Anything for Her(37)

Telling him about Florida wasn’t that big a deal. Lots of people had lived there at some point in their lives, and at least she really had been there.

What had most paralyzed her was the fear that she’d run into someone who had actually lived in one of the places she was pretending she’d come from. Or that she’d get her stories tangled.

She’d been sure she would, even after her family’s first move, when there had only been the one new background to memorize and recite when required. That easily, she’d been made nearly mute from panic. It only got worse after they were wrenched away again, and she had yet another new name and completely different story to recall.

Well, she’d had other issues then, too, like losing Dad and Jason and what pretense of a life they had built after giving up their real lives.

I am all tangled up inside, she thought miserably, picturing what happened to three delicate silver or gold chains, stored loose in a box for too long. Seemingly all by themselves, lying loose, nobody moving that box, they still somehow wound together in a confounding snarl that defied the deftest of fingers. That’s me. The three of me, intertwined and knotted. And...I don’t know what would happen if I could be untangled, separated into three. There is Chloe, there’s Laura, there’s Allie. What would happen to me?

Wow. Split personality, anyone?

No, she knew better. She couldn’t be separated into three. That was her trouble, at its heart. She had spent eleven years now trying to live as Allie alone, and she couldn’t. Not really. But recovering all of her, even privately, could be dangerous.

Her parents’ voices whispered in her ear, so stern. We’re starting all over. You can’t ever forget our new names. Never, never, never tell anyone who we used to be. Remember. Never.

The dream, she decided, was like a crack in a dike. A trickle had made it through. How to keep it from becoming a stream and then a flood?

The easy answer was: cut Nolan out of her life. This was his fault. And hers, for not listening to her mother. For not keeping to herself, the way she always had.

Allie checked the clock, and saw that she had to leave if she was to open the store on time. That was safe enough. Unless Nolan stopped by with lunch today, of course. But surely he wouldn’t, when he’d seen her yesterday and lost so much time on his work.

Not only seen her—made love to her. I don’t think that was sex, Allie.

She didn’t think it was, either. And she didn’t want to live without whatever it had been. Without Nolan. Because she saw suddenly that all her efforts to piece and layer and stitch together a past, a self, accomplished absolutely nothing if she didn’t have a future. If she never married, had children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. What was she staying safe for if not for that?

By halfway through the day, Allie had let go of most of the strain, although a headache lingered. She’d been indulging in melodrama, she concluded. What did it matter where she’d lived as a kid, or gone to middle school? So she’d had different names. There were cultures where people acquired different names for each phase of their life. She could think of it that way. Some of the names were secret, that’s all.

Chloe was the child, the dancer, Laura the muddled teenager, Allie the adult. They are all me; I am them. Telling forbidden truths wouldn’t make that any more so. It wasn’t as if she couldn’t talk about childhood experiences. The time she’d fallen from the monkey bars at school and broken her arm, Nanna’s snowflakes, Lady the family beagle and, yes, her lost dream of being a ballerina. All she would have to do was...edit. No, we never, never, never lived in Queens, and all I did was take dance lessons like many thousands of other girls my age, and did anybody care who Laura Nelson, tongue-tied, had been, except that it was Laura who had discovered quilting? And that went to show how silly she’d been, didn’t it, because that meant Laura and Allie were certainly integrated.

That calmed her, as she chatted with Libby Hutchins, an occasional customer. “Yes,” she said, “we’re displaying miniature quilts starting on the fifteenth. Do come see them. They’re all gorgeous, and some are really extraordinary. Marybeth Winters—do you know her?—made the most astonishing basket quilt with appliqué flowers. The blocks are only three inches square. You almost have to use a magnifying glass to appreciate the detail.”

Libby, who was starting a crib quilt for her first grandchild, promised to stop by.

Allie’s mini-quilt shows, one a quarter, were a big draw. Customers loved having their own quilts featured.