A Stitch in Time (A Stitch In Time #1) - Kelley Armstrong Page 0,10

would shed my baby fat even when my bone structure scoffed at the notion. That probably explains a childhood of “You can have ice cream if you clean your room,” which turned into “Here’s a nice yogurt parfait.”

I went to ballet lessons twice a week and adored it. By the time I turned nine, though, Mom realized I’d never follow in her professional footsteps and declared the lessons a waste of money, claiming her child support wouldn’t cover them. That last part was a lie. As I later discovered, Dad always added extra for my lessons.

I don’t remember my parents ever getting along. They were like colleagues forced to work together on a shared project, and that project was me. When I was five, they finally split. As Mom put it, Dad “ran off with some girl.” The truth is that he reunited with his childhood sweetheart and asked Mom for an amicable split with joint custody.

In leaving for another woman, Dad stole Mom’s dignity, and she retaliated by stealing me. She claimed Dad was abusive, and he lost all visitation rights. I hated her for that—I hated her for a lot of things—but there was love in our relationship. Taking me out of ballet lessons wasn’t spite or greed. I clearly would never be a ballerina, and she didn’t want to set me up for disappointment. The idea that I’d have been happy dancing as a hobby likely never occurred to her because she wouldn’t have been.

My mother has been gone two years. Lung cancer from a lifetime of cigarettes to keep her ballerina thin. Dad lives in Toronto, and I see him at least once a week. He’s still with his second wife, who is as lovely and non-evil a stepmom as anyone could want.

As for ballet, when Dad discovered I’d stopped, he insisted I take it up again. I still dance with a troupe every week—the ballet equivalent of community theatre—and I love it even if you couldn’t pay me to wear a tutu.

So I might grumble about masochism, doing those ballet exercises, but spinning my way through Thorne Manor sends my already kite-high mood into the stratosphere. In the daylight, the house is pure magic. Its shadows become pockets of cool shade among the rectangles of sunlight stretching across the rich wood floors. A heather-perfumed breeze blows through every open window. I dance between sun and shade, drinking in the scent of the moors and feeling the wind kiss my skin. If there’s anything dark in this house, it’s not here now. In the daylight, I can’t imagine it was ever here at all.

After my dance exercises, I explore the house, poking around its nooks and crannies. What surprises me most is the smell: a mix of moor and wet wool and old wood and the faint whiff of camphor. It shouldn’t be a pleasant odor, but it is because it’s the smell of Thorne Manor, sparking memories of endless days curled up in one of these nooks or crannies with an old blanket and a book.

I kneel beside a storage hole under the stairs. I open the tiny crooked door, and I’m not sure I can still fit inside, but I want to try, grab a blanket and a pillow and a novel and a cup of milky tea and pretend I’m five again, fifteen again, half-dozing in the lantern light as I listen to the clomp of Uncle Stan’s boots, and Aunt Judith’s shout for him to take those bloody things off and Dad’s laugh at this daily routine of theirs. My eyes prickle at the memory, but it’s a good one, and maybe someday this summer, I will indeed crawl in here and read. For now, the kitten explores the space, and I watch, smiling like an indulgent parent.

When she tires of that, I find Aunt Judith’s sewing kit and fetch my shirt from last night. I noticed a small rip in the seam this morning.

A rip . . . after William yanked it?

I shake my head. No, a rip because the shirt is ten years old, and I’ve stitched it more than once. It’s one of Michael’s, from my collection, three of which made their way into my suitcase. This particular one is a Toronto Maple Leafs tee. Born in Cairo, educated in England, Michael had never seen a hockey game until he came to Canada for his graduate studies. That didn’t stop him from becoming a bigger Leafs fan than my