Threading the Needle by Marie Bostwick

Author:Marie Bostwick [Bostwick, Marie]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corp.
Published: 2011-05-02T22:00:00+00:00

27

Tessa

It’s a nice day, cool and crisp but still warm for November. That early October snowstorm was a fluke. It snowed four inches and melted the next day. We haven’t had so much as a flurry since.

When we got back from the hardware store, I decided to go putter in the garden a bit. Not that there’s much to be done this time of year. The lavender was harvested early in the summer while the flowers were just buds, laid to dry in the sun on clean white sheets, then put into glass jars or alcohol tinctures to be used in potpourris, sachets, soaps, and creams. The rest of my summer herbal bounty—flowers, seeds, stems, and leaves—were similarly harvested long ago, back when the garden was lush and the sun shone warm every day.

Now the garden is brown and stark, trimmed back tight, the tender plants covered with sheets of opaque plastic or bell-shaped glass cloches. If I had my way, I’d use nothing but cloches, but I only have a few and they’re expensive. The plastic does the job, though far less prettily. Because they’re hardy enough to endure the New England winter, I left the rosemary bushes uncovered except for a generous blanket of mulch at the base. Rosemary is so strong a scent that I don’t often use it in my products, but it rivals lavender as my favorite herb. It’s got so many uses, both culinary and cosmetic, and I just love the smell. Something about that sharp, resiny scent wakes up my senses and makes me think that something good could happen soon.

I pulled a pair of garden clippers from the pocket of my barn coat, snipped off a few sprigs of rosemary, and thought about our conversation with Jake Kaminski.

Can people change? And I’ve decided to believe they can.

I’ve changed. I came to New Bern in search of a new lifestyle, but what I’ve found is a new life. Not an easier life, definitely not. So much of what I’m facing now is unexpected, even frightening. But I have to believe, I do believe, that these changes and this new life are leading me to something truer and better.

I pray now. When I began it felt awkward, forced, like those stumbling, start-and-stop conversations you have when meeting someone for the first time, full of uncomfortable silences as I racked my brain for the next question, the proper terminology. I picked up a book on prayer but found it just confused me.

Then one day, while I was in the shop, repairing some stitching on Madelyn’s quilt (quilting during business hours, I have found, helps me fill the sometimes long stretches of time between customers), I started praying. I prayed for Lee, for Josh, for Madelyn, for Margot, Virginia, Evelyn, and all the new friends I’ve made at the Cobbled Court Quilt Shop, where I am now a regular, and for myself, for all my doubts and worries, as well as all the things I’m grateful for.

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