Threading the Needle Read Online Free PDF

words like ‘Madelyn, you’re broke’!”
    Gene reached into the breast pocket of his jacket.
    â€œDon’t bother getting out your handkerchief, Gene. I’m not going to cry.”
    He stared at me, to see if I meant it. I stared back.
    â€œJust tell me what I’m supposed to do now. What have I got left? There must be something.”
    Gene’s eyes flitted over the surface of his desk as he looked for and eventually found a blue file folder. “There is,” he said, opening the file. “You’ve got an account in your name, and your name only, which is a good thing, at the Connecticut National Bank.”
    â€œI do? Oh, wait! I do! I remember now. The money I’d saved before I married Sterling. I’d forgotten. It’s been sitting there all this time?”
    Gene nodded. “And gaining interest.”
    â€œReally? It can’t be that much, though.”
    â€œIt isn’t,” he said. “New Bern National is pretty conservative. Still, your average return over the last thirty years was a little more than seven percent, which means your little nest egg is now worth $119,368.42.”
    A hundred and twenty thousand dollars. Less than the cost of my surrendered diamond choker. Less than the annual maintenance fee on the penthouse apartment I had to vacate by the end of the month, leaving everything behind—my furniture, my paintings, my china—everything but my clothes and what few possessions I could prove had been mine before my marriage.
    â€œCheer up, Madelyn. It could be worse. You could have invested your money with Sterling. Then you’d really be broke.” Gene started to chuckle, but I shot him a look filled with such loathing that he dropped his eyes and mumbled an apology.
    â€œI was just trying to help you see the bright side.”
    â€œI’m sure.”
    He cleared his throat and shuffled the papers in my file. “I’ve got some more good news,” he said officiously. “I lit a fire under my associates, got them to hurry along the probate of your grandmother’s estate. It’s done. You can claim your inheritance free and clear. Good timing, don’t you think?”
    My inheritance?
    â€œWhat are you talking about? She cut me out of her will years ago, even before I met Sterling.”
    I felt a flush of heat in my chest. Even from the grave, Edna Beecher, the meanest, most disapproving old woman who ever walked the earth, could still upset me.
    â€œShe was bluffing? I can’t believe it. How much did she leave to me?”
    Gene held up his hand. “No money. She split that between her church and the Humane Society. Not that there was much to begin with. She left you the house—”
    â€œThe house? On Oak Leaf Lane?”
    â€œYes.” Gene drew his brows together. “Did she have another house?”
    â€œNo . . . I just . . .” I said quietly, laying my hand over the warm place on my chest, “I’m just surprised. It’s known as Beecher Cottage. Our family is distantly related to Harriet Beecher Stowe, the famous abolitionist who wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and her father, Lyman Beecher, and Henry Ward Beecher, her brother, preachers who were nearly as famous as Harriet in their day. They lived in Litchfield, east of New Bern.
    â€œYou see what pious Yankee stock I’m descended from,” I said with a hollow laugh. “My grandmother was almost as proud of her Beecher heritage as she was disappointed in me. The cottage is the last remnant of that heritage. I never thought she’d leave it to me.”
    â€œAccording to her will, she didn’t want to,” Gene said, picking up a yellowed paper and scanning it. “But it seems the old lady couldn’t bear to leave the family house in the hands of strangers, so, as the last Beecher standing, she felt she had no choice but to leave it to you. Along with many admonitions about