Stitches in Time (2 page)

She did iron them, watched closely by Kara and perspiring with nervousness. She learned how to sew on buttons and repair hooks-and-eyes strained by customers who had underestimated their waist size. “If you don't replace a button immediately it may be lost,” Kara had informed her. “And then we'd have to replace all of them.” It was a sufficient threat; some of the Victorian and Edwardian blouses (Rachel learned to call them “waists”) had long rows of buttons, all old and impossible to match.

In addition to demonstrating emergency cleaning techniques—“The sooner you get at a stain, the easier it is to remove”—Kara gave her a crash course in the history of costume. Luckily for Rachel the tags attached to each garment carried not only the price, but information about the date, the fabric and the approximate size. “Not that that deters chubbies from trying to squeeze themselves into a size three,” Kara had commented wryly. “Try to talk them out of it if you can—tactfully. I usually point out that the armholes of the old garments are too tight for ‘well-shaped modern females.' Women weren't supposed to have muscles in the bad old days.”

Bias-cut, pongee, Lily Dache, Battenburg; celluloid versus tortoiseshell, paste (paste?) versus rhinestone; at the
end of a week Rachel's head rattled with information she knew she would never absorb, and her wariness of Cheryl's partner had developed into hearty dislike. Kara was never flat-out rude…well, hardly ever; her comment on Rachel's first attempt at sewing on a button (“For God's sake, don't they teach kids anything useful these days?”) was probably not meant to be taken personally. One day, watching Rachel rearrange the rack of lingerie a customer had left in disorder, Kara said suddenly, “You don't like these clothes, do you?”

Shaking out the twelve-inch flounce of a white petticoat, Rachel took her time about answering. “I admire the workmanship and the materials. But I'd never wear them. They aren't my style.”

“Hmmm,” said Kara. She didn't press the point.

Cheryl's standards were just as demanding, but her tutelage was a lot easier to take. She told funny stories about her own mistakes and interspersed instruction with compliments. “You sure are picking this up fast. Took me forever to learn all those designer names, and I still can't pronounce 'em right. Why do they all have to be French?”

Cheryl didn't have much time for Rachel, though. Not only did Tony require her attention, but ordinary domestic chores become more than doubly burdensome when the person who usually shares them is incapacitated. Cheryl seemed to spend half her time in the car, running errands, shopping, chauffeuring the children to various appointments. Occasionally she accepted Rachel's offer of help with gratitude so effusive it embarrassed Rachel, who was uncomfortably aware of her true motives. Any excuse to get away from the shop and Kara's bossiness!

By the time Tony came home from the hospital Cheryl was treating her like one of the family. It was impossible not to respond—rejecting Cheryl's overtures would have been like slapping a child—but Rachel almost preferred
Kara's cool courtesy. She didn't want to hear Cheryl talk about her husband—about her fears for his safety, about his (many) virtues and (few) failings. About how they had met, how she had believed she could never care for another man as she had cared for her Joe, how wrong she had been. Rachel listened with a sunny smile on her face and envy boiling darkly inside her. It wasn't fair. What had Cheryl done to deserve not one but two such paragons? Her first marriage had ended, not in divorce or desertion, but in her husband's premature and tragic death.

Cheryl had everything. Three children, all bright and healthy and handsome, a lovely old house filled with antiques, a loving brother and fond friends. It was too good to be true, like a feature in some saccharine woman's magazine.

As “one of the family” she had come to know Cheryl's brother Mark, who was also Kara's husband, fairly well. Before he left for Europe he had helped Cheryl rearrange one of the downstairs rooms of the big, rambling house as a bedroom for Tony. The family living quarters were on the second floor, and Cheryl had decided—unilaterally—that the stairs would be too difficult for a man on crutches. She would, of course, sleep upstairs to be near the children. Once she had set her mind on something she was impossible to budge, so nobody argued with her, though Mark's raised eyebrows suggested he had some doubt of Tony's approval of the arrangement.

Rachel's initial wariness of Mark disappeared as she watched him carry furniture and wash windows, and listened to him exchange friendly insults with Alice, Cheryl's cleaning woman. All of them treated Alice like a friend instead of an employee, but Mark was obviously her favorite; he kept accusing her of being a feminist—a charge she vehemently denied—and she retaliated by
repeating the current scandals about his fellow congressmen. There was always some scandal about some congressman, and Alice's expertise supported her claim that she read three newspapers a day.

Sometimes Rachel thought Mark was on better terms with Alice than with his own wife. There was something uneasy about that relationship, pleasant though it appeared on the surface. It couldn't be Kara's decision to stay in Washington instead of accompanying Mark to Europe; he had postponed his own departure for two days so he could be on hand to help bring Tony home from the hospital. They had been friends for years, even before Tony married Mark's sister, and their mutual affection was evident, though it took the typical masculine form of insults and rude jokes.

After Mark left, Tony had been visibly depressed. For a man who was accustomed to being active and in control, his enforced idleness was maddening, and with the best intentions in the world Cheryl kept saying and doing all the wrong things. Watching her, Rachel was torn between sympathy and exasperation. She understood, only too well, why Cheryl hovered over him, touching him and patting him; but couldn't Cheryl realize that he didn't want her to be bright and cheerful and uncomplaining all the time? He would have liked her to complain now and then, to prove she couldn't get on as well without him.

Tony had been home for about a week when Rachel found herself alone in the shop one gray December afternoon. It was the first time she had been on her own, and she was acutely conscious of Tony's presence, even though two closed doors and a short corridor separated them. Kara was out chasing down merchandise and Cheryl had taken young Jerry to the pediatrician—it was one of those ear infections that wouldn't go away—and there were no
customers to occupy her attention. She was supposed to be reading one of her reference books but she hadn't turned a single page; she kept listening for sounds from the back room, and wondering what he was doing there all alone. Reading, sleeping, lying on his bed staring out the window in bored frustration? The view would be lovely in a few months, but the gray skies and withered grass of a December day would only depress a man who was already feeling low. Cheryl had put up a bird feeder outside the window. Rachel would never forget the look on Tony's face when his wife explained she was sure he'd enjoy watching the finches and the sparrows and the cute little tufted titmice.

It was no use trying to study, she couldn't concentrate. Perhaps there was something she ought to do in the shop. Brightly but softly lit, with pots of ferns and ivy hanging at the windows, it was a cheerful, summery room—a lot more cheerful than Tony's back bedroom. Once the double parlors of the house, it had been turned into a single large room by removing the French doors and replacing partition walls with square columns that provided additional display space. The graceful proportions and handsome old woodwork gave it a look of elegance that suited the merchandise on display—bright quilts, framed pieces of fragile old lace, designer gowns by great names like Worth and Vionnet. Rachel's gaze lingered on a garment that had struck her as epitomizing the frivolity and impracticality of vintage chic—a peignoir of fragile shell pink chiffon, its flowing sleeves and trailing skirts and low-cut neck trimmed with cascades of pink silk roses and green silk leaves. Why would a modern, sensible woman wear a thing like that? She certainly wouldn't; it was too frivolous and feminine, and far, far too expensive—another designer original, almost a century old. It was beautiful, though. The woman who had owned it must
have worn it only a few times, on special occasions, for a special person, a husband or lover…

The footsteps on the porch outside were a welcome distraction from fantasies that had taken on an uncomfortable edge. Rachel swore under her breath. Those fantasies had gotten worse (or better?) since Tony came home. She'd have to do something about the situation—it wasn't fair to anyone, including herself.

Bracing herself to smile and look pleasant, she realized the footsteps had halted. Not retreated, just stopped, outside the door. There was a soft but solid thud, and then silence.

Rachel craned her neck, trying to get a glimpse of the person outside through one of the long glass panels flanking the door. The mailman, or UPS? If he had delivered something, he should have at least rung the bell. She was about to stand up when the door opened.

Not a customer, Rachel thought, unless the clientele was about to undergo a radical change. The usual male clients were either older men looking for a present for a wife or daughter, or younger men with sophisticated tastes in interior decoration. This man was in his late teens or early twenties, and if his clothes were any indication of his tastes, they weren't sophisticated. His sneakers had cost more than Rachel spent on clothes in a month, his jacket was covered with iridescent insignia, and his jeans were supported by a wide leather belt and gaudy brass buckle.

It wasn't his clothes that raised Rachel's hackles, it was the way his eyes shifted, searching the big room like a dog sniffing out a strange neighborhood. Not until he had looked the place over did he actually enter the room, giving the door a careless shove that slammed it into place. Then his eyes returned to Rachel.

One of Cheryl's first lessons had concerned potential buyers. “Just because a customer looks poor or ignorant
doesn't mean she can't buy everything in the shop. Be polite. To everybody.”

“Can I help you?” Rachel asked, politely.

“Depends on what you got in mind.” Feet apart, thumbs hooked in his belt, he grinned insolently at her.

Oh, hell, Rachel thought. One of those. There was only one way to handle them—and for all she knew, he
could
buy everything in the shop. Holding her polite smile in place, she said, “Are you looking for something in particular?”

“Nah.” He turned away, studying the garments on a rack nearby. When he began rummaging through them Rachel bit her lip to hold back a sharp protest. The clothes were vintage whites, Victorian and Edwardian undergarments and nightgowns. Their present snowy perfection was the result of hours of washing, bleaching, starching and ironing. She had ironed one of the petticoats herself, ruffle by ruffle by ruffle.

He wasn't looking at the clothes, he was yanking at the price tags. If he was a seller instead of a buyer, that would account for his behavior and his presence; sellers often checked the prices, especially people who were selling for the first time. They wanted to get an idea of how much they could ask. Most of them failed to take into account not only the difference between wholesale and retail, but the amount of work involved in restoring the garments. Cheryl had some funny stories about would-be sellers and their indignation when she tactfully declined to buy tattered family treasures for outrageous prices, but she had occasionally acquired good pieces from such sources. “Be polite to everybody.”

Watching his dirty hands tugging at the fragile fabrics, Rachel was on the verge of breaking Cheryl's rule when he pulled one of the hangers off the rack. The sight of this particular garment had distracted him from his original
purpose, whatever that may have been; it was a pair of lacy, ruffled underdrawers.

Like all the merchandise in the shop, they were in pristine condition and of rare quality—hand-stitched crepe de chine, the legs ending in deep frills of handmade lace and silk ribbons—but it was the label sewed inside the waistband that justified the high price. Lucile, whose real name was Lady Duff Gordon, had specialized in extravagant lingerie for wealthy aristocrats during the early 1900s. Following the fashion of the time, this pair of undies had separate legs, joined only at the waistband.

Turning, a broad grin on his face, the man inserted his hand into the front opening and wriggled his fingers.

Rachel felt a furious blush warm her face. She and Cheryl had laughed and exchanged mildly ribald comments over those open-legged panties, though the practicality of the arrangement in a period of long skirts and trailing petticoats could not be denied. It was not embarrassment but anger and shock that provoked her reaction. No doubt the man was just a stupid clod, like the characters who insist that the obscene remarks they yell at passing women aren't meant to sound threatening, but his fixed smile and intent unblinking stare underlined the crudeness of that gesture.

She couldn't do anything about the blush, but she managed to control her voice. “Please don't handle the merchandise. If it's torn or soiled you'll have to pay for repairs.”

A sullen frown replaced the grin. “Aright, aright, you don't hafta be so snotty. I was just kidding around.”

He slung the hanger into place and sauntered toward the back of the room, where rows of open shelves held folded quilts, coverlets and fabric. Rachel had spent hours folding the quilts just so. She clenched her hands. The hell with politeness, she thought. How could she get rid of him? Cheryl would be back soon…

She hadn't been frightened before. He was tall, a good foot taller than she, gawky and hollow-chested and pasty-faced—not a particularly formidable figure. But she was suddenly and unpleasantly conscious of the fact that the house was isolated, set back from the street in its own large lot, in a quiet residential district; and when she thought of Cheryl walking in the door with Jerry, five years old…Whatever this character had in mind, he wasn't likely to be deterred by another woman and a small child. Maybe he had a gun. Everybody had guns these days. He hadn't felt threatened, not by one undersized female, but if someone else came in…