When did your wife die?
Three years ago. Sunnie was thirteen. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his baggy pants and rounded his shoulders forward as if trying to seem smaller, or maybe hold his grief inside. Sunnie wanted to meet you. I dont think shed ever admit it, but shes protective of Gram. I told her she could maybe help out after school now and then. But dont look for her until shes at the door.
Jillian thought of screaming No!, but she simply smiled and said, Id appreciate the help.
He nodded, then hurried out.
Jillian stood by the front window, watching the town come alive. This street reminded her of a beehive. Everyone seemed to have their job and all were working frantically to get the day started. She almost wanted to tell them all that it didnt matter how many flags or sandwich boards the shops put outthis one street would never draw much of a crowd.
The old warehouse buildings across the creek hung over the cute main street like deaths shadow. The stillness just across the water was a constant reminder that a few blocks away, half of the town had been abandoned. Jillian wondered if the people who lived here even saw the crumbling buildings anymore.
When the Autumn Acres bus pulled up, she went outside and waited for Gram to come down the steps.
The lady, still tall for her age even though her shoulders had rounded, was dressed in a very proper wool suit with lace on her white collar. Her shoes might be rounded and rubber, but she hadnt forgotten her pearls.
Hello, dear, Gram shouted. How nice of you to come help me again.
I had so much fun I just had to return. You dont mind me hanging around?
Oh, no. I love the company and there is always plenty to do.
They walked in with arms locked. Jillian wasnt sure Eugenia remembered her name, but the Southern lady seemed to assume she knew everyone, and she treated all, old friends or strangers, the same.
Lets make a cup of tea first this morning, Gram suggested. That will start the day right. I do love tea in the spring.
Jillian followed her back to a small kitchen, without mentioning it was still winter. They talked about the tea and the day as if they were old friends.
The morning passed like a peaceful river. Customers came in, mostly to talk. Jillian made note of the ones who had lived their entire lives in this town. A long-retired teacher named Joe Dunaway, most of the quilters shed met yesterday, the mailman named Tap. As she settled in, she did what she often did in little towns: shed ask if they knew a Jefferson James who might have lived around here thirty years ago. The answer was always no, a dead end. Shed found a few Jameses over the years, but none knew a Jefferson. Her father never allowed anyone to shorten his name.
Joe Dunaway said he thought the name might be familiar, but after forty years of teaching, all names sounded familiar.
While Joe watched the store, Gram took the time to show her around the tiny office after Jillian explained for the third time that she was there to make a record of all the quilts.
Someday, your quilts will hang in a gallery at the county museum, and youll want all the facts to be right. Ill compile that record for you, Gram.
Oh, of course you will, Eugenia agreed as she sugared her tea for the second time.
When their cups were half-empty, they began to stroll through the colorful garden of quilts. Jillian kept her questions light. Never too many. Never too fast.
She noticed how Gram stroked each quilt she straightened as if it were precious. The kitchen and the office might be a cluttered mess, but all the quilts had to be in perfect order.
You touch them as if theyre priceless. Like theyre your treasures, your babies, Jillian said.
Oh, theyre not mine. But in a way they are alive. Each one holds memories. I just put them together in the final step of quilting. She pulled one from the shelf and spread it out on a wide table designed for cutting fabric. This one belongs to Helen Harmon, who made it as a gift to give the man she loved on their wedding day. Theyd known each other since grade school. Gram pointed to one square. See, thats them as kids on the playground. Hes pulling her pigtail. I swear, Helens hair was stoplight red when she was little.
Jillian saw thick red threads braided together and sewn onto the quilt.
Grams wrinkled fingers passed over another quilt square. A UT logo stood out in burnt orange. Thats for their college days, and she made this one when he went into the army. When he came home a few years later and started work, his first job was in construction. Turned out he had a real knack for it.
Jillian saw the square with tools crossing, almost like a crest.
And here we have vacations they took camping, hiking, riding across the country on what Helen called hogs. One square ran like a road map. When they finally got engaged, both were thirty-four. One square held nothing but sparkling material in the pattern of a diamond ring.
Jillian touched the square of a house. When they bought their first house, right?
Gram shook her head. When he built what was to be their first house, she made that square. They both agreed neither would move in until after the wedding.
What happened? Jillian realized she was holding her breath.
Id worked late into the night the evening before their rehearsal dinner. I wanted to have the quilt ready for her to give to him. She was not a natural seamstress, and was years away from being a skilled quilter. Each piece came hard for her. Shed laugh and say she really made ten quilts because she had to do each square over and over to get it just right.
What happened? Jillian asked again.
She didnt come pick up the quilt the day of their rehearsal. When she woke that morning before her wedding, she found a note on his pillow. Hed had an offer for a new job up north and hadnt known how to tell her. The note said hed tried a hundred times to break off the engagement, but she was too busy planning the wedding to listen.
So he just left her?
Gram nodded. And she left this quilt. She told me I could sell it, but who buys anothers memories? Shed even embroidered the wedding date in the middle.
Jillian looked at the quilt. June 19, 1971.
Youve kept this for almost fifty years?
Gram nodded. How do you throw away memories? Its a beautiful quilt made with love. Helen eventually married a man named Green and moved to Houston, but she didnt make anything for her next groom, and she never dropped by the shop to even look at this.
Jillian helped her fold it up and gently lay it back on the shelf. This would be the first quilt she logged.
The story had been fascinating, but Grams memory of the details surprised Jillian. A woman who couldnt remember if shed sugared her tea had told every detail of something that had happened nearly fifty years ago.
As soon as Connor picked up his gram for lunch, Jillian put the be-back-soon sign on the door and spread Helen Harmons quilt back out. With care she took pictures and wrote down details. Then, the last thing she did before folding it back into place was to stitch a two-inch blue square of fabric in one corner of the quilts back.
No. 1
Helen Harmon Greens memory quilt. Made as a wedding gift to her future husband. Completed 1971. Never delivered.
No. 1
Helen Harmon Greens memory quilt. Made as a wedding gift to her future husband. Completed 1971. Never delivered.
* * *
As Jillian ate the apple shed brought from the bed-and-breakfast, she walked around the shop. Shed have to do two or three handmade treasures a day to get them all logged. And shed have to hear every story. Some might be short, but shed bet theyd all be interesting. If only Grams memory would hold up just a little longer, shed get them all down.
When Connor brought Gram back from lunch, Jillian showed him what shed done and he approved of her system. You know, he added as an afterthought. If you want to write up a few of the stories, they might make nice human interest pieces for the Laurel Springs online paper I put out. Its mostly just a blog, a bulletin of whats happening, but something like this might interest people.
Ill give it a try after work. See what you think.
He handed her a key to the shop. If you want to work after hours when the shop is closed, thats fine with me.
Thanks. I might do that.
To her surprise, he smiled. Im not trying to run you off early or keep you longer than you want to stay. I get a feeling you have somewhere else to be.
She thought of denying it. No matter what she said, shed be giving away too much information, so she simply smiled back.
That evening, they walked home together, each talking about their day. When she turned into the gate at the bed-and-breakfast, he didnt say goodbye. But this time he did smile as he waved.
She stood on the porch, watching him vanish. A paper man who would disappear from her mind as fast as a match fired. Maybe shed describe him on her Laurel Springs journal page.
Yes, she could mention how normal it had felt to just walk and talk about nothing really. Her father had called it passing time like it was a waste of energy, but he was wrong. Invisible threads were binding people who took the time to talk, helping them to care about each other even in a small way, to know each other. Making them almost friends.
Shed seen it happen with doormen in big cities or clerks in stores shed frequented in towns. Not friends exactly, but no longer strangers.
This was something rare for Jillian, but she realized Eugenia Larady had been doing it all her life. With Joe Dunaway, with customers, and with the quilters. Talking, caring, relating with everyone she met.
Invisible threads. Invisible bonds. Not strong enough to hold her down, but nice to feel.
5
Connor Laradys world of routine shifted as the days passed. After a week, Jillian James had become part of his life as easily as if a piece had always been missing and she simply fit into the void.
He liked the easy way she greeted him every morning, not too formal, not too friendly. He looked forward to the few minutes theyd talk before the bus chauffeured his grandmother to the door of the quilt shop. He liked collecting little things he learned about Jillian, the pretty lady who never talked about herself.
Some mornings hed studied the way Jillian dressed, casual yet professional, as if every detail about her mattered somehow. She might be tall, but she wasnt too thin. Her eyes often caught his attention, stormy-day gray one moment and calm blue the next. She watched the clock, always aware of time, and she seemed to study people as if looking for something familiar in their faces. And she listened, really listened.
All the women he knew in town seemed shallow water, babbling brooks. But Jillian was deep current and he had a feeling it would take years to really know her. She never started a conversation, but if she disagreed with him she didnt mind debating.
Who knew, maybe theyd become friends. But no more. The one thing Connor had figured out about himself a long time ago was that he was a watcher, not a participant, where women were concerned. If life were a banquet, he was the beggar outside the window looking in. Hed rather put up with the loneliness than take another chance.
Hed stepped out of his place once. Hed married Sunnies mother, Melissa, a few months after they slept together on their first date. Hed been home from school for the summer the year he turned twenty-one and shed been nineteen. Hed used protection, but shed told him it hadnt worked.
Marriage had seemed the only answer. She went back to school with him. He took a part-time job and rented a bigger apartment. Hed known the marriage was a mistake before Christmas that year, but Connor wasnt a quitter. He carried on.
Funny, he thought, hed been caught in her net like a blind fish, but he hadnt minded. It was just the way of life, and Sunnie made it all bearable.
Melissa loved that he was from one of the oldest families in East Texas. Almost royalty, she used to say. He was educated, a path she had no interest in following. His family might be cash poor at times, but they were land rich, she claimed, though none of them seemed inclined to sell even one of their properties.
Sunnie was eight months old when his parents were killed in a wreck. Afterward, Connor, Melissa and Sunnie had moved back to his childhood home, where he finished his degrees online. The house was roomy, but Melissa hated it from the day they moved in. She went back to her high school friends for entertainment, and he spent most of his days learning to handle the family business and his nights in his study with Sunnies bassinet by his desk.
He wanted to write childrens stories, blending Greek myths with todays world. Though he rarely left Laurel Springs, his character, a Roman soldier, traveled through time visiting battlefields that changed the world. In his novels, Connors hero collected knowledge in hopes of ending all conflict.
But in reality, Connor simply fought to survive. To keep going when there never seemed enough time for his little dream; realitys voice was always outshouting creativitys whisper.
When Sunnie started school, he moved his stories to the newspaper office and set up a writing desk. As the newspaper dwindled to a one-man job, he set up a business desk across from his editors desk to handle his rental properties in town and his leasing property outside the city limits. Next came the mayors desk, with all the city business stacked high. Of all the desks in his office, the writing desk was the most neglected.
It had been that way from the beginning of his marriage. There was always too much to do. Too little time for dreams of writing.
Even when Melissa had started needing her nights out after Sunnie was born, he never thought to complain. But after they moved back to Laurel Springs, the nights turned into long weekends. She needed to feel alive, shed say. She needed to get away.
About the time Sunnie started school, the weekends grew into weeks at a time.
When Melissa would return, shed bring gifts for Sunnie, and her only daughter would forgive her for not calling. Theyd go back to being best friends, not mother and daughter, and Connor would prepare for the next time shed leave with only a note on the counter.
Even before she could read, Sunnie would see the note and cry before he read it.
He learned to cook. Kept track of Sunnies schedule. He was there for the everyday of her life. Melissa was there for the party.
Until three years ago, when she didnt come back at all. A private plane crash outside of Reno. Both passengers died. Connor hadnt even known the man shed been with.