Chapter 5 - The Price of the Threshold
Three weeks later, a black Lincoln Town Car pulled up directly in front of 412 Vine Street, right where the old vegetable truck usually parked on Saturdays.
The hazard lights flashed twice.
The rear door opened, and Nathan Whitmore stepped out onto the slushy sidewalk.
He wasn't wearing his country club blazer. He was wearing a plain dark wool coat, his hair slightly ruffled by the wind coming off the river, and he looked smaller than he had at the altar.
The brass bell above the door jangled with its thin, sharp note as he pushed it open.
The shop didn't smell like turpentine anymore. It smelled of heavy English wool, beeswax, and wood smoke from the small potbellied stove Evie had installed in the corner.
Evie was standing behind the cutting table, her sleeves rolled up to her elbows, pressing a seam with a heavy iron that she heated directly on the stove.
She didn't look up when the bell rang.
“We’re not taking new alterations until after the first of the month,” she said, her voice even and detached as she lowered the iron onto a strip of charcoal wool with a sharp hiss of steam.
Nathan stopped ten feet from the counter. Exactly the same distance his father had stopped in the aisle of St. Matthew’s Church.
“Evie,” he said.
The iron didn't waver. Evie lifted it, set it on its iron stand, and finally raised her eyes.
She looked at him the way Mrs. Harrington had looked at the dead mice—with clinical, unhurried assessment.
“Nathan,” she said.
He swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing beneath his scarf. He looked around the shop—at the high, whitewashed tin ceiling, at the clean pine floors, at the single rack where three heavy, magnificent coats hung like suits of armor in a museum hall.
“My father’s lawyers are filing the injunction tomorrow,” Nathan said, his voice dropping as he took half a step closer.
“I know,” Evie said. She reached for her shears. “The papers were served at eight-fifteen this morning by a very sweaty man in a gray suit.”
“Evie, you can’t fight them,” Nathan said, his tone turning pleading, the old, familiar whine of a boy who had never had to build anything with his own hands. “They have four firms on retainer. They’ll drag this through the county courts for five years. You’ll lose the shop. You’ll lose the easement. You’ll be back—” He stopped himself, catching the cold gray flash in her eyes. “You’ll be back where you started.”
Evie laid the shears down on the table.
“Where did I start, Nathan?” she asked softly.
“At the market,” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper. “You know what I mean. You belong... we belong in a different world than this.”
Evie walked around the cutting table.
She wasn't wearing the ivory dress. She was wearing a pair of heavy wool trousers she’d tailored herself, a thick cream-colored fisherman’s sweater, and heavy leather boots that could kick through ice.
She stopped two feet from him. Close enough that he could smell the cedar and the starch on her clothes.
“Your father thinks the world is divided into two kinds of people,” Evie said, her voice as level as a spirit level. “The people who own the deeds, and the people who sell the turnips.”
“He’s wrong,” Nathan said quickly. “I’m not like him. I told him this morning that the injunction was a mistake. I told him we should settle.”
“Settle?” Evie tilted her head. “On what terms? Does he want to buy the easement for twenty thousand? Fifty?”
Nathan hesitated. Just for half a second.
Evie saw it. The same micro-second hesitation she had seen in Charles at the altar when she asked if Nathan had sent him.
“He wants to buy the block,” Nathan admitted, his voice barely audible over the hum of the stove. “And he’s willing to offer you... a consulting position. In the design division of the downtown commercial development. With a salary.”
Evie didn't laugh.
She didn't even smile.
She reached out, her hand steady as a stone, and brushed a speck of lint off the lapel of Nathan’s expensive wool coat—right where his heart should have been.
“Tell your father something for me, Nathan,” she whispered.
“What?”
“Tell him the Riverside Coat retails for eight hundred and fifty dollars.” She stepped back, her eyes locking onto his with a clarity that made him flinch. “And tell him I’m not selling the shop. Not for a salary. Not for a consulting position. And certainly not for a Whitmore.”
Nathan stared at her.
The door behind him creaked open as a gust of wind rattled the brass bell.
“Evie,” he said, his voice breaking for the first time. “I loved you.”
May you like
“No, Nathan,” she said, turning her back on him to pick up her iron. “You loved the idea of a girl who didn't take up too much space. But I’m taking up all of it now.”
***
