Needle and Thread (2 page)

“I'll be at Camden Falls Elementary,” Flora said. “In sixth grade. Olivia and Nikki are going to be in my class. Ruby will be in fourth grade.”

“I have Mrs. Fulton,” said Robby. “I always have her. She's very nice. She has lots of glue.”

Robby left Flora and began wandering around Needle and Thread. He let his hand graze bolts of fabric as he passed the racks of quilting cottons. He examined the displays of buttons and laces. He eyed with interest the small table near the back of the store where old Mary Woolsey sat when she took in mending. He passed his mother, who was leafing through pattern books. Finally, he returned to the front of the store and looked at the flyers by the register.

“‘Make a teddy bear,'” he read aloud. “‘Learn to sew, have fun, and help a kid in need.' Flora,” he said, “what is this?”

“It's a class we're going to have here at the store,” she explained.

“And it was all Flora's idea,” a voice said. Flora turned around to see Olivia come jangling through the door. “Hi, everyone!” Olivia called. “Hi, Gigi. Hi, Min. Hi, Robby.”

“Hello, Olivia,” replied Robby.

Olivia peered at the flyer Robby was holding. “These came out really well,” she said.

“Camden Falls Art Supply printed them,” said Gigi. “I picked them up on my way to the store this morning. They
did
come out well, didn't they?”

“But what do you mean, ‘Learn to sew and help a kid in need'?” asked Robby.

“It's a really cool idea,” said Olivia. “You can take the class for free. You sign up ahead of time, and when you come to the store, we give you everything you need to make a teddy bear. We'll help you make it — if you don't already know how to sew — and then all the finished bears will be donated to kids who …” (Olivia paused and glanced at Flora) “to kids who really need them.”

“That's okay,” said Flora. “You can say it. Robby, after the car accident —”

“The one you and Ruby were in with your parents?”

“Yes. After the car accident, when the police officer came to tell Ruby and me that our parents had died, she gave each of us a teddy bear. And then I read about this organization that gives teddies to kids who need them — kids who are in the hospital, or who have lost their homes, or who are really sad.”

“Like you and Ruby,” said Robby.

Flora swallowed. “Well, yes.” Talking about the accident had become a little easier, but not much.

“I want to make a teddy bear,” said Robby.

“Great. You can be the first one to sign up for a class,” said Olivia.

Robby grinned and shouted across the store, “Mom, I'm going to learn to sew, have fun, and help a kid in need!”

The bell over the door jangled again … and again and again as customers came and went.

“Land sakes, what a busy morning,” said Min.

Ruby returned from her errands, and she and Flora began assembling teddy bear kits for the classes. Olivia, who got paid to work at the store since her father had lost his job, rang up purchases while Min and Gigi helped customers. Olivia took her work very seriously.

It wasn't until after lunch that things quieted down, and when they did, Nikki arrived. She stepped cautiously through the door, barely causing the bell to ring.

“Hi,” she said shyly.

“Nikki, dear,” said Gigi. “How nice that you could stop by.”

Nikki Sherman, scrawny and unkempt, lived on the outskirts of Camden Falls. Until her brother had found a bicycle at the dump and fixed it up for her, she hadn't had a way to come into town on her own. And she had even fewer reasons to do so. She almost never had money to spend, and until recently she'd had no friends, either. But the summer — and Flora and Ruby's arrival — had changed that.

Olivia, Ruby, Flora, and Nikki sprawled on the couches at the front of Needle and Thread. Min and Gigi sat behind the counter while a sole customer roamed the store.

“I can't believe summer's over,” said Olivia, letting out a loud sigh. “It always goes by too fast.”

“I thought you liked school,” said Ruby.

“I do. But I like vacation just as much.”

“This summer seemed really long to me,” said Flora.

“Me, too,” said Nikki. “But I still don't want to go back to school.”

“Why not?” asked Ruby. “School's fun. You get to be with your friends.”

“
You
don't
have
friends yet,” Flora said to Ruby. “I mean, friends your own age.”

“I do, too. Lacey is my age. Almost. And I'll have more friends soon. Nikki, how come you don't want to go to school?”

Nikki shrugged. “I just don't.”

“Not even if you and Flora and I will be in the same class?” asked Olivia, who knew why Nikki didn't want to go to school. It must have been awful to be a Sherman in Camden Falls. The Shermans had an unfortunate reputation, mainly because Mr. and Mrs. Sherman drank too much and Mr. Sherman had a terrible temper. The three Sherman kids showed up at school in ill-fitting clothes and were able to bathe only when the plumbing in their little house was in working order. Olivia hoped school might improve for Nikki now that they were all friends.

“Well, that will make it better,” Nikki agreed. “Plus, we'll have Mrs. Mandel.”

Every student at Camden Falls Elementary hoped to get Mrs. Mandel for sixth grade.

The girls lounged on the couches until Nikki looked at the Needle and Thread clock.

“Oh!” she cried. “I have to go! I promised Tobias I'd get home by three to take care of Mae so he can go to work. He got a part-time job at John's.”

“John's?” said Flora.

“That auto body place out by the new grocery store.” Nikki jumped to her feet. “Okay. I'll see you guys at school tomorrow. Wish me luck on the bus.”

“Good luck,” said Flora and Ruby dutifully.

And Olivia said, “Stick with Mae. Maybe no one will bother you if you're sitting with a first-grader.”

The door closed behind Nikki, and Flora felt in her pocket for the photograph. Then she glanced at her sister. “Hey, Ruby. If you'll go to Ma Grand-mère to get chocolate chip cookies for you and Olivia and me, I'll pay for the cookies.”

“Cool,” said Ruby, who grabbed the money from her sister and was out the door before Flora could change her mind.

Flora scooted down the couch to Olivia and thrust the photo in front of her. “Look. Look at this,” she said.

“What is it?” Olivia squinted at the picture of a young woman posing stiffly with a little girl.

“I found it in this box of papers that was in the attic,” Flora replied. “I haven't told anyone about the box yet,” she added, squirming slightly. “It's old family stuff and I kind of want to keep it a secret.”

“Min's stuff? How come you want to keep it a secret?”

“I just do.”

“Okay…. Who are these people?”

“That's just the thing. I've been looking at the picture over and over, thinking the woman is familiar. The little girl is my mother when she was four years old. See?” Flora turned over the photo to show Olivia the writing on the back. “It says ‘Frannie and Mary — nineteen seventy.' Frannie is my mother. And at first I thought Mary might be Min's sister, Mary Elizabeth. A nice photo of my mother with her aunt. But take a look at the necklace Mary is wearing.”

Olivia brought the photo closer to her face and gazed at it for a moment. Then she screamed and dropped the picture to the floor.

“Shh!”
hissed Flora. She grabbed for the photo and turned around to look at Min and Gigi, but they were busy talking with the UPS woman who had arrived at the back door with a delivery. Then she clasped Olivia's hand. “It's who I think it is, isn't it?” she said quietly.

“Scary Mary,” whispered Olivia, “wearing her star necklace.”

“What was my mother doing with Mary Woolsey? I didn't think Mary knew my family back then.”

“I have no idea,” Olivia croaked, and she cleared her throat.

“Really? You don't have any idea at all? You've told me everything you know about Mary?”

“Cross my heart. She's, like, eighty years old. She lives alone — you saw her house. She's possibly a witch and definitely crazy. She's buried some kind of treasure in her garden and she keeps a child hidden in her basement.”

Flora narrowed her eyes at Olivia.

“Okay, those are just rumors. But they might be true.”

“What else?”

“She catches rats in her attic and fries them up for dinner?” suggested Olivia.

“Come on. Tell me something that will help.”

“I don't know anything more. I mean, anything more than you do. She comes here three times a week to take in people's mending and stuff, and to return it to them when it's finished. She's been doing that ever since the store opened, I think, and that's how she earns her money, thanks to Gigi and Min.” Olivia looked at the photo again and shuddered. “I really don't know what she would have been doing with your mother.” She paused. “Maybe your mother had a secret past.”

Flora was about to reply when Ruby entered the store, holding aloft a paper bag from Ma Grand-mère. Flora stuffed the picture back in her pocket and whispered to Olivia, “We can discuss this later.”

Now she had even more questions … and no answers. Although she did like the idea of someone, anyone, having a secret past.

If you had never before visited Camden Falls, you might first choose to walk down Main Street; you might walk from one end to the other, passing Frank's Beans and the used bookstore and the post office and Ma Grand-mère. You might pause to look in the window of Camden Falls Art Supply with its back-to-school theme, and the window of Needle and Thread, where Evelyn Walter and Min Read have already displayed orange and black Halloween fabrics. You might call hello to cranky Gina Grindle as she closes up Stuff 'n' Nonsense for the evening, and then you might glance curiously at Sonny Sutphin as he inches his wheelchair along the sidewalk. You might breathe in the aroma of oregano and cheese and tomato sauce as you pass College Pizza, and of chocolate and almonds and butterscotch as you pass Dutch Haus, the ice-cream parlor.

At Dutch Haus, you would find yourself at one end of downtown Camden Falls, and you might choose to turn left off Main Street, and then right onto Aiken Avenue. If you did this, you would soon face a row of eight attached homes, a mansionlike block of granite known locally as the Row Houses. These homes, nearly identical to one another, once grand, now solidly practical, were built 125 years before Flora and Ruby came to Camden Falls to live with their grandmother, which was 71 years after Min Read (then Mindy Davis) was born in the very house in which she now lives with Ruby and Flora.

If you were standing on Aiken Avenue not too long after Flora Northrop showed her friend Olivia Walter the mysterious photograph, you would be able to peek into the lives of the Row House residents on an early September evening, the night before school starts in Camden Falls.

In the house at the left end of the row, you would find the Morrises. There are four Morris children, and tomorrow Alyssa, the youngest, will begin all-day preschool, which means that for the first time, every Morris child will be in school five full days a week. Mrs. Morris thought Alyssa would be thrilled to go off to school like her older sister and brothers, but now Alyssa is close to having a tantrum.

“I don't
want
to go to school,” she cries, “and you can't make me.”

“But, Lissy, school is fun,” says Lacey, her big sister. “Especially preschool. You get to paint and make things and play games.”

“I can do all those things with you and Travis and Mathias,” says Alyssa, and her sister sighs in a very frustrated fashion.

Next door, old Mr. Willet is just as frustrated as Lacey Morris, except that he's frustrated with his wife, who has been insisting all day that people are spying on her from inside their television set. She has draped the set with a towel, and anytime Mr. Willet tries to fold it up and put it away, she exclaims, “But now they can see us! And I don't want people spying on me. I'm still in my nightie.” This is not true. Mrs. Willet is dressed. She has been dressed in the same outfit for three days straight. Mr. Willet, for the life of him, can't convince her to take off the pants and top he chose for her on Sunday morning. This business of dressing and undressing has been a problem all summer long, and he has no idea what to do about it. He has no idea what to do about the TV people, either.

In the house between the Willets' and the one Flora, Ruby, and Min now share, you would find the Malones — Dr. Malone, Camden Falls's dentist, and his daughters, Margaret and Lydia. Margaret is sixteen and will be a junior at Camden Falls Central High School. She is beginning to think about colleges and wishes her mother were alive to help her with the big decision she will soon have to make. Not that her father won't be helpful, but Margaret is thinking about going to Mount Holyoke, which is where her mother went to college.