It would’ve made me really happy if Susanna was joking, but the look on her face made it clear that she was dead serious.
I said with exceptional restraint, “Independence Day is barely a week away.”
She nodded grimly. “It is fast, I know.”
“Fast?” Okay, I was beginning to lose my restraint. “How about insane?”
“Difficult, perhaps, but hardly insane.”
“Why do we have to move her so quickly?”
“My mother plans to wed Mr. Shaw on July tenth.”
Damn. “Okay, that’s a good reason.”
Her hands twisted in the folds of her apron, her only sign of agitation. “What have you learned so far?”
“Nothing much.” I must be as crazy as she, because I was already sifting through ways to ramp up the speed. “I thought we had months.”
“We must look for jobs in a dressmaker’s shop, or we may find a large household which requires a skilled needlewoman.”
“Right. What, exactly, can a skilled needlewoman do?”
“Embroidery, hemming, and mending.”
I snorted. “How large does a household have to be to afford someone who does nothing but stitch all day?”
“Very large. And she would certainly be assigned other duties.”
“How many large households will Raleigh have?”
Her face scrunched in thought. “Three or four.”
I felt like one of those cartoon characters whose eyes were popping out of my head on threads. “Really? It ought to be easy when I have three to choose from.”
“Or four.” She ignored my sarcasm. “Phoebe’s needlework is truly exquisite. A wealthy family will want her.”
Here was the first weird side effect of being with Susanna: the things she needed me to do. Alexis had only asked for trivial stuff. I’d done some of it to keep the peace and blown off the things I really, really didn’t want to do. But in Susanna’s case, she asked for crazy-important, scary-as-hell, life-and-death things, which I couldn’t blow off.
“Let me make sure I understand. First, I’ll find your one-talent sister a job with a rich family living near the state capital. And second, we’ll move her there, all within the next week.”
“Precisely.” She gave me the kind of smile a teacher gives to an idiot who has finally said something smart.
“Okay.” Crazy or not, I felt engaged by the challenge. It would be a tough, non-stop push to succeed, but already I could feel the energy flowing. “What’s the plan?”
“You should start by checking with your web for large households.”
“My web? Great idea. I’ll give that a try.” I pulled out the print-out from the 1799 Raleigh Register. “As it happens, I did find a family like that. The Etons sound rich. Do you know who they are?”
“Mr. Nathaniel Eton was a great hero in the war. He fought most bravely and will soon serve the people of North Carolina in our new government.”
“Sounds like they like to have fun. They throw parties and serve sonker.”
Susanna blinked. “Sonker? Are you sure?” She snatched the document and scanned quickly. Her lips moved as she read the article. “How can this be?”
“What’s the problem?”
“Nobody in the county knows the recipe but my mother and I,” she said, the words so faint I leaned forward to hear.
“How can you know that?”
“The recipe is a secret.” She looked up, a smile brightening her face into something amazingly beautiful. “Do you know what this means? I may be the cook for the Etons.”
“So, this is good?”
“Indeed.” She read the article again.
The news disturbed me. It reminded me that our time together might end. The falls would stop, or we would stop. The fracture in time would heal.
I had to put it from my mind. It would drive me insane if I focused on Susanna’s future instead of the search for Phoebe’s job.
“I have a logistical question. How long will it take to get to Raleigh from here?”
“An hour or more by horse,” she murmured. “Hours by foot.”
“What about your mother? Won’t she have to agree to Phoebe’s job?”
“Indeed. I shall assume that task.” She folded the document and handed it back to me. “I am determined to persuade her. The larger problem is to keep the secret from Mr. Shaw. So I must wait until all of the details are worked out. The more time she has to consider my plan, the more likely she will talk with him. And that I cannot permit.” As her smile faded, her eyes narrowed with fear. “We must settle my sister’s future by Independence Day. Please say you’ll help us.”
The odds were against us. There were no known jobs. We had an immature girl with a doormat for a mother and a jerk for a stepdad-to-be. Susanna couldn’t leave Worthville to run any negotiations, and I—who had no experience with eighteenth century behavior—would be her sole set of eyes and ears.
Just when I thought I understood how big the problem was, it got even bigger. My gut told me it was a total train wreck. But we had to win.
How was I going to pull this off?
The obstacles didn’t matter. I couldn’t refuse.
“I’m in.”
* * *
The hunt for a costume began as soon as my morning customers had been handled.
My first stop was the junk room—or guest bedroom, as my mother preferred to call it. I stared into the closet for so long, my eyes were starting to cross. Halloween costumes of all shapes and sizes were in there, but none that looked remotely colonial.
I was going to solve the costume problem today.
The stairs creaked. I hadn’t really spoken to my mother since the wedding situation first exploded, but desperation was a great equalizer, especially since I needed information she was likely to have.
“Mom,” I called, “if you were going to a costume party, where would you look for a costume?”
“The junk closet in the guest bedroom.”
“Besides there?”
The brush of her bare feet on carpet came closer. Her head appeared in the doorway. “Are you going to a costume party?”
“Could be.”
“When?”
“Independence Day.” I faced the shelves. The back of my head had a way better poker face than the front.
“What are you going as?”
“George Washington.”
Oddly, she kissed me on the cheek. “Guess Me! on Hillsborough Street. If anyone has the father of our country, it would be that store.”
“Thanks.”
It took me fifteen minutes to bike there. My mom was wrong. They didn’t, but they called around and sent me to another shop downtown.
Sash and Dash was hidden between two chic boutiques. If I hadn’t known exactly where to look, I wouldn’t have found it. The shop smelled the way I would’ve expected—musty, sweaty, and thick—like the fabrics had released microscopic fibers into the air that I was breathing in. I would’ve brought a mask if I’d known.
“Can I help you, hon?”
I heard the voice but couldn’t find its owner. It came from the corner, so I headed there. An elderly woman with long, curly gray hair and ten earrings in each ear looked up. She wore lots of eye makeup and her lips were black. Intentionally.
“Need something?” Her voice had a heavy-smoker huskiness.
“Yeah. I’m looking for a costume.”
She made a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a pig snort. “Well, it’s either that or the bathroom. We don’t have much else in here.” She unrolled from the beanbag chair she had been sitting in and creaked to her feet. She was nearly as tall as I was. “Did you have something specific in mind?”
“George Washington.”
“General or President?”
“President. Second term.”
“That narrows it down.” Her nose scrunched. “I had you pegged for Spiderman. Or Dr. Frank-N-Furter.”
“What?”
She laughed/snorted again. “Georgie, huh? Let’s see.” She wandered through a long rack of clothes, made a hard right, stopped, pushed a few hangers aside, and grunted. “Here’s something.”
She took a pair of pants in ugly, dog-poop brown. They tied on, which was probably fine because they were too big. I swung them around. The back was split open.
“My ass will show through these.”
“Then, obviously, you’ll have to sew them.”
“Is the store not responsible for that?”
“Do I look like a seamstress?” Her laugh morphed into a mucousy cough. “I’ll sell them to you for ten bucks.”
“Sure. Whatever.” My mom had a sewing machine. She would take care of them for me. I just had to work out how I would answer all of the questions she would ask. “I need more than pants.”
“They’re called breeches. And yes, you do.” She pulled out a white shirt. Huge sleeves with buttons at the wrists. It was open to mid-chest but had laces. “How about this?”
It stank. Like beer and BO. “I assume you’re not a laundromat, either?”
“You catch on quickly. I’ll sell this one for ten bucks.”
“Do you ever rent?”
“If you want to rent, you try Guess Me! on Hillsborough Street.”
“Yeah, they sent me here.”
“So you’re stuck. Twenty bucks.”
“Okay.” I’d expected to spend more on rentals. So far, so good.
“Shoes, my young Georgie?”
“Probably.”
They were awful. Big, black, cracked leather things with thick heels and silverish buckles.
“What do you think, hon?”
“I think not.”
“Wise choice. No one’ll look at your feet.”
Yeah. Black athletic shoes would have to do. “Anything else I should have?”
“Hat.” She handed over a tricorn hat made of navy felt. “It’s on the house.”
The hat was the nastiest thing I’d ever tried on. “Sure.”
“Jacket.” She held up a blue wool coat with big buttons and gold trim and waggled her eyebrows.
“In the summer? No way.”
She shrugged and tossed it on a dresser piled with similarly discarded items. “You must have stockings.”
“Why?”
“Back then, bare legs were not smoking.” With a jerk of her head, she wove her way through the maze of her shop toward the front.
I followed.
Fingers flying, she rang up my stuff on an antique cash register. “You can buy stockings at the drug store. Knee highs. Like your mom wears.”
“My mom does not wear knee highs.”
“Your grandma, then.” She held out her hand, palm up, and wiggled her fingers. “Twenty bucks. Hand ‘em over.”
* * *
I stopped at Meredith Ridge Shopping Center on my way home, bought The Witch of Blackbird Pond at the bookstore, and then headed into the drug store for fake stockings.
Damn. If someone had told me a month ago that I’d be taking time away from my training and my business to hit the State Archives or to buy a costume with stockings, I would’ve said they were crazy.
But then, I hadn’t met Susanna yet—and for her, I’d do whatever it took.
The hose aisle was easy enough to find. I hadn’t expected so many kinds and colors, though. Not just black and brown. There were red, purple, blue, and yellow? Seriously?
The sizes weren’t helpful. Small. Medium. Large. Queen.
Really? They had queen but not extra-large or gigantic or guy-with-big-calves?
“Hey, Mark.”
Alexis’s voice. Of course. Why did she keep popping up in places where I was and didn’t want her to be?
“Hey,” I said as I grabbed a package and flipped to the back. There was a size chart. Cool.
“So…” She stepped closer. “What are you looking for?”
I looked at the display and then at the package in my hand. How much more obvious could it be…? “Knee highs.”
She blinked. “Why?”
“My mom. Is queen the biggest?” I flipped to the front and rechecked the color. Dark brown was good.
“Uh-huh.” She pointed at a different package. “Your mom is more this size.”
“Nah, I’ll take these.” I lowered my voice, as if I were telling a secret. “She’s allergic to bee stings. One got her in the leg.” I made a muffled explosion sound. “Serious swelling.”
“Uh-huh.” She fell into step beside me as I walked to the front. “Tell her I hope she feels better.”
“Sure thing.”
Alexis detoured to another aisle while I waited my turn in the checkout line. I was proud of myself. That had gone well. Very polite. Civil. Mature.
I glanced back over my shoulder as I exited the store and froze.
She stood beside Carlton in front of the refrigerators, choosing cold drinks.
They were holding hands.
Carlton had been home since Sunday. We’d texted a couple of times but could never seem to work out anything. I’d been too busy with Susanna to even think about why.
Now I knew. I wasn’t the problem.
My insides felt hollow and expanding—a great big void, waiting for the right emotion to fill it up.
I didn’t feel jealousy. At a purely selfish level, I wanted Alexis to be focused on another guy. It meant I wouldn’t run into her on the greenway anymore. It was great, too, that it wasn’t Keefe. That would’ve pissed me off, because he’d been involved with the bully ring somehow and Alexis knew it.
So what emotions were left? Anger? Sadness?
Aunt Pamela had once said that the worst kind of betrayal could only come at the hands of a friend. I’d never really understood what she meant until this moment.
Carlton’s head whipped around and our gazes locked. The muscles along his jaw tensed. He flushed a dark red and then looked back at the cold drinks.
Alexis finally had a boyfriend who didn’t play competitive sports year-round, and she hadn’t had to look any further than my best friend.