Read The Wishing Thread for Free Online Page A

Knocking into things. She stood in the darkness, petrified.
    She’d just begun to retreat, to rouse her sister and make a call to the cops, when the door flew open—a gust of inward-sucking air. Aubrey held up her needle and screamed.
    “Wait! Wait!” The intruder grabbed her wrist. They were both screaming. “Wait!”
    Aubrey twisted out of the figure’s shadowed grip, insensible with fear.
    “Aubrey. Stop. It’s me!”
    Aubrey stilled.
    “Hey. It’s
me
.”
    She drew back. “Meggie?”
    Meggie flipped the switch on the wall, then squinted violently at the shock of light. When she’d left the Stitchery, her hair had been a warm brown-blond, falling to her waist in gentle waves. She’d loved wearing flowered dresses that skimmed the floor and going around Tarrytown with no shoes or bra.
    Now her hair was short and raven black—moppish across her brows. Her face was fuller, more mature, though she still had the small features of a pixie. She wore skinny jeans and Converse sneakers, a silver-studded belt slung low around her hips.
    Meggie had left the Stitchery four years ago. Four short years. Now Aubrey hardly recognized her. A lifetime might have passed since then.
    “Well,” Aubrey said.
    Meggie held out her hands. “I can explain …”
    The last time Aubrey saw her little sister, she’d been watching Meggie stuff jeans and shirts into an old suitcase without bothering to fold them. Her newly earned high school diploma—which had come in the mail only the day before—was open on the bed.
    I saved up enough to go to Miami
, Meggie had said with a grin.
To celebrate. After eleven years of homeschooling I think I earned a weekend off, don’t you?
    Aubrey had sat on Meggie’s bed, tying a braid of rainbow yarn to her sister’s red backpack to repel pickpockets, mosquitoes, exchange-rate cons, transportation delays, and—just for the hell of it—untrustworthy men. Aubrey had wanted to say,
Can I come, too?
But she could not picture herself sippingsweet cocktails by a pool on an island, dancing all night in hot clubs and sleeping until noon. She could not even see herself getting on a plane. Meggie was free to go anywhere she pleased, to not only follow her whims but chase them down and tackle them in a headlock. Aubrey on the other hand was tethered by her belief in and her obligation to the Stitchery’s crumbling walls.
    Perhaps if she hadn’t been thinking so much of herself, of her own lot in life, she would have noticed that the breadth of clothing Meggie was shoving into her suitcase was much more than was needed for a long weekend. Perhaps if she’d been paying closer attention, she would have pocketed her sister’s plane ticket and demanded answers about where she really planned to go. But she hadn’t been thinking—not of Meggie, anyway. And so when she dropped her sister off at JFK airport she had actually rushed Meggie out of the car with only the briefest hug because she hadn’t wanted to hold up the taxis and rental vans behind her. She’d had no idea at the time that it would take Mariah’s death, so many years later, to bring her younger sister home.
    Aubrey felt dizzy. She pushed past Meggie and into the old bedroom. When Bitty rushed in she brought with her a wash of cold night air. Her eyes were puffy with sleep, and her highlights were disarrayed.
    “Aubrey? Are you okay? What happen—?” Bitty stopped. Her gaze landed on Meggie. And then she straightened, surprised. “Oh. When did you get here?”
    “Just now.”
    “Aubrey called you?” Bitty asked. “She knew where you were?”
    Meggie’s chin was tucked into her chest. “Um, no.”
    “Then … how did you find out?”
    “How did I find out what?” Meggie asked.
    Bitty blinked, confused. “How did you find out about Mariah  …?”
    “What about Mariah?”
    “Oh God.” Aubrey’s stomach bent into a sickening kink, and she clutched her middle as if she could stop the turning with her hands.
    “Are you