“I’ll Venmo you for it,” she said, shrugging at the jagged crack in the loom my late husband built, “What’s it worth, like, a hundred bucks?”
The offer was more violent than the damage itself.
She saw a vintage prop for her soulless photoshoots; I saw the last, best piece of the man I loved.
She had no idea that in her desperate quest for content, she had already filmed the very evidence that would allow me to take a shuttle to her carefully woven life and pull the thread until it all unraveled.
The Gilded Request: A Knock at the Door
The shuttle flies from my right hand to my left, a swift wooden bird weaving a trail of crimson silk. Click-clack, thud. Click-clack, thud. The rhythm is the beat of my own heart, a meditation I’ve practiced for forty years. My studio, a converted sunroom at the back of the house, smells of lanolin and cedar. Sunlight streams through the large windows, illuminating dust motes dancing in the air like tiny, golden fairies. This is my sanctuary. Here, there is only the warp and the weft, the steady creak of the treadles under my feet, and the memory of the man who built this magnificent machine for me.
A sharp, percussive knock on the French doors jars me from my trance. The shuttle clatters to the floor. I see a silhouette framed against the bright afternoon light—all sharp angles, a phone held aloft.
I sigh, my rhythm broken. I slide off the weaving bench and open the door.
“Frances! Oh my god, I’m so sorry to bother you, I know you’re, like, in your zone.”
Tiffany stands there, a whirlwind of neon pink athletic wear and a smile so bright it could power a small city. She’s my neighbor, the one who moved into the Hendersons’ old place a year ago. I know her mostly from the constant stream of delivery boxes on her porch and the perfectly staged photos she takes in her front yard, contorting her body in ways that look deeply uncomfortable.
“It’s fine, Tiffany. What can I do for you?” I ask, my hand still on the doorknob.
Her eyes, wide and expertly lined, bypass me completely and fix on the loom. It dominates the room, a beautiful sculpture of polished maple wood that glows in the afternoon sun. David had called it his masterpiece. He’d spent a year in his workshop, sanding every edge, carving the posts with a subtle leaf motif, making sure every joint was perfect. It wasn’t just a tool; it was a testament.
“That,” she breathes, pointing a manicured finger. “Oh my god, Frances. It’s even more incredible up close. The aesthetic. It’s so… authentic.”
The word hangs in the air, feeling cheap and out of place in a room dedicated to the real and tangible.
“Thank you,” I say simply.
“So, I have the craziest, tiniest favor to ask,” she barrels on, stepping past me into the studio. Her perfume, something cloyingly sweet like burnt sugar, invades my cedar-scented space. “I’m doing a whole series for my followers on, like, homesteading and traditional crafts. You know, getting back to our roots, but, like, cute.” She makes a little frame with her fingers. “And I was thinking, for my ‘Weekend as a Weaver’ post, I need the perfect backdrop. And, well…” She gestures expansively at the loom. “This is it. It’s the vibe.”
I stare at her, then at the loom. My loom. David’s loom. The thought of her perfectly curated, artificial world touching it feels like a violation.
“You want to… take pictures with it?” I ask slowly.
“Not just pictures! A whole photoshoot. A video reel. I need to, like, interact with it,” she says. “Could I maybe borrow it? Just for the weekend? I would be so, so careful. I swear.”
The Weight of Wood and Memory
My breath catches in my throat. Borrow it. The words sound like a foreign language. People borrow a cup of sugar. They borrow a book. They do not borrow a piece of your soul that happens to be shaped like a floor loom.
My gaze drifts over the castle, the high frame that holds the harnesses. I see David’s pencil marks, faint gray lines he never erased, where he’d measured the cuts. My fingers find the beater bar, the heavy wooden comb I swing forward to pack the weft threads into place. It’s worn smooth as a river stone from the motion of my hands, a million swings, a million threads compacted into cloth. It’s a groove my body knows by heart.
“Tiffany, I… I don’t lend it out,” I say, the words feeling inadequate. “It’s very delicate. And it’s… old.”
“Oh, I know! That’s what makes it so perfect! The vintage look is everything right now,” she says, completely missing the point. She runs a hand along the front beam, her acrylic nails making a soft, grating sound against the wood. I flinch.
“It’s not just vintage,” I try to explain, my voice quiet. “My husband, David, he built it for me. By hand. Before he passed away.”
Any normal person would have stopped there. They would have seen the shadow pass over my face, heard the tremor in my voice. They would have understood that they were not asking to borrow an object, but a shrine.
Tiffany’s smile only tightens, her expression shifting from bubbly to professionally empathetic. It’s a mask she puts on, thin as veneer.
“Oh, Frances, that is so beautiful. Truly. It’s a legacy. And that’s exactly why people need to see it! To appreciate it. Think of it as honoring his memory. Sharing his incredible work with, like, two hundred thousand people.”
She frames it as a tribute, a generous act on my part. The argument is so twisted, so deeply manipulative, that it leaves me momentarily speechless. She sees a prop. A thing to be used for clicks and engagement, for brand deals with artisanal yarn companies that probably get their product from a factory in Bangladesh. I see David’s hands, covered in sawdust. I see him beaming with pride the day he carried the last piece into this room. I see the decades of my life’s work held in its frame.
“I don’t know,” I murmur, turning away from her to face the loom myself, as if to shield it with my body. The half-finished silk shawl on the loom, a commission for a wedding, seems to glow with a protective energy.
A Promise Light as Air
“Please, Frances,” Tiffany says, her voice dropping into a conspiratorial whisper. She steps closer, invading my personal space. “I’ll treat it like it’s the Mona Lisa. My boyfriend, Josh, he’s super strong. We’ll move it. You won’t have to lift a finger. We’ll have it back here Sunday evening, sparkling clean. Promise.”
I look at her, at the desperate earnestness in her eyes. It’s the same look a child gets when they want a new toy, an all-consuming desire for a shiny thing they don’t understand the value of. Part of me, the part that has been a mother and a neighbor and a generally accommodating woman my whole life, feels a tug of obligation. She’s young. She doesn’t get it. Saying no feels… mean. Curmudgeonly. It feels like becoming the cranky old lady stereotype she probably already sees me as.
My own daughter, Claire, is always telling me I need to be more assertive, to stop letting people walk all over me. “Your kindness is a resource, Mom, not an infinite commodity,” she’d said just last week.
But the confrontation required to say a firm, unequivocal “no” feels exhausting. It would involve explaining, in detail, why the loom is priceless to me, an act that would feel like baring my soul to a stranger who just wants to use my grief as a backdrop.
“There are very specific ways to move it,” I find myself saying, my voice betraying my resolve. “You can’t just lift it. The tension on the warp has to be released. The beams have to be secured.”
A flash of victory lights up Tiffany’s face. She knows she’s won.
“Whatever you say! You can totally show us. We’ll be your loom students,” she chirps, clapping her hands together softly. “I’ll bring you a bottle of that fancy wine you like from the organic market as a thank you. The one with the bird on the label.”
She remembers a detail. A small, calculated gesture of neighborliness. It’s disarming. She’s not a monster; she’s just… shallow. Utterly, terrifyingly shallow.
“Okay,” I hear myself say, the word tasting like defeat. “Just for the weekend. And you have to listen to every single one of my instructions.”
“I will be so, so careful,” she repeats, the promise floating out of her mouth, light and meaningless as air. “You won’t even know it was gone.”
The Surrender
An hour later, Josh arrives. He’s a tall, muscular guy with a vacant smile and a t-shirt that says “Hustle.” He nods at me while Tiffany gives him a rapid-fire briefing, using words like “content” and “engagement metrics.”
I spend twenty minutes demonstrating the proper procedure. I show them how to gently release the tension on the warp beam using the ratchet and pawl, the metallic click echoing in the quiet room. I point out the main structural beams that can be used for leverage and the delicate, hand-carved harnesses that cannot bear any weight at all.
“Never, ever lift from here,” I say, tapping the beater bar. “It’s perfectly balanced, but it’s not meant to support the loom’s weight.”
They nod, their eyes slightly glazed over. I’m not sure they’ve absorbed a single word. They are simply waiting for the lecture to be over so they can claim their prize.
With a deep breath, I give them the okay. Watching them lift it is a physical agony. Josh grunts with the effort, his muscles straining. Tiffany directs him, “A little to the left, babe! Don’t scrape the doorframe!” without offering any help herself. The loom looks clumsy and vulnerable in their hands, a graceful creature being manhandled by poachers.
As they maneuver it through the French doors and across my lawn, I feel a piece of my home, a piece of me, being carried away. The room is suddenly cavernous, an echo chamber of my own anxiety. The empty space on the floor is a wound. The indentations in the rug where the loom’s feet stood are like scars.
I stand at the window and watch until they disappear with it into Tiffany’s aggressively modern, white-and-gray house. The door closes, and my loom is gone. The silence it leaves behind is deafening. I wrap my arms around myself, a cold dread seeping into my bones. I shouldn’t have done it. I know, with a certainty that feels like a lead weight in my stomach, that I have made a terrible mistake.
The Silent Weekend: An Empty Space
Saturday morning, I wake up before the sun. My body, accustomed to decades of rising early to weave in the quiet dawn, pulls me from sleep. I make my coffee and walk into the studio, my bare feet padding on the wooden floor. And then I stop, my heart giving a painful lurch.
The empty space. It’s the first thing I see. The morning light spills across the floor where the loom should be, illuminating nothing but the ghost of its presence. The room feels wrong, unbalanced. The shelves of colorful yarn, the baskets of tools, the spinning wheel in the corner—they all seem to be waiting, holding their breath for the return of their king.
I try to work. I have a small frame loom for tapestry samples, and I pull it out, thinking the familiar motion of weaving will soothe me. But it’s no good. My hands feel clumsy, my mind distracted. Every few minutes, my eyes drift to the empty space, half-expecting the loom to reappear, as if its absence were just a bad dream.
The silence is the worst part. My studio is never truly quiet. There is always the subtle creak of wood, the whisper of thread, the rhythmic thud of the beater bar. That symphony is gone, replaced by a hollow void. The house feels too big, my own thoughts too loud. I’m a musician without my instrument, a painter without her canvas. I wander from room to room, unable to settle, the anxiety a low, constant hum beneath my skin.
Echoes from Next Door
Around two in the afternoon, the sounds begin. A thumping bass line from a pop song I don’t recognize starts vibrating through the wall we share. It’s followed by a burst of high-pitched laughter, then another. A party. Of course. A photoshoot requires models, and models require a party atmosphere.
I go to my kitchen window, which offers a partial view of Tiffany’s backyard and patio. Through the large glass doors of her living room, I can see flashes of movement. Tiffany, in a flowing white dress, poses dramatically. Another girl with purple hair holds up a phone, directing her. I see Josh pop the cork on a bottle of champagne, the foam spilling over his hands.
My stomach clenches. Wine. Laughter. A house full of careless young people. And my loom—David’s loom—is in the middle of it all. I picture a glass of red wine tipping over, staining the pale maple. I picture someone leaning against the harnesses, snapping the delicate heddles. I picture them bumping into it, treating it like a piece of furniture, a prop, instead of the finely tuned instrument it is.
I force myself to turn away from the window. I am being paranoid. She promised she would be careful. But the promise feels thinner than ever, stretched to its breaking point by the thumping bass and shrieks of laughter from next door. The sounds aren’t just sounds; they are evidence of everything I had feared—a world of carelessness and performance, and my beautiful, meaningful loom is trapped inside it.
A Thread of Doubt
My phone rings, startling me. It’s Claire.
“Hey, Mom. Just calling to check in. How’s the shawl coming along?”
Her voice is a comfort, a lifeline to sanity. “It’s… on pause for the weekend,” I say, trying to keep my tone light.
“Oh? Taking a break? Good for you.”
I hesitate, the lie sticking in my throat. I can’t lie to Claire. “Not exactly. I, uh… I lent the loom to my neighbor.”
There’s a beat of stunned silence on the other end of the line.
“You what?” Claire’s voice is sharp with disbelief. “Mom, no. Not Dad’s loom. Please tell me you’re joking.”
“It’s just for the weekend,” I say defensively. “She’s using it for a photoshoot.”
“Which neighbor? The TikTok girl? The one who puts inspirational quotes over pictures of her breakfast bowls?”
“She’s an influencer, Claire. And her name is Tiffany.”
“Oh, I don’t care if her name is Queen Elizabeth,” Claire retorts, her voice rising. “She has no business touching that loom. Mom, what were you thinking? It’s not a prop! It’s fragile. It’s… it’s Dad’s.”
Her words echo my own thoughts, validating every ounce of my anxiety. Hearing my fears spoken aloud by someone else makes them feel terrifyingly real.
“I know,” I whisper, sinking into a chair. “She was very persuasive. I didn’t want to be rude.”
“Rude?” Claire scoffs. “Sometimes you have to be rude to protect what’s important. Did you at least show them how to move it?”
“Yes, of course. I gave them very specific instructions.”
“And you think they listened?”
I don’t have an answer for that. The memory of their glazed-over eyes flashes in my mind. The sound of champagne popping next door seems to mock me.
“I’m sure it will be fine,” I say, more to convince myself than her.
“I hope so, Mom,” Claire says, her tone softening with worry. “I really, really hope so. Call me the second you get it back, okay?”
“I will,” I promise. We hang up, and I feel a fresh wave of dread wash over me. I’ve not only risked the loom, I’ve managed to disappoint my daughter in the process.
The Longest Sunday
Sunday is an exercise in torment. Every passing car on the street makes my head snap up, hoping it’s them, bringing it back early. The house next door is quiet now, unnervingly so. I imagine the aftermath of the party, a mess of bottles and discarded props. I imagine my loom sitting in the middle of the chaos, forgotten.
The agreement was Sunday evening. The hours crawl by with agonizing slowness. I can’t read. I can’t watch television. I find myself in the studio again and again, staring at the empty floor. I decide to clean, to prepare for its return. It’s a foolishly optimistic act. I dust the shelves, sweep the floor, and organize my cones of yarn by color, creating a perfect, welcoming space.
I run my hand along the windowsill, my fingers tracing patterns in the dust. This is where David used to sit and watch me, a cup of coffee in his hands, a quiet smile on his face. He loved watching the threads come together, seeing a blank canvas of warp become a story in weft. “You’re a magician, Fran,” he used to say. “You make magic out of string.”
The memory brings tears to my eyes. What have I done? I’ve taken his greatest gift to me, the physical manifestation of his love and support, and handed it over to someone who wouldn’t know magic if it bit her on the nose.
As dusk begins to settle, painting the sky in shades of orange and purple, I see movement next door. A light flicks on. My heart starts to pound. Soon. They have to bring it back soon. I sit on the stool by the French doors, my hands clasped in my lap, and I wait. Every minute stretches into an eternity. The long, silent weekend is almost over, but the worst part, I fear, is yet to come.
The Splintered Heart: The Shrouded Return
At precisely 7:45 PM, I see headlights sweep across my lawn. My body tenses. I watch through the window as Tiffany’s front door opens. Josh emerges, followed by Tiffany, and between them, they carry the loom.
But something is wrong. It’s covered, completely shrouded in a thick, gray moving blanket, obscuring it from view. My breath catches. Why would they cover it? To protect it from the evening dew? Or to hide something?
I open the French doors before they reach them, the cool night air rushing in. My hands are trembling.
“Thanks so much, Frances!” Tiffany says, her voice a little too loud, a little too bright. She’s back in her neon athletic wear, her face scrubbed clean of makeup. She looks like a child who has been caught doing something wrong and is trying to act exceptionally good to compensate. “We got some amazing shots. My followers are going to, like, die.”
Josh grunts as they maneuver the loom back into the studio, placing it carefully in its original spot. The blanket gives it a funereal air. It looks like a body on a gurney. The sight makes me feel sick.
“It was the perfect backdrop!” she continues, chattering to fill the silence. “Seriously, you were a lifesaver. I’m going to tag your… wait, do you have an Instagram?”
“No,” I say, my voice a dry whisper. My eyes are fixed on the gray blanket. I can’t bring myself to touch it.
“Oh, well. Anyway, we were super, super careful with it,” she says, the words rushing out. “Just like we promised.”
Josh is already backing out of the room, eager to escape. He won’t meet my eye. That’s when I know. The certainty of it lands in my gut like a punch. Something is terribly wrong.
The Unveiling
My heart is hammering against my ribs, a frantic, trapped bird. Tiffany is still smiling, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. They dart around the room, landing on everything but the shrouded loom.
“Well, we should let you get back to it,” she says, turning to leave.
“Wait,” I say. The word is quiet, but it stops her cold.
Slowly, deliberately, I walk to the loom. My hands feel like they belong to someone else as I reach for the edge of the blanket. The fabric is coarse under my fingertips. I take a deep breath and pull it back.
The blanket slides off, pooling on the floor. For a moment, everything looks fine. The silk warp is undisturbed, the harnesses are aligned. Relief begins to bloom in my chest, a fragile, hopeful thing. And then I see it.
The front breast beam. The wide, smooth piece of maple that the cloth rolls over as it’s woven. The piece my arms rest on hundreds of times a day. There’s a crack running through it, a jagged, ugly line starting from the top edge and splintering halfway down. It’s a fresh break. I can see the pale, raw wood of the interior, a stark white wound against the golden patina of the aged surface.
The air leaves my lungs in a silent rush. The studio, the world, narrows to that single, splintered line. It’s not just a crack in the wood. It’s a fissure straight through my heart. I run my hand over it, the sharp edges of the splintered wood biting into my skin. This was not here on Friday. This was not a flaw in the wood, not a sign of age. This was damage. This was violence.
My head feels light. I can hear David’s voice in my memory, the day he finished that piece. “Solid maple, Fran. This will outlast both of us.”
“Tiffany…” I say, my voice barely audible. My gaze is still locked on the splintered wood. “What happened?”
A Hundred Dollars for a Soul
Tiffany takes a step forward, peering at the beam. She puts on a performance of surprise, her eyes widening, her hand flying to her mouth. It’s so fake, so transparent, it’s insulting.
“Oh my god, did that happen?” she asks, her voice dripping with counterfeit shock. “Wow. It must have been like that already. It’s really old, right?”
The casual dismissal, the immediate attempt to shift blame, sends a jolt of ice-cold rage through me. It’s a clean, sharp anger that cuts through the fog of my shock and grief.
I finally look up from the broken beam and meet her eyes.
“No,” I say, my voice flat and hard. “It was not ‘like that.’ My husband made this for me. You broke it.”
Her facade cracks. The feigned surprise melts away, replaced by a flash of petulant defensiveness. Her carefully constructed “good vibes only” persona evaporates under the first sign of real conflict.
“Look,” she says, crossing her arms. Her tone shifts, becoming condescending, impatient. “I said we were careful. I don’t know what happened. Maybe it cracked when we moved it. It’s old. Old things break.”
“This didn’t just ‘break,’ Tiffany. This kind of crack takes a significant impact. Someone, or something, hit this beam. Hard.” I run my thumb along the sharp edge of the splinter again. It’s a fresh wound, and she is pouring salt in it.
She sighs, a dramatic, put-upon sound, as if I am the one inconveniencing her. “Look, I’m sorry, but it’s a piece of old wood. It’s not the end of the world. I’ll Venmo you for it. What’s it worth, like, a hundred bucks?”
The words hit me with the force of a physical blow. A hundred bucks. She has reduced this loom, this monument of love and memory and forty years of my life’s work, to a transaction. She has assigned a value of one hundred dollars to a piece of my soul.
The callousness of it is breathtaking. It’s more painful than the crack itself. The break is in the wood, but her words, they break something deep inside me. The hope that this was all a misunderstanding, that she might show a shred of remorse or empathy, shatters into a million tiny pieces. In her world, everything has a price tag, and nothing has real value.
About the Author
