Page 14 of By A Thread

“I think you mentioned it,” I said, stuffing my hands into the pocket of my sweatshirt.

“Okay. Good. Let’s go then,” she said, hooking her arm through mine and towing me toward the door.

“Go? Where?” I asked. “I don’t have shoes or money.”

“Get shoes. You don’t need money.”

That was a laugh. I desperately needed money.

“I have some work to do,” I said, trying again.

“No. You always have work. Your calendar on the refrigerator says you work at three. It takes you forty-five minutes to get to work. Therefore, you have time to come with me.”

I’d argued with her before and always lost.

“What you are doing for your father is a very good, beautiful thing. We’re not going to let you go through this alone,” she said, shoving me into my winter coat.

I stuffed my feet into boots and fumbled for my purse.

“I don’t know what that means,” I admitted. “And who’s we?”

“You start a new job on Monday. Mr. Mohammad and I are taking you shopping at that thrift store you like for some work-appropriate clothes.”

I dug my heels into the ruined plywood, making sure to avoid the strip of carpet tacks. “No, you’re not.”

Mrs. Grosu often talked about her older brothers and their wrestling prowess. Apparently they’d taught her a thing or two because I found myself outside. Mr. Mohammad, an Ethiopian immigrant who arrived in America several decades before I was born, waved from his twenty-year-old sedan.

“Oh, no. He has the car,” I said.

“You see how important this is?” Mrs. Grosu said.

Very few things could convince Mr. Mohammad to actually take his car out of the garage. The car had somewhere in the neighborhood of eight hundred miles on it because its smiling, mustachioed owner loved to walk. Before he retired, he’d walked the two miles to his job as a grocery store supervisor. Since his retirement, he still walked. But now it was to church every Sunday and to bridge at the community center on Wednesdays.

My dad had been Mr. Mohammad’s bridge partner. Together they had ruled the community center with subtle nods and indecipherable body language.

So many things had changed in such a short time. Now, instead of looking out for my dad, his neighbors were looking out for me.

“Don’t fight us on this. We’ve got social security checks burning holes in our pockets, and it’s Senior Citizens Day at the thrift store,” Mrs. Grosu said, stuffing me into the backseat.

“Hello, Ally,” Mr. Mohammad sang. He was the happiest person I knew.

“Mr. Mohammad, I can’t let you two do this.”

“You just relax, girly,” he insisted. “Wewantto do this.”

It was true. They really did. Dad’s entire neighborhood seemed to thrive on the “love thy neighbor” principle. When I sold Dad’s house, when this was all over, I’d pay them back. And I would miss them fiercely.

“Fine,” I sighed. “But I’ll pay you back.”

Mr. Mohammad and Mrs. Grosu shared an eye-roll in the front seat.

“Do not make this weird, Ally,” Mr. Mohammad said and cranked up the Billy Joel cassette tape.

6

Ally

Label’soffices took up the forty-second and forty-third floors of a shiny metal tower in Midtown. It was a fancy building in which fancy people worked fancy jobs.