Hanging by a Thread Read Online Free

Dressed” in the June issue of
Glamour
. Mom brought old magazines home from the office whenever new issues arrived. Her accounting business was located in a bungalow that also housed a dental practice, and I guess none of the staff wanted the old magazines.
    “This quilt block—its name is Monkey Puzzle. My grandmother made a quilt like this—well, not like this, exactly.” The white-haired woman laughed, her raspy voice warm and friendly. “My grandmother probably never would have thought of using an elephant.”
    I blushed. Okay, so maybe the elephant head hadn’t been my best idea ever.
    “Uh, well, we have some really sweet little zipper cases that are also made from salvaged quilts,” I mumbled, sorting through the rack. “Perfect for holding makeup, or eyeglasses—”
    “Oh, no, honey, I like this one.” She laughed again as she handed the bag to Rachel to wrap up. “You’ve got quite an eye. May I ask where you find your merchandise, girls?”
    “Clare sews each piece herself,” Rachel said proudly. She called me by my real name in front of adults, for which I was grateful. “Everything’s made right here in Winston.”
    The lady raised a silver eyebrow. “Clare
Raley
?” she asked. “Lila’s granddaughter?”
    I smiled uncomfortably. “Clare Knight, ma’am, actually. But yes, Lila Raley is my grandmother.”
    “Oh, of course you wouldn’t be a Raley, what was I thinking? Your mother married that boy she met in college.”
    “Joe Knight,” I said, blushing harder as I got ready to tell my usual lie. “Although my mother and father are amicably separated.”
    “Yes. Yes. Well.” She didn’t stop smiling, even as her expression slipped just a bit. Rachel counted out change and handed it over. “I should have known your creativity runs in the family. Lila’s quite a character, isn’t she.”
    That was code for “eccentric.” People had a lot of different ways of saying it, but I knew what they meant—my grandmother was weird. I sighed. “Yes, ma’am.”
    “And so
active
locally, with all her causes. Now if we could just get her to put some of her energy into restoring that lovely historic home of hers, hmm?” She gave me asmile to mask the fact that she’d just insulted Nana’s house. Many Winston residents thought Nana had turned the old Raley mansion into an eyesore. “You be sure to give her my regards, all right? And your parents, too.”
    As I watched the woman walk away with her new tote bag tucked under her arm, I wondered what she would think if she knew that I hadn’t seen my father, Joe Knight, in almost a year, despite the fact that he lived only three hours away. Or that Nana was planning to paint her front door purple.
    Or that while I was cutting up the corduroy jeans that became the handle of her new bag, my mind had filled with visions of the man who’d worn them the night he’d robbed a convenience store.

CHAPTER FOUR
    C LOTHES SPEAK TO ME .
    Not all clothes. And not all the time. It’s been happening since before I was old enough to understand what my visions meant. No, strike that—I
still
didn’t always understand what I saw, even after Nana shared what she knew about the gift she had passed down to me. She believed that what happened long ago on the night when Alma died was the direct result of a terrible kind of justice. Or rather,
the physical manifestation of a lack of balance created when there is an injustice
.
    Those were her words, and I can still hear her saying them all these years later. I was twelve when she told me. I’d just started seventh grade and had my first vision, a silver-sparkled, hazy episode, when I borrowed my friend Gayle’s sweater and, slipping it over my school uniform in the coatroom, got so dizzy I had to sit down. In the blurry moments that followed, feeling like I was watching a grainy television in my mind, I discovered that Gayle had droppedher mother’s favorite vase out of a second-story window after she was