Threads of Love Page 26

  His kiss was all that she had imagined, and more. Fireworks coursed through her, and she kissed him back. He squeezed her with the warmth of a hundred fires then drew back and wrapped his fingers around her hands.

  “I can’t stand the thought that you’ll be a thousand miles away. How are we going to do this?”

  “Jason, God brought us together, and He’ll make a way. I believe that.” She grinned and raised a brow. “It seems just yesterday, someone I respect and admire told me, ‘Sometimes the best thing you can do is be still.’”

  Jason smiled, “Let’s see, who was that?”

  Eve squeezed his hands. “Pray. Who knows what God may do?”

  Chapter 14

  Eve reeled with the sense that her interview with Mr. Hill this morning had gone well. He had all but promised her the job. And Jason’s declaration of love still made her pulse race.

  But now, she was headed to the cottage on the eighteenth hole where she would meet her cousins. She had to focus all her energy on this gathering.

  Posey Winston, her grandmother’s legal representative, had telephoned this morning and said the thousands-a-night cottage was reserved and paid for long ago. Posey informed Eve that she would meet with her and her cousins at three this afternoon.

  Eve pondered as she walked. It had been years since the cousins spent time together, apart from a two-hour funeral a year ago. Would they enjoy each other like they had as children? Who would get the finished quilt? Would they end up in a savage split like their mothers? Only a few minutes stood between her and the answers.

  Her arrival at the cottage was uneventful. She was greeted by Zoe, Carla, and Danni.

  The silver-haired Posey Winston had already arrived and was seated in an ample upholstered chair. She officiated as if holding court.

  “Eve, I was just telling your cousins that I met your grandmother at a quilting club years ago, Stitches in Time. Thursday afternoons we’d quilt and chat. I miss Lizzie and those lovely times. I don’t suppose any of you are in a quilting club.”

  The cousins shook their heads no.

  “It’s a shame. Not much of that kind of thing today. Quilting machines have nearly erased the old community quilting bees.”

  Posey wore a tooled leather jacket, wool pants, and large boots. She looked more like a ranch wife than a lawyer.

  “My primary work is in water rights, but Lizzie insisted I do her personal legal affairs. So, down to business.” Posey opened a black briefcase and removed some papers. “Let’s begin with the issue of the quilt.” She put on a pair of black-framed reading glasses and scanned a document. “It has caused considerable trouble in the past.”

  “Our mothers fell out over who would get money, not the quilt. After all, they only had a few squares stitched together,” Zoe spurted. “Why all the fuss?”

  “When your grandfather’s will left everything to his wife and nothing to his daughters, it brought out the worst in your mothers and the quilt became an impossibility. But your grandmother saw it differently.”

  Danni uncoiled her legs from the chair she sat in and leaned forward. “What was the real reason Gramps cut our moms out of his will?”

  Posey shrugged. “It was no secret he wanted boys. And I’m here to tell you that it broke your grandmother’s heart. But there were issues going on with your mothers long before the problem of no paternal inheritance.”

  “Like what?” Zoe asked.

  “Your mother, Zoe, always felt Danni’s mom, the firstborn, was the favorite. It was a never-ending competition. And, I understand, Danni’s mom didn’t try to dissuade her sisters of the notion.”

  Zoe shot a glance at Danni.

  “Carla, your mom, the baby, felt smothered by her sisters. She had to leave to breathe her own air.”

  “What about Eve’s mom?” Carla questioned.

  “Lizzie always said Eve’s mother ate ambition for breakfast and determination for lunch. Not endearing traits for sisterly relations.”

  “No,” Eve agreed.

  “All that to say your mothers never could work it all out. Lizzie tried to get your mothers together to work on the quilt with the promise of money when she departed this earth. Even then there were too many unforgiven hurts, I suppose. They couldn’t sit in the same room long enough together to do it. So, your grandmother’s dying hope was that her granddaughters would find common ground and complete the quilt together in peace. I just suspect she thought if you all came together, perhaps you might influence your mothers to do the same someday.”

  Danni crossed her arms. “And that’s why we’re here?”

  “Yes. Indeed.” Posey adjusted her glasses. “But there is one small hitch.”

  “Hitch?” Eve raised a brow.

  “The quilt needs to be completed in seventy-two hours or you don’t get the financial inheritance of fifty thousand dollars each.”

  “Lord have mercy.” Zoe collapsed back in her chair. “That’s not much time to lose a bucket of money.”

  “Lizzie made this stipulation as an extra incentive to make sure every effort was made to work together and complete the project. Think of this cottage as your home for the next seventy-two hours.”

  “An entire quilt in three days.” Carla’s eyes were the size of teacups.

  “Well, I must be going now,” Posey said as she rose from her throne. She placed a business card on the coffee table and a sewing bag on the dining table. “Ring me if there’s anything I can do to help. I’ll return”—she glanced at her watch—“at three thirty sharp, in seventy-two hours.”

  And with that, she was out the door.

  “Let’s get to it.” Danni’s words cut through the shock that gripped them all.

  Eve’s organizational skills kicked in. “First, let’s gather all our resources. Bring whatever squares you have to the dining room table, and we’ll dump out everything in that sewing bag. Now.”

  Four minutes later, the table held embroidered squares plus surplus embroidery floss and cloth. There were Gran’s squares from Eve’s trove, squares from the sewing bag, squares their moms had stitched years ago, and the cousins’ work. All were splayed across the table.

  Danni picked up a square Gran had sewn. “Wasn’t this from one of Gramps’s favorite shirts?” Her eyes danced as she fingered it. “I remember him wearing it when he took me fishing.”

  “Grandpa took you fishing?” Zoe ran a finger across a design.

  “Of course.” Carla grinned. “Grandpa always doted on you, Danni.”

  Danni looked up from the square she was holding. She parted her lips as if to speak and then closed them tightly.

  Eve sensed some discomfort. “And that’s Grandpa’s issue, isn’t it? Not ours.”

  Carla picked up another square. “Grams made me a sundress out of this cloth.” She smiled. “I loved that dress.”

  Eve’s face lit up. “She made one for me out of that fabric, too.”

  Zoe eyed the fabric. “I remember it, Eve. You looked so cute in that dress.”

  Danni watched Carla scrunch the fabric. “Carla, you looked like a little lamb in yours.”

  Carla’s eyes glistened. “Grams used to call me her little lamb.”

  “She called me pumpkin,” Zoe said.

  Danni grinned. “And I was chipmunk.”

  Eve searched her memory. “I don’t think I had a nickname.”

  Danni picked up another square to examine. Her eyes brightened. “Firecracker. That’s what Grams called you, Eve.”

  Eve chuckled. “I’d forgotten.”

  “ ‘My cute little firecracker,’ Grams said. You had an explosive temper, Eve … But we loved you anyway,” Carla said with a slight tremor in her voice.

  Eve felt heat rise to her face.

  Zoe put down her needlework. “You okay, Carla?”

  “I’m fine,” she said half-heartedly.

  “Really?” Zoe eyed her carefully.

  An awkward silence spoke volumes.

  C
arla’s shoulders drooped. “Look.” She slipped her hand under several of Gran’s squares and pulled one folded piece of fabric out from under them. “This is all I have to bring to the table that’s all my own.” She laid it in plain sight.

  It was easy to see that Carla would not take a prize in handcrafts at the state fair. “And it took me four months.” Carla’s eyes grew moist and her lips trembled. “I have so little to offer in getting this quilt done. We’ll all lose our inheritance and it will be my fault. I should just go back to Kansas.”

  “No you shouldn’t.” Danni wrapped her arm around the youngest cousin’s shoulder. “You’re here. That’s what counts.”

  “I’m just not very good at this needle stuff,” Carla said.

  Zoe shrugged. “It’s okay.”

  “Gran just wants us to be together, work together,” Eve reminded them. “We are not our mothers. We’re free to do the right thing.”

  Danni beckoned Zoe and Eve to join her and Carla in a circle. She extended her arm and put her hand out to the center in a gesture she’d made hundreds of times with teammates before a volleyball game. “We’re going to do this.”

  Eve put her hand on top of Danni’s. “Right.”

  Zoe put hers on Eve’s. “And we’ll do it together and on time.”

  Everyone looked at Carla. A sheepish grin stole across her face, and she added her hand to the stack. “By God’s grace.”

  A sense of great expectation glowed as warmly as the fire in the hearth.

  Eve made some calls and rummaged up a quilting frame from a member of Stitches in Time. She sent Jason to fetch it. When he arrived, Eve and Danni helped him get it from the Jeep.

  “This is huge,” Danni huffed.

  “But at least it’s collapsible,” Jason said. “You ladies have fun.” He kissed Eve lightly and left.

  Danni smiled. “More than an errand boy?”

  Eve grinned. “Much more.”

  Once back inside, Eve set about putting the frame together. Carla sorted all the embroidery floss by colors while Danni and Zoe sorted squares.

  “We still haven’t said who will get the finished quilt,” Zoe reminded them.

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” Carla said as she grabbed another red skein to add to the pile. “We could give it to a quilt museum. Then we could see it whenever we visited.”

  “But it’s a family heirloom,” Danni countered. “It’s meant to go from generation to generation.”

  Eve and Zoe agreed.

  “What about rotating it?” Danni asked. “It stays with each of us for one year and then we rotate to the next cousin.”

  Carla paused. “So each of us would have the quilt one year, then not have it for three years, then have it again.”

  Eve tightened a screw on the frame. “As a family heirloom, the bigger question is whose child then gets it when we all die?”

  “That’s right,” Danni said. “The more kids there are, the longer in between times to have the quilt.”

  “There’s a solution out there somewhere. We just need to think outside the box,” Zoe reasoned.

  Danni’s face lit up. “Collapsible. Jason said it. Collapsible. Make it smaller.”

  Eve looked at Danni and widened her eyes. “Are you saying what I think?”

  “Four blankets.” Danni smiled. “Divide the quilt into four smaller ones.”

  “Can we?” Carla asked.

  Eve was already dialing Posey’s number.

  “Perfect. We still accomplish what Nana wanted and each of us gets a quilt.” Zoe inhaled. “I can smell my floral shop now.”

  “Yes, Posey, that’s what we want to do. Take all the squares for the one quilt but make four small ones.” Eve paced. “Will that still comply with the will?”

  Danni, Carla, and Zoe’s eyes were glued on Eve.

  “Still have to work together to do it, of course. Yes, we are already helping each other. We’ll make them together, one at a time. Have to keep the same deadline, yes.” Eve smiled at her cousins. “Posey wants to drop in and check our progress.”

  “Come on over anytime, Posey,” Danni called out.

  “Did you hear that?” Eve asked and laughed. She gave her cousins a thumbs-up.

  Carla yipped, Zoe cheered, Danni let go a deep sigh.

  Eve rang off. “Four blankets it is.”

  “Thank God. Well, we’ve got our work cut out for us,” Zoe quipped.

  The others laughed.

  “Pun not intended,” she added.

  The cousins worked well into the night. Early the next morning, everyone took just long enough to gobble some ordered sweet rolls and then began the quilting work, assembling one blanket at a time.

  Eve noticed that each of her cousins wore engagement rings. “We seem to have an abundance of sparklers,” she said. One by one, each woman told the story of her way to love.

  Zoe, and her disastrous trip that turned to utter joy with Dewayne, had proved all things work together for good.

  Danni’s resolution to a new commitment, engagement to Trace, and Olympic training on the horizon, had truly led her into love, mercy, and forgiveness.

  Carla had realized that committing one’s way to the Lord brings love and life at its best. And for her, that included Todd.

  Eve shared her discovery about being still and the heroic love Jason had demonstrated.

  “It’s all happened in the last two weeks. Do you think Grams knew something?” Carla speculated.

  “We know she wanted us to overcome the hurts of our mothers,” Zoe said.

  “And reunite us,” Danni added with confidence.

  “Finding love along the way was God’s plan. He just used Gran’s plans for us to get us there,” Eve said.

  For hours the cousins quilted and chatted. As one day turned into the next, they shared their hearts together, sleep being the only thing that separated them. A true bond was developing among them. It was clear that as Zoe, Danni, Carla, and Eve stitched square to square, their lives were knitted together as well.

  Just as she said, Posey showed up at the cottage a couple times to see how the girls progressed. Then, seventy-two hours to the moment they started, she arrived to reward their work together. Along with a checkbook, she had a bottle of sparkling apple cider. After viewing the beautiful quilts, she wrote the checks and left the four exhausted but energized women to bask in their accomplishment.

  Eve went to the kitchen, found four glasses, and returned to the living room, where she filled the glasses.

  “A toast,” she ordered.

  All four lifted their glasses.

  “To Nana,” Zoe proposed.

  “To family bonds regained,” Carla said.

  “And love along the way,” Danni added.

  “To threads of love that bind us together,” Eve concluded.

  The four cousins clinked their glasses and drank from cups that overflowed.

  Marilyn Leach has enjoyed writing for the stage as well as for publication. She became a “dyed in the wool” British enthusiast after visiting England, where she discovered her roots. She currently teaches art at an inner-city school near Denver, Colorado, and lives lakeside near the foothills.

  Instructions for a

  MEMORY QUILT

  by Cynthia Hickey

  Supplies:

  fabric squares*

  embroidery needle

  thread

  fabric for border and binding

  sheet (for back of quilt)

  quilt batting

  *Fabric squares can be any size, depending on whether you are sewing a quilt for a bed or a quilt for a wall hanging. I prefer using squares that measure 10 inches by 10 inches for a bed.

  For the memory blocks, plain white squares work best with either photos transferred (you can buy special paper for this) or embroidery. If you choose to alternate your memory blocks with plain squares, you can use white or colored fabric.

  Cut as many squares as you need for the size
of quilt you are making. Embellish squares with embroidery, special fabric, or photos. When your squares are finished, you are ready to sew them together. I sew my squares together on the sewing machine. Once your squares are connected, sew on a border in the width and design you prefer to complement the rest of the quilt. After the quilt top is finished, you are ready to put the front and back together.

  Layer the back, the batting, and then your quilt top on a quilting frame. Quilt a design of your choice on the blank squares and along the border. If your sewing machine can handle quilting, this doesn’t have to be done by hand, but it’s more fun! Once all your decorative quilting (through all layers of the quilt) is complete, you are ready to sew a thin strip of border (or binding) to finish off your edges.

  My memory quilt is one my grandmother and great aunts started and passed down to me to finish. It has plain white blocks with their names embroidered in the squares. I will quilt a rose in the blank squares as I complete the quilt. My grandmother and great aunts have all passed since the quilt was handed down to me, making it even more special.