“Will do.”
“Ivy says hi and to have fun and take a lot of pictures. Margot says the same and that everything is under control at the shop. She’d also like a postcard from Paris. Well, actually she’d just like some French stamps, to give Arnie for his collection.”
“We can do that.”
“Abigail and Franklin called from Bermuda. They’re still loving it. Abigail wants to buy a condo there. Franklin talked her down from that, but they’ve already made reservations for next year. Abbie said to tell you that she called the credit card company and had them up your limit so you wouldn’t run out of money in Paris.”
I rolled my eyes. “She didn’t have to do that. How many times do I have to tell her? I’m going to be making good money after August. Plus, I have plenty saved up from working at the quilt shop last summer. Doesn’t she think I’m capable of taking care of myself?”
“I don’t know,” Garrett said, unsuccessfully trying to stifle another yawn. “I think it’s just her way of letting you know she cares. And, continuing on the list of people who care: Mom and Charlie called from London. Their flight to Dublin is delayed, so they had time to phone.
“Mom says to have a wonderful time. And Charlie says to make sure we have lemon tarts at Ladurée, and cassoulet at Allard, and baguettes at—”
“Okay, I get the idea.” I laughed. “You don’t have to go through the whole list again. He already wrote it down for me. How were they? Did they sound happy?”
“Very,” Garrett said, raising his eyebrows. “At one point, Mom actually giggled.”
“Oh, that’s sweet,” I said.
“Yeah, I guess so, but when it’s your mom, it’s a little weird. She said everything was wonderful. Charlie was wonderful. Their weekend in New York was wonderful. The flight to London was wonderful. I think she even thought their delay to Dublin was wonderful.”
“Well, she’s in love.” I shrugged. “It just took her a while to realize it, that’s all.”
“I’ll say. I knew Charlie was the right guy for her five minutes after I met him. Good thing Grandma pulled Charlie aside and told him to play hard to get for a while. Otherwise, who knows how long it would have taken her to figure it out?”
“At least once she did figure it out, she didn’t waste time doing something about it. I’ve never been to two weddings in one week before.”
Garrett smiled. “Yeah. That was crazy, wasn’t it? But they did it right. Get the license and the ring, call up the minister, arrange for a quiet little ceremony at the church, followed by lunch for a few friends and family at the Grill, and then fly off to Ireland for the honeymoon. Simple. And I thought it was just as nice as Abigail and Franklin’s wedding.”
I nodded. “I agree. There’s only one downside. When Abigail finds out that they got married without her, she’s going to blow a gasket.” I looked up from my quilting, worried. “You didn’t say anything to her, did you?”
“Are you kidding? And risk her reaching through the phone line to strangle me? I’m not stupid. Mom and Charlie can detonate that bomb on their own, thanks. I’m nobody’s stooge.”
Garrett leaned his head back, closed his eyes, and said in a wistful voice, “Babe, if we ever do decide to get married, do you think we can pull a Charlie? Just run off, get married, and tell Abigail about it later?”
I laughed. “Tempting, but no. We can’t leave Abigail out of the picture. She’d never forgive us.”
“I was afraid of that.” Eyes still closed, he shrugged. “Oh, well. It never hurts to dream.”
I put down my stitching, reached out to hold Garrett’s hand, and leaned my head on his shoulder. “Nope. It never does.”
The flight was nearly full, but Garrett and I had an extra seat in our row. Even so, we sat side by side, me in the window seat and Garrett in the middle, stretching his long legs to the left, taking advantage of the empty space next to him.
He was asleep before we’d even left the ground, his head lolling on my shoulder, which was kind of nice.
The air-conditioning was going full blast, so the plane was chilly. I wished I had my Star-Crossed Love quilt with me, the one that was supposed to be my wedding quilt but that the quilt circle had agreed could be my bon voyage quilt instead. It was big, too big to put in my carry-on luggage, so I’d had to check it. It took up a lot of room and I’d had to leave behind some extra clothes to make room for it. Garrett thought I was crazy to bring it, but there was no way I was going to Paris for a month without it. No matter how far I was from home, when I snuggled up under my quilt, blanketed under those beautiful stars, I felt surrounded by friends.
I pulled one of those cheap little airline blankets out of a plastic bag, covered my legs with it, and scooted a little closer to Garrett as the plane climbed.
There was a movie on a big screen at the front of the plane. I glanced at it now and again but didn’t put on my headphones, preferring to enjoy the stillness, the steady white whoosh of engine noise, while I worked on my quilt blocks and Garrett slept.
Having finished one block, I reached into my bag to pull out another but realized they were all done. All I had to do now was stitch together the separate blocks, quilt the top, and bind the edges, and the wall hanging, my wedding present to Evelyn and Charlie, would be finished.
Moving slowly so I wouldn’t wake Garrett, I put down my tray table and laid out a few of the blocks so I could get an idea of how the finished wall hanging would look.
Two painted doors of the quilt shop and the restaurant side by side, one red and one black, flanked by a generic background of shop doors and windows, patched from fabrics of gray and charcoal, a New Bern streetscape silhouetted against a cerulean sky that darkened in layers, from sapphire to indigo to midnight, as my eye rose past rooftops and treetops and into a miniature firmament of tiny stars in bright, bold colors, each one separate and distinct from the others but also in harmony with the whole, like brilliant hues in a little girl’s paint box, untouched but full of possibility.
It would look beautiful when it was done. Evelyn would love it. She would understand it.
And while I was thinking this, the separated blocks moved closer and closer together, becoming one seamless whole, the entire scene flawlessly stitched and perfectly joined just as it had been when I first bought the fabrics, laid them out on the table, side by side by side, and imagined what they could become.
It was all there, just as I’d seen it in my mind’s eye. With one addition.
On the left side, about a third of the way up between the rooftops and the midnight sky, there was a flight of birds, ghost white against the darkening sky, flying in formation to an unknown destination. I hadn’t sewn those birds, not in this quilt anyway. At least I didn’t remember doing so. How had they gotten there?
“What would you like to drink?”
I looked up. A flight attendant was standing in the aisle, smiling, her hands gripping the handles of a completely empty beverage cart without a can, bottle, or even a pitcher of water on its surface.
“Well…I don’t know. What do you have?”
“Anything. Anything you can imagine. Well, almost anything. Here,” she said, reaching down into a square opening in the top of the cart and pulling out a green glass bottle with a gold label, “try this. It’ll help you sleep.”
“But I’m already asleep,” I said, accepting a glass from her hand and taking a sip of the wine, deep red, complex, and quenching.
“Yes, of course you are,” she said. “But this will help you stay asleep, at least for a little while, so you can get some rest. It’s good to dream, Liza. It’s even better to live.”
I finished the wine while the woman looked on approvingly. Leaning down to take my empty glass, she saw the quilt lying on the tray table.
“That’s lovely! You made it, didn’t you? I can tell. It has your mark all over it, your voice, your touch.” She leaned closer to get a better look.
“There’s just one thing mi
ssing. You need some silver thread, don’t you? For the birds. Let me see if I can find some.” She reached into the cart again. When her hand emerged, she was clutching a collection of beautiful threads in her hand, shining and smooth and thin, cobalt and salmon and celadon and pearl, every color you could imagine, every color but silver.
“Oh,” she said softly, a little crease of disappointment appearing between her brows, in exactly the same spot it did when I was disappointed, which I suddenly realized I was.
“I thought you said anything I could want is in there.”
“Almost everything. Some things you have to find for yourself. Wait a minute!” she exclaimed, her features brightening. “Of course! I should have remembered. You don’t need me to get you the thread. You can do that for yourself. See?”
She smiled and pointed to the window. I looked out and saw them, a flight of birds, each one holding a silver thread in its beak, each thread attaching itself to some point on the wing of the plane, one thread for each person inside.
“There’s yours,” she said, pointing to the thread nearest my window. “You can reach out and clip off as much or as little as you need.”
I turned from the window. “But if I do that, won’t I run out?”
She laughed. “No! Of course not! Your thread is always as long or as short as you need it to be.”
“Are you sure? How do you know? And how do you know which one is mine?”
She tipped her head to the side, as if trying to understand how I had failed to grasp something so obvious. “Well, I don’t, Liza. Only you know that. After all, it’s your thread. It’s your choice. I’m just glad you finally made one.”
“But that’s what’s had me worried. How do I know I’m making the right one?”
“You don’t.” She laughed. “Not for sure. But don’t worry. It’s not like there’s only one right thread. If you find your thread is taking you somewhere you don’t want to go, you can always grab hold of another. You’ll have many threads, many choices in your life. Some will be better than others. But all of them, every single one, has at least the potential for good. You’ll see,” she said and reached her hand to run her finger tenderly along my cheek, a touch I remembered from other dreams and other days.
“The main thing is not to be afraid.”
“I’m not. Not anymore.”
“Good for you. You’re going to be fine. I always knew you would be. Just keep reaching out and grabbing hold. The thread may look thin, but it’s stronger than you think. You’ll see. You’re stronger than you think too.”
She smiled again and held out her hand. I looked up at her, handed her the empty glass, and saw the name printed on her name tag: Susan.
She grabbed hold of the cart handle. “It’s time for you to wake up now, Liza. But I’ll see you again,” she said as she walked down the aisle, pushing the cart ahead of her.
Garrett stirred next to me, yawned.
I yawned, too, opening my eyes and blinking a few times before turning first to the left, toward the empty aisle of the darkened plane, filled with sleeping travelers, then down to my lap, where the unstitched patches of my quilt block still sat, and then to the right.
Looking out the tiny oval window, I saw the velvet-black night studded with pinprick stars in a sky that began in the mind of God and ended at the edge of dawn, to a thin silver thread of morning arcing across the horizon, stretching as far as I could see and farther still, a shining path that could lead me anywhere.
Anywhere I choose.
A READING GROUP GUIDE
A THREAD SO THIN
Marie Bostwick
ABOUT THIS GUIDE
The following questions are intended to
enhance your group’s reading of
A THREAD SO THIN.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
One of the recurring themes in A Thread So Thin is that women have many and varying choices today: to marry, not to marry, to have children, not to have children, to pursue a lucrative field or one that is fulfilling but does not provide financial security. Liza said, “The way I see it, the older you get, the more chance there is that the choices you make now will screw up the whole rest of your life.” Why do you think Liza had this outlook on life? Do you agree with her? Like Liza, have you faced a crossroads in your life when you had a difficult decision to make about your future? Did the decision turn out right for you? If not, did it or did it not impact the rest of your life? Looking back, would you make the same decision?
Both Garrett and Liza had lost their fathers due to betrayal, yet one of them lived life with a positive outlook, and the other seemed to continue to suffer from the betrayal. What do you think led to this difference?
When Liza’s mother died, her mom’s attorney, Franklin, gave her some of the support her mother would have provided had she lived. In your life, has there been an adult other than your parents who helped you through tough times and helped you celebrate your successes? Who is that person, and what did he or she do to help you?
After Liza was forced to move in with her aunt Abigail, she set out to make Abigail’s life hell. Do you recall a time in your life when, in rebellion, you gave your parent or guardian similar grief? Why do you think you did this? Later, how did you feel about your attitude? Did you change your attitude, and why?
Liza loves New York City—the ambience, the art, the food—especially the people. How would you characterize the people where you live? Are they generally friendly or standoffish? Why do you think the local populace has this kind of attitude?
Garrett is an optimistic person. What is your outlook on life? Are you, like Garrett, confident that, one way or another, everything will work out and that the best is yet to come? Or do you find that you generally expect the worst to happen? Why do you think you have your attitude? Has your outlook been influenced by turns of events in your life, or do you think this is just a part of your inherited tendencies? Do you think a person can change his or her outlook on life? If so, how?
Abigail and Liza mended the rift between them, aided by their shared involvement in quilting. If you have mended a broken relationship in your life, share how the mending began and what brought you back together.
When Liza was trying to make up her mind what to do about Garrett’s proposal, she surveyed her friends and acquaintances about their attitudes toward marriage. Do you think marriage is as relevant to women today as it was fifty, even twenty-five, years ago?
Why do you think it took Evelyn so long to say yes to Charlie’s proposal? Was that wisdom on her part, or fear, or some of both? Have you, or has someone you know, faced similar difficulty in responding to a proposal? How does time and age change what women want or expect from life, marriage, and career?
One of Charlie’s favorite sayings about a person who possessed a certain skill was, “You don’t just lick it up off the rocks,” meaning that a lot of the talents we think of as belonging to us alone are actually inherited. What talent or special skill do you have that you think you inherited from a member or members of your family?
After Liza did not immediately say yes to Garrett’s unanticipated marriage proposal, and she witnessed his abrupt change in demeanor, she decided that the idea of being responsible for someone’s happiness isn’t any more comfortable than the idea of being responsible for someone’s misery. Have you ever felt you were forced to “own” someone’s happiness or misery? If so, did you convey that this was not a weight that should be put on your shoulders, and how did you accomplish this? How did the person react to your assertion?
Evelyn was thrilled that every woman in the new quilting class taught by her and her mother left with at least one new friend. She allowed that new friends are the kinds of treasures that don’t show up on a balance sheet but do add up to the best sort of payday. Especially considering what Evelyn has been through in her marriage and her health, what does this attitude say about Evelyn? How do you think her attitude has contributed to or detracted from her happi
ness and success?
Why do you think Evelyn reacted negatively when she first learned about Garrett and Liza’s engagement? Can you remember a time when you wished you could have taken back a response to someone’s news?
What impact did Liza’s father’s betrayal have on her concept of family? How did this affect her ability to commit to Garrett?
Liza was profoundly touched by the beautiful quilt her friends and relatives made for her as their wedding gift. Have you ever received a gift that touched you similarly? If so, tell the group about it and the people who gave it to you.
For more information about A Thread So Thin or Marie Bostwick, visit www.mariebostwick.com or follow her on Twitter, @marie bostwick.
Dear Reading Friend,
It has been such a joy for me to serve as your guide on this, our third visit, to New Bern. Three books in to the Cobbled Court series of novels (and already working on book four, which I believe you’ll see in the late spring or early summer of 2011), I can honestly say that I find this little village and these characters as compelling as ever. I hope you feel the same.
When I sat down to begin working on A Single Thread, the first Cobbled Court novel, I had not considered it to be the first in a series. But by the time I finished writing it, I very much wanted to return to New Bern, so I asked readers to write and let me know if they felt as I did.
You did write, by the thousands, and I am so grateful.
Your enthusiasm for these characters and their stories, and your openness as you shared how these books have made you laugh, cry, think, and even make important changes and decisions in your own lives, convinced me that it was important to return to New Bern. I have done so with pleasure.
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