Free A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler Page A

fact, was what the Whitshanks imagined to be the theme of their two stories—patiently lying in wait for what they believed should come to them. “Biding their time,” as Junior had put it, and as Merrick might have put it too if she had been willing to talk about it. But somebody more critical might say that the theme was envy. And someone else, someone who had known the family intimately and forever (but there wasn’t any such person), might ask why no one seemed to realize that another, unspoken theme lay beneath the first two: in the long run, both stories had led to disappointment.
    Junior got his house, but it didn’t seem to make him as happy as you might expect, and he had often been seen contemplating it with a puzzled, forlorn sort of look on his face. He spent the rest of his life fidgeting with it, altering it, adding closets, resetting flagstones, as if he hoped that achieving the perfect abode would finally open the hearts of those neighbors who never acknowledged him. Neighbors whom he didn’t even like, as it turned out.
    Merrick got her husband, but he was a cold, aloof man unless he was drinking, in which case he grew argumentative and boorish. They never had children, and Merrick spent most of her time alone in the Sarasota place so as to avoid her mother-in-law, whom she detested.
    The disappointments seemed to escape the family’s notice, though. That was another of their quirks: they had a talent for pretending that everything was fine. Or maybe it wasn’t a quirk at all. Maybe it was just further proof that the Whitshanks were not remarkable in any way whatsoever.

3
    O N THE VERY FIRST DAY OF 2012, Abby began disappearing.
    She and Red had kept Stem’s three boys overnight so that Stem and Nora could go to a New Year’s Eve party, and Stem showed up to collect them around ten o’clock the next morning. Like everyone else in the family, he gave only a token knock before walking on into the house. “Hello?” he called. He stopped in the hall and stood listening, idly ruffling the dog’s ears. The only sounds came from his children in the sunroom. “Hello,” he said again. He walked toward their voices.
    The boys sat on the rug around a Parcheesi board, three stair-step towheads dressed scruffily in jeans. “Dad,” Petey said, “tell Sammy he can’t play with us. He doesn’t add the dots up right!”
    “Where’s your grandma?” Stem asked.
    “I don’t know. Tell him, Dad! And he rolled the dice so hard, one went under the couch.”
    “Grandma
said
I could play,” Sammy said.
    Stem walked back into the living room. “Mom? Dad?” he called.
    No answer.
    He went to the kitchen, where he found his father sitting at thebreakfast table reading the
Baltimore Sun
. Over the past few years Red had grown hard of hearing, and it wasn’t till Stem entered his line of vision that he looked up from his newspaper. “Hey!” he said. “Happy New Year!”
    “Happy New Year to you.”
    “How was the party?”
    “It was good. Where’s Mom?”
    “Oh, somewhere around. Want some coffee?”
    “No, thanks.”
    “I just made it.”
    “I’m okay.”
    Stem walked over to the back door and looked out. A lone cardinal sat in the nearest dogwood, bright as a leftover leaf, but otherwise the yard was empty. He turned away. “I’m thinking we’ll have to fire Guillermo,” he said.
    “Pardon?”
    “
Guillermo
. We should get rid of him. De’Ontay said he showed up hungover again on Friday.”
    Red made a clucking sound and folded his newspaper. “Well, it’s not like there aren’t plenty of other guys out there nowadays,” he said.
    “Kids behave okay?”
    “Yes, fine.”
    “Thanks for looking after them. I’ll go get their stuff together.”
    Stem went back into the hall, climbed the stairs, and headed toward the bedroom that used to be his sisters’. It was full of bunk beds now, and the floor was a welter of tossed-off pajamas and comic books and backpacks. He began stuffing