Fabric of Life Read online

  “He pops in and out,” Thea said. “It takes a lot of energy for him to be visible.”

  Muriel was quiet a minute. “What does he do the rest of the time? Is he just in limbo?”

  “He hangs out with my sister, Aggie. She told me that time’s different for a ghost.”

  “How’s that?” Muriel asked.

  “She says you’re in sort of a happy limbo. You don’t have anything that you have to do except the one reason you stayed behind. She reads a lot while she stays tuned to Hannah.”

  “Gabe always liked poetry and biographies,” David said.

  “But his true love was wood,” said Thea.

  “And you.” Muriel looked at Thea. “The minute he met you, he knew. He told me that he was going to marry you when he was in fourth grade.”

  “No one should trust ten-year-old boys.” David laughed.

  Thea rubbed her forehead. A headache was growing behind her right eye. Since Gabe’s death, she kept pushing “could have beens” out of her mind, but it was hard.

  “I wasn’t trying to make you sad,” Muriel said. “Coming home again just stirs up memories.”

  “And Gabe’s death. . . “ David paused. “You start reminiscing.”

  “It’s as hard for you as it is for me,” Thea said.

  Muriel shook her head. “No, dear, we’ve only lost him once, in death. I think divorce would be even worse. He didn’t betray us or let us down. He didn’t choose to leave us.”

  Thea swallowed her hurt.

  “We love our son,” Muriel said, “but we understood why you divorced him. Love isn’t enough. People say it is, but they’re wrong. You and Gabe loved each other, but he cheated on you. How could you trust him the next time life got tough?”

  Tears spilled down Thea’s cheeks. “Thank you. He’s your son. I was worried you’d hate me.”

  Muriel put a hand on her shoulder. “We’ll always love Gabe, but so do you. You’ve been a wonderful mother to his children, and that had to be hard by yourself.”

  Thea was relieved when Annabel’s house came into sight. She wasn’t sure how much more compassion and goodwill she could take without flooding her car with tears.

  “Remember, your mother’s not the same woman you left nine years ago,” she reminded Muriel.

  Muriel straightened her shoulders, bracing herself. “I wish Mom would have moved with us. We wanted her to.”

  “Emerald Hills is her home,” David said. “Her whole life is here.”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t have gone,” Muriel fretted. “We shouldn’t have left her.”

  “She’s eighty-six.” Thea led them up the steps to the wide front porch and went to the door at the side. “She’s healthy, she’s happy, and she’s loved. She’d have hated it if you stayed here because you didn’t want to leave her. Quit beating yourself over the head.”

  Muriel gave a wry smile. “We’re taking turns, aren’t we, of absolving each other of guilt?”

  “Guilt’s overrated,” Thea said.

  David nodded. “Damn right.”

  Thea gave a quick knock and Rachel opened the door. “Hey, guys, we’ve been expecting you.”

  Isak was setting a tray on the cherry coffee table when they entered the living room. “Thought you might be hungry,” he said. He’d brought bagels with cream cheese from his bakery, along with tiny fruit tarts.

  Rachel disappeared into the kitchen and came back with a pot of coffee and a pitcher of iced tea. Thea watched her. Her daughter looked happy. Happier than when she was at home.

  Annabel rocked gently in her wicker chair. “Looks like a party, doesn’t it?”

  Muriel went straight to her mother. “Boy, I’ve missed you.”

  “Pretty lies!” Annabel said. “You’ve been happy as a clam, and you know it. So have I.”

  “Have you?” Muriel studied her mother’s face.

  “Why wouldn’t I be? It’s summer. No more lesson plans or papers to grade.”

  Muriel raised an eyebrow, but said, “So what are you doing with your time?”

  “Me?” Annabel looked across the room to another old woman sitting on a stiff-backed chair by the bay window. “What have I been doing, Avi?”

  “Not a thing, as far as I can tell.”

  Isak nodded his head. “Let me introduce my grandmother. She fell and broke her hip, and I bring her here during the days, so that she has company.”

  Avi’s hair was snow-white, and her eyes were as blue and sparkling as Isak’s. She was no taller than Annabel, but she was rounder with thicker ankles.

  “You put two old women together and all they can do is talk,” Avi said. “But we have lots of great memories, don’t we, Anna?”

  Annabel laughed. “When my mind works. Think it caught a virus and has a glitch.”

  “Is it good today?” Muriel asked.

  “Better than Rachel’s broadband.”

  “I was just telling her about my new computer,” Rachel said.

  “You have a new computer?” Thea asked.

  Rachel flushed. “It’s at the apartment over Isak’s bakery.”

  “Do you still live there?” David asked Isak. “Your dad took me up there once when I was a kid. He was using it for storage.”

  “I made it back into an apartment when my parents retired,” Isak said, “but it’s really cramped.”

  “Gabe used to live with me,” Annabel said. “He left. The sculptor’s leaving, too. I want Rachel and Isak to move upstairs. They might stay.”

  Muriel and David looked at Thea, surprised. Rachel and Isak looked at her, too.

  “Well, Mom?” Rachel asked.

  She licked her lips. She hadn’t had time to think. Then she shrugged. “Why not?”

  “If you think Rachel’s too young…,” Isak began.

  “I was nineteen when I married Gabe. She won’t make my mistakes. You two will make your own.”

  Rachel ran to hug her mom. “We’ll be all right, Mom. Really.”

  “You have as good a shot as anyone,” Thea said. She looked at Isak. “And you’re all right with the weaving? Not every man can handle that.”

  “It’s part of who Rachel is,” he said.

  Thea looked at her daughter. Was Isak right? Rachel was filling her life with distractions. Was weaving an important part of Rachel?

  Chapter 10

  Rachel drove home with Thea later that night.

  “Are you all right?” Rachel asked as they climbed the steps to the cottage’s deck.

  “I’m just tired.” Thea’s headache had come and gone off and on during the day. Probably stress. Joshua and Hannah had come to Annabel’s later in the evening with the roast and vegetables that Thea started in the crock pot before she left home. They’d stayed to eat supper with everyone. For a man who enjoyed people as much as Josh did, he was certainly lonely, Thea thought, watching him. He cared about people, but remained distant somehow. Of course, with Hannah around, there were never too many long moments of silence, anyway.

  Josh promised Hannah ice cream on their way home, so it would be a while before they got back. Thea sank onto the leather sofa in the living room and pressed her head against its cushions. It had been a long day. She promised herself that she’d get busy on Josh’s life map in the morning.

  “Want some aspirin?” Rachel asked, coming from the basement, where she’d changed into a sleeveless T-shirt and elastic-waisted pants--her choice of PJ’s. She plopped on a leather chair opposite Thea.

  “I’ll take a couple at bedtime,” Thea said. “I’ll be all right once I relax.”

  “It went better than I thought it would,” Rachel said. They sat and talked about the day until dark clouds rumbled in the distance. “Looks like rain. I’ve got to get to bed. I promised Isak I’d meet him at the bakery tomorrow morning.”

  “At four-thirty?” Thea asked. When Rachel nodded, she said, “It must be love. I got out of bed for babies, but that’s about it.”

  Rachel leaned and kis
sed her mother’s cheek. “Love ya, Mom.”

  “Happy dreams.” It was their standard goodnight. Thea sat and watched lightning bounce across the sky until Josh and Hannah returned. Both of them looked happy.

  “It was fun seeing Grandma and Grandpa again,” Josh said. “They invited me to visit them in California sometime.”

  “That’s not a bad idea. You should take them up on it.”

  “And leave here?”

  “Why not?”

  “What about me?” Hannah asked. “Do they want me to come, too?”

  Josh tousled her hair. “You could be my date.”

  “We’ll worry about all of that later,” Thea said. “It’s getting late. Time for jet setters to hit the sack.”

  After she tucked Hannah into bed, she climbed upstairs to a quiet house. She had no idea where Josh was, probably out in his workshop, so she went to the porch and took a book with her. It lay, untouched, while she watched the storm. It took her a while to notice that Gabe was sitting in the porch chair beside hers, enjoying the thunder and lightning with her.

  “I tried to join everyone at Grandma’s house,” he said, “but no one saw me, not even you. I’m thinking that I’m not supposed to do group gatherings.”

  “Nancy couldn’t see you, either,” Thea said.

  “There seems to be a lot of rules to ghosting. I wanted to visit the kids, too, but the only one who can see me is Hannah, and she doesn’t count. She can see every ghost.” He reached across the space between them and placed a hand on top of hers.

  A comforting coolness brushed Thea’s skin. “How are you doing?” she asked. “You chose to stay. How does that work? Are you doing okay? Is it boring?” She knew how she was with nothing to do. It drove her crazy.

  “Happier than I’ve been in years,” he said. “And you?”

  She considered. “Happier than I’ve been in years, too.”

  “Rachel and Isak are going to be fine, you know.”

  “You think so?”

  “Her bookmark’s pretty clear sailing.”

  “You looked?”

  “Hey, I couldn’t help myself.”

  “Every soul comes here for a reason,” Thea said.

  “Rachel came to help others. I asked your mom. She said that Rachel’s a caretaker. She sees an aura and knows how to adjust the colors. Your mom said that every Patek is here to serve mankind in one way or another.”

  “That makes me feel better, knowing.” Thea hesitated. “I forgot to tell you that Melissa brought flowers when she read that you were dead. She wanted us to call a truce.”

  “Right! She’s hated both of us ever since you kicked me out and I didn’t run to her. She cursed me when I packed my things and left town.”

  “I’m sorry that she hates you. I didn’t know that.”

  “No one said cheating was easy,” Gabe said. “At least, it wasn’t easy for me.”

  “That’s because you’re a good man.” Thea wished that she could hold him, wrap him in her love, touch him somehow. “I love you, Gabe.”

  They sat for a while in comfortable silence. Finally, Thea asked, “Did you try to visit me earlier, before you died?”

  “Come again? How would I do that?”

  “I felt an energy that was sort of like yours, only lots more unstable, a week before you died. I don’t know what it was.”

  “How many kinds of energy are there?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I only feel spirit energy, and before you came, I only felt it before a baby was born. This is a first.”

  “Could a person focus enough energy to make something happen?” Gabe asked. “If he practiced, could he send his energy into your studio?”

  “I don’t know. I hope not.”

  “I never want to let you down again,” Gabe said. “I’d rather die first.” He was a silent a minute, then started to laugh. “Oops, already did that.” He started to fade. “Damn, every time I laugh, I fade. Gotta work on that.”

  The next instant, he was gone.

  Chapter 11

  Thea put Hannah on the school bus, then climbed into her beat-up, old Jeep. She wanted to see her mom, to brainstorm about Gabe’s bookmark and her studio. As she followed Ruby Riverwalk past Annabel’s house, she saw Rachel’s little, red Geo parked in the driveway. Probably a donut and roll delivery. A block later, she saw Joshua leaning against a tree by the stream, whittling a large block of wood. Half of it already resembled a woman with long, flowing hair, sitting on a rock. The other half, she knew, would be a mermaid’s tail. Joshua’s obsession with mermaids started when he was a little boy and watched the Disney movie of Peter Pan.

  When Thea reached Burgundy Boulevard, she glanced down the street at Isak’s bakery before she turned left and crossed the bridge to the residential area of Emerald Hills. Her mom had moved there, away from her farm on the outside of town, when she retired from weaving.

  “Your dad’s ready to live a normal life,” she said. “He likes being able to sleep nights without my running to the studio to do a bookmark, and he likes to have backyard barbecues with people who aren’t worried that I’ll go into one of my trances.”

  A normal life, Thea thought, as she passed century-old houses that complemented the older buildings of the town. Thea wasn’t sure what that would be like. She’d always lived with weaving.

  Kids were outside for recess, playing on the schoolyard equipment, when Thea drove by the sprawling, brick elementary school. She craned her neck to look for Hannah and slowed when she caught a glimpse of Hannah’s favorite red sundress. Her little girl was standing between two boys, wagging her finger at one of them. When the boy stepped forward and gave her a hard push, Hannah retaliated by knocking him flat on the ground.

  Thea slowed more to see what would happen. The boy on the ground twisted quickly and scrambled away. Even children, it seemed, were intimidated by Hannah’s unusual powers. Either that, or by her like-it-or-shove-it personality. Thea smiled. Probably the latter.

  When she reached Lake Road, she took another left to her mom’s house. The shingled bungalow sat back from the road. Mom had stained the shingles robin-egg blue and painted the trim a soft sage. Thea didn’t think the colors would work, but somehow, they made a happy blend. Everything her mother did made a happy blend. Rachel was like that, too, she thought.

  As usual, her mom was outside, working in the yard.

  “Hey, kid,” she said when Thea climbed from her Jeep. “What you doing in this neck of the woods?”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “I didn’t do it,” her mother said.

  Thea smiled. “You were an accomplice to the crime.”

  “That sounds serious.” Kate took off her gardening gloves and led Thea to the brick patio at the back of the house. “Okay, spill.”

  Thea explained about Gabe tampering with Joshua’s bookmark before her mother hung it with the others. “And someone tampered with Gabe’s bookmark. They cut the knot and unraveled the threads.”

  “And you think I let someone else in my studio who fiddled with Gabe’s bookmark,” Kate said.

  “No. Not that. It couldn’t have been any of us, but that means someone got into my studio, and that seems impossible. Gabe wouldn’t step foot in it, and neither would Josh. Rachel thought it was boring until it was time to train her.”

  Kate leaned back in her lawn chair and closed her eyes. “I remember Gabe coming both times you had your babies. I didn’t leave him when Rachel was born, but shame on him for tricking me with Josh’s weaving. I always knew that man was naughty, but I didn’t think he was stupid.”

  “He thought Josh’s knot was too big, too awful.”

  “Silly man! But then, what man isn’t silly? Look at your dad, the old poop.”

  Thea laughed. “He’s been able to live with you. That’s an accomplishment in itself.”

  Kate waved her comment away. “Back to Gabe. It’s not like I threw parties in the weaving studio. You kids came in on
ce in a while, but you never touched anything. You knew the drill. Nope, the only people who came in and out of the studio was family. Your friends weren’t allowed inside, and neither were ours. Why would any of us tamper with Gabe’s bookmark?”

  Thea nodded. “You’re going through the same thoughts I did, and I ruled everyone out. So what’s left?”

  “Coffee!” her mom said, slapping her hand on her knee. “I need a cup. You’re making me think too early in the day.”

  Thea followed her mom into her big, country-style kitchen. An archway led to a huge dining room, and another arch to the living room at the front of the house. Lots of people came in and out of her mother’s house. And most of them stayed for meals.

  Her mom pushed two cups of coffee across the island in the center of the kitchen. “Maybe your visitor isn’t a person.”

  Thea blinked. “You mean an animal might have gnawed at Gabe’s knot?”

  “No, silly, but Gabe coming back made me think. A person can’t enter our studios unless we’ve invited him. The arches won’t let him through. But what about a ghost?”

  “A ghost?” Thea set down her coffee mug with a heavy thump. That would explain a lot. She told her mom about the two, different energy vibes she’d felt before Gabe returned to her.

  “And the first vibe was chaotic?” Kate asked.

  “Frightening,” Thea admitted.

  Kate leaned across the table. “Frightening? How?”

  “It felt almost. . . “ Thea searched for the right word. “Overwhelming.”

  “I’m not sure ghosts have to follow the rules. I’ve never thought about it,” Kate said. “They can drift through walls, so they wouldn’t have to go under the arch. Of course, most of them go to the light, so there’s only a slim chance they’d hide out in your studio. Even if they did, though, they’re sort of past fussing about bookmarks, aren’t they? I mean, it’s too late for them.”

  “A ghost,” Thea repeated. “Hannah sees them every once in a while. I wonder how many of them there are.”

  “Our family seems to have more than we need,” Kate said.