Free A Thread of Truth by Marie Bostwick Page B

the point of Friday nights. The scars don’t appear as terrible, or take as long to heal, when you’re safe inside the circle of friends. For a while there, Friday nights were the only times I felt lucky.
    That’s why I wanted Ivy to join our circle. I thought that she needed us.
    Ivy has a quick wit but, more often than not, the laughs come at her own expense, poking fun at her own weaknesses with a regularity and fierceness that makes me wonder if she’s really joking at all.
    I really don’t know much about Ivy, but there’s something about her, a sadness that lurks behind her ready smile and goes down to the bone. She tries to mask it, but it’s there, sadness and something else harder to name. Determination, perhaps.
    I saw it clearly one night during the log cabin class at the Stanton Center as she sat at her sewing machine, holding her quilt block in her two hands as silent tears tracked slowly down her cheeks. Seeing her crying, I started to go over and comfort her, but she saw me looking at her and nodded to let me know she was all right, or would be. Ivy is quiet and careful, but she’s also strong. Given what she’s been through, I guess she’d have to be.
    Since she lives at the Stanton Center, we know she was married to an abusive man, a man who Abigail told me was killed in some sort of construction accident and left Ivy and the children without a dime to live on, but she never speaks of him or of how she ended up in New Bern. I think she’s from somewhere in Pennsylvania originally, but I don’t know for certain.
    Not that she has to share any of that with us, not at all. Our quilt circle isn’t a place for gossip, it’s a place for honesty. It might take some time, but I think that’s what Ivy needs: a safe place where she can be herself, and with a group of friends who will love and accept her for exactly who she is.

8
Evelyn Dixon
    A bigail was indignant.
    â€œNo? We’re kind enough to invite her to join our quilt circle and she just says no? After all we’ve done for her! Especially you, Evelyn. Where would she be if you hadn’t given her a job?” She answered her own question. “In the unemployment line, that’s where! I’ve never heard of such ingratitude!”
    She practically stabbed the needle through the quilt top and batting she was basting together. Looking at her, I decided it was a good thing Ivy had left as quickly as she did. If not, Abigail just might have turned that basting needle into a lethal weapon.
    We were in the workroom, Abigail, Liza, Margot, and myself, going on with our usual circle meeting like we normally did, but the evening’s previously festive atmosphere had definitely faded.
    Margot was working on a quilted tote bag she planned to give her sister for Christmas. Liza was supposed to be sewing a bunch of shells with holes she’d drilled herself onto the back of a jacket, but mostly she seemed to be drinking wine. And I sat at my sewing machine with my head down, using my seam ripper to remove the stitches from a seam I’d accidentally sewn wrong sides together, the sort of beginner’s mistake I hadn’t made in years.
    â€œAbigail, calm down. It’s not like joining the quilt circle is a condition of employment around here. Ivy must have her reasons for not wanting to be part of the group,” I said evenly, though for the life of me, I couldn’t think what those reasons could be.
    I was so sure that Ivy would be happy, even excited, at the prospect of being included in our circle. If not for the quilting, at least for the chance to have an adult evening out now and then. It never crossed my mind that she’d refuse the invitation. I couldn’t help but feel a little hurt by Ivy’s reaction.
    â€œWell”—Liza shrugged and took another sip from one of the coffee cups we used in lieu of wineglasses—“it isn’t like she was rude