The Mulberry Tree Read online

  Since everyone seemed used to the situation, it was obviously a long-standing feud. Janice’s youngest daughter, Desiree, was the funniest about it. Bailey heard her say, “Mommie, you look so lonely standing there all alone,” when Janice was six inches away from Patsy. Then the child turned big blue eyes to her aunt Patsy and said, “You look so lonely, Aunt Patsy. Don’t you wish someone was with you?” Bailey had to turn away to keep from laughing out loud at the impishness of the child.

  By the time Matt suggested that Bailey ask Patsy to see her sewing room, Bailey wasn’t surprised when Janice followed them.

  When she and Matt had pulled up in front of the house, she’d been impressed. The house was large and fairly new—no more than five years old, at a guess. It was what she would call “contemporary country,” with a deep, old-fashioned porch set across the length of the house, but the upper story had a tall, round-topped dormer flanked on each side by two square dormers. It was a very pleasant blend of old and new.

  They entered the house through the back door, and once inside, Patsy halted and stood there in silence. Bailey wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do.

  Janice solved the problem. “You’ll probably want to see Rick’s house,” she said. “Or maybe I should call it Matt’s house.”

  It took a moment for Bailey to understand. “Matt designed this house?”

  “Yes, he did,” Patsy said proudly. “Would you like me to show you what he did?”

  Bailey understood that Patsy didn’t think it was polite to brag on her own house, but she could brag on Matt’s design. It was a nice house, Bailey thought as she followed behind Patsy and Janice. As though they were a well-rehearsed duet, the two women split into different directions. Patsy showed her a room, then Janice would call, and Bailey would go to her.

  On one side of the ground floor was a big, open area that was living room, dining room, and kitchen with a built-in table and upholstered bench. Although no walls separated the spaces, Matt had managed to divide them in other ways. Over both the dining room and the living room, half the ceiling opened up all the way to the ceiling of the floor above. Partitions set off the ends of the kitchen from the living areas.

  All in all, the house had a cozy feeling, open but separate. She said the good things she thought, but kept the fact that she truly hated the kitchen to herself. It had the sink and refrigerator against the back wall, an island with an electric cooktop in it, then, on the other side of the island, another island with four stools. To go from the sink to where the food was served at the bar, a person would have to walk around the cooktop island. It was a kitchen that made the cook walk many extra steps. On the other hand, from the look of the shiny surfaces, the kitchen wasn’t used much, so maybe inefficiency didn’t matter.

  The other half of the ground floor was a master suite with his-and-hers walk-in closets and a home office. When Patsy showed off the bathroom, she said, “Have you ever seen a bigger bathroom in your life?”

  Bailey had politely said that the room was beautiful, ignoring the piercing look Janice gave her. The truth was that Jimmie had a fetish about bathrooms: to him they couldn’t be big enough or ornate enough. One of his houses had a bathtub the size of a small swimming pool. The shower could have been used to bathe an elephant, and there were two rooms within the bathroom that held toilets and bidets.

  What was remarkable to Bailey was that everywhere in Patsy’s house were home-sewn items. Bailey had never been interested in sewing, but since her preserving had kept her around local and state fairs as a kid, she’d picked up some knowledge. In the living room, the couch, the two chairs, and the curtains were all made of the same blue-and-green-flowered chintz, and a blinding array of other items were covered in the same fabric. There was a big pine armoire that Bailey guessed probably held a TV and a stereo. The panels on the doors had been removed, and gathered fabric inserted. The bookshelves beside the TV had covers on each shelf, all of them chintz, but piped in different colors—blue on one shelf, green above it, then blue, then green. The waste-basket had a cover on it. The side tables were covered; the lamp shade had been covered in the same fabric. Wherever there was a surface, a doily, a mat, a slip-cover—something—had been made for it.

  Every room Bailey saw was filled with homemade covers and curtains. The bedroom was upholstered in combinations of blue and burgundy, but again, every surface had been covered. Upstairs was the same. Patsy briefly opened the door to the big bedroom her sons shared, and Bailey had a quick glimpse of curtains, bedspreads, and pillowcases that had to have taken bolts of the blue fabric printed with airplanes. If she didn’t know differently, Bailey would have thought that Patsy’s sons were nine years old.

  Across the hall, past a bathroom enveloped in hand-made covers, was Patsy’s sewing room, its walls covered with pink paper printed with rows of rosebuds. A worktable occupied the middle of the room; a sewing machine stood against a wall, with shelves full of boxes labeled with fabric swatches. The room and the work materials were all perfectly organized.

  “And here are my patterns, and I keep the extra buttons from every garment my family owns in here, each labeled by size, color, and materials.”

  Bailey hoped she was looking appropriately impressed. She didn’t want to blurt out, “Why?!” On the wall to her right were photographs of people, and to distract herself, Bailey turned and looked at them. There were five framed photos, each one a group shot, and in each Patsy was standing at the edge, wearing a white three-quarter-length coat that had a badge pinned to the pocket. “What’s this?” Bailey asked.

  “Just the factory over in Ridgeway. Would you like to see my sewing machine needles?”

  “Patsy,” Bailey said firmly, “were you the boss of all these people?”

  “Yeah. But that was a long time ago,” Patsy said in dismissal. “I want to show you my thread cabinet.”

  Reluctantly, Bailey pulled herself away from the photos and turned to look at the hundreds of different colors of spools of thread lined up on dowel rods on the back of a cabinet door. After a moment, she glanced up and felt Janice staring at her. When their eyes met, Janice seemed to be saying something to her, but then her eyes flickered and she looked away.

  After a while, Janice said quietly, “We better go join the men.”

  When they were downstairs, Rick said that Matt couldn’t stop bragging about Bailey’s cooking. “So when are we invited over?” Rick asked. For the third time that day, they all froze in motion and looked at Bailey.

  “How about next Saturday?” Matt said as he put his arm around Bailey’s shoulders. “That okay with you, hon?”

  “Sure,” Bailey said, then slipped out from under Matt’s arm. “Next Saturday is fine.” When Bailey looked up, she saw that both Janice and Patsy were staring at her with identical gazes of such intensity that she shivered. They looked away, though, when her eyes met theirs.

  Ten

  Bailey looked at the clock on her bedside table. It was two A.M., and she hadn’t gone to sleep yet. She should have fallen into bed at ten and gone to sleep instantly. After all, it had been a long day. She and Matt had left Patsy’s house at four, and when they got home, Matt suggested that they start tearing out the walls between the exterior and the living room and begin to restore what had once been the porch.

  “You mean I get to tear out that pink bathroom?” Bailey had asked.

  Matt took a short crowbar from his toolbox and handed it to her. “Be my guest.”

  When she walked into the pink bathroom and looked at the tiles, the wallpaper, and the fixtures, she didn’t know where to start.

  “Leave the plumbing alone,” Matt called to her from the other room. “Wait until I can turn off the water. Start with the tiles. Or pull the wallpaper off.”

  “Okay,” Bailey said as she put her wrecking bar under a flowered pink tile and pulled back. She had to duck as the tile went sailing across the room.

  “You okay?” Matt asked from the doorway.