Stitches in Time (38 page)

The old woman had been right, there was no such thing as coincidence or accident. Every event, however random in appearance, formed part of a design too vast and too alien to be comprehended by limited human understanding. Events that were, on the surface, unimportant and meaningless—Rachel's choice of a thesis topic, Tony's decision to respond to a call he should never have answered—these and a dozen other strands in the web led inexorably toward a nexus in time, when the invisible hands of the weaver would draw the threads tight and complete the pattern. It had been predestinated and foreordained; their efforts to prevent the inevitable end had been as futile as the struggles of flies caught in a spider web.

In deadly patience she watched the illuminated numbers of the clock flash on and off. Two hours now since Adam had gone to his room. There had been no sound for over an hour. Time to get on with it.

She had taken off her shoes but had not undressed. Slowly she went to the door and eased it open. The hall light was on. The door of the room Kara occupied was closed. She had assumed it would be, because of the dog, and she didn't doubt that Kara was sound asleep. She had had quite a bit to drink. Adam was, the problem. His door was ajar, as she had expected.

She stood in the open doorway listening and watching, until Adam's door edged a little farther open. Figgin squeezed his portly form through the opening and padded toward her. She had expected that too. Picking him up, she put him in her room and closed the door. The turkey sandwich she had brought upstairs would keep him quiet long enough. It wouldn't take long.

She waited for another sixty seconds, counting them off, to make sure the cat's movement hadn't wakened Adam. Hearing nothing, she went to the stairs and descended them, placing each foot carefully on the outside of the tread to avoid a squeaking board.

There was no sound from the family room. The dogs wouldn't bark, they were accustomed to hearing people move around inside the house. One of the wall sconces was just outside Tony's room. That was all the light she would need.

The door squeaked slightly, but he didn't stir. She saw him more clearly than the dim glow should have allowed, as if another kind of light surrounded him. He was lying on his back, one arm across his chest, the other hanging limp off the bed. She stood looking at him for a moment, memorizing the features she would never see again—the mouth relaxed in sleep, framed by the cavalry-style
bravado of his mustache, the tousled golden hair, streaked with paler gold where the sun had bleached it…

Something buried deep in her mind whimpered and made a last frantic effort to fight free. “It's all right,” she whispered, soothing it. “It will soon be over.”

Her feet moved lightly and surely toward the wardrobe. The gun was there, where Kara had put it, on a high shelf. Sooner or later she would remember it and remove it, if Tony didn't find it first. Sooner rather than later—probably the following day. Kara wasn't usually careless about such things, but she had had a lot on her mind that evening. Tomorrow the gun would be gone. Another thread in the weaving…

Her fingers fumbled for a moment before they found the proper grip. Phil had insisted that Rachel handle the gun, had showed her how the safety worked and how to aim.

She heard him coming, though he could move quietly as a cat when he chose. She turned, without haste. It was too late, she was ready—-arms extended, one hand bracing the other, the muzzle pointed at the sleeper's chest.

“Rachel!”

“Don't wake him,” she said softly. “That would be cruel.”

“I had a feeling…” He lowered his voice; it was a deep, shaken sound, half-groan, half-whisper. “Mary Elizabeth wasn't the only one you—she—wanted to harm. It was his blood on that scrap in the quilt, wasn't it? One of the nail clippings too…Rachel—darling—can you hear me?”

“It's too late.” The taste of salt on her parted lips…Someone was crying. The tears streaked down her cheeks but her hands were steady as stone. “You can't stop it now. Don't come any closer. I don't want to hurt you.”

He was closer than she had realized, almost within
arm's reach—perhaps within his reach, his arms were longer than those of most people. The light from the hall fell across his face, scoring the harsh lines of it with deep shadows. The lines writhed, shifting, as he weighed the risks and tried to decide what to do.

Then the lines smoothed out and his clenched hands loosened and his breath went out in a long slow expiration. He took one step back, and then another. “You won't do it,” he said quietly. “You can't do it. Put the gun down, Rachel, and come here to me.”

The threads of the unfinished pattern stretched and grew taut, poised and quivering, before they slipped smoothly into place. The gun fell to the floor and Rachel turned blindly into Adam's outstretched arms.

 

She woke to find herself lying on her own bed with Adam holding her, and with no conscious recollection of what had happened after she stumbled into his embrace. He was fully dressed and sound asleep, but the moment she stirred he came awake. His arms tightened and he studied her face anxiously.

“It's all right, honey. Nothing happened.”

“How did I get here?”

“You don't remember?”

“I remember everything up to…It is all right,” she said, thinking how inadequate the trite phrase sounded. There should have been trumpets. “Did I faint?”

“I guess that's what it was. You were completely out of it and limp as one of Megan's floppy stuffed animals—except for your hands. I couldn't pry them loose, even after I had carried you upstairs and tried to put you on your bed.”

Her hands were relaxed now, resting against his chest. Rachel opened his shirt and saw the marks her nails had
left, even through the wool fabric. Her lips touched each of them in turn and came to rest on the largest bruise.

Adam groaned. “Don't do that. A polite ‘thank you' will suffice.”

“Who is Rosamund?”

“I haven't the faintest idea,” Adam said wildly. “What do you think you're—”

“You wrote her a letter.”

“Oh. Oh, that. A former teacher. Old. Retired. She likes to get—”

“That's all right, then.” Rachel kissed his throat and chin and jaw, and then his mouth, and finally his arms closed around her and his lips shaped themselves to fit hers.

She didn't hear the knocking until Adam breathed into her ear, “There's somebody at the door.”

“Mmmm,” said Rachel.

“It's probably Kara.”

“Who cares? Don't stop,” she added dreamily.

“It's now or never,” Adam said, on a breath of stifled laughter. “Release me, you shameless hussy. I didn't lock the door.”

“Oh, hell.”

She watched him move toward the door, wondering how she could ever have thought him clumsy and homely. Even his back looked wonderful.

Kara didn't so much as blink when she saw Adam, large and looming and there; she had other things on her mind.

“Did you get that quilt off the line?” she demanded.

“No, I forgot. Guess I'd better.”

Adam stretched and yawned, and Kara said suspiciously, “You look like the cat that ate the canary. What's going on?”

“Nothing,” Adam said. “Nothing at all. Isn't that wonderful?”

“You're drunk. Dammit, Adam—” She stopped, cocking her head to listen. “That's Tony, what's he doing up so early? I've got to get down there. Hurry.”

The activities of the next few hours reminded Rachel of one of the more improbable plots of light opera, with characters running on and off the stage, constantly interrupted and being interrupted, never completing the conversation that would resolve the ambiguities and bring the play to an end. The conspirators were unable to exchange more than a few whispered sentences. Tony was rested and bright and in a convivial mood; he wanted to talk to all of them. Distracting his attention while Adam sneaked out to retrieve the quilt and restore it to its place involved maneuvers that would have been funny under other circumstances. The phone kept ringing—Cheryl, demanding to chat with everyone in turn—Mark, who had heard of Tony's arrival and announced he was coming out to take them all to dinner—Tom, wanting to discuss the case with Tony and angling for an invitation, which he didn't get.

“There are too damned many people here already,” Pat said disagreeably. He and Ruth had arrived shortly after eight, and Adam's disjointed references to the events of the previous night had left him totally bewildered and wild with curiosity.

“The more the merrier,” Tony said. “It sure is good to be home.”

His affectionate smile included Rachel, who returned it with interest. She knew she was behaving like an idiot; she couldn't seem to stop smiling. Her behavior worried Pat. He kept staring nervously at her.

Mark's arrival finally gave them the chance they wanted. He and Tony settled down to watch a football game, and since Mark favored the Patriots and Tony was a fanatical Redskins supporter, they graciously allowed the
unconverted to withdraw. Kara refused to be in the same room with them. “They yell all the time,” she explained.

The others retreated to the workroom. Pat settled his wife in the rocking chair and himself in the only other chair the room provided.

“Talk and talk fast,” he growled. “I'm on the verge of a stroke.”

Cross-legged on the floor, with Rachel next to him, Adam talked. As he later said, he had never had or was likely to have such an attentive audience.

Kara was the first to comment on the story. Her voice shook. “I could kill myself for forgetting about that gun. You took an awful chance, Adam.”

“I didn't think of it that way. It was just the only thing to do.”

“The pattern had to be worked out,” Ruth said. “Completed.”

“So it's really completed?” Kara asked. “She's gone?”

“She was never here,” Rachel said. “Not until the very end. What came through to me were isolated memories or emotions—strong enough at times to obliterate my own consciousness—but they weren't all of her, only the feelings that had lingered. At first I couldn't even remember them. Later…”

“You began to identify with her,” Pat said. “I was afraid of that. I didn't mention it because the warning itself might have put the idea into your head. But it was already there. As time went on she became increasingly part of you—”

“No, it wasn't like that at all. I always saw her as something apart from me, and when I visualized her, she was so…so small. Crouched, hiding—on the defensive. The first time you questioned me she reacted as any threatened creature might do; terror produced unthinking violence. After that night she could only work with me and through me. It took me a long time to realize that the emotion I
had felt most often and most strongly wasn't hate. It was fear.”

The expletive that burst out of Pat brought a murmur of reproach from Ruth. “I was applying it to myself,” he explained. “That was what I felt, the day I…” He cleared his throat self-consciously and glanced at Ruth. “I didn't tell you about that, honey. I was afraid it would upset you. I—uh—well, I grabbed Rachel by the shoulders, I was just going to give her a friendly little shake, the way I do with all the girls—”

Perched on the table, feet swinging, Kara said, “I hate it when you do that.”

“You do? Why didn't you say so?”

“We put up with your grosser habits because you're so adorable in other ways,” Kara said with a grin. “I didn't want to hurt your poor little feelings.”

“Go to hell,” Pat said amiably. “Anyhow, she reacted as if I had made a really gross advance. It scared the—uh—the devil out of me. That wasn't you reacting, was it, Rachel? You were reliving an experience of hers.”

Rachel nodded. Even now, with Adam's hand warm on hers and her friends around her, the memory was painful. “I remember thinking the night the burglar was in my room, ‘You can fight back.' She couldn't. Except—” She indicated the bundle that contained the mutilated quilt. “The hate and the fear were there. She sewed them into the quilt. But the hair and the fingernail clippings and the other trappings of black magic were rather childish, really; feeble substitutes for action. The things I did under her influence weren't directly homicidal either. The canopy was the most dangerous, but it was a very haphazard way of killing someone. It might have fallen of its own accord, or caused minor injuries. No one would have taken more than a single bite of the cranberry sauce, the pieces of glass were large enough to be visible. The black liquid in the bleach bottle—”

“Dye,” Pat said. “I got the report yesterday. Black dye and Drano. It would have ruined the laundry and raised blisters on Cheryl's hands if she had spilled it.”

“Spiteful and childish,” Rachel said. “Like the grit in Cheryl's makeup. Oh, she hated them all right—the woman who had taken her lover, and her lover too, after he cast her off. But she would never have attacked either of them directly. Adam saw that last night. I didn't stop her, I couldn't have stopped her. She made the decision—a decision she never had a chance to make in life. Something happened to prevent it, something that broke the pattern.”

“She died?” Ruth suggested.

“Something worse, I think. Murder or suicide. A natural death wouldn't have left such an imprint on time. She died believing herself guilty. Guilty and damned.”

“It does make sense,” Pat said grudgingly. “In the literature of the supernatural, violent death is a standard explanation for psychic survival. It's the fear I don't understand. Why couldn't she fight back against something like attempted rape? Women had few enough rights at that time, God knows, but defending their virtue—”

“You're missing it, Pat,” Adam said. “It seems obvious to me, but maybe it's because I know something you don't. That cemetery next to the old lady's house? It was a slave cemetery.”