A Thread of Truth (Cobbled Court Quilts, Band 2) - Softcover

Bostwick, Marie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0758232152 ISBN 13: 9780758232151

Verlag: Kensington Books, 2009

Inhaltsangabe

Come home to Marie Bostwick's poignant novel of new beginnings, old friends, and the rich, varied tapestry of lives fully lived. . .

At twenty-seven, having fled an abusive marriage with little more than her kids and the clothes on her back, Ivy Peterman figures she has nowhere to go but up. Quaint, historic New Bern, Connecticut, seems as good a place as any to start fresh. With a part-time job at the Cobbled Court Quilt Shop and budding friendships, Ivy feels hopeful for the first time in ages.

But when a popular quilting TV show is taped at the quilt shop, Ivy's unwitting appearance in an on-air promo alerts her ex-husband to her whereabouts. Suddenly, Ivy is facing the fight of her life--one that forces her to face her deepest fears as a woman and a mother. This time, however, she's got a sisterhood behind her: companions as complex, strong, and lasting as the quilts they stitch. . .

Praise for Marie Bostwick's A Single Thread

"Enjoy this big-hearted novel, then pass it along to your best friend."
--Susan Wiggs

"By the time you finish this book, the women in A Single Thread will feel like your own girlfriends--emotional, funny, creative and deeply caring. It's a story filled with wit and wisdom. Sit back and enjoy this big-hearted novel, and then pass it on to your best friend."
--Susan Wiggs, New York Times bestselling author

"Marie Bostwick beautifully captures the very essence of women's friendships--the love, the pain, the trust, the forgiveness--and crafts a seamless and heartfelt novel from them. Evelyn, Abigail, Margot, and Liza are as real and endearing as my own closest friends, and as I turned the last page I felt that sweet, satisfying sorrow in having to say goodbye that marks the work of a writer at the top of her game." --Kristy Kiernan, author of Catching Genius and Matters of Faith

"Bostwick makes a seamless transition from historical fiction to the contemporary scene in this buoyant novel about the value of friendship among women. . ..Bostwick's polished style and command of plot make this story of bonding and sisterhood a tantalizing book club contender." --Publishers Weekly

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Marie Bostwick was born and raised in the northwest. In the three decades since her marriage, Marie and her family have moved frequently, living in eight different states at eighteen different addresses. These experiences have given Marie a unique perspective that enables her to write about people from all walks of life and corners of the country with insight and authenticity. Marie currently resides in Portland, where she enjoys writing, spending time with family, gardening, collecting fabric, and stitching quilts. Visit her at www.mariebostwick.com.

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A Thread of Truth

By MARIE BOSTWICK

KENSINGTON BOOKS

Copyright © 2009 Marie Bostwick Skinner
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7582-3215-1

Chapter One

Ivy Peterman

Eighteen months later

Fight or flight? Until recently, it's never been a question. Not for me.

Whenever I feel frightened or threatened, my first instinct has always been flight. I do it pretty regularly.

I was six years old when my father had a heart attack and died. The news sent me running into the woods in the back of our house. I could hear my mother calling for me, her voice raspy with tears and shock and anger, but wouldn't budge from my hiding place in the branches of a half-dead oak. Finally, she sent our neighbor, Pete, out to find me.

Just after my sixteenth birthday, Mom was killed in a head-on collision and Pete, who was by then my stepfather, also became my legal guardian. He and I had never gotten along, but then again neither had he and Mom, not since about ten minutes after their wedding. After Mom died, Pete started to drink even more than before, so I ran away again. Farther this time, buying a one-way train ticket to the city. So far that Pete would never be able to find me, though now I realize he probably never tried.

And, of course, when I was twenty-four, I ran away from my husband. This time I took my two babies with me.

My escape wasn't exactly well-planned.

The day began normally enough, with a trip to the department store and a new tube of lipstick, but by that night I was running. I had to. I was afraid, not just for my life but for the lives of my children. All I took were some clothes, a file with some personal papers, the kids' baby books, some jewelry I sold later, and about $288 in cash, fifty-six of it from the spare change jar we kept on the kitchen counter. That's all. I had credit cards, but I didn't take them. I was worried that Hodge would be able to track us down if I used them.

When we could find an opening, we lived in emergency shelters. When we couldn't, we lived in the car. That was the hardest time. The kids were cranky, and so was I. The things I'd taken for granted while living in a nice house in the suburbs, like being able to keep clean and warm, using a toilet whenever we wanted to, or eating hot food, were concerns that occupied my every waking moment. I had no reserve of time or energy to consider how I was going to get us out of that mess, only enough to survive the day.

One night, I was asleep on the front seat and heard a noise. I woke up to see a figure, a man, pressed up against the passenger side window of the backseat, where my kids were sleeping, trying to slide a hanger wire into the space between the window and the door. I didn't think, just jumped out of the car and started screaming. "Get away from that door! Don't touch them! Get away!"

Somewhere along the line I must have grabbed the metal flashlight from the side storage compartment in the door. Still screaming, I flung it at the intruder and it hit him in the head. He swore and ran off into the alley. The kids woke up and started crying. A tall, scruffy man with a four-day growth of beard-the clerk from the twenty-four-hour mini-mart where I'd decided to park that night, stupidly thinking it was a safe spot-heard the commotion and came outside to investigate.

He took one look at me, tears in my eyes while I tried to quiet Bethany and Bobby's sobbing, and decided to call the police. Over my protests, he went inside the store to make the call. I got in the car and told the kids to buckle up. There was no way I was going to stick around and answer a bunch of questions from the police. If Hodge had filed a report saying I was a kidnapper, they'd lock me up and take the kids away from me forever. That's what Hodge said would happen if I ever even thought about leaving him. He didn't say that out of any kind of love, but just to make me believe that no matter what I did or where I went, he would still be in control. And I did believe it. I'd put hundreds miles of road between us, but even so I could feel his power, the menace of his presence, just like I always had. We had to get out of there.

My tires squealed as I peeled out of the parking lot, my mind racing. Did it made more sense for me to get on the freeway and go to another town? Or better to find a dark alley and park there until the coast was clear? I decided on the freeway.

In the backseat the kids were still crying. I swore under my breath, cursing traffic engineers who were too cheap or too stupid to put up any signs directing out-of-towners to the freeway entrance. Ten minutes later I was still lost. Bethany had stopped crying, but Bobby was still going strong.

I looked in the rearview mirror and saw his face, his chubby baby cheeks flushed and hot, his black lashes clumped and glistening with tears. "Bobby. Calm down, baby. Mommy is going to find a quiet place to park and then you can go back to sleep, all right?"

"Go home!" he wailed. "Go home!"

And for the first time, I wondered if I was doing the right thing. A few weeks before, my children had been living the relatively normal, scheduled lives of children in the suburbs; three meals a day, playing on the swing set in our fenced backyard, watching cartoons, baths at seven, bed at eight. Of course, when it was time for Hodge to come home, they'd get clingy and quiet, feeling my fear, perhaps, as I listened for the grind of gears as the automatic garage door opened and tuned my ears to assess the level of force Hodge used to slam the door of his BMW, a clue as to his mood and what the rest of the evening would bring.

But, I told myself as I drove through the darkness, he wasn't violent every night. Only when I'd done something, or not done something, that made him mad. After all, I was the one he took his anger out on. Not the kids. Maybe they'd be better off if we went back. At least they'd be safe.

But a voice in my head reminded me that it wasn't true anymore.

I remembered that last day, Hodge screaming and swearing and pounding on one side of the locked bathroom door, while we huddled on the other side. I remembered the swelling of my left eye, pain shooting through my bleeding hand, but worse, so much worse, was the memory of the angry red mark on Bethany's pale cheek.

Bethany was used to his rages, used to seeing me holding ice packs on my bruises, or trying to cover up the marks of his fury with extra makeup, but he'd never hit her before. That day, he considered her fair game and I realized that from then on, he always would.

In the backseat, Bethany tried to calm her baby brother. "Bobby, don't cry. We can't go home. Daddy's there."

She was right. I couldn't take them back. Not now. It wasn't safe to go back to Hodge. Not for me and not for my children. But we couldn't go on like this, either. We couldn't keep running. I was tired, and scared, and broke. Somehow or other I had to come up with another plan. But what?

To say that I haven't had a lot of experience with praying in my life would be an understatement, but that night, driving around in the middle of the night without the least clue of where we should go or what we should do when we arrived, I prayed silently, asking God for a sign or at least a hint.

Lost in uncharted territory, I accidentally turned onto the northbound freeway entrance instead of the southbound. By the time I figured it out, I was crossing the state line into Connecticut. And that's how I ended up in New Bern.

After three weeks living in a tiny...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Kensington Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2009
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0758232152
• ISBN 13: 9780758232151
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 352
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Dietmar Rusche; 15110751138; rusche.dietmar@gmx.de; ; Dr.-Willi-Bergmann-Str. 13; St. Andreasberg; 37444; Deutschland