“Dani? I made raisin toast and coffee to get you started, but how do you want your eggs? Omelet or scrambled? Dani? Honey?”
Hearing nothing aside from the hiss of the shower, I pressed my ear to the door and called her once again, louder this time.
Nothing.
I knocked as hard as I could, waited a moment, then opened the door and pushed aside the shower curtain. Steam billowed out, but the shower was empty.
I walked quickly down the hallway, opening each door, checking each room, with Blixen and Nelson close on my heels, calling Dani’s name. Blixen let out a series of barks as if he, too, were calling for Dani.
Heart pounding, I raced down the stairs. The front door was open. Dani was gone. So was my purse and all the money inside.
Chapter 31
Grace
Though I had hoped to have thirty-five dresses in stock for my opening day at the Saturday Market, when I finished the thirty-fourth, around three o’clock on the afternoon before, I shut down my sewing machine. Saturday was going to be a long day and I needed a break.
I slipped on my tennis shoes and took Maisie for a walk around the neighborhood, concerned when we passed the concrete planters and saw no sign of Sunny. She did that sometimes, disappeared for a day or two, or even as long as a week, and always turned up. What if, one day, she didn’t turn up? Who would I call? Who would even care? She was an adult, of course, free to come and go as she willed, and there was nothing I could do to keep her from it, but I couldn’t keep from worrying about her.
I was worrying about a lot of things that day. In particular, I was worried about what Saturday would bring.
I’d spent the last three weeks sewing dresses, beautiful dresses, any one of which I would have loved to wear. But just because I loved them didn’t mean other people would love them, or buy them. What if I’d put in all this effort, put my search for a real job on hold, and nobody bought anything?
What if I failed?
Back at home, I ate half a turkey sandwich, leftover from my lunch the day before, then sat down on the sofa and turned on the television, surfing channels and trying, unsuccessfully, to find something to watch that would hold my attention and silence the questions and doubts that kept circling my brain. Finally, I shut it off and got out my sewing basket.
I’d been sewing nonstop for weeks, but I hadn’t touched my quilt blocks at all. Hand sewing always calmed me, quilting especially. Sewing the seams, stitch by stitch, I would quickly fall into the rhythm that allowed me to focus on the task at hand and clear my head of worry. And it was such a pleasure, after putting in the last stitch, to unfold the patches like the pages of a book and reveal the pattern, see the colors and contrast between the patches, and how pretty they looked together. It was a small sort of accomplishment, I realized that, but satisfying nonetheless.
I took out a bag with triangles for a star block I’d cut out just before immersing myself in dressmaking. The patches were blue and red plaid, cut from a shirt I’d always thought brought out the blue of Jamie’s eyes. I threaded my needle and started stitching, but halfway through the first seam, for the first time in many days, I dissolved into tears.
What if I failed? What if?
Tears gave way to sobs. Hearing them, Maisie ran to the sofa, yipped and fussed, then jumped onto the sofa and started licking my face. Another day, it would have helped, maybe even made me laugh through my tears. Not then. I felt afraid, and lonely. And homesick, more homesick than I’d ever felt in my life. Which was pretty ridiculous, considering I was home.
What was I doing here? What if I never felt at home anywhere ever again? What if I failed?
Eventually, I’m not sure when, I fell asleep on the couch.
I dreamed I was walking in downtown Portland, in the Park Blocks, and Jamie was walking with me. We were holding hands and I was wearing one of my twirly skirts, the one with the flamingos, and I felt so happy.
It was Farmers’ Market day and there were people everywhere, walking across the bright green grass, wandering among booths, sampling cheeses and fresh baked bread, picking through produce to find the sweetest strawberries, the freshest lettuce, buying pizza and tamales and bowls of noodles, finding a bench and picnicking under the high, green canopy of sheltering trees.
We strolled past the college library, into the cool shadow of the giant copper beech tree, and were suddenly surrounded by people, by women. They were all wearing bright cotton dresses and skirts, patterned with fruit and flowers and birds, with polka dots and paisley and bright cheerful plaid, dresses I had made, and they were old and young and fat and thin and beautiful. And smiling.
Jamie was smiling too. He squeezed my hand. “Look what you did, babe. Look what you started.”
* * *
I’d planned to get up at five and arrive at the market well before seven, but I fell asleep on the couch before setting my alarm. Fortunately, the weather was fine on Saturday. The sun beamed bright rays through the pane of my bow window and shone on my face, waking me a little before six.
Fifteen minutes later, I was slipping my feet into a pair of red pumps that perfectly matched the clusters of cherries on my new dress. I spun around in a circle to test the twirl and looked down at Maisie.
“Well? What do you think? Cute, right?”
Maisie, whose dog jacket was made from the same cherry print and mint-green polka-dot fabric as my dress, sneezed and let her tongue loll out of her mouth.
“Absolutely. If
