Threads of Evidence Read Free

weary and worn
With eyelids heavy and red.
A woman sat, in unwomanly rags
Plying her needle and thread.
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    â€”Thomas Hood (1798–1845)
The Song of the Shirt , 1843
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    I kept thinking about Jasmine Gardener on my drive home. She’d died when she was only seventeen. Today she’d be sixty-two. Thirty-five years older than I was. She might have been married and had grandchildren by now. Or had a great career as . . . what? I couldn’t guess. All I knew about her was she’d been a rich girl and she’d died.
    She might have made a major contribution to the world. Or she might have lived an ordinary life. Or a disastrous one. She didn’t have a chance to choose. To die at seventeen meant all her possibilities were wasted. Canceled. Gone.
    I’d been seventeen ten years ago. What had I accomplished with those years?
    It was a depressing thought.
    I’d felt like an average, ordinary girl, growing up not-rich-and-not-destitute in a harbor town in Maine until Mama disappeared, when I was almost ten. Then I became the subject of whispers; I was someone to be pitied. I was someone whose mother, many said under their breaths, was a slut. As a teenager I’d raged, followed in some of Mama’s footsteps, and hated everything and everyone. I certainly hadn’t made life easier for Gram, or for anyone else in Haven Harbor. Or, I was beginning to admit now, for myself.
    Then I’d spent ten years in Arizona. Had I made a difference to the world? A difference, perhaps indirectly, to our clients whose spouses I’d tracked and who’d ended up winning in divorce court. No differences I was proud of, although my work had paid the bills.
    And here I was, back in Haven Harbor. After all these years Mama’s body had been discovered a month ago, and I’d been able to find her killer. I’d committed to staying in town six months. I wasn’t ready to sign up for more small-town life than that.
    Being back home opened some chapters of my life I’d tried to close forever. Meant confronting the memories and nightmares I’d grown up with.
    But it also meant I was close to the rocks and sea I’d always loved. Back where the familiar screech of hungry herring gulls woke me in the morning, and the spring peepers kept me company at night. I could indulge in the seafood and fresh New England produce I’d missed in Arizona. For me, Mexican food would never replace haddock chowder, a lobster club sandwich, or, at this time of year, rhubarb crisp or strawberry-rhubarb pie, with vanilla ice cream.
    I hoped Gram’d made something sweet today. Maybe her maple bread pudding. One sniff of her kitchen and I was back to my childhood. The good parts of my childhood. What would I do after she married Reverend Tom and moved to the rectory? I’d existed on fast food in Arizona. Someday I’d have to learn to cook.
    I pulled into the driveway in back of Gram’s car, opened the door, and inhaled. The smell and the taste of salt breezes were better than any tranquilizer or massage.
    I wouldn’t have minded a glass of wine or two, though. Or a gin and tonic.
    For the moment I was living chastely, by chance if not by choice. But I hadn’t given up all my vices. Wine, beer, cognac, gin . . . I didn’t discriminate against any of them.
    Those chairs Gram and I repainted last week looked inviting on the front porch. A glass in my hand, a copy of the Portland Press Herald, and a seat protected from strong sea breezes and overlooking Haven Harbor’s Green—that’s where I was headed.
    â€œGram? I’m home,” I called into the front hall. Juno, Gram’s enormous yellow coon cat, padded into the hall from the living room and greeted me with a yowl.
    â€œIn the kitchen, Angel,” came Gram’s response. “With Sarah. Come join us.”
    Gram and Sarah Byrne, the youngest member of the Mainely Needlework crew (except