Welcome to Camden Falls

  You would never guess, from a quick peek in Min’s window, that she and Ruby and Flora have been a family for just five months.

  On Monday morning, Sonny Sutphin, making his way slowly through town in his wheelchair, noticed Min Read walking smartly along Main Street, hand in hand with her granddaughters.

  “’Morning, Min,” called Sonny.

  “’Morning, Sonny,” replied Min. “Sonny, I don’t believe you’ve met my grandchildren yet. This is Flora Northrop and this is Ruby Northrop.” Flora and Ruby stepped forward and shook Sonny’s hand.

  “Pleased to meet you,” said Sonny. He turned to Min. “Back at work?”

  “My first day. I’ve been away for a long time. Ruby and Flora are coming to the store with me.”

  “We’re going to spend every day there,” said Ruby, glaring at Min and stabbing the toe of her sneaker into a crack in the sidewalk.

  “Ruby,” said Min, a warning in her voice.

  “Well, what am I going to do all day?”

  “At Needle and Thread? Goodness me, I think you’ll keep yourself occupied,” replied Min. “And please don’t whine. It isn’t becoming.”

  Ruby almost said “Becoming what?” but stopped herself in time.

  Sonny waved good-bye, and Min and Ruby and Flora continued down the street. Ruby was scowling fiercely, but Flora wore a small smile on her face. Flora hadn’t admitted this to her sister — it wasn’t any fun telling something good to someone crabby — but she was looking forward to spending her days at Needle and Thread. In fact, just thinking about this was one of the few things that made her feel truly happy. Needlework was Flora’s passion. She liked sewing. She liked quilting. She liked embroidering. She liked embellishing things. She liked fabric and buttons and beads and patterns and ribbons and lace. (She also liked knitting and crafting and card making, but Needle and Thread didn’t carry many supplies for those hobbies.)

  When Flora was very small, her busy grandmother had taken the time during visits to teach her to sew. (Later, Min had offered to teach Ruby, but Ruby was more interested in ballet classes and tap routines and voice lessons.) Flora had first made pillows and blankets for her dolls but was soon learning crewel work and even smocking. Her mother had taught her to knit. And now the thought of spending summer days at Needle and Thread made her let go of Min’s hand and skip the last few paces to the store.

  “Mrs. Walter’s already here!” she said, peering through the door.

  From behind her, Ruby said, “Do we really have to spend every single day here, Min?”

  Min stopped walking. She looked down at her granddaughter. “Ruby,” she said, trying to sound patient, “this is my store. Mrs. Walter and I own it. We have to run it. Do you understand that?” (Ruby nodded.) “I have worked out the best hours I can, but I still have to be here at least five days a week. In the fall you will go to school, and if you want to go to after-school activities you may. But this is the summertime. What do you suggest you do all day while I’m at the store? I can’t leave you at home alone, and I haven’t arranged for a baby-sitter —”

  “I don’t want a baby-sitter. I’m not a baby.”

  “Okay. And I’m sorry, but I didn’t get around to looking into day camp or anything else. This has been a busy time. I know it isn’t what you want, but bear with me. We all have to make sacrifices. I promise you, though, things will work out. For now, you and Flora will come to the store with me. I don’t think you’re going to be bored. There will be plenty for you to do. Please just give it a try. I’m doing the best I can.”

  “Okay,” muttered Ruby. “I’ll try.”

  “Thank you,” said Min.

  Flora flung open the door to Needle and Thread. She was greeted by the smell of coffee, and while the coffeemaker steamed and gurgled, Olivia’s grandmother was setting out cups and spoons and packets of sugar on a table at the front of the store.

  “Hi, Mrs. Walter!” said Flora.

  “Flora,” Mrs. Walter replied warmly. She wrapped Flora in a giant, bosomy hug. “How are you?”

  “Fine, thank you,” said Flora.

  Ruby and Min stepped inside then, and Mrs. Walter opened her arms to Ruby. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said.

  Min grinned at Mrs. Walter. “Ruby wants to be put to work,” she said. “She’s afraid she’s going to be bored.”

  “Bored? Never,” said Mrs. Walter.

  Flora turned her attention away from crabby Ruby and looked around the store. She let out a long, satisfied sigh. There in the front of Needle and Thread were the couches for people who stopped by for a chat-and-stitch. All day long, Min and Mrs. Walter’s customers dropped in with their sewing projects and sat on the couches, drinking coffee or tea, sewing and chatting with whomever else was there. The coffeepot was kept going all day long, and often people brought in cookies or muffins to share.

  “See? Isn’t this nice?” Flora said to Ruby. “People will be coming in for chat-and-stitches.”

  “And sometimes,” said Mrs. Walter, “we have a special event here in the evening — a lecture, or an author reading from a new book.”

  “Lectures and books about sewing?” asked Ruby.

  “Not necessarily,” replied Mrs. Walter. “Needle and Thread is a gathering place. All sorts of things go on here.”

  Flora drifted toward the back of the store, past the checkout counter and several racks lined with bolts of fabric, to the tables where classes were held. There were classes for adults and for kids. All kinds of classes. Quilting, ribbon embroidery, holiday projects.

  “Min?” Flora called to the front of the store. “Could I please take a kids’ class sometime?”

  “I think you could help teach the kids’ classes,” replied Min, and Flora smiled and looked at her shoes. She continued wandering through the store, stopping to examine the cards of buttons on the spinner racks, the tables where customers could look through pattern books, the counter where fabric was cut, and the arrays of laces and ribbons and zippers and notions and thread and interfacing and needlework magazines.

  “What’s that table for?” Flora asked Mrs. Walter. She had passed a display of sewing machines and come upon a messy table, piled with fabric, patterns, and articles of clothing, each with a receipt attached.

  “That’s where Miss Woolsey works. She comes in several times a week to take in mending and altering, or to do custom sewing. She does some of her work here and the rest at home.”

  “Miss Woolsey?” repeated Flora, her voice rising to a squeak. “Do you mean Sca — Mary Woolsey?”

  “I do,” replied Mrs. Walter in a voice that stopped Flora from asking any more questions. “She’ll be in this afternoon.”

  And so Flora and Ruby’s first day at Needle and Thread began to unfold. By nine, Liz Durbin and Rick O’Bannen, the store clerks, had arrived for work. Five minutes later, Olivia arrived.

  “Is there anything I can organize?” she wanted to know, and her grandmother asked her to tidy the button racks and the rows of zippers and piping and bias tape.

  “What can I do?” asked Ruby.

  “I have a stack of things that came in for people who placed special orders,” Min replied. “They’re all right here with receipts attached. You can make sure we wrote the customers’ phone numbers on the receipts. If you don’t see a number, look it up in the phone book and write it on the receipt. There’s the phone book.”

  Ruby’s eyes widened. This was an important job.

  Min asked Flora to start working on a sample outfit to display in the store. “We just got in all these adorable patterns for fall skirts and vests for younger girls,” said Min. “Gigi and I wanted to make up several and hang them around the store later this summer when people come in to start their back-to-school sewing. Do you think you could make a skirt and vest? I’ll show you the fabric Gigi and I would like used in the display. I’ve already washed it.”

  So Flora spent the morning at a class table in the back, laying out the pieces fo
r a corduroy skirt and a pumpkin-print vest, size six.

  By lunchtime, Ruby had finished her task and was allowed to take a handful of letters to the post office and to pick up Liz’s lunch order from College Pizza. Olivia had tidied everything in sight. And Flora, while she was busy with the corduroy, had also had a long and slightly confusing conversation with a haughty woman who was so dressed up that Flora thought she must be on her way to a party.

  “My name is Mrs. DuVane,” said the woman as she approached Flora. “Do you … work here?”

  “Sort of. My grandmo —”

  “Oh, well, that’s fine then. I saw the notice in the window about the ribbon embroidery classes. I’m going to sign up, so I’ll be needing ribbon, of course, but I only want silk ribbon.”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s all my grandmother carries.”

  “Because silk is the best. I wouldn’t use anything else.”

  “Well, the ribbon is over there, and it’s all silk,” said Flora, pointing. “Maybe you should ask my —”

  But Mrs. DuVane had hurried away while Flora was still talking.

  “Don’t worry about her,” said Olivia later, when Flora recounted the conversation to her. “She’s just a —” Olivia caught sight of her grandmother standing nearby and said quickly, “She’s fussy, that’s all.”

  At two o’clock, when Flora was beginning to feel a bit tired, the bell over the front door jangled and in came an old woman, wearing what Flora thought was way too many clothes for the warm day. She was carrying a cloth parcel and wheezing slightly.

  “’Afternoon, Mary,” said Min and Mrs. Walter at the same time.

  The old woman didn’t reply, just raised one hand in greeting before lowering it to touch a tiny star that hung from a delicate necklace half hidden under a scarf. Then she made her way to the little table near the display of sewing machines.

  Flora looked around the store and caught Olivia’s eye. Olivia nodded. Here was Scary Mary. In person.

  Min introduced Flora and Ruby to Mary a few minutes later and they shook her hand — Flora gingerly, and Ruby more robustly since she didn’t know anything about Scary Mary yet — but Mary Woolsey barely spoke to them. She barely spoke to her customers, either, Flora realized later as she watched people bring their torn pants and too-long skirts to her. They would explain what they needed, and Mary would take some measurements, then carefully make notes on a battered notepad. She would suggest a price for the work, and the customers would agree, thank her, and leave.

  Later that afternoon, Flora and Ruby, both exhausted from their first day in the store, lay down on the couches by the front door. Flora began paging through a sewing magazine. She leafed through articles on paper piecing and the perfect set-in sleeve and how to miter a corner, and then she came to a photo of a firefighter handing a teddy bear to a small boy. The title of the article was “Project Teddy: Creating Hope with Handmade Teddy Bears.” The article explained that in a town not far from Seattle, a sewing store was helping children cope with grief by donating hundreds of handmade teddies to various organizations in the area.

  Flora remembered the teddy bears that had been given to her and Ruby in the hospital the night of the car accident, and an idea began to take shape.

  Nikki Sherman was eye to eye with a grasshopper, separated from it only by the glass jar in which she had carefully prepared a grasshopper-friendly environment. Nikki studied the grasshopper’s head. Then she drew in her breath and returned to the sketch she was working on, using a bitten-up pencil and a sheet of lined notebook paper.

  The afternoon was hot and still, very still. The steps on which Nikki was sitting were warm from the sun. She set down the jar and her drawing, stretched her skinny legs in front of her, and yawned. It wasn’t often that her yard was this quiet. But her mother had taken Mae down the road to see the Shaws’ donkey, and Tobias had gone off with friends of his, and her father — well, he could be anywhere. Nikki hadn’t seen him in several days.

  Nikki sat still and let her gaze take in the yard. She was aware that it was probably one of the most rundown, dirty yards in all of Camden Falls. If there was anything good about living so far from town it was that very few people passed the Shermans’ place, so most of Nikki’s classmates didn’t know where she lived, out here, on the edge. Not that Nikki spoke much to her classmates. She saw how they looked at her, at her worn clothes, some of them hand-me-downs from Tobias, even though he was a full six years older than she, and a boy to boot. No matter how Nikki tried to keep up with the washing and the mending (on the days when her mother couldn’t cope), her clothes were torn and shabby and faded and dirty.

  From time to time, her classmates informed her that she smelled.

  Nikki thought of the yards of the houses in town, yards with grass growing and flowers blooming and tall trees shading porches, tidy yards with maybe a jungle gym in the back or a swing hanging from the limb of a maple, but no litter or clutter or ramshackle sheds. In Nikki’s yard were four wooden structures that her father had once used for storage and for workspaces, three of which were falling apart. There were also two old cars, neither with wheels; a woodpile; an ax that had been left for so long in a log that the blade had rusted; an ancient refrigerator, its door removed; a burning pile; and a heap of trash resembling a dump, which was in fact garbage that Nikki’s parents had been too lazy to take to the actual dump. What wasn’t in the yard was grass, unless you counted crabgrass. There were no flowers or trees, either. Just packed earth and plenty of weeds.

  “Woof!”

  Nikki smiled. Trotting across the yard was Paw-Paw, one of the many stray dogs who hung around the edges of Nikki’s yard. He’d shown up in the spring and was Nikki’s favorite.

  “Come here, Paw-Paw,” said Nikki. “It’s okay. Dad isn’t home. I’m the only one here.”

  Paw-Paw crossed the yard cautiously, glancing from side to side, but when he reached Nikki, he relaxed. He plopped down on his haunches and offered his front paw to her, something he had done the first time Nikki and Mae had seen him, which was why Mae, five years old at the time, had named him Paw-Paw.

  As she often did when she talked to Paw-Paw, Nikki now said, “Who used to own you? Huh? Who did, Paw-Paw? Someone must have owned you. You’re trained. And you’re friendly. But if someone owned you, why did they let you go?” Nikki wished she knew the story of every single one of the stray dogs.

  “Come on,” said Nikki, brushing off her shorts and standing up. “I’ll get you some food. It’ll be okay. You can eat as much as you want, and you won’t even have to hide. Now, if Dad was here …”

  Nikki’s voice trailed off. She crossed the yard to one of the sheds and grabbed the bag of kibble she had stashed there. It usually took Nikki three weeks to earn enough money to buy each bag of dog food, and she was careful to keep them hidden. The last time her father had found one of the bags he had slurrily told Nikki that if she didn’t stop attracting those filthy beasts to his property he would take her outside and tan her hide. Then he had burned the bag and its contents.

  Nikki hadn’t worried much about the threat. Her father had been too drunk and forgetful when he’d made it (what he had actually said was that if Nikki didn’t shtop trekking those filthy feasts to his proppity he would take her outshide and tan her tide), but she couldn’t afford to buy extra bags of food. Not unless she found a way to earn more money, and her money-earning opportunities were few.

  Nikki carried the bag to the bushes at one side of her yard and filled the bowls she left there.

  “Come and get it, everybody!” she called, and from behind sheds, from under bushes, from the farthest edges of her yard crept one scruffy dog after another. Nikki hadn’t named most of them; the dogs came and went. While they were there, though, Nikki did the best she could for them.

  Nikki was returning the bag of kibble to the shed, her mind on the grasshopper and her sketch, when she heard the sound of tires on gravel.

  Oh, no, she thought.
Not Dad. Not on such a peaceful afternoon.

  But the car that was crunching its way toward the Shermans’ house was a red Audi in fine condition, one Tobias envied.

  Nikki clapped her hand to her forehead and groaned. It was the old bat. Mrs. DuVane. Nikki would almost rather have seen her father’s dented truck come roaring up the drive.

  The Audi glided to a stop by the house, and as Nikki approached it, the driver’s door opened and a pair of long legs, delicate sandals on the feet, slid out, followed by the rest of Mrs. DuVane.

  “Nicolette! Just the person I wanted to see.”

  “Hi, Mrs. DuVane,” said Nikki.

  “I’ve had a wonderful idea. Come, sit on the steps with me and we’ll have a chat.”

  Nikki followed Mrs. DuVane to the stoop, sticking out her tongue and making faces at her back. Mrs. DuVane, who years ago had attended Camden Falls Central High School with Nikki’s mother, had somehow taken on Nikki and Tobias and Mae as personal charity projects. Nikki wasn’t quite sure how this had come about. All she knew was that her mother was an acquaintance of Mrs. DuVane, and that Mrs. DuVane showed up periodically to take Mae shopping for school clothes (so she could hold up her head in class) or Tobias out for a fancy dinner (in order to teach him manners) or Nikki to the community theatre (to expose her to culture). Nikki knew they should be grateful for such treats, especially since Mrs. DuVane often made vague promises about helping with education — and Nikki desperately wanted to go to college someday. But it was hard to be grateful since Mrs. DuVane made Nikki and her brother and sister feel stupid and needy and awkward.

  All the Shermans privately referred to her as the old bat.

  When they reached the stoop, Mrs. DuVane said, “Is your mother here, Nicolette?”

  Nikki shook her head. “She’s out with Mae.”

  “All right, I’ll talk to her later. Listen, I’ve just come from Needle and Thread. Do you know Needle and Thread? In town?”

  Nikki nodded.