“Nancy Crenshaw speaking,” Mrs. Crenshaw answers.
“Mrs. Crenshaw, I need you to do me a big favor, please.”
“Yes?”
“Remember how I told you this morning my mom threatened to clear out my closet?” Rachel asks.
“Yes.”
“Well, I’m going to do something crazy and force her to retaliate in earnest. Would you be so kind as to go into my room and save whatever clothes you can from my closet? I’ll try and keep her occupied for as long as I can. Thirty minutes tops.” Rachel glances at the kitchen window again and sees her mom and Mrs. White walking out of the pool house together.
This is a new, unforeseen development.
Jenny Cleary and Rebecca White have been rivals since high school, back in the 1990s. Rebecca—who happens to be the notorious Vince Henderson’s younger sister—used to steal Jenny’s boyfriends through spreading gossip and telling lies. Apparently, things got really bad between them when Rebecca set her sights on Jason White.
Rachel has heard the story before, about how her mom had been going steady with the captain of the football team for close to two years when suddenly, two days before their senior prom, Jason White dropped her like a piece of toast—butter-side down. In steps Liam Cleary, the slightly dorky but always sweet boy who’d been pining over Jenny ever since they were in middle school, to save the pretty cheerleader from humiliation. Rachel knows her parents loved each other deeply, had witnessed it firsthand, but she also knows Jenny Cleary despised Rebecca White for what she’d done.
Seeing them together definitely doesn’t sit well with Rachel.
“Sweetie? Hello, are you still there?” Mrs. Crenshaw’s voice interrupts her musings.
“Sorry. Yes, I’m here.”
“Anything you want me to save in particular?”
“Just take what you can and hide it for me at your house, please. Also, keep your sewing machine at the ready, because I’m going into full rebel-mode for however long it takes to get my mom back,” Rachel says.
Mrs. Crenshaw laughs. “Okay, dear. Be careful.”
“See you soon.” Rachel ends the call and stands up from the barstool. She places her hand over Greg’s hand and smiles. “I’m sacrificing a lot by doing this. In fact, my whole wardrobe is on the line here, so you’d best keep up your end of the bargain or I swear I’ll make you regret it.”
Confusion crosses his expression. “What are you up to?”
Rachel leads him to the sofa, before gesturing for him to sit. He does as he’s told, though she’s sure it’s only because he’s not been able to put two-and-two together yet. She walks over to the apartment’s door and opens it a crack, listening for any sign of the women. Some muffled conversation comes from the belly of the manor. Rachel rushes back to the sofa.
“Aside from losing her fashion sense, what other odd behavior has your mom displayed?” she asks, sitting down beside him.
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing,” Greg says. “What are you doing, Rachel?” he repeats, watching her as she takes off her jacket and unbuttons the first couple of buttons on her dress.
“I’m staging a shocking scene for our parents to walk in on,” she says. “Take off your shirt.”
“What?” he drags the word out, still unmoving.
“Stop worrying and do what I ask.” She tosses her jacket aside carelessly, kicks off her shoes, and unbuttons one more button for good measure. Then, Rachel lifts her hands to her head and musses her hair.
Greg grumbles under his breath as he pulls off his shirt and drops it onto the floor. “People are going to talk. I hope you know that.”
“You’re far too worried about what people say,” she responds, assessing his torso from her position. Smooth skin, lean and muscular physique. Oh, yes, Greg Pearson certainly has grown up. Whether he’s realized it himself, however, Rachel doesn’t know. Greg keeps quiet about his romantic life in general so she can’t use it against him—the same tactic Rachel has employed during her high school career.
“You do have a plan, right? This isn’t one of your tricks to get back at me for some reason?” Greg asks.
“Mrs. Crenshaw says the mass hysteria of 1811 ended with the lynching of the mayor. My thinking is this: if we can focus our mothers’ energies on preventing teenage promiscuity, then maybe we can save a life or two. When this stunt is over, and I’m being dragged out of your house, just get on the WhatsApp group and inform everyone that they should suck up to their parents by following the new rules and doing chores or whatever—”
“That’ll go down well,” he interrupts Rachel.
“Anyway,” Rachel continues. “Form a fake Bible study group, something our moms will approve of, so I can have access to your house again. Like I told Mrs. Crenshaw, I’m going full-rebel, and my mom’s probably going to do everything in her power to make me change my ways. Or so I hope.”
Greg sighs. “Is there any specific information you need me to obtain?”
“Everything you can find about the kids that went missing during the Eerie Creek Sawmill saga. My dad’s journal mentioned it as going on for about two years before the fire broke out. If you can find some info about the mass hysteria of 1811, that’ll help. Oh, and any references regarding the Night Weaver will be much appreciated—that’s a personal request by the way.”
He nods before looking her up and down. “Have you done this before?”
“Staged a compromising scene?”
“I don’t mean a simulated version,” Greg says.
“You mean to ask if I’ve ever been in a compromising position?” she clarifies. Greg gives a tiny shrug. “I’ve fooled around, but nobody’s ever walked in,” Rachel says. “You?”
“My mom’s walked in on a few of my make-out sessions in the past,” he admits. Greg inhales deeply. “If we’re going to do this, we’re doing it right. We are, after all, both over-achievers, so there’s no use in us doing this halfheartedly.” He reaches over and tugs down the sleeves of her dress until her bra is almost fully exposed. “Take one arm out of your sleeve,” he instructs. Rachel does as she’s told, feeling her bravado trickle away. “Now, scoot down and lie back.”
“Who says scoot anymore?”
“I do. Now scoot.” He stands up, making room for Rachel to lie down. He fumbles with her hair as she keeps her dress from running up too high. “Put this knee up.” Greg points to her knee closest to the back of the sofa. “Put this foot on the floor.”
Rachel rolls her eyes but doesn’t argue.
“You look like you’re ready to be ravished.” Greg unbuttons his jeans and shakes his head. “If Luke could see us now.”
“Are you kidding me? This would’ve been Luke’s idea, and I’m sure it wouldn’t have been for the sake of finding missing children or fixing our moms. I recall your brother having a sick sense of humor when it came to his pranks.”
Greg grins. “Actually, I think you may be right.”
Rachel smiles up at him. “You ready?”
He clears his throat, walks closer, and carefully climbs onto the sofa. After a bit of repositioning, he lowers himself over her, and whispers, “This is so weird.” He pushes one hand underneath her body, resting his palm against the small of her back.
She shifts beneath him to get comfortable, drapes one arm around his neck, and places her other hand against his chest. “Just think about the kids.”
He frowns. “That’s even weirder.”
“Not like that, jeez,” she says in a high-pitched whisper. “We’ve both acted in the school plays, so think of this as a performance for a smaller crowd. Stay in character and all will be well.”
Rachel sees his Adam’s apple bob as he looks down at her. “Who’d you fool around with before?” he asks.
“I don’t kiss and tell,” she says. “We should probably make this thing seem more authentic now, especially seeing as my mom hasn’t texted yet. Do you have any rules I should adhere to?”
“No. You?”
“Nothing below the belt, please. I require, at least, dinner and a movie for that type of action.”
Greg chuckles, one of those real, breathy chuckles he hardly ever uses anymore. “I forgot how funny you are, Rach.”
The faint clickety-clacks of shoes against wooden floors drift into the apartment, cutting their conversation short. The footsteps don’t appear in a hurry, but they definitely seem to be heading toward the apartment.
Rachel nods at Greg, ready to give her mother the shock of her life. She just hopes Mrs. Crenshaw’s doing her part now and saving what clothes she can from being thrown out.
“Compartmentalize and kiss me like you mean it or none of this will look real,” Greg whispers. He leans down and presses his lips against hers.
Rachel parts her lips to deepen the kiss and pulls him close enough so there’s almost no space between them. She closes her eyes, tuning out his roving hands and focuses on the next step of her plan, but the pleasant sensations resonating in her core and quickly spreading throughout her entire body keep interrupting her thoughts. She moves with him, rubbing up against him for that genuine look they’re hoping to achieve. Her fingers travel up the back of his neck and push into his hair. Greg’s mouth moves away from her lips for a millisecond, and she inadvertently sighs, before he returns to muffle the sound. She feels him smile and the rumble of laughter that he quashes reverberates against the hand she’s pressing against his chest.
What she expects to hear is a shout of outrage, maybe an argument where hurtful insults are thrown around. What she expects is for their mothers to act like mothers and discipline them for their wayward behavior.
Mrs. Pearson, however, simply says in an apologetic tone, “Oh, dear. I forgot to knock again.”
Greg pulls away in mock surprise, a worthy thespian if ever there was one, and turns to look at his mother standing in the doorway.
“Mom! Some privacy, please.” His discreet sternness effectively conveys the fake humiliation and disbelief anyway.
Rachel shifts beneath him to look at Mrs. Pearson, who wears a dopey smile plastered across her face, staring through the two teenagers. Beside the washed-out woman—and yes, Mrs. Pearson does look bleaker and thinner and unlike her usual trophy-wife self—Rachel’s mother stands with wide, almost glazy eyes, wearing a similar smile.
“I’m sorry for bothering you, but Mrs. Cleary just wanted to say she’ll be home late tonight, Rachel. Isn’t that right, Jenny?”
“It sure is, Patricia.” Rachel’s mother laughs, sounding like some drugged-up TV game show hostess. “Honey, Mrs. Pearson was kind enough to invite you to stay over tonight. Isn’t that nice?”
Greg glances down at Rachel and mouths, “What’s going on here?” as if this is a math problem she has a better grasp on.
“What do we say, Rachel?” her mother asks, still smiling broadly at her.
“Thanks, Mrs. Pearson?” Rachel’s unsure what else to say—she certainly doesn’t know what more she can do to get a rise out of them. Her eyes dart between the two women in their identical dresses and wearing their matching smiles, looking like they couldn’t be happier with their not-as-advertised Stepford lives.
“Now, you two have fun,” Mrs. Pearson says a tad too cheerfully, shooing Rachel’s mother out of the apartment’s living room and shutting the door firmly behind them once they’re outside.
Dumbstruck, Rachel stares at the space where their mothers had stood, their unseeing eyes already haunting her thoughts. This was not the intended outcome of her stunt, not by a longshot.
“What just happened?” Greg asks in a whisper. “My mom flipped when she walked in on me and Maggie Dawson a few months ago. It rained hellfire and brimstone for a week. Now, she’s invited you over to stay the night?”
Rachel grimaces as she drags her gaze from the door and meets his eyes. “Maggie Dawson? Really?”
“She’s a nice girl. Nicer than most,” Greg says, shrugging.
She sniggers. “That’s slightly offensive.” Rachel looks back to the closed door, her humor evaporating. “It’s like they’ve been brainwashed to see only what they want to see. I mean, your hand is clearly on my boob,” she says, and glimpses down to where his hand is still cupping her breast through the white padded bra. “That reminds me, Greg. You can remove your hand now.”
Nine
Mother Knows Best
Rachel’s mother doesn’t explode into anger when she returns home that night. Words like slut and whore aren’t thrown around like they hold some magical power. There is no lecture about how bad sex before marriage is—the automated argument parents tend to use when it comes to these types of things. The unsubtle mention of how God punishes sinners isn’t mixed into casual conversation as an indirect warning either. Rachel expected her mother to stomp up to her bedroom in a fit of rage, throw open the closet doors to chuck her remaining clothes and shoes into garbage bags, but nothing as absolute as that occurred. Instead, an uncaring and obstinate Rachel had to watch as her mother carefully unpacked the half-empty closet into a box marked Goodwill while chatting cheerily about her day.
The less Rachel seems to care about what’s happening, the happier her mother becomes.
When the closet is empty and the box is removed from her room, Jenny returns with five dresses and their matching sensible shoes, all in Rachel’s sizes. The smile her mother wears—seemingly proud if Rachel’s eyes aren’t deceiving her—is the creepiest part of the entire exchange, which says a lot. She looks at the dresses, identical to the ones her mother wears these days, and tries not to lose her cool at the shapeless, ugly garments. If she’d been forced to wear these potato sacks last year, she definitely wouldn’t have lost her V-card to an undeserving Jules—Jules. Just Jules—while they were spending the Christmas break at her aunt’s house in Bangor. Then again, clothes—or the lack thereof—hadn’t really mattered at the time.
Rachel puts on a dress, which hangs to the middle of her calves and reaches to the top of her neck, and listens to her gushing mother. There isn’t much more she can do.
Her mother loses steam eventually, but only after she’s snapped a few pictures of Rachel in her horrible new attire. Jenny heads to her bedroom, because ‘too much excitement isn’t good before bedtime’, leaving Rachel alone once more.
Rachel takes the four dresses out of her closet, hangers and all, and makes her way downstairs. She finds her phone where she’d left it behind a throw pillow and unlocks the screen. No new text messages, no new emails, only a few inconsequential WhatsApp updates—Greg apparently hadn’t seen the need to follow through on her request due to their plan’s failure. After quickly copying and pasting Greg’s number into a new contact, she makes her way to Mrs. Crenshaw’s house for a meeting—this time with a whole other objective in mind.
Mrs. Crenshaw used to work in one of Shadow Grove’s now-defunct factories as a fashion designer, between the late 1970s and early 1990s. She still has a keen eye for fashion, is an impressive tailor, and understands how to work under pressure.
Operation Fashion Police can’t wait until the morning.
Rachel lets herself into Mrs. Crenshaw’s house, hearing the ancient TV crackling in the living room. “Mrs. Crenshaw?” she calls, not wanting to frighten the poor woman by arriving unannounced.
“What are you wearing?” Mrs. Crenshaw says in way of greeting, perched on her armchair when Rachel walks into the living room.
Dougal, who’s lying on the sofa, twists around and laughs when he sees Rachel. “Och! Ye look ... ye look ... lik’ a disgraced nun,” he howls through the laughter.
Mrs. Crenshaw’s hand moves to her mouth to muffle her snickers and giggles. “I’m sorry, dear, but he’s not wrong.”
Rachel sneers and dumps the dresses onto the back of the empty armchair. “After the day I’ve had, forgive me for not finding any of this funny,” she says, crossing her arms.
Mrs. Crenshaw reaches over and pulls the top dress into her lap to inspect
it. “My mother wouldn’t have worn these travesties.”
The disgust is a justified response. The fabric is heavy, has no ventilation, and feels terrible against a person’s skin.
Mrs. Crenshaw turns to Rachel and says, “I take it you would like some alterations made?”
“If you could shorten it and give it an open back—” Rachel tugs at the stiff sleeves, which make her feel like she is in a straitjacket. “Maybe do something with these sleeves? I’ll do the rest.”
“What’s the rest?”
“Bedazzling it to death comes to mind,” Rachel says, turning her nose up at the ghastly dress. “What do you think?”
“I think you should leave it to me. Your mother’s going to have a fit anyway; let’s not overdo it with sparkles.”
“I doubt it,” Rachel mutters, walking around the armchair and plopping down. “Greg and I staged a scene for our moms to walk in on, and we went all out. His hands were everywhere. We were kissing like it’s nobody’s business. Now, guess what happened when they came across our steamy performance? Zero. Zilch.” She exhales loudly, frustrated with her failure. “Mrs. Pearson went so far as to ask me to stay the night.”
“Should I say something parental on the matter to make you feel better?” Mrs. Crenshaw asks.
Rachel puffs out her cheeks like a disgruntled child, mumbling, “It won’t be the same.”
“Well, I tried.” Mrs. Crenshaw stands with a groan, clutching the dress. She grabs the rest of Rachel’s new wardrobe and says, “Get comfortable, Rachel. This may take a while.” The old woman shuffles into the dining room, mumbling about how nobody in their right mind wears Crimplene anymore and how forcing a child to wear that type of nonsense is cruel and unusual punishment.
“I love you, too, Mrs. Crenshaw,” Rachel shouts after her.
“You’d better.”
Dougal chuckles as he stretches out on the sofa, keeping his eyes glued to the grainy TV screen.
“How was your first day at the new job?” Rachel asks.
The Night Weaver Page 9
