Free A Single Thread (Cobbled Court) by Marie Bostwick Page B

and I’m already about to tear out my hair! I’ll never survive a year of this!”
    “Abigail,” he said, “do you think you might be overdramatizing this just a bit?”
    “No, I don’t. She is simply impossible. She barely speaks to me, and when she does, her tone is terribly rude. You’d think she’d be the tiniest bit grateful to me. After all, if it weren’t for me she’d be rotting in a jail cell somewhere!”
    “It sounds like she’s angry.”
    “Really, Franklin?” I said, arching my eyebrows to their highest point. “How very insightful of you. Of course, she’s angry. But she has no right to take her anger out on me. It isn’t like I got her into this. Until Harry Gulden foisted her off on me, I’d barely laid eyes on her.”
    “That’s true. She is your niece, but it’s not like you’ve had anything to do with her. What could she possibly have against you? After all, you’ve done nothing, just left her to her own devices for the last nineteen years—and her mother too.”
    I looked up. The accusation in his eyes was plain. “That’s not fair, Franklin. You of all people should know that. You know what Susan did to me.”
    “I do, but that was years ago. Couldn’t you at least have gone to see her at the end? She was dying.”
    “And was my going to her bedside, pretending everything was so much water under the bridge, going to change that?” I snapped. “You make me sound utterly heartless, and it’s not fair! You know I did what I could. I made sure there was money enough for Susan’s doctors, and for Liza’s education after. I told you to make sure they had whatever they needed.”
    Franklin looked at me and said in a cold voice, “What you said was to make sure they had whatever they needed as long as you never had to deal with them personally. You were willing to be generous with your wallet, Abigail, just not with your forgiveness.”
    “I was protecting them,” I hissed. “I didn’t want them to be embarrassed about taking money from me. That’s why I had you make up that story about Uncle Dwight dying and leaving Susan a legacy. So they wouldn’t have to feel beholden to me.”
    “Abbie, I’m not sure even you believe that speech. Maybe you’d better rehearse it a few more times.”
    “Franklin Spaulding! How dare you!” This was too much. I was furious, but he didn’t seem to care.
    “Abbie, I’ve always thought you were a simply marvelous woman—difficult, as Charlie so aptly observed, though worth the effort. But you’ve always held everyone at arm’s length. Even me, and I’ve known you, known your secrets, taken care of every detail of your personal affairs, for the last thirty years. It was the same with Susan, though once upon a time she was closer to you than anyone in the world. I know she hurt you terribly, but if you couldn’t bring yourself to forgive Susan, or even see her, you might at least have reached out to Liza. After Susan died, she had no one to turn to.”
    “No one but you! I heard the way she talked to you in the judge’s chambers. Clearly, you decided to be the person she could turn to, and look what came from it. She came here, looking for you, but somehow I’m the one who’s left to clean up the mess that you, with all your meddling in private affairs that don’t concern you, have created. Who asked you to do that? All you were supposed to do was make sure she had enough money. That’s all!” In spite of my earlier resolve, my voice was raised. A few people in the restaurant were craning their necks to look at us; many more were pretending not to look. I was mortified. I took a deep breath, touched my napkin to my lips, and laid it on the table.
    I got up to leave just as Charlie returned carrying a cup of steaming cappuccino. His eyes moved quickly from my face to Franklin’s, assessing the situation. “Abigail,” he said soothingly, “sit down and have your coffee. It’s got a lovely big cap of foam. I made it