A Single Thread (Cobbled Court) by Marie Bostwick Read Free Book Online Page B

Liza and me in turn. “Miss Burgess, I am releasing you to the custody and recognizance of your Aunt Abigail. Abigail, from this moment forward, you are responsible for your niece—for her care, her conduct, and for making sure she returns to my court in thirteen months’ time.”
    It wasn’t possible! He couldn’t mean it! I started to tell him exactly that and Liza was doing the same thing, but he wasn’t listening.
    “Ladies!” he bellowed, stunning us into silence. “Enough! That is how I have ruled and that is how it will be. Unless, of course, you’d rather we explore some other options, trials, jail-time, that sort of thing?” He paused as if waiting for us to respond before getting to his feet. No one said a word.
    “In that case, I’ll be going. I’m already thirty minutes behind schedule,” he muttered to himself, walking out without even saying goodbye.
    I couldn’t believe what had just happened.
    “He can’t be serious,” I said, turning around and looking at Franklin, who was looking at me with an expression that, had I not been certain that he had to realize the disastrous nature of the situation, might have passed for amusement. “This will never work! Not in a million years.
    Franklin didn’t say anything, just stood there with that odd look on his face.
    Mr. Corey picked up his briefcase. “Well, it looks like we’re all finished here. Mrs. Burgess-Wynne,” he said breezily, nodding to me before walking out the door, “you’re certainly fortunate to number someone as prominent and wise as Judge Gulden among your friends. I’d say you got very lucky today.” He grinned in a manner that told me how he really felt, that far from being “let off the hook,” I, the innocent bystander to this whole affair, had just been handed a thirteen-month sentence.
    Turning to look at my scowling, belligerent, delinquent niece, I couldn’t have agreed more.

5
Evelyn Dixon
     
    S tanding in a puddle of not-quite-subsided water, the plumber shook his head.
    “A quilt shop? In New Bern? Lady, you must be crazy. You won’t last six months.”
    “So I’ve been told”—I yawned, weary from a night of bailing—“about six hundred times. Just figure out how to fix the pipe and give me the estimate, would you please? I’ll be upstairs, making coffee. Would you like a cup?”
    “Oh yeah. That’d be great. Thanks. With cream if you’ve got it.”
    “I do.”
    I trudged up the wooden staircase at the back of the shop that led to my small apartment and plugged in the coffeemaker before flopping onto the sofa. When I’d peered through the dirty window of the shop, more than six months before, and decided that this filthy, decrepit ruin of a building was the stuff dreams were made of, I didn’t realize that there was an apartment above the store. But then again, there were a lot of things I hadn’t realized six months ago. And it was probably just as well. If I’d completely understood what I getting into, I might have changed my mind.
    When I went back to Texas to pack up the house and have my things shipped to Connecticut, almost everyone thought I’d lost my mind. When I asked my neighor, Maureen Stimmons, to check the mailbox for a day or two after the moving truck left, just to make sure the mail was being forwarded properly, she was quite vocal in her disapproval.
    “A quilt shop? You’ve never even held a full-time job! Evelyn, if you ask me, I think you’re a few sandwiches short of a picnic,” she declared, which was her way of saying she thought I was crazy. It’s more colorful and maybe a teeny bit more polite than just coming out and telling someone they’re nuts, but it means the same thing. There’s a lot of that in Texas.
    But I hadn’t asked her, so I just smiled and said good-bye. My mother had an old saying too; not as colorful, but it had always stood me in good stead: If you don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say anything at all. And I definitely