Free A Thread So Thin by Marie Bostwick

Gino’s Pizzeria, minimum wage and all the pizza I could eat, which was my idea of heaven.
    For the first two weeks I worked at Gino’s I single-handedly ate an entire pepperoni pizza every single day—this was back in those wonderful bygone days when I could eat anything and never gain an ounce. At fifteen, I had the metabolism of a wolverine. But by the third week, I was down to a couple of slices a day, and by the end of the summer, you couldn’t have paid me to eat a piece of pizza.
    That experience led me to formulate Gino’s Law, which states that overexposure to objects once considered desirable will eventually lead you to regard them with disgust and loathing. Gino’s Law applies to almost everything—pizza, pistachio ice cream, certain men—but it does not apply to quilting. At least, not for me.
    After spending my days ordering fabric, racking fabric, cutting fabric, and selling fabric, and spending my nights sewing quilt samples for the shop and teaching quilting classes, Gino’s Law would dictate that the last way I’d want to spend my none-too-plentiful free time is quilting and fussing with fabric, but it’s not.
    Friday night, quilt circle night, is my favorite night of the week. As soon as I turn the Closed sign face out, I can’t wait to climb the stairs to the big, open workshop where we hold our weekly meeting of the Cobbled Court Quilt Circle. This is the time when I get to kick back and relax in the way that seems most natural to me: with a number ten needle pinched between the thumb and index finger of my right hand, a pair of thread snips looped on a ribbon around my neck, and a glass of good red wine sitting close at hand, surrounded by a pleasant buzz of female voices as my best friends talk about whatever’s on their minds at the moment. The questions under discussion on any given night can range from the inconsequential (Does drinking diet soda actually make you gain weight?) to the profound (Is there any real hope for a lasting Middle East peace?) and everything in between.
    This Friday night, my questions are unspoken and all about Mom.
    How did she fall? Why didn’t she tell me about it? What else hasn’t she been telling me? Should she be living on her own anymore? If not, what am I going to do about it?
    I won’t get any answers until I get to Wisconsin tomorrow, but that doesn’t stop the questions from spinning around in my mind, which is probably why I didn’t hear Liza’s voice at first.
    “Evelyn, what do you think? Evelyn?”
    “Hmm?” I looked up from my stitching to see four pairs of eyes on me, obviously waiting for some kind of response. “What?”
    Abigail was standing at the ironing board, pressing the seams of a table runner. “Haven’t you been listening?” She pressed her lips together to signal her disapproval. “We’ve been discussing this for the last twenty minutes.”
    “I’m sorry. Guess I was concentrating on my quilting,” I said and then casually moved my hand, trying to cover the section of the quilt I’d been working on.
    One look at my uncharacteristically long and uneven stitches and they’d realize that I’d been a million miles away. Not that I have any compunctions about discussing my problems with the others, but I wasn’t ready for their advice just yet. Not until I had a chance to spend some time with Mom and see how she was doing.
    Abigail craned her neck, peering at my stitches, and then raised an eyebrow. “Concentrating on your quilting? Hmm. More like thinking about your vacation. I highly approve of you taking some time off, Evelyn, but really…”
    Her second eyebrow lifted to join its partner. “Wisconsin in January? Why not Miami? Or Bermuda? Somewhere you can thaw out a little, take Charlie along, lie on a beach and drink cocktails out of coconuts with little paper umbrellas sticking out of them. You could use my condo at Hilton Head if you wanted to. Why don’t you call Charlie, tell him there’s been a change