Pleating for Mercy

“Harry Potter?” she said. “Ministry of Magic?”

“Right!” I forced myself to laugh with her. I had stayed up late and made progress on all three muslin mock- ups, but time was still marching on. Talking magic wasn’t on my agenda. “So, about that thought you had?” I prompted.

“I’ve been thinking about your family lineage. I’m sort of a history buff, too,” she said as an aside. “Was your great-great-grandmother Cressida gifted? And what about her mother, Texana?”

I felt my eyelids strain as they opened wide. What if Madelyn was a stalker? It just wasn’t normal to know so much about someone else’s life, was it? All I knew about her was that she was from England, took pictures, and was married to a professor. That was a whole lot different than knowing about a family’s magical charms. “How do you know about my family?”

“Writer, remember?” she said, though when she said “writer,” it sounded more like “writ-a.”

Even through my wariness, I felt there was something likable about Madelyn Brighton. But was she diabolical under the unassuming exterior? “Let me rephrase that. Why do you know so much about my family?”

“Like I said before, Harlow, I’m a bit of a magic junkie. I’ve studied the Salem Witch Trials. My husband is a leader in the North Texas Paranormal Society. Your family, Harlow, is renowned in those circles.”

The pipes upstairs creaked. We both glanced at the ceiling. I hoped Meemaw wouldn’t choose now to materialize. I hadn’t seen her since last night when her wraithlike form had appeared before me and I’d asked if she knew who’d killed Nell.

I gulped, trying to wrap my mind around what she was saying. All these years, I’d thought the Cassidy women flew under the radar, but according to Madelyn, that was not the case. “What, exactly, do you mean by ‘renowned’?”

She fiddled with her camera, taking the lens cover off. “Maybe renowned is overstating it a bit. Nobody seems to know that it’s your family, specifically, but just that there is a family in Texas whose women have some sort of magic in them.”

“But how would anyone know that?”

“People talk, Harlow, and if the right person is listening—and the Paranormal Society is always listening—then stories get around.”

Madelyn pressed buttons on her camera, finally lifting it and aiming at me. “Do you mind if I take a photo? I’m actually doing an article for the Fort Worth Business Review on women entrepreneurs. I’d love to interview you for the piece.”

My mind reeled. She had a hundred irons in the fire, including her hunt for the paranormal. What else did she have up her sleeve?

I nodded, and she set to work, snapping a series of pictures of both me and the shop. “My deadline’s day after tomorrow, but I’m also photographing a fund-raising gala for the Kincaid Family Foundation and writing a piece for the Bliss Record-Chronicle on Nell Gellen’s funeral. Quite busy at the moment, but I do want to include your dressmaking shop in the Business Review piece. If I could just shadow you for a while today and ask a few questions . . .”

I went over my plan for the day. The silk for Josie’s dress had arrived, as well as the other fabrics I’d ordered. I’d be diving into the actual dressmaking, which meant Madelyn would probably be bored out of her mind. Sewing wasn’t an action-packed activity. Gracie was coming back for another visit. There should be no harm in allowing Madelyn to stay.

“Sure,” I said, but I had a niggling feeling in the pit of my stomach that things were going to get curiouser and curiouser.

Madelyn asked me question after question, going back and forth from my life in New York, to my return to Bliss, the opening of Buttons & Bows, and the Cassidy charms.

“Your great-grandmother bequeathed you this house?” she asked.

“Actually, she deeded it to me the day I was born.”

“She knew then that what she wanted was for you to live here. Hmm, interesting. So you always knew you’d come back.”

I looked up from the cutting table where I had yards and yards of Diamond French silk laid out for Josie’s dress. “No. I hadn’t planned on coming back until I found out about the house, but it was definitely the right thing to do.”

Like a magnet, my gaze was drawn to a pile of quilts I’d brought down from the attic. All the Cassidy women, starting with Butch Cassidy’s daughter, Cressida, had pieced together bits of clothing and fabric to tell the stories of their lives in quilts they made, sometimes together, sometimes alone. From hand-tied creations to painstakingly pieced patterns, the threads of the quilts bound us together.

“This is where I belong,” I said.

She jotted something down in her fabric-covered notebook. I went back to my silk, a warm comfort settling around me. She looked up from her writing. “Is someone baking?”

I breathed in the scent of fresh-baked banana bread, one of Meemaw’s favorites. Every day, the house seemed to be coming more and more alive with her presence. “The window’s open,” I said, gesturing toward Nana’s farm. “My grandmother must be baking.”

She looked skeptical, even sneaking a peek out the French doors toward the kitchen to be sure. Finally, she walked over to the cutting table and sat down on the stool I’d pulled up next to it. “Tell me how it works, Harlow.”

I took the pins from between my lips, glancing up from the paper pattern I’d created for the wedding gown’s bodice. “How does what work?”

Her hazel eyes sparkled. “The magic.”

The pipes groaned again, first in a high-pitched tone, then deeper, like a foghorn. It reminded me of the guitar players in the seventies like Peter Frampton who’d hooked their instruments up to talk boxes and made their guitars speak. Tell. Her. Tell. Her.

The creaking grew louder, more persistent. Madelyn’s shoulders curved in. A nervous tint colored her face. Tell. Her. Tell. Her.

“What’s that?”

“Just old pipes,” I said, sending a surreptitious scowl around the room, hoping Meemaw would see and get the message.

She must have, because the creaking stopped as suddenly as it had started. Madelyn visibly relaxed, but I felt like I’d absorbed her tension. We’d kept the family gifts under our hats for so long, it didn’t seem right to share details with a complete stranger. I’d already said too much.

Madelyn closed her notebook, but her finger held the page she’d been taking notes on. “Were Texana and Cressida charmed?” she asked.

“Is this off the record?” I asked, even though the question seemed silly. It was right up there with a lawyer purposely saying something during court that he knew would be stricken, but once the jury heard it, could it really be erased from their minds?

She let her finger slide out from between the pages. “Absolutely. Look, Harlow, I can see you don’t trust me, but I promise to keep your secrets. I’m simply fascinated by your history and I’d love to learn more.”

I didn’t trust Madelyn, but I trusted Meemaw and she seemed to want this woman to know our story. I didn’t understand, but I knew if I started to say something I wasn’t supposed to, Meemaw would rattle a chain or do something to interrupt me. I’d seen it happen when Will and Gracie were here. I had no doubt I would see it again.

I sucked in a bolstering breath—I’d never uttered these words to anyone outside the Cassidy family—and said, “We all think Texana and Cressida were charmed, but I don’t know what their gifts were. For me, it started with Meemaw.”

Her eyes danced with excitement. “So Loretta Mae started getting what she wanted, but when did she realize it was more than just luck?”

“I don’t know. That’s the only way I ever knew her. She never talked about it.”

“Hmm. How did it work? Was there some ritual? Some incantation, or something?”