words
hit home. “But how could he do that to her? She
made
him something.”

“Now you understand the talk about him at our circle meeting on Monday night.” Debbie
came around the back of the chairs and perched on the edge of a leather ottoman at
Frieda’s feet. “I think giving Charlotte that sketchbook was such a gift, Frieda.
It’s obvious she enjoyed it.”

Tori half listened as she turned the page, the next picture in the book nearly identical
to the first with a few minor exceptions . . .

“I have to admit part of the reason I gave Mizz Devereaux that book was to help me
understand her. But it didn’t work.” Frieda craned her head around the edge of the
chair to get a better view of Tori’s lap. “And now you see why.”

Tori stared down at the new sketch, her mind registering the absence of Frieda’s stethoscope
from the side table and its food tray replacement complete with a steaming cup of
tea. “It’s the same picture,” she mumbled.

“As is the one after that . . . and the one after that . . . and the one after that.”
Frieda’s shoulders rose and fell in frustration. “Any hope I had of figuring out what
was bothering her via pictures was short lived.”

Debbie leaned forward, tugging the corner of the sketchbook into her field of vision
before Tori could flip ahead. “The shadows in the room are different.”

Frieda agreed. “That one was drawn later in the evening—at suppertime.”

Sadness turned to anger as Tori took a closer look, Charlotte’s drawing for Ethan
still lying precariously on the mantel. Still unwanted. Still unnoticed.

Picture after picture was essentially the same, with only slight variations depending
on things like the time of day or visitors in the room. But the vantage point was
always the same. Charlotte’s chair. Looking toward the mantel.

“I hope you don’t think I was lazy looking at those sketches because I wasn’t. I tried
to move that picture Ethan stuck on the mantel many, many times. But every time I
did, Mizz Devereaux got upset.”

Tori pulled her focus from the sketchbook and fixed it, instead, on Frieda. “Upset?
Upset how?”

“She’d start rocking in her chair. Sometimes she’d make noises, but most of the time
it was just the rocking. Like a little kid who’d gotten in trouble . . . or was afraid
she would.” Frieda pushed off the chair and wandered over to the mantel, her dark
hand gliding its way across the edge. “I hated to see her like that so I just left
it.”

Tori nodded and then looked back at the book, her fingers continuing to flip from
sketch to sketch.

“And then, one day, it was gone.” Frieda dropped her hand to her waist and turned
to face them, her eyes wide. “And so was Mizz Devereaux.”

“Gone?” Tori and Debbie echoed in unison.

Frieda worried her lower lip into her mouth. “That’s the day she passed. In her sleep.”

“Did you know it was coming?” Debbie asked as Tori flipped to the last picture in
the book.

“Mizz Devereaux’s death? Of course. I knew it was a matter of time. I just thought
we had more of it.”

She opened her mouth to ask Frieda a question but slammed it shut as Charlotte’s final
picture came into view. The sketch itself was the same as all the others with the
mantel, the framed sketches of Sweet Briar landmarks, the crack in the brick, the
end table with its variation of the day, and the broken clock. Only this time, the
picture Charlotte had given Ethan was faceup on the hearth, the victim of a swift
autumn breeze . . .

Pulling the book closer, Tori stared down at Ethan’s picture, the chosen setting bringing
an instant flash of recognition.

“She drew him a picture of the library?” she whispered.

Debbie and Frieda rushed to see the picture that had been hidden from view for nearly
two dozen pages while she took in the near-perfect copy of the framed sketch showcased
on the mantel less than three yards from where she sat.

“She liked to duplicate drawings, didn’t she?”

Debbie’s words broke through Tori’s woolgathering. “I—I guess.”

“Well, let’s see.” Frieda made her way back to the mantel, only to return to Tori’s
side once again, the framed sketch in her outstretched hand. “Is it the same?”

Tori took the frame and held it next to the sketchbook, her eyes cataloging every
detail at warp speed.

“She drew the same trees, the same fine cracks in the front steps . . .”

She followed Debbie’s verbal tour around the picture until they reached the last spot.
Squinting at the sketch in front of her, she felt her stomach flop, once. Twice.