The Wishing Thread (15 page)

Aubrey lifted the lid. Somewhere in the darkness of the
river, a fish jumped skyward and splashed down. She felt something passing among them, an energy, buzzing like electricity down a line. She knew there were rough waters ahead: fights that they were going to have about selling the Stitchery. Accusations. Maybe blame. And then, God help her, the inevitable loneliness that would descend once her sisters went back to their old, regular lives.

But right now, for a moment, all of that was put on hold. She could have sworn—but she didn’t mention it—that she saw the old dead bulb in the top of the lighthouse, the bulb that had been out for decades, glowing a faint yellow-green, like a firefly just before it dies.

“Ready?” Aubrey asked.

Her sisters didn’t answer. Meggie let go of her hand. Aubrey squatted down. Gentle waves petted the rocks. A meteor scraped across the dark sky. A frost was coming—she could feel it in the chill, could nearly see the shimmer of it crackling along the surface of the water. She tipped the urn; the heaviness sifted from her hands. Mariah was gone.

On Wednesday morning, Ruth Ten Eckye stopped by to pick up the fingerless gloves Aubrey had made for her. The
cold streamed in a rush behind Ruth as she entered. In the yarn room, she seized the fingerless gloves that Aubrey had made, holding them in the light this way and that to inspect them. Aubrey lifted her chin; she was not confident about many things, but she was certain she was a good knitter. Her stitches were even, her ends expertly woven in. Ruth folded the gloves, stuffed them in her handbag, then snapped it closed.

“How long will it take before I see results?” she asked.

“I can’t say. It might be immediate. It might be a while. It might not happen at all. You’ll have to let me know what happens.”

Ruth lifted the pencil marks that were her eyebrows.

“Or don’t,” Aubrey said.

The little bell over the door rang when Ruth made her way outside, but no sooner had she left than Aubrey’s next client came in. The Stitchery kept no consistent hours: Visitors had always relied on lucky timing to connect with Mariah, and if luck wasn’t on their side—if Mariah happened to be out or sick or too overbooked—they were always welcome to stop back again.

Aubrey recognized the girl who stood before her now. She lived on the next block over in Tappan Square. Her name was Blanca and she wore a scarlet football jacket. She was a round girl—round face, round eyes, round cheeks—with large, low breasts that might have been more suited to a woman twice her age. Her brown hair was long and loose. If Aubrey had been in high school with her, she would not have wanted to get on the girl’s bad side.

“Where’s Mariah?” the girl asked.

“She’s not available,” Aubrey said. If she’d admitted Mariah was dead, then she and the girl both would have been sucked into a conversation about how and when and murmurs of
sympathy and understanding. Aubrey had had enough of that over the past few days.

“Do you know when she’ll be back?”

“It’s probably best not to wait around. What do you need?”

The girl swore, not quite under her breath. “I have a problem. It’s with this thing Mariah knit for me.” She reached into her big purse and pulled out an entrelac scarf, the diamond checks alternating in red and black. “I need to return it.”

“Oh? Why?”

“It’s not working.”

Aubrey sighed. This morning, before she’d lifted her head from her pillow, she knew without going to the window that it was going to be just the kind of fall day that she liked—the kind of day that starts off cold and dark but warms like a crackling fire in the afternoon. The kind of day to pick apples or knit with thick wool. She’d pulled on her favorite pair of jeans and a heavy Aran sweater that was big enough to get lost in. She thought now that she should have worn armor.

“Tell me the whole story,” she said.

And Blanca did. Blanca was the oldest of six children. Her littlest brother was two and a half. Blanca desperately wanted to go away to college; she’d even figured out all by herself how to get her applications together, pay the application fees, and send them out. And she’d got an acceptance letter back, too, from a small school upstate. The trouble was, her mother had died last year and her father was not willing to let her go. He insisted she could make a perfectly good living without paying all that money for school.

“I did everything Mariah told me to do,” Blanca said. “I gave the scarf to my father. But nothing’s happening. Nothing’s different. What am I doing wrong?”

Aubrey’s heart was sinking. “Can I ask what you gave up in exchange for the spell?”

“My locket. My mother had given it to me. It had a picture of the two of us inside.”

Aubrey nodded. She’d seen the locket in the tower. It was beautiful, dull yellow gold with a floral pattern. When she spoke, Aubrey tried to appear as if she dealt with broken spells all the time. “Well, get him to wear the scarf for a little while longer. Sometimes these things can take a while.”

“But I don’t have a while,” the girl said. “I got a letter of acceptance and I have to send the deposit soon. Part of what I asked for in the spell was for him to change his mind
quickly
. You know? Quickly. But nothing’s happening and it’s already practically too late.”

“I’m sorry,” Aubrey said. “I have no control over when a spell will work. Just have him wear it a little while longer.”

Blanca’s tough face was no longer so immutable. “You and I both know that’s not going to help.”

Aubrey didn’t know what to do. She turned away from the girl and fussed with a bit of yarn in order to compose herself. “Mariah explained it all to you?”

“Yes,” Blanca said. “Maybe I didn’t give up the right thing. Maybe the locket wasn’t enough.”

Aubrey said nothing.

“But it
seemed
like enough,” she went on. “It really hurt to give it away like that. It hurt so much. It was like getting my heart ripped out. Like losing my mom all over again.”

“I’m sorry,” Aubrey said.

“The scarf’s not going to work.” Her voice sounded small. “So … can I have the locket?”

There were moments when Aubrey hated the Stitchery and wished it would burn to the ground. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“Please?”

Aubrey turned to her. Blanca was holding the red-and-black scarf in her hands: She clasped it near her sternum like a child hiding behind a blanket. Aubrey shook her head.

Blanca’s face went red. “Are you friggin’ kidding me? First you tell me you can help me, then instead of helping me you take the one thing away from me that’s most important in the world?”

“I don’t know how to explain. I don’t want to sound like I’m making excuses.”

“There’s no excuse for this,” Blanca said. She lifted her spine, her large chest jutting forward, until she stood at her full height. Her eyes were red-rimmed now. Her body seemed to shake. “They told me not to come. But did I listen? No. No, I didn’t.” She balled up the scarf and threw it at Aubrey as hard as she could. Aubrey didn’t catch it. She felt the soft bulk of it as it hit her in the face, heard the quiet thump as it landed on the floor.

“Fine,” Blanca said. “I’ll do it without anybody’s help. Like I’ve done
everything
.”

Aubrey said nothing. When Blanca left, a whiff of cold fall air came through the door. She was glad neither of her sisters was around.

Nessa had been sitting on the porch stairs, in a fraught struggle to detangle a sprawling knot of yarn, when a girl dashed out of the Stitchery. The screen door slammed behind her. Nessa could hear by the way her feet pounded the wooden porch stairs that the girl was upset. She gathered up the awful tangle on her lap and went into the yarn shop. The air inside the Stitchery was no less crisp and cool than the air outside.

Aubrey was alone. She was standing at the window looking
out. She wore loose cotton jeans that might have belonged to a man at one point, and a thick sweater that was shot through with cables. She was so very still that Nessa couldn’t even tell if she was breathing, so still that she might have been part of the room itself—like the curtains, or the shelving, or the spindly wooden chair. Gently, Nessa cleared her throat. Her aunt jumped a mile, and Nessa couldn’t help but laugh. “Sorry!”

Aubrey laughed, too. “It’s okay. I was just … lost in thought.”

“What did that girl want?”

“The one who just left? Oh, right. She just wanted to ask me a question.”

Nessa took a few steps deeper into the room. Since she’d arrived at the Stitchery, she hadn’t had much time alone with her aunt. But Nessa wasn’t one to miss an opening. Her mother had once called her an
opportunist
, and she liked the sound of the word—so sharp, so dangerous. An hour ago, everyone else had gone out shopping. But not Aubrey. Nessa had decided to stay behind.

“How are you doing?” Aubrey asked.

“I’m okay. How are you?”

Aubrey tipped her head, gazing thoughtfully, and Nessa winced. Her mother had warned her that looking at her aunt’s eyeballs would be a little uncomfortable. Her eyes were enormous and blue, but more eerie than pretty. They were hard to look at. Aubrey lowered her eyes to the floorboards. The motion seemed more automatic than polite.

“I’m adjusting. It’s always hard when you lose someone you love,” Aubrey said. “I thought you were going with your mom to the store?”

“No. But you don’t have to
watch
me or anything. I stay home by myself all the time.”

“That’s not—I didn’t …” Aubrey’s face went a shade whiter. “What are you doing with that yarn?”

She’d thought she was holding the bunched yarn behind her back, but one long tentacle had wiggled out of the main knot, trailing behind her and to the floor. “Oops. Guess I’m caught!” She giggled nervously and brought the yarn out from behind her back.

It was a hideous tangle—twists and loops like a bird’s nest and one silver knitting needle shoved down the middle like a stake in a vampire’s heart. But when Nessa had first found it sitting on a shelf in the yarn room, it had been a neat little twist like a cruller or a loaf of challah. It had called to her in a way she couldn’t begin to explain, almost as if a tiny firecracker had gone
pop
in her peripheral vision and made her turn her head. The strands were the color of grape bubblegum—more grapey than an actual grape could ever be. A person could pop a color like that in her mouth it would burst into juice. She’d
had
to have it.

“Are you mad?” Nessa asked.

“No, I’m not Mad, I’m perfectly fine—oh. You mean, am I angry?” Aubrey wrapped her arms around her middle, her sweater bunching in thick wrinkles. “I’m not angry. But your mom wouldn’t want you to have it.”