A Stitch in Time

by Kelley Armstrong

  “Who are you, and what the devil are you doing in my bed?”

  I don’t answer. I’m waiting to wake up. That’s what will happen next, obviously. Two dreams overlapped—the anxious momma cat and the lovely sexual fantasy—the former inexcusably interrupting the latter.

  Or perhaps the dream will restart. Yes, I’d like option two, please. Silence the cat, and return this shadowy cursing figure to his proper place in bed.

  “Are you deaf?” the man snaps. “Dumb? I’m asking you a question!”

  Any time now, Morpheus. Rewind ten minutes please, and hold the cat.

  The man stands there, half-lost in shadow but presenting a very fine figure, broad shouldered and naked except for the unfortunate coverlet.

  “I asked you a question,” he says.

  “Two.”

  His shadowed face scrunches. “What?”

  “You asked me two questions. Who am I, and what am I doing here.”

  When I speak, he goes still, head tilted, face slackening. He blinks, those light eyes vanishing for a second.

  “Speak again,” he says.

  “Is that an order, m’lord?”

  “Yes, it is, girl.”

  “Well, not having been a girl for many years, I decline to comply.” I pause. “Though I suppose I just did, didn’t I?”

  “Who are you?” he asks, his voice lower now, tense, as if fearing the answer.

  “Just a woman who was enjoying a very fine dream before the cat yowled. Please stop yelling at me. You were so much more appealing half-asleep.”

  He stares at me. Just stares. I’m about to speak again when he lunges and grabs me by the arm. I’m still in bed, kneeling, and his sudden yank topples me before I can object. Next thing I know, I’m on my feet, being dragged into a patch of moonlight. My nightshirt tears, but he doesn’t seem to notice. Fingers roughly grip my chin and wrest my face upward.

  Then he stops. Goes completely still again and breathes, “Bronwyn.”

  I look up into a face as familiar as his smell and his voice. I know them by heart, and yet do not know them at all. A broad face, hard edged and beard shadowed, with a knife-cut line between thick brows. A face that I remember as soft edges and smooth cheeks. Yet under that hard maturity, I see the boy I knew. I see his sky-blue eyes. I see the curve of his jaw. I see the dark hair curling over a wide forehead. I look at the man and instead gaze upon a boy I haven’t seen in twenty-three years.

  “William,” I whisper, and he releases me, recoiling.

  I fall backward, thumping to the floor, and when I look up, the man is gone.

  3

  I sit on my bedroom floor, blinking. A cat mews, and I jump, but it’s only the kitten, crawling onto my lap, as if wondering how I got on the floor.

  Good question, kitten.

  Obviously, I’d fallen out of bed after dreaming I’d been yanked from it by . . .

  William.

  Twenty-three years ago, I fled this house, screaming about a ghost. One episode, however, was not enough to land me in a psychiatric ward. That came when, in my grief and shock, I began babbling about other people I’d seen in Thorne Manor. About a boy who shared my room hundreds of years ago. A boy who’d been my friend . . . and then more than a friend.

  William Thorne.

  I don’t remember the first time we met. For me, William has always been as much a part of this house as the grandfather clock. My earliest memory of Thorne Manor is of being in a room that is mine and yet not mine. In William’s bedroom, the two of us, little more than toddlers, playing marbles as if we’ve known each other forever. In that memory, I sense that I’ve already been there many times, seen him many times, played this game many times.

  I’d been too young to think anything odd about that. William was my friend at Auntie Judith’s summer house. If I closed my eyes and thought about him in my bedroom, I would open them to find myself in his room.

  When we got older, we roamed farther afield. To the stables, to the hay barn, to the moors, to the attic, and the secret passage and every corner of this house. We avoided his family and staff. I was William’s secret, and he was mine.

  Then came my parents’ divorce, and it was ten years before I returned. At fifteen I came back, and I had only to think of him while in my bedroom, and I stepped through, and there he was, my age again and as awkwardly sweet as any fifteen-year-old girl could want.

  I fell in love that summer, and it was the most perfect first romance imaginable. We walked hand in hand through the moors. We kissed under a canopy of stars. We talked, endlessly talked, and wanted nothing more than to be together even if I was curled up in the stable with a book while he groomed his horses.

  As for how I traveled back to William’s time, we didn’t need an explanation. The answer was obvious. He was real, and I was real, and therefore, what happened must be equally real—real magic. A shared room, a shared life. A reasonable explanation for a fifteen-year-old girl, madly in love with a boy who lived two centuries before her.

  The truth was much harsher. After my uncle died and I babbled my confession about William, the doctors explained that stress had twisted memories of an imaginary childhood friend into vivid hallucinations of a teenage boy.

  My father is a historian, and I caught the bug from him, and so, the doctors explained, I imagined a Thorne boy who once lived in my Thorne Manor bedroom. An imaginary playmate for an only child who spent her summers in an isolated country house. At fifteen, I’d been reuniting with Dad against my mother’s wishes. The stress of that proved too much, and my mind conjured William anew, shaping him into the friend and the first love I desperately needed.

  Tonight, I visited William again to find him a grown man, still my own age. Yet this was clearly a dream, and somehow that makes it worse, the flame of loss igniting another, never quite snuffed out. Michael is eight years dead. And William Thorne never lived at all.

  It’s a long time before I fall back to sleep, and when I do, my pillow is soaked with tears for a husband I lost and a boy I never truly had.

  I wake the next morning in a far better mood. There is a kitten curled up at my side, as if drawn there by my silent crying, and it’s hard to laze in bed with a tiny creature who needs you to fix her breakfast.

  Midmorning, I tuck the kitten into my newly kitten-proof room. Then I pop into the detached garage—formerly the stables—in case Del was exaggerating about the condition of the car. When I tug off the tarp, dust motes fly, and a few mice scatter, but the chrome and cherry-red paint still gleams.

  Uncle Stan’s baby, Aunt Judith had called it. At the time, I hadn’t seen the appeal of such an old car. Now, I realize my mistake. It’s an Austin-Healey convertible. I have no idea what year or model, but she’s a beauty, and my fingers itch to wrap around the leather-bound steering wheel. That, however, is where Del was telling the truth. While the keys are in the ignition, the motor doesn’t turn. I’m no mechanic, but my dad taught me enough to confirm the problem isn’t a dead battery or empty gas tank. Still, I fold the tarp aside and leave the garage door open to air the car out.

  Tucked behind the convertible, I find two ancient bicycles. I take Aunt Judith’s, with its huge front basket. A few drops of oil on the chain, a bit of air in the tires, a backpack for extra storage, and I’m off to town.

  At around a thousand people, High Thornesbury is just big enough that I can blend in with the June holiday crowds. I’ll socialize when I’m less jet-lagged and better able to put names to faces twenty-three years older than I last saw them.

  After a visit to the hardware shop and the grocer, my backpack is full, but my bicycle basket holds only a small bag of kibble and a bottle of red wine, cushioned by a pair of thick woolen socks. Then I smell fresh bread wafting from the tiny village bakery, and since I have extra room . . .

  By the time I leave town, my bicycle basket is full to overflowing. I blame Mrs. Del’s scones. Sure, one might think that since I already have a box of them at the hous
e, I shouldn’t need more, but having some only makes me worry about the morning when I’ll have none. Also, as lovely as tinned biscuits are, they’re no match for fresh shortbread. Or gingersnaps. Or butter buns.

  If I don’t get the convertible running, I’ll be doing a lot of riding on this old bicycle. The seat feels as if it were cast in cement—I need all the extra padding I can get.

  The ride back to Thorne Manor is straight up a twelve percent grade, and I’m spurring myself on with the promise of chocolate-dipped flapjacks when I see Del heading my way on his bicycle. He looks even more bizarre in daylight, his macintosh thrashing, clunky work boots pumping the pedals, the pipe clamped between his teeth. On a fishing boat, he’d be right at home. A bicycle? Not so much.

  His face is set in a way that defies anyone to stop him. So I’m about to lift a hand in greeting as we pass, but he pulls to a halt, and I realize that’s just his normal expression. Impatience and annoyance, set in the stone of his weathered skin.

  “Won’t be up today,” he says. “Got a call in town. Urgent business.” A roll of his eyes doubts it’s urgent, and if he’s right, I wouldn’t want to be the person who summoned him. “I was going to come by and see if you needed owt. You’ve found the grocer.” He peers into the basket, and his face darkens. “Frey’s scones not to your liking?”

  I smile. “They’re too much to my liking, which means they’ll be gone by tomorrow morning.”

  “I’ll bring you more, then. Saints knows, she baked enough of them. Said she remembers you eating a whole basket by yourself when you were a sprog. I said you had probably learned restraint. Guess not.”

  “Frey?” I say. “Is that short for Freya?”

  “Aye-uh.”

  “She used to teach in town, didn’t she? She played whist and bridge with my aunt.”

  Freya was living in Liverpool when I returned at fifteen, so it’s been over thirty years since I’ve seen her. I pull up a mental collection of a soft lap and a softer voice, a laugh too hearty to come from that voice. A pile of dog-eared books. A basket of fresh scones. The smell of chalk and sage and browned butter.

  “I’d love to see her,” I say.

  “She doesn’t get out much these days. Waiting for a hip replacement. She’s off to the city today for a doctor’s visit. She’d love to have you for tea tomorrow, though.”

  “I’ll enjoy seeing her whenever it’s convenient. Oh, and I found a kitten upstairs.”

  “Upstairs?” His gray eyebrows soar into his hairline.

  “Locked in my old bedroom.”

  He frowns. “I was there all last week, cleaning. No kittens inside or out. They’d have a feast in that garage, but I’ve never seen any even in there.”

  “This one’s very young.” I show him the picture on my phone.

  “Huh.” He eases back on his bicycle seat. “Doesn’t seem big enough to be away from her ma.”

  “I know. Last night, I tried looking up what to feed her, but I don’t have a cell phone signal.”

  “Aye, we’re in a bit of a dead zone here. It’s fine down’t the road, but at the house, you need to be in the sitting room. Or the front yard. Unless the wind picks up. Or the fog rolls in. Or it rains. But I don’t need the internet to tell you that’s a very young kitten who can’t eat that.” He points to the dry kibble in my basket. “You’ll need to mix it into a slush.” His gaze lifts to mine. “You keeping her?”

  “I’d like to find her family if I can.”

  “Kitten that young? She hasn’t wandered away from town. Someone dumped her. If you want her, she’s yours.”

  I should say that I’m only here for the summer, and I know nothing about caring for pets. Mom was allergic, and Michael and I had been preparing to buy our first house—which would have meant our first pet—when he got his diagnosis. After that, I just didn’t get around to it. Like I “didn’t get around” to dating again, “didn’t get around” to having kids, “didn’t get around” to buying a house . . .

  All that was on The List. After three doctors declared Michael’s tumor terminal, he made a list of everything he wanted me to do when he was gone. Buy a house. Fall madly in love. Get married and have children. Well, no, actually, I was supposed to have a few flings first. Forget long-term relationships, and just have sex with hot guys. Yes, that was actually on The List.

  Somewhere on it was this, too. Adopt a cat. And so, while I’m sure I’m not the ideal pet-parent for a barely weaned kitten, when Del asks whether I’m keeping her, I find myself saying, “Yes.”

  He nods and says he’ll talk to the local vet and then come by tomorrow morning.

  While I promised myself chocolate flapjacks as my hill-climbing reward, in reality . . . Let’s just say it’s probably a good thing Michael and I never had kids, because I display a strong risk for becoming my mother, who’d promise me treats for an accomplishment only to bait-and-switch later.

  No, I wouldn’t actually do that to my child, not when I know what it was like. I do, however, do it to myself. I postpone the flapjacks and boil a couple of farm-fresh eggs instead. Then, for added masochism, I do twenty minutes of ballet exercise.

  Mom had been a professional ballerina, who’d hoped her only child would follow in her slippers. Unfortunately, I inherited Dad’s body shape. I’m five-foot-ten and not thin. Never been thin. I was a “big-boned” kid, who became a “voluptuous” adult, both being polite euphemisms for a figure that will never grace the princess—or even the queen mother—in Swan Lake.

  When I was little, my mother held out hope that I would shed my baby fat even when my bone structure scoffed at the notion. That probably explains a childhood of “You can have ice cream if you clean your room,” which turned into “Here’s a nice yogurt parfait.”

  I went to ballet lessons twice a week and adored it. By the time I turned nine, though, Mom realized I’d never follow in her professional footsteps and declared the lessons a waste of money, claiming her child support wouldn’t cover them. That last part was a lie. As I later discovered, Dad always added extra for my lessons.

  I don’t remember my parents ever getting along. They were like colleagues forced to work together on a shared project, and that project was me. When I was five, they finally split. As Mom put it, Dad “ran off with some girl.” The truth is that he reunited with his childhood sweetheart and asked Mom for an amicable split with joint custody.

  In leaving for another woman, Dad stole Mom’s dignity, and she retaliated by stealing me. She claimed Dad was abusive, and he lost all visitation rights. I hated her for that—I hated her for a lot of things—but there was love in our relationship. Taking me out of ballet lessons wasn’t spite or greed. I clearly would never be a ballerina, and she didn’t want to set me up for disappointment. The idea that I’d have been happy dancing as a hobby likely never occurred to her because she wouldn’t have been.

  My mother has been gone two years. Lung cancer from a lifetime of cigarettes to keep her ballerina thin. Dad lives in Toronto, and I see him at least once a week. He’s still with his second wife, who is as lovely and non-evil a stepmom as anyone could want.

  As for ballet, when Dad discovered I’d stopped, he insisted I take it up again. I still dance with a troupe every week—the ballet equivalent of community theatre—and I love it even if you couldn’t pay me to wear a tutu.

  So I might grumble about masochism, doing those ballet exercises, but spinning my way through Thorne Manor sends my already kite-high mood into the stratosphere. In the daylight, the house is pure magic. Its shadows become pockets of cool shade among the rectangles of sunlight stretching across the rich wood floors. A heather-perfumed breeze blows through every open window. I dance between sun and shade, drinking in the scent of the moors and feeling the wind kiss my skin. If there’s anything dark in this house, it’s not here now. In the daylight, I can’t imagine it was ever here at all.

  After my dance exercises, I explore the house, poking around its nooks and crannies.
What surprises me most is the smell: a mix of moor and wet wool and old wood and the faint whiff of camphor. It shouldn’t be a pleasant odor, but it is because it’s the smell of Thorne Manor, sparking memories of endless days curled up in one of these nooks or crannies with an old blanket and a book.

  I kneel beside a storage hole under the stairs. I open the tiny crooked door, and I’m not sure I can still fit inside, but I want to try, grab a blanket and a pillow and a novel and a cup of milky tea and pretend I’m five again, fifteen again, half-dozing in the lantern light as I listen to the clomp of Uncle Stan’s boots, and Aunt Judith’s shout for him to take those bloody things off and Dad’s laugh at this daily routine of theirs. My eyes prickle at the memory, but it’s a good one, and maybe someday this summer, I will indeed crawl in here and read. For now, the kitten explores the space, and I watch, smiling like an indulgent parent.

  When she tires of that, I find Aunt Judith’s sewing kit and fetch my shirt from last night. I noticed a small rip in the seam this morning.

  A rip . . . after William yanked it?

  I shake my head. No, a rip because the shirt is ten years old, and I’ve stitched it more than once. It’s one of Michael’s, from my collection, three of which made their way into my suitcase. This particular one is a Toronto Maple Leafs tee. Born in Cairo, educated in England, Michael had never seen a hockey game until he came to Canada for his graduate studies. That didn’t stop him from becoming a bigger Leafs fan than my father, who still drags me to games. Michael had never strapped on skates before, but by his second year, he was on a varsity team. He joked they let him play to inject a little color in the team, but that wouldn’t explain the MVP trophy still proudly displayed in my condo. Michael did nothing by halves. People presumed he learned hockey to assimilate into Canadian culture, but that never crossed his mind. He’d watched a few games, thought, That looks interesting, and threw himself into learning it.

  Michael threw himself into life. Every driving trip we took, I knew to double the travel time because he’d constantly detour to “see what’s over there.” He spoke four languages and started learning Japanese “for fun” after the diagnosis. When that diagnosis came—a glioblastoma brain tumor—the joke was that he’d worn out his brain from overuse.