by Jeannie Watt
With a happy sense of anticipation, Tess lugged the boxes into the house and started unpacking. It didn’t take long to remove all the components and set them on the portable table she’d bought at the mercantile expressly for her sewing. After shoving all the packing material back into the box, she sat back and admired the cream-colored machine.
There were unidentified buttons and knobs and wheels—seemingly dozens of them. She touched a lever and the metal foot dropped down with a clack. All right...
Slowly she turned the wheel on the side of the machine and watched as the mechanism above the foot rose and fell, rose and fell.
Tess blew out a breath and sat back, feeling a flutter of excitement mixed with trepidation. The upside was that she had nothing but time on her hands to learn to use this thing and no one would see her mistakes. The downside was that she had no one to turn to for advice. Picking up one of the DVDs, she slit the cellophane seal and popped open the case.
After watching the DVD—twice—Tess had a distinct in-over-her-head feeling. Had she just wasted close to a thousand dollars on the machine and various accoutrements?
Tess turned off the TV and sat for a moment studying her inscrutable nemesis.
Then she sat down in the chair in front of the machine and tried to do what the lady on the DVD had done so easily. She tried to sew two squares of fabric together. And then she tried again.
It took some time to get the hang of controlling the fabric as it sailed through the machine at breakneck speed, but as she learned to control the amount of pressure she put on the foot pedal, she learned to control the direction the seams took—for the most part. Holding the fabric taut helped. In fact, the tauter she held it, the straighter the seam.
“Nothing to this,” she said to Blossom. A split second later there was an odd pop and the machine jammed. It took a second for her to realize that the needle had broken.
Back to the instruction booklet. Tess changed the needle then spent a good ten minutes taking out the seam before she tried again. Success. She carefully backstitched, held up the two pieces of fabric she had joined, testing the strength of the seam.
“Look,” she said to the dogs, who both ignored her. “Fine. Don’t look.”
She reached for the next two pieces and started feeding them through the machine. Less than a minute later the needle broke.
What the...?
Tess changed the needle, consulted the instruction manual. The needle size was correct, but after two more seams she broke another needle. And another.
Noting that she had only two needles left, Tess rested her head on the machine. What was going on? Why was her beautiful new machine pulverizing needles right and left? And where would she get new ones?
The mercantile. The store had everything from hog chow to embroidery hoops to portable tables. Surely there were sewing machine needles. She hadn’t been out for groceries in over a week. It was time.
And thankfully the mercantile was empty except for Ann.
“How’s that dog of yours?” she asked after Tess had found the needles, stocked up on bread, eggs, milk and apples and set them all on the counter.
“Limping, but better.”
“What happened to him?”
“He fell in a hole.”
Ann lifted an eyebrow then shot her an ironic look when she rang up the needles. “Taken up quilting, have you?”
“Uh, no.” Tess bit her lip then took a chance since Ann seemed moderately friendly today. “Do you happen to know anything about sewing machines?”
The old lady laughed and shook her head. “You’d have to talk to someone from the quilting club.”
“I can’t see that happening.”
“Neither can I. You should have taken the casserole,” Ann said, pushing the bag closer to Tess.
“Yeah,” Tess said with a sigh. “Live and learn.” To her surprise, Ann laughed.
“Doesn’t pay to piss off the queen bees around here,” she said.
Tess smiled a little. “Thanks.”
“Good luck,” Ann called after her.
Tess skipped the post office and drove straight back to the ranch, where she unpacked her groceries and then sat down to sew again.
Five minutes later the needle broke. Tess was seriously considering beating her head on the sewing machine when the dogs scrambled to their feet and headed to the living room, scaring the bejeezus out of her. A second later there was a knock on the door.
Tess slipped into the living room, checked out the window, taking care not to be seen, and then let out the breath she’d been holding and went to the door. Glasses girl, Zach’s daughter, was on the porch.
“I’m not supposed to talk to you,” the girl said as soon as Tess opened the door.
“But you are,” Tess said.
“It’s important. My sister’s cat is missing. This is what she looks like...” The girl held out a photo of a black cat with a white face and front paws. “My sister is very attached to her.”
“The little sister?” First I scare her to death? And now she’s lost her cat?
“No. My other sister.” The girl tucked the photo away. “Have you seen the cat?” she asked with a touch of impatience that reminded Tess of her father, and then she glanced furtively over her shoulder at her own house.
“No,” Tess said. “But if I do, I’ll call.”
“Thanks.” The girl once again looked at her place as if ascertaining that the coast was clear before starting for the steps.
“Did you sneak over here or something?”
“Or something,” she agreed. “I’m on my way to quilt club. I didn’t think anyone would notice if I took a detour, but you never know.”
Tess wasn’t certain how to take that. The kid was forbidden from going near her, to the point of being afraid of being caught? How did this tie into the neighborliness her father had mentioned? Maybe it didn’t extend to his kids...or maybe it was because she’d kicked his daughters off her property. That actually made sense, but this kid was here anyway. The middle sister must be pretty attached to the cat.
And then it struck her. Quilt club...
“Do you sew?”
The girl lifted her tote bag instead of replying.
“You made that?” Tess asked, impressed.
“Yeah.”
“All of it?”
The girl scowled at Tess’s comment before glancing at her house again. She turned back and opened her mouth, but Tess cut her off. “If your father doesn’t want you over here, maybe you’d better go.”
“It’s just because you scared my little sister.”
Bad move, that. “I’m sorry I scared your little sister.”
“Then why’d you do it?”
“I didn’t realize she’d take me literally. I was trying to make a point.” Tess reached up to lightly touch her scars.
“That’s what Dad spent two days trying to convince her of. Well, more like a night and breakfast the next morning. Six-year-olds have wild imaginations.”
Tess almost smiled. “And you’re...?”
“Twelve. My imagination has slowed down.”
Somehow Tess didn’t think so, and she didn’t want her tenuous peace with her neighbor to be disrupted by his daughter sneaking over to see her. “If I see the cat, I’ll call.”
“Why’d you want to know about my bag?”
“I’m trying to learn to sew.”
“Guess you should have joined quilt c
lub when you had the chance.” The girl was in the position of power. She seemed quite at home there. “What kind of help do you need?”
“I keep breaking needles.”
The girl frowned. “Look. I have to get to quilt club. If you let me use the creek path, I’ll come back that way and maybe help.”
“What about your folks?”
“It’ll be fine.” The kid spoke with such authority that Tess almost believed her.
Tess gave a quick glance in the direction of Zach Nolan’s house trying to tamp down her conscience. Zach had forbidden his daughter from seeing her and she was not going to encourage the kid to break the rules. As much as she’d like help, it wasn’t right.
“You can use the path, but just go straight home, okay?”
The girl nodded and started down the porch steps, the tote bag bouncing against her hip.
“Hey...what’s your name?” Tess asked as the girl reached the bottom step.
“Darcy.” She adjusted the tote bag’s shoulder strap. “I’ve gotta go.” A second later the girl disappeared around the corner of the house.
* * *
DARCY NOLAN SHOWED up on Tess’s porch two hours after she’d left.
“Hi,” she said as soon as Tess opened the door, nudging the dogs back with her leg. “I’m back.”
“So I see.” Tess liked this kid’s direct manner because it made it easier to be equally direct. “It’s not right for you to be here when your parents told you not to come over here.”
The girl appeared unfazed by Tess’s declaration. “Parent,” she corrected. “I only have a dad, and he didn’t say I couldn’t be here. He just told me not to trespass.”
Only a dad? Tess felt like her heart had just stopped.
Then who was the woman who drove in and out of Zach’s ranch? Did he have a live-in girlfriend?
Tess cleared her throat, which seemed unusually tight. “I thought he told you not to talk to me.”
“Well, specifically, when I asked if I could call round to the neighbors to see if they’d seen Misty, he told me not to talk to you.”
“I don’t know—”
“But I do.”
Tess frowned. “You know what?”
“The answer to your needle problem.” The girl dug into her pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of white paper. She flipped it open and read, “Needles can break because they’re put into the machine wrong, they’re threaded wrong, the size is wrong, or there’s too much tension while sewing.” Darcy looked up from the paper. “Could any of those be the problem?”
“Maybe...?” Tess said.
“Why don’t you let me watch you sew? I can tell you if you’re doing it right.”
Yeah. She could let the kid into her house and then go through all kinds of hell when her father found out.
“My dad will understand,” Darcy said, accurately reading Tess’s thoughts. “I’ll confess I helped you sew when I get home if it makes you feel better.”
“What if I say no?”
“I’ll leave and you’ll keep breaking needles.”
Good point. “Fine.” She stood back and Darcy walked into the house, pausing to pet first Blossom and then Mac, who wagged their tails and pushed each other aside trying to claim all of the girl’s attention.
“Nice dogs. What happened to him?” Darcy asked.
“He fell in a hole and sprained his leg. He’s getting better,” Tess said. Darcy gave the dogs one last pat, then crossed the room to the sewing machine set up on the portable table next to the window where Tess got the best light.
Darcy reached out and tested the table’s stability. It wobbled beneath her hand. “You might want to get something better.” Tess agreed wholeheartedly. The portable table vibrated like a jackhammer when she sewed.
“I had something better, but it burned up,” she said.
“Yeah. That’s too bad,” Darcy said as she leaned closer to the sewing machine, inspecting the dials. “I bet you’re glad the fire marshal cleared up that deal about how the fire started.” Tess frowned. How did this kid know about her worries on that front?
“Glad how?” Tess asked cautiously, having a strong feeling she wasn’t going to like the answer.
Darcy glanced up at her, her expression candid. “Glad that they decided you didn’t start it. Irv said you asked a lot of questions that arsonists ask.”
Tess fought an upwelling of anger. Was nothing private in this valley? “I just wanted to know how it started. I hadn’t seen any lightning so it was hard to believe that was the cause.” And she couldn’t believe she was defending herself to a twelve-year-old.
“Sometimes there are spontaneous strikes,” Darcy said as she gestured for Tess to sit down. Tess slowly sat. “We learned about it in science. There’s a lot of weird stuff about lightning. Ball lighting, St. Elmo’s fire. It’s not all forked stuff.”
“Interesting.” And how ironic that all Tess had wanted to do was to disappear here and instead she’d briefly become an arson suspect. That wouldn’t make her stick in people’s minds or anything.
“Show me what you do,” Darcy said. Tess complied. The sooner she got this over with, the sooner she could shoo the girl back home where she belonged. She took two pieces of cloth from a pile of practice squares she already had pinned together and carefully fed the fabric through the machine, holding it taut as it moved under the needle.
“Too tight?” she asked when the seam was finished, even though the needle was still intact.
“Yeah,” Darcy said. “I think so. What size needle are you using?”
Tess reached for the packet in the basket on the floor next to her. “Eleven?”
“No wonder. Too small. You need a thicker one if you’re going to pull like that. You’re bending the needle and it’s hitting the hole in the faceplate.”
“I see...”
“You won’t be able to bend a size sixteen, but it’s kind of big for cotton. Maybe you shouldn’t pull so much.”
“The seams go crooked.”
“Practice,” the girl said in a way that made Tess think she’s heard the word a time or two herself.
“Okay. I’ll practice.”
Darcy picked up a pair of pinned squares off Tess’s stack, rubbing her thumb over the top of the fabric. “You need to get some cheap sale fabric. This stuff is too nice to practice on.”
“You learned all this in quilt club?”
“And 4-H. Tia made me, but now I like it.”
Tess wasn’t going to ask who Tia was. She may well be the nosy lady who’d come to her door with the casserole-bearing grandmother.
“You could learn a lot in quilt club, but I don’t know if you can join. Now.”
“Probably not,” Tess agreed.
Darcy picked up her tote bag. “I can stop by every now and then and see how you’re doing,” she said. And then, before Tess could respond, she added, “And maybe in return you could let us take the path along the creek to school.”
Tess was searching for a way to explain that it wasn’t that she really had anything against the girls taking the path, but rather that she was trying to avoid any kind of false alarm setting the dogs off, when Darcy added, “Honestly, since you ticked off the quilt club, you aren’t going to get help from anyone else.”
“I have a book,” Tess countered.
Darcy shook her dark head. “Nothing takes the place of a real person. Trust me on this—you can’t believe how
many things can go wrong when you’re trying to learn to sew.”
She did look as if she knew what she was talking about.
Tess shifted her jaw sideways, the movement pulling on the scar tissue. What was the worst that could happen if she let the girls use the path? Her dogs would bark and scare her, at least until they recognized the girls and accepted them as part of the daily routine. If they ever did.
Did she want to jump out of her skin whenever the girls took a shortcut to school?
On the other hand, did she want to move toward having a more normal life?
“Are you all right?” Darcy asked with a slight frown.
“Wonderful,” Tess said dryly. “If I let you use the creek path, I want a note from your parents...uh, your dad...saying he knows about this deal and that you have permission to come over here.”
The girl’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully behind her glasses and Tess felt a vague sense of satisfaction. Score one for her. She really didn’t want to give up learning to sew before she started out of sheer frustration, but she didn’t want to be accused of kidnapping or contributing to the delinquency of a minor, either.
“Do you think that’d be a problem?” Tess asked.
Darcy cast her a sideways glance. “Maybe not if you also let him use the pasture for his cows.”
“What?” Tess demanded. Did this kid never stop?
“He needs that pasture.”
“Why?”
Darcy’s rolled her eyes. “Economics?” There was a lot of preadolescent sarcasm in the one word.
“I meant why my pasture?”
“Because the other pasture land in the valley is all leased right now and if he can graze his cattle, he has less hay to buy. Everything our family has depends on the price of cattle and hay.” Darcy shifted her weight. “You don’t know much about ranch life, do you?”
“Absolutely nothing.”
“Then why did you move here?”
Tess had a sudden and deep understanding of the term “deer in the headlights” because at that moment she felt exactly like one. “I, uh...” Don’t have a quick answer here. An obvious question for a kid to ask and she should have prepared a pat answer in advance, but hadn’t. So she did the only thing she could and redirected the conversation. “So you’ll help me with the ins and outs of sewing and all I have to do is give your family free access to my place?”
