Free Twisted Threads by Lea Wait Page B

been a young girl. The work was neither complicated nor did it illustrate different stitches. Was it done as a gift? But, then, why was there no personalization?
    Sarah was looking closely at the frame. “I think once there was paper backing the piece. Perhaps the person who did this had written on the paper who she was and what the date was.”
    Perhaps. But the paper was gone.
    Just as the twig is bent, the tree’s inclined.
    And why had she chosen that verse?
    “Take care of that, Sarah,” said Gram. “And if you solve its mystery, let us know.”

Chapter Eleven

    The Unicorn Tapestries in the National Museum of the Middle Ages (the Cluny Museum) in Paris are some of the most famous examples of medieval weaving. Using a combination of research and imagination, Tracy Chevalier’s historical novel The Lady and the Unicorn takes the reader back to the fifteenth century, and weaves its own tale of how the tapestries might have been created. Another famous series of Unicorn Tapestries is at the Cloisters Museum, a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in northern Manhattan.

    “Gram, you need to tell me more about Jacques Lattimore if I’m going to find him.”
    Sarah had left, we’d put the groceries away, and Gram and I were sitting in the room I remembered as a living room. Gram had made it her office. It was where she stored completed work and supplies needed by the needlepointers, but there was still space for her old couch and comfortable chairs.
    “I have his address in Brunswick. Or at least I have an address. The last letter I sent there came back marked as ‘moved, no forwarding address.’”
    “Did he ever talk about his family?”
    Gram shook her head. “He never mentioned one.”
    “Friends?”
    “When he left here once, about a year ago, he said he was going to have dinner down in Portland with ‘Billy.’ I don’t remember him ever mentioning anyone else.”
    “How about a picture of him?”
    She thought for a moment. “I do have one of those somewhere.” She turned to her computer and talked as she searched. “We had a meeting here, with all the needlepointers, the day we hired Jacques as our agent. He took a picture of all of us—said it would help in sales to show customers we were real, down-to-earth, Maine home craftspeople. Someone, I think it was Ruth, didn’t want her picture taken. Said she always looked ten years older in photographs. Finally she agreed, if we could take a picture of him, too. A couple of people took pictures with their cell phones. Everyone was laughing and kidding around. We were real happy, then, thinking he’d be an asset to the business.” She shook her head. “Were we wrong! But I took a picture of him with my little camera. Hold on.” She clicked a few keys. Gram clearly knew how to use a computer. That was a skill she’d learned since I was last home.
    “Here he is,” she said finally. “I should organize my picture file. But it never seemed that important. I take pictures of needlepoint patterns and completed work and scan in ideas I find in home-decorating or art magazines. Let me print this out for you.”
    As the printer hummed, she turned back to me. “Remember, Angel, I don’t want you to do anything dangerous, or anything that would get you in trouble. And I want you to tell me where you’re going. No big surprises or disappearances.”
    I could have told her I wasn’t sixteen anymore. That I’d done this before. That finding people was something I’d been trained to do. But I understood the importance of that word “disappearances.”
    “I promise, Gram. I’ll let you know what I’m doing. First I have to find this guy for you. You don’t even know if he’s in Maine now, right?”
    She sighed. “I have no idea.” She plucked the photo off her printer and handed it to me.
    The color picture was a three-quarter shot of a man leaning against the mantel in our living room. Good! I could measure the fireplace and get a close