A Stitch in Time

by Kelley Armstrong

  “William. Please.” I grasp his upper arm as he walks away. “I just want to—”

  He wheels sharply, jerking his arm away. The moment we break contact, the hall stutters, and I stumble back, landing on the floor, looking up at . . .

  Nothing.

  William is gone, and I’m sitting on the floor of my own bathroom.

  5

  I pick myself up off the bathroom floor as Enigma yowls from my bedroom, furious that I tricked her into thinking I was napping alongside her, and then, boom, I snuck out and closed the door, trapping her in there like a toddler at nap time.

  As for how I got on this side of the closed door, the obvious answer is sleepwalking. I’m not known for doing that, but it’s certainly more plausible than “I stepped through a time portal into Victorian Thorne Manor.” And if part of me longs to jump to that implausible conclusion, well, I can’t allow it. This one makes perfect sense. I lay down for a nap, dreamed of William and walked from my room, waking when I stumbled and fell.

  I release Enigma to cuddles and promises of supper, and then I stride downstairs, putting the dream from my head . . . as much as I can.

  I take my evening tea and novel and kitten into the sitting room, where I open the front window, snuggle onto the sofa and tuck a wool blanket around me. I don’t read right away, though—I just relax and inhale the perfume of dew-laden heather as I cuddle under the warm blanket, nibble my chocolate biscuits and sip my tea.

  Does it remind me of summers I curled up in a chair in this very room, munching biscuits and sipping milky tea with Aunt Judith? Or days wandering the moor with Uncle Stan? Of course it does. It also makes me think of Michael, how I wish I’d brought him to this house, shared it with him.

  I let the memories and regrets float into consciousness. Like lifting necklaces from my mother’s jewelry box, running them through my fingers. I allow myself time to feel the grief and pain, hard as diamonds and just as bright. Then I put them into their box, safely stowed in a treasured spot in my subconscious.

  Don’t dwell on what isn’t here. Dwell on what is. A perfumed breeze, hot tea, rich biscuits, a warm blanket, a purring kitten. And me. That last is the hardest. Focus on being in the moment with myself, comfortable in my own company.

  Even as I’m luxuriating in the break, my mind compiles a to-do list from what I see around me. Strip the wood trim. Sew curtains. Buy a comfy chair for the front porch so I can curl up in the moonlight. Repaint the walls. They’d look lovely in a soft rose, a counterpoint to the cottage-chic. Of course, if I’m planning to sell the place, pink walls won’t help.

  Am I planning to sell it?

  I have no idea, and that’s yet another thought to tuck into a box for now.

  I sit, and I think, and then I refill my cup, and my cookie plate and curl up with my kitten and my book. I read as the clock chimes eight and then nine. When it strikes ten, I declare it’s late enough to call it a night.

  I take Enigma upstairs and tuck her into her box. Then I step into the hall, heading for the bathroom and . . .

  A shape flits past the doorway to the master bedroom.

  I go still. In my mind’s eye, I see it again, a dark human figure sliding past.

  I swallow and squeeze my eyes shut. Then I glance back at Enigma. She’s curled up in her box. When she sees me watching, she only lifts her head with a drowsy meow. Nothing has set off her internal alarms. So whatever I saw exists only in my imagination.

  It only ever existed in your imagination, Bronwyn. It’s time you accepted that.

  I square my shoulders and stride down the hall into the master bedroom and—

  A woman stands at the open bay window. A woman wearing what looks like a long dress of black lace with a veil over her face.

  She turns to me, and I stagger back and knock something behind my foot, and thank God I still have the mental awareness not to step down because it’s Enigma. The kitten stares at the figure, her eyes wide, fur on end, tiny tail bristled like a bottle brush. Then she leaps in front of me, hissing and spitting.

  The figure steps toward me. She doesn’t float like a horror movie spook. She walks, one soundless step at a time, her face hidden behind the veil. As she grows closer, I’m not sure it’s a lace dress at all. It seems more like a swirling layer of black, obscuring her from view.

  Enigma shoots forward, hissing. The figure slows, veiled face lowering to look at the kitten.

  I dart forward to scoop Enigma up. The figure lifts her head, watching me, and I’m close enough to see through the veil, and yet I can’t. There is only that fluttering black, by turns solid and semi-translucent, pale skin shimmering behind it.

  The woman lifts a hand swathed in black. Glimmers of moonlight shine through her body. I see that moonlight gleam, and I swallow hard.

  I’m looking at a ghost.

  Not a hallucination. Not a prankster. Enigma sees the figure, and so it exists. Yet light shines through it, and so it’s not real, not solid.

  That hand reaches toward me, and I shrink back. Enigma growls, her eyes huge as they follow the hand. When I flinch, it pauses there, a finger outstretched toward me. Then the hand drops, and the figure steps forward.

  One step. Another. Closing the gap between us.

  I wheel. Something flickers by the linen closet door, a shimmer of light and shadow. I don’t pause to look—I race past, careering down the hall, Enigma clutched against me.

  I spot the stairs. I could turn that way. I should. Instead, I barrel toward my room. At the last second, I realize I’m running deeper into the house. But the last time I fled a ghost, I ran outside and—

  The black-veiled figure rounds the corner, and that settles the matter. I race into my room and slam the door, the whole house shaking with it. I back up until I hit the bed, and then I half-sit, half-fall onto it, my gaze fixed on the door, expecting the woman to walk right through.

  She doesn’t.

  I sit there, Enigma’s tiny heart tripping under my fingers, my own heart pounding so hard I can barely breathe. When I finally wrest my gaze from the door, I scan the room, my muscles tensed.

  It’s empty.

  Enigma relaxes into my arms. Her purrs come jagged, like someone laughing in a carnival spook house, trying to convince themselves they’re okay. After a moment, though, those purrs smooth out, and she lifts her head in a miniature lion’s roar of a yawn, her needle-teeth flashing.

  Still clutching her, I scuttle up the bed until my back is firmly against the headboard. When I listen, I hear only the kitten’s purrs and the ticktock of the grandfather clock.

  I’ve seen enough horror movies to know that the moment I relax, the woman will pop up from the foot of the bed. It soon becomes apparent, though, that the ghost has never seen a horror movie. She doesn’t pop up. She doesn’t moan at the door. She doesn’t appear floating outside my windows.

  I’m safe here. She can’t follow me into my room.

  Or that’s what she wants you to think!

  I have to laugh at that even if it’s as rough as Enigma’s forced purrs. I do relax a little, though, and still nothing bursts through the plasterwork.

  The clock downstairs strikes two before I finally fall asleep, still braced against the headboard, kitten in my arms.

  After breakfast, Del comes by with Ronnie, a kid from the local garage. And when I say kid I mean the guy is twenty-five. God, I’m getting old fast. So damn fast it leaves me with an ache in my heart and a panic in my gut. My life is a train rushing past, and I’m just standing there, acting as if I have no choice but to watch and grieve its passing.

  Ten years ago, I had the kind of life that made my friends tell me to shut up if I dared raise a complaint. They were joking, and not joking. I’d lament a night spent marking freshman papers, and to them, it was like hearing someone complain about the property tax on her summer home.

  Oh, you poor baby. Did Michael sit up with you? Bring you ice cream? Rub your shoulders?

  Er,
yes, actually, he did.

  At twenty-eight, I had my PhD and my dream job—assistant professor at one of Canada’s top universities. I was married to my college sweetheart, who also had a PhD—in economics—and a job at a Toronto think tank. We’d spent the last two years living rent-free as we renovated our landlord’s house, and we were about to move into a house of our own after which we’d buy a dog and have a baby . . . in that order.

  We were that couple. Madly in love, financially stable, and ready to embark on the “children and a white picket fence” stage of our nauseatingly perfect lives.

  Then came Michael’s diagnosis.

  Canada has a wonderful health system, but that didn’t keep me from spending our new home down payment on experimental treatments. I knew they were a waste of money. I didn’t care. I couldn’t live my life without knowing I’d done everything I could to save his.

  By thirty, I was a widow. A broke widow, barely clinging to her job because she’d spent every spare minute with her dying husband.

  After that, my life paused. Or, more accurately, I paused. I stood at the tracks, watching the train whip past. At first, I didn’t care. When I finally did, I couldn’t figure out what to do about it. My dreams and my future and part of my soul died with Michael, but now, deep inside, a voice has begun to scream that I’m letting the best years of my life slip past.

  I’m sure someone like Del would laugh at me. At thirty-eight, I’m as much a kid to him as Ronnie is to me. Yet when I look in the mirror and see the first deepening lines, the first strands of silver, I imagine a wrinkled face and gray hair and a woman who has not taken a single step forward since her husband died half a lifetime ago.

  This may explain why I don’t run screaming from Thorne Manor after my ghostly encounter. Granted, I’m not the sort who’d do that anyway, which isn’t an excess of courage so much as an excess of self-consciousness and ego. I’ve been in that place before, the distraught fifteen-year-old ranting about ghosts only to be told it was my brain rebelling against me. That had been humiliating beyond measure. So I’d never run and pound on Del’s door at midnight, sobbing about ghostly figures in black.

  Come morning, however, I could have calmly decided I no longer wished to stay at Thorne Manor. Too isolated. Too many memories. I’d sell it and let someone else return the old dame to her former glory.

  Instead, I tell Ronnie I’d like the car fixed if that’s possible with my budget. Once I’d crawled from under the debt of Michael’s treatments, my mother borrowed money from me for her own hospice care, insisting it’d be covered by my inheritance. The only thing I inherited was her collection of pointe shoes. So I can afford to spend no more fixing the car than I would renting a vehicle for the summer.

  I also invest a hundred pounds in drapery material, paint stripper and varnish. Which means I’m staying for the summer. This is my house, the only one I’ve ever owned, possibly the only one I ever will. Along with the adopted cat, it’s forward motion. Another milestone to be ticked off the long-neglected List.

  It’s not just a home, either, but a summer home abroad. It makes me feel as if I’ve drawn a special card in the board game of life, fast-forwarding me to where I could have been if Michael lived. I might not have the husband or kids or suburban home, but I have a summer house in England, as an overachieving middle-aged professional should.

  Thorne Manor is a start. A huge one for me, terrifying in its way. Like watching that passing train, realizing it’s not going to stop for me, and taking a running leap onto it. I am taking that leap, starting with renovating the house. First, though, I’m having a guest over for afternoon tea.

  6

  Del brings Freya by at exactly four. Ronnie’s younger brother, Archie, drove them. He waves as I step outside but stays in the car while Del helps his wife to her walker. The moment I see Freya, I recognize her. She’s smaller than I remember her, my mind’s eye being that of a child. She’s a good six inches shorter than me, plump and pretty, with the kind of smile that makes you smile in return.

  I hurry to help them, but Del only hands me a basket with “More scones, apparently. And pastries. And sourdough bread. And choccy biscuits. At least you won’t starve.”

  Freya embraces me in a cloud of sweet sage and browned butter as the car backs out with a friendly honk. “He’s just grumbling because I’m baking more for you than I do for him.” She turns to Del. “You, my dear, are supposed to be retired. You have plenty of time to bake for yourself. Miss Bronwyn is a university professor on sabbatical, which means she has a paper to write.” She glances at me. “Yes?”

  “Allegedly, though my real work this summer is fixing up the house and relaxing.”

  “Not doing much of the latter, I’ll bet.” She pats my arm. “You will, once you’re settled, and I’ll keep sending you scones and biscuits and bringing them up when I have the excuse.”

  “That’s her real goal,” Del says. “Forget this nonsense about giving you time to do your paper. She’s angling for visits to her favorite house. Seeing if the ghosts will finally spark her gran’s second sight.”

  I give a start at that, but they don’t notice.

  Freya chuckles. “I don’t want the Sight, but I’ll take the visits. I do love this marvelous house. Now, get on with you, old man. You have work to do on that car. Give the lass back her mobility.”

  Del stays until she’s in the house, and then tromps out to do whatever first aid Ronnie prescribed for my car.

  Freya and I chat as I bring out tea, and I relax, partly because I realize I won’t need my rusty dialect deciphering skills. I suppose that has something to do with Freya being a former teacher—if she uses the dialect at home, she code-switches with me.

  When we’re settled, Freya glances toward the door and then says, her voice lower, “Thank you, dear. For being understanding with him.”

  “Of course. Like I told Del, I’m a university prof. For a lot of young people, college is the one place they feel comfortable being themselves.” I start to pour tea. “I suppose it’s not easy being here. I know kids from rural areas have a much tougher time of it.”

  “Actually, we’re blessed that way, and it’s one reason Del decided to retire in High Thornesbury. He says it was because he met me”—her gray eyes twinkle—“but really, he found a place where he’s comfortable. Our village has always had a soft spot for outsiders. They have the Thornes to thank for that. Hard for a town to be judgmental when its most esteemed family had its share of eccentrics. Let’s just say it isn’t the first time this house has seen someone like Del.”

  I smile. “I have heard the Thornes were an unusual lot.”

  “They were, indeed. Whatever their eccentricities, though, they were kind, and they were generous, and it had an impact on those around them. I’m no monarchist—and I despise the lingering class system—but the Thornes led by example, and the village is the better for it. Plus, they left a lot of stories. Strange and wonderful stories.”

  She watches me, expectant. Yet what flies to the tip of my tongue isn’t a laughing request for a fun tale, but a very specific one.

  Do you know the history well? Was there a Lord Thorne named William? Silly question—I’m sure there was when it’s such a common name. But was there one named William with a sister named Cordelia?

  Even if Freya doesn’t know, I could look this up online. There’s a reason I haven’t done that. A simple reason. Fear.

  Fear of what, exactly?

  Everything.

  So I just chuckle and murmur, “Yes, I’ve heard there are stories.” And then I spread clotted cream on a scone and change the subject.

  Soon we’re talking about teaching, something we have in common. When I discover Freya has a combined degree in English and folklore, I’m overcome with envy.

  “I desperately wanted my undergrad in history and folklore, but my mother was horrified enough by the history major. A completely unmarketable field of study.”

  “Wasn’t
your dad a historian?”

  “Yep, still is. So, as much as I wanted to minor in folklore, I agreed to economics instead. Hated it. Only one good thing came of that . . .” I think of Michael and then hurry on with, “Anyway, my dream is to someday go back for a degree in folklore. A couple of Canadian universities offer them.”

  “You like folklore, then?” she asks.

  I chuckle. “That’s an understatement. My historical era of expertise is Victorian with a particular slant toward women’s roles. Women have always found power in the realm of folklore. Folk magic, charms, witchcraft . . . With the rise of spiritualism, men shouldered them aside, but they were still active participants, equal participants with real power in the movement. It was a way to engage in scientific study and be taken seriously even if it was pseudoscience.” I pause and sigh. “I just switched into Professor Dale mode, didn’t I?”

  Freya smiles. “You have a willing pupil here. Lecture away.” She lifts her teacup and says, far too casually, “So you believe spiritualism is a pseudoscience?”

  “Er . . . misjudged my audience, did I? Sorry.”

  Her smile softens. “That’s quite all right. I’m very fond of lively debate. I just thought it was unusual”—she sips her tea—“coming from one with the Sight.”

  I wince. “Aunt Judith told you about the ghosts. It was only one, actually, and even then, it wasn’t real. I had a hypnopompic hallucination. That’s—” I pause, not wanting to presume she doesn’t know what that is.

  She nods. “Thinking you wake to see a ghost by your bed, when really, you aren’t awake yet. I’m well aware of the phenomenon, but that doesn’t explain your experience, Bronwyn. You fled from the ghost. You saw it while clearly awake. And Stan . . .” She sips her tea. Then she says, “So you haven’t seen anything since you’ve returned, I presume?”

  In my mind, I say no and make some silly quip. What I hear myself say, though, is nothing. Dead and damning silence.