Chapter 8 - The Midnight Repossession
The blue Ford F-150 was the only vehicle left in the gravel back lot when I walked out of the clubhouse at midnight.
The grass was slick with heavy spring dew, smelling of cut turf, clover, and the sharp, sulfuric tang of fireworks the club had launched thirty minutes prior for the crowning of the prom court.
Brielle had won Queen.
Of course she had. The votes had been collected on paper ballots three days earlier, long before the ballroom doors opened.
She had stood on the stage with a five-dollar rhinestone tiara pinned to her ruined curls, holding a bouquet of dying carnations, while less than forty people stayed to watch. The rest of the room had migrated to the north terrace to watch the news crews pack their vans and to catch a glimpse of Julian Harrington’s limousine departing into the mist.
Her victory was an empty shell, a hollow plastic trophy awarded in an empty hall.
I unlocked the truck’s driver-side door with the brass key. The old spring groaned in the latch, a low, metallic complaint that sounded like home.
I didn't drive back to the house on the ridge.
I drove down into the valley, across the bridge where the black water of the Merrimack ran silent between the brick foundations of the abandoned cotton mills, and pulled up behind the long, low brick facade of Mercer’s Fabrics & Notions.
The yellow light above the loading dock was on.
Sitting on a wooden crate beside the roll-up door, wrapped in an enormous gray woolen shawl that smelled of cedar and lavender, was Mrs. Mercer. She was drinking black tea from a thermos lid, her walking stick leaning against her knee.
I stepped down from the cab, the black silk dress hissing against the rough metal of the running board.
Mrs. Mercer looked up. Her ancient, rheumy eyes raked over the spencer jacket, the pagoda shoulders, the razor-cut hemline of the skirt, and the five thousand gunmetal beads catching the yellow sodium light of the alleyway.
She spat a tea leaf onto the gravel.
"Tension on the left armhole is three millimeters too tight," she rasped, her voice like two river stones grinding together.
I stopped four feet from her crate. "It was drafted for posture, not comfort."
"Comfort is for nightgowns," the old woman grunted. She reached out with one bent, arthritic finger and flicked the edge of my collar. The nail made a dry tink against the gunmetal beads. "You used the silver-core filament."
"I did."
"Good. The nylon thread is for amateurs who are afraid their work will outlive them." She took another sip from the thermos lid, her sharp old eyes narrowing as she looked into my face. "Did she cry?"
"Whose tears?" I asked. "Brielle's or my mother's?"
"The sister's."
"Her eyeliner ran down to her chin," I said. "Her date left her before the slow dances started."
Mrs. Mercer gave a single, barking laugh that ended in a dry cough. She reached behind her crate, pulled out a heavy cardboard shipping box bound with reinforced strapping tape, and shoved it toward my shins with the tip of her cane.
"What is this?" I asked.
"My shears," she said.
The air seemed to stop moving in the alley.
The shears were seventy years old. Hand-forged in Solingen, Germany, by a master cutler who died during the reconstruction. They weighed three pounds, had brass-inlaid handles contoured to fit only a master's grip, and had cut the cloth for four generations of garments that never unraveled. She had refused to let anyone touch them—not the shop girls, not the sales reps, not even the regional museum curators who had offered her five thousand dollars to put them in a case.
"Mrs. Mercer," I whispered, my voice wavering for the very first time that night. "I can't take these."
"You're going to London," the old woman snapped, glaring at me with ferocious, unsentimental fury. "You think those English dandies are going to respect you because you're clever? You think those French bastards at the trade shows are going to care about your feelings? You take those shears. When they try to tell you that you're just a girl from a mill town who doesn't understand heritage, you put those shears on the cutting table. They'll know what they're looking at."
I knelt in the gravel, the charcoal faille spreading out around me like a dark pool, and picked up the heavy cardboard box.
It was freezing cold. It smelled of machine oil, whetstone grit, and half a century of honest labor.
May you like
"Thank you, Martha," I said.
"Don't thank me," she said, turning her back to pull the shop door shut. "Make something that doesn't rot. Now get out of here. The morning mist is coming off the river. It’ll swell your grain line."
