The weekend fog hung over the town as thick as Southern gravy. Jillian walked the few blocks to work on her third Monday in town. The old, run-down homes were becoming familiar in a way that surprised her. She saw the beauty in their unique structures and one-of-a-kind craftsmanship. Each day she looked to see if some detail had changed and was comforted that it hadn’t. Familiar surroundings reassured her weary soul in a way she hadn’t expected.
Maybe it was a sign that she should stop traveling for a while. Only hers was the good life. The free life. No relatives to bother her. No friends to pull her down. No mortgage or things she had to do just because she was a part of a group. She’d noticed a long time ago that the more possessions someone has, the more they have to repair, or clean, or worry about them being stolen.
She was free to live, to explore, to pick her own adventure.
Shoving the wild thoughts aside, she continued on her walk. Some days just walking was all the excitement she needed.
Three doors down from the bed-and-breakfast, a little brown cottage had huge clay pots, each a different color, lining the long porch. Every pot was overflowing with colorful plastic flowers. The cottage reminded her of San Francisco. Only the flowers weren’t real.
They almost looked as if they’d grown there, but the plants were fake. Make-believe pretty. The yard was only dirt with a few weeds scattered around as though to catch trash blowing by.
The scene didn’t make sense. Such detail to the porch. Such neglect of the yard. An ugly frame surrounding a third grader’s colorful painting.
She found herself wondering about the people inside the house. Before, she’d never cared who people were, or why houses looked as they did. Her surroundings were simply markers along her path and she was only passing through. What currently bothered her thoughts: Was she more balanced then, when she didn’t care, or now?
As she turned on Main, the dull, damp grayness of the day seemed to settle, not just over her, but into her, as well, clouding her thoughts as the happenings of the weekend pirouetted around in her mind.
The school snapshot that had disappeared from her secret library box. The closeness she’d shared with Connor that had bonded them as friends, real friends. The feeling of not being alone in the old house even after she’d walked through every room except Mrs. K’s private quarters.
Even the strange message left on her cell phone from Mrs. Kelly, saying she wouldn’t be back for a few days, bothered Jillian. If she didn’t think it impossible, she’d consider the option that the round little woman was holed up in her room having an affair.
Jillian smiled, realizing she’d always thought the only man in Mrs. K’s life was old Willie Flancher. They old guy must have had something going for him if he found five women to marry him back in the 1800s.
Maybe the innkeeper was simply worried about leaving her tattered Tara in the care of a stranger. Maybe she’d asked someone to walk through the downstairs last night to simply check to see if the place was locked up. A neighbor would do that.
Maybe Mrs. K simply got out of the house for once and found herself in no hurry to come back.
The big old place was usually so quiet when no guests were there. No wonder Mrs. Kelly talked to the shy ghost. Another weekend like this one and Jillian decided she’d not only be seeing him, but talking to him, as well.
As she moved toward the quilt shop, all the stores appeared to be still sleeping. The flower shop called Pot Along. The coffee shop lined with bookshelves. The antiques store with a hundred dolls with porcelain eyes staring at her. She knew she was early, but she’d expected some life before eight in the morning.
Seven forty-five. She was really early. Mamma Bee’s Pastries had lights on inside, but the Open sign hadn’t been flipped.
Jillian unlocked A Stitch in Time’s door. She glanced across the street and noticed the lights were also on in the Laurel Springs Daily. Connor must have not been able to sleep either. He was always there to meet Gram when she climbed off the Autumn Acres bus, but Jillian never thought that he’d already been at work for hours before.
Whatever his work was... He was a man who wore many hats, it seemed. Gram said he managed the family properties better than the past three Larady men. Sunnie claimed he wrote books that never sold. Joe Dunaway told her being mayor in this mess of a town was a full-time job.
Jillian swore she could feel Connor close. The need to talk to him again had kept her awake last night, but she’d be wise to take no action. Keep it polite and formal. She didn’t want to leave sadness behind when she drove away. Connor deserved a friend who didn’t count their time together in minutes.
Smiling, she thought of Joe Dunaway and his Jeanie. They’d been friends for decades and still had plenty to talk about. She’d never have that, but she’d seen it and guessed that was a rare thing to witness.
“Mornin’, Jillian,” a squeaky voice sounded from a few feet away.
Almost dropping her keys, Jillian turned, half expecting to see Minnie Mouse behind her. “Oh, Stella, I’m sorry I didn’t see you there.”
The nervous little quilter hiccuped a giggle. “I may be a little early, but it’s quilting day and I never miss the bee. I got my bag full of ‘fixing to-dos’ to help me pass the time till the others get here.”
“‘Fixing to-dos’?”
“Yep. Every quilter has them. Projects we don’t get finished before another one comes along.” She tick-tocked her head from side to side, sending her gray curls bouncing. “The older I get, the earlier I am to everything. At the rate I’m going, I’ll outrun dying and jump into heaven while I’m still alive.”
Jillian pushed the door open. “No problem. We’ll have time for tea before the others come in.” An hour of time, since Gram’s bus wouldn’t be along until almost nine and the quilters tended to wander in after that.
She held the door as Stella stepped inside, muttering something about how it was hard to tell what time it was on foggy days.
“How long have you been quilting?” Jillian asked, just to make conversation.
“For as long as I can remember. When I was little, I’d take my naps under the quilting frame as I listened to the ladies talk.”
Jillian made herbal green apple tea and brought it out to one of the tables by the huge front windows. This special spot was called the Someday Corner because it was framed on two sides by supplies. Organized squares of material were bunched together. Fat quarters, wild confetti, drab pieces, and splashed segments. All waiting their turn to be pieced into a quilt someday.
In truth, it was simply pure marketing. Gram served tea in the one spot in the shop stuffed with sales items. She made money on the bolts and pattern books, but here the profits were higher. Fancy scissors that just cut batting or tiny ones made small and sharp for embroidery. Rulers and marking pens that could be erased by water or heat.
Stella patted Jillian’s camera on the table and asked questions about how the cataloging project was going.
Jillian explained, telling only the facts, as she carefully stitched the two-inch blue ID onto the back of the quilt she was working on.
No. 19
Cherry Bostock’s pinwheel quilt, 1992
A blend of material from her thirteen bridesmaid dresses
Entitled: You’ll wear it again.
* * *
“I’m managing to finish up two or three quilts most days. I write up their stories at night and file the photos.” More to distract Stella than out of interest, Jillian asked which one of the quilts in the shop Stella thought had the most interesting story.
The old woman laughed. “Eugenia’s quilt, of course. She’s been working on it since she opened the shop.”
“Eugenia’s quilt? I haven’t seen it. Which one is hers?” She scanned the walls, where two stories of quilts hung in the shadows.
“Last time I saw it she had it stashed in a drawer beneath the cutting table. It’s not finished. Maybe never will be. It’s her crazy quilt. We all make one if we quilt long enough. Some start with it, some end with it. Most are made from the scraps of our lives.”
Jillian fought the urge to jump up and run to find the quilt, but somehow it seemed like an invasion of privacy. Gram hadn’t mentioned it in the weeks she’d been in the shop. Maybe she’d forgotten about it. “I’ll ask her to show it to me sometime.”
Stella nodded. “I made a funny quilt once. It was a dozen blocks of all the cats I’ve owned. Or lived with, since no one really owns a cat. I put hats on them just for fun and to add color to the quilt.” She giggled. “They would have hated wearing hats. My Sassy, a big red Somali, would sit on any hat I left lying around. I put a pillbox hat on him in his block.”
“I’d like to see that quilt,” Jillian lied.
“I’ll bring it sometime and you can take a picture of it.”
They talked their way through three cups of tea and all the leftover cookies. Jillian spent most of her time making a mental list of what she needed to do. If she planned to finish in three months, she had to keep a schedule, even if no one else in the quilt shop seemed to follow one. Sunnie would be a big help on Saturdays, but the other five days she’d be helping Gram more often than working on her cataloging project for the county museum.
Jillian listened to Stella talk about her cats as she stared out the window, hoping Gram would come soon. The street was alive now. People moving past the window. Cars parking.
Connor Larady suddenly rushed out of his office and headed directly toward her. Head down, steps long. He marched like a man on a mission and truly had no idea how powerful he looked at that moment. For a man who worked behind a desk, he somehow still managed to look like he stayed in shape.
Before she could stand, he banged his way through the front door. “Have you seen Gram?”
“No.” Jillian glanced at the clock. “But she should be here by now.”
He took her words like a blow. His brown eyes darkened to coffee and his hands were knuckle-white fists. The mild-mannered mayor looked more like a warrior.
“What’s wrong?” she whispered, as if saying it too loud might alarm him.
“We don’t know where she is.” Connor paced back and forth in the small space in front of the windows. “A main desk attendant from the Acres called. She thought maybe I’d dropped by and picked her up.”
Raking his fingers through unruly hair, Connor seemed to age before her eyes as he struggled to piece together an answer.
His words finally came out like a news report. “When she didn’t get on the bus, the driver went inside to check on her. The receptionist said she’d seen Gram dressed and walking toward the little cafeteria earlier that morning. One of the staff said she’d walked with her to the front door where she always waited for the bus.” Connor took a breath, as if fighting down anger. “Somewhere between the front lobby and the bus parked ten feet outside, they lost her. At first they thought she might have gone back to her room, but she wasn’t there.”
“Maybe she went to someone else’s room. You said she has a lot of friends there.”
Stella nodded her agreement, as if Jillian could solve the problem so easily.
Even Connor relaxed a bit. “They searched once, but you’re right. She could have decided to say hello to a friend, or gone back for another cup of coffee, or maybe she simply went to the restroom. There are a dozen places she might have thought she’d stop instead of just waiting by the door. The chapel, the one-chair beauty shop to make an appointment, the little post office to check her box.”
Stella’s head kept nodding. “One of the girls said your gram likes to go out the side door of the Acres and watch the construction going on along the new wing.”
“I’ll call them back and tell them to keep checking.” The muscle in his jaw was still tight. “Only the nurse who makes sure she takes her meds said Gram had commented once last week that she could walk to work. Gram said she’d done it for fifty years. But not from the Acres. She was mixed up. Gram always walked from her little place in town to the shop.”
He met Jillian’s gaze. His voice came low. “What if she decided to walk?”
Jillian had only been to Autumn Acres once, when Connor took Gram home because the bus was running late. It was far to the west of town. Too far for an elderly woman to walk. The apartments were small, with a tiny living area and a bedroom. Staff was around, but it wasn’t a nursing home. Tenants were independent. If Gram had decided to walk, she could have easily left without anyone noticing.
“She wouldn’t walk,” Stella whispered. “Not today. It might rain.”
Connor showed no sign of hearing the little quilter. “I’m driving that direction. If she’s walking, she’ll need help. I have to find her.”
Jillian grabbed her jacket. “I’m going with you.”
“No. If she is walking she’s headed to the shop. If she catches a ride she’ll end up here. Someone needs to stay.”
Stella stood up as if she’d heard the call to arms. “I’ll man the shop and start calling folks on my cell. I’ll keep the shop phone open so you can call in with news. The more people looking for her, the faster we’ll find her.”
Connor didn’t argue with the plan. He opened the door as Jillian buttoned her coat. When she passed him, her shoulder brushed his and she stumbled slightly.
His hand shot out and rested against her back for just a moment.
Neither looked up.
They climbed into his truck and began slowly tracing the route between Autumn Acres and Main Street. There was one obvious route, along the highway. But Gram wouldn’t take that way. She’d told Jillian she always avoided the state highway even when she could drive. Too many trucks, she’d complained. Too much noise.
The other routes weren’t so direct. There were half a dozen roads that would all end up on Main.
Connor drove slowly as he dialed the retirement home, clicked it on speaker, then dropped the cell on the dash. “Any luck?”
“No, Mr. Larady.”
“Did you search...”
“We’ve searched everywhere twice. Our staff is trained for this. Not one room, not one closet is skipped. She is not in the building, or the garden, or even the construction site next door.”
“How do you know? The site is a big place.”
“It’s far enough along to be locked at night. The painters haven’t gotten here yet.”
“Okay.” Connor seemed to be gulping down the lecture he’d planned to give the staff. “I’m driving the roads between your place and Main.”
“It’s only three miles.” The woman on the phone seemed to think her words would calm him. “The bus driver is tracing his route. Maybe, if she’s walking, she’d go the same way he drives.”
“Call me if you find her. I’ll do the same.” He clicked off the phone.
Jillian didn’t make a sound. The last thing she wanted to do was speculate on what might happen in three miles of road on a cloudy day.
They drove over the bridge and into the warehouse area of town. This old part would be directly in her path unless she took the highway road or followed the winding creek. Neither of those routes would be likely, though—too rough. The warehouse crossing was her safest way.
Jillian tried to think of something to say that would help. Gram might be forgetting little things—names, dates—but putting an extra round of sugar in her coffee didn’t make her senile. Just last week, she’d explained the layout of a six-point Lone Star pattern and helped cut bias binding for a scalloped-edge quilt.
She kept glancing over at Connor. Gram had told her he was only thirty-seven, but he seemed older now. She’d said when he’d left college and returned home to run the business after his parents died, Gram wondered if he regretted it. He’d had no wild twenties to find himself.
“The boy doesn’t know how to live,” Gram admitted. “Too many brains, not enough wildness in his heart, I fear.”
Jillian considered that Gram might be right. He seemed to carry a heavy load on his shoulders.
As they passed through the grain elevators and warehouses littered with the bones of equipment left behind, Jillian said, “Gram told me you own this land.”
“I inherited it. Not sure if it was a blessing or a curse. It’d cost a million to clear all this out and then I doubt I could sell the land. With all these aging buildings, no one would buy it. So I keep paying the taxes until I figure out what to do.”
He seemed to relax a little. At least he looked like he was breathing. Earlier she wasn’t so sure. Talking came easy while they were both watching the road and not facing each other.
“You grow up in a town like this?”
She saw his effort to remain calm, so she played along. “No. I grew up in the oil fields, from the Gulf of Mexico to Alaska. My dad liked to travel. He went wherever the jobs took him.”
“What about you?”
“I’m the same way. No strings to anywhere. I wouldn’t know where to call home.”
His short laugh held little humor. “I envy you a little. When I was in college, I thought I’d graduate and see the world. Wash dishes for gas money. Write all night in a cheap hotel or sleep under the stars on warm nights.”
“You ever do any of that?”
“No. Melissa, my wife, got pregnant a few months after we met. She came to college one semester with me, but it was too hard on her. Sunnie came along a few months before my folks died, so we moved back and I finished my degree online. She never got hers started. When we moved back, she stepped into running with her high school crowd and none of them were interested in college. Melissa was younger than me. I figured she had some growing up years to finish.”
Jillian studied all the corners and shadows of the district as she continued to talk low. “Gram said Melissa died in a plane crash a few years ago. I’m sorry.”
“We married because she was pregnant. We both loved Sunnie, but I knew my wife never loved me.” His voice was bland. Simply giving a report.
“Did you love her?” Jillian couldn’t believe she was getting so personal, but for a change she wanted to know someone better. Now might not be the time for these questions, but talking would keep them calm.
“I tried. A man should love his wife. After the plane accident, I found the paperwork she’d done for a divorce. I guess I failed in the loving her department. I think she was planning to leave me and marry the guy with her in the plane. I found out they’d traveled together several times. Her ‘weekends with the girls’ were mostly weekends with him.”
Jillian thought of telling him that it took two people to make a marriage work, but now wasn’t the time and she didn’t know enough about relationships to advise anyone. The longest one she’d ever had was three weeks.
Connor turned down a dusty street, and Jillian saw a truck parked in front of one of the barns.
She pointed but before she could ask, he answered her questions. “That’s Joe Dunaway’s truck. He’s probably still working on that crazy idea of making Toe Tents.”
Jillian couldn’t stop a smile. The old man was nuts, but ever since he’d mentioned them, she’d wished she had a Toe Tent when she crawled into bed.
Connor pulled up beside the truck. “I’ll tell him Gram’s missing. He’ll want to help.”
Out of curiosity, Jillian climbed out of the pickup and followed Connor. The bay area had been scrubbed clean and long tables were laid out in a square. The abandoned building Joe had made his factory seemed to be holding up well.
“Morning, Connor,” Joe shouted. “Come to check on your investment?”
“I’m not invested, Joe. The barn is yours to use. When you hit it big, it’s all your idea and your profit.”
Joe took off his welding gloves. “That won’t be long. I’ve about got the assembly line set up.”
“You mean assembly square.” Connor reached the man and lowered his voice. “We got a problem I need your help with, Joe. Gram is missing. We think she left the Acres and started walking to work.”
Joe moved so fast he almost left Connor behind. “Where do I look?”
“Take the creek road.” Connor followed him outside. “It’s not the shortest, but she always liked the wildflowers there. I’ll go down past the grain elevators and the tracks.”
Jillian followed the men out without mentioning that it was winter. If Gram thought she could walk, she probably hadn’t noticed the weather, but she might be disappointed that there were no wildflowers.
They got back in the pickup. Connor took a long breath. “I feel better with Joe looking, too. We’ll cover the area in half the time.” He swung the truck around and the search continued.
“How long have you known Joe?” She kept her eyes on the side of the road as she asked.
“All my life. He and my grandfather were best friends. The three of them grew up together, but he’s the only one who calls Gram Jeanie.”
“She’s still a girl to him.”
Connor nodded. “I guess so. Sometimes, when they’re just talking to each other, I get the feeling they’re two young people dressed up in old folks’ bodies. The way they talk, how they laugh at jokes no one else gets. Maybe once in a while time stops between friends.”
Jillian fought back tears. She’d never known that kind of friendship.
Silence hung in the air as he drove. They reached Autumn Acres, but had no luck. For a moment, she thought Connor might insist on searching the place himself. Each minute Gram was gone deepened the worry lines across his forehead.
Jillian used her cell to call Stella. No word, but Stella had organized a search in town. The Sanderson sisters were combing Walmart. Toad sent both her sons to walk Main. Gram might have stopped in somewhere. Paulina called the sheriff’s office and suggested they block the state highway just in case Gram was kidnapped.
“We’ll find her,” Stella’s squeaky little voice pledged, “even if we have to comb every street and alley in this town.”
Jillian thought maybe Stella had watched one too many crime shows. Every street wouldn’t take twenty minutes on a bike.
As they began another loop through the back streets of the district, Connor’s phone rang.
“Yes,” he said as he clicked on the speaker.
“I’ve got her!” Joe shouted. “She took a fall on the uneven ground by the creek. We’re on our way to the hospital. Meet you there.”
“Is she...”
Gram’s voice came through the cell. “I’m fine, Connor. Don’t worry about me. Skinned both knees and Joe’s worried I may have broken my leg. He’s just fussing over me.”
“I am not. We’re going to the hospital, Jeanie, and that’s final.”
Jillian could hear the old folks arguing, and then Gram said, “Connor, you make Joe get his blood pressure checked at the hospital. He’s overreacting.”
“We’ll get your leg x-rayed first. If you can’t put any weight on it, you got a problem.” Joe sounded worried.
Gram didn’t argue. There was silence for a moment, then Joe said low into the phone. “She’s crying, son. She’s hurting and just too stubborn to admit it. But I’ll get her there and they’ll take care of her. I promise.”
Gram’s voice was barely audible in the background. “I’m just fine. I’ve seen more blood cutting up a chicken than I’ve got on me. Don’t you worry, Danny.”
Connor smiled at Jillian but yelled into the phone. “We’ll meet you at the hospital, Gram. Thanks, Joe. You found her and if she’s arguing, her injuries are probably not that bad.”
The call ended.
While he drove, Jillian called Stella and filled her in.
“We’ll get the word out,” Stella announced. “All the quilters are here with their cell phones. Except Dixie. She forgot hers.”
“I’ll report back as soon as we’re at the hospital.”
“Send pictures of any injuries. Those emergency rooms are chaos, and they might miss something. We’ll check the photos and probably notice something they missed. After all, we’ve had our share of broken bones.”
When Connor pulled into the ten-car parking lot of the local hospital, Jillian almost laughed out loud. This wasn’t exactly a chaos emergency room.
Connor explained as they walked in. “Most of the rooms were for long-term residents needing more help than the Acres offered. Two rooms at the front were reserved as delivery rooms or emergency rooms.” He took her hand. A solid grip as if he needed her beside him. “This care facility is packed. That’s why we’re building on another unit at the Acres. It’ll have all levels of care in a few months. Since we doubled our doctor’s clinic and built Autumn Acres, a strange thing is happening. Retired folks, even those who moved away for jobs years ago, are moving back.”
Jillian didn’t want to talk. The worry about Gram was too great in her mind. She fought the urge to say that she was with him in this, no matter what they faced. But there was no time. Panic of what they might face with Gram made her heart pound double-time. Deep inside a thought formed. This must be what it feels like to care about someone.
Suddenly her grip was as tight around Connor’s fingers as his was around hers.
The tiny waiting room, which looked like it was furnished with someone’s leftover sixties furniture, was empty. Gram was in one of the birthing rooms being checked by a nurse practitioner who had a doctor looking on from a computer screen.
She looked up when they entered. “I have the doc on screen. He’s got one more patient at the clinic, then he’ll head over here.”
When Connor frowned, the nurse tagged Morrison, RN, added, “She’s stable. I’ll make her comfortable until he gets here.”
“I’m fine, Connor.” Gram smiled at them but no one missed the white-knuckle grip she held on Joe’s hand.
“Just relax, Gram. The doctor will be here soon.”
Gram shrugged. “I just saw him last week. Every time I go to that young man he puts me on another pill. I’ll be good as ever after he gives me another pill and then I’ll head over to the shop. I’ve got projects to finish.”
The nurse let Gram talk about all the things she needed to do as she checked her vitals and silently put in an IV, making everyone, except Gram apparently, aware that this was not going to be a short visit.
As the hours passed Jillian was impressed at how Connor took charge. He calmed Gram, talked to the doctor, signed forms, and made Joe sit down long enough to have his blood pressure checked.
While they waited for results on Gram, the dear old lady slept and Joe dozed in the chair beside her bed.
Connor offered his hand to Jillian as easily as if he’d done it a thousand times. Even in the bedlam he was comforting her. Pulling her out of the room, he leaned close and said, “It’s going to be a while.”
They walked down the hallway to a little room lined with vending machines.
“Can I buy you lunch?”
He turned loose of her hand and dug into his pocket for change.
“A Coke, nothing more. I had cookies for breakfast.”
He collected two Cokes and they went out on a winter patio, lined with vacant birdhouses. The sun was warm enough to almost make them believe it was comfortable outside, but Jillian barely noticed. She slowly realized that Gram was safe. They might be dealing with a broken leg, but she would recover.
Connor talked for a half hour about the town and Jillian realized how much he loved the place. He filled her in on all the people she’d met and their stories. Neither wanted to get into the what-ifs concerning Gram until they had the facts.
When the nurse came to get Connor, he was much more relaxed than when he’d hit the door.
Gram finally rested, no longer frightened. Both she and Joe looked like they’d been scrubbed free of mud. The staff made X-rays and ran several tests. While the waiting continued, the nurse named Morrison asked if she could speak with Connor in the hallway.
He tugged Jillian out of the room with him. Joe and Gram were busy arguing over what to watch on the tiny TV mounted so high up in the corner of the room no one could have seen any program well.
“Mr. Larady,” the nurse said after a moment of silence. “The doctor wanted to make sure you understand that this accident will not affect your grandmother’s condition, but that her condition likely caused it.”
“What condition?” Connor’s words were low, but they seemed to echo off the walls of the silent hallway.
“Her Alzheimer’s. Dr. Latham his been treating her for a year now, but the medicine only slows the progress.”
Jillian didn’t have to look at Connor. She could feel the shock, the pain, coursing from his body.
“She’s forgetful,” he said slowly. “She gets mixed up. She forgets words. She forgets if she’s eaten now and then.”
Jillian didn’t move, but she felt one tear slowly roll down her cheek.
“She walked away from a safe place,” the nurse added. “She put herself in danger.” The nurse’s tired eyes filled with sadness. “You didn’t know, did you, Connor?”
He didn’t have to answer.
Nurse Morrison flipped open a file. “When we informed her last year, she asked us to call her grandson Danny. His name was listed along with yours in our files.”
Connor leaned back against the wall as if all the energy had drained out of him all at once. “Gram gets our names mixed up sometimes.”
One more piece of proof, Jillian thought.
“Didn’t he call you to tell you? Didn’t Gram tell you?”
“No,” Connor answered without emotion. “He probably figured since I see her every day, I already knew. He’s busy. We don’t keep in touch.”
The nurse looked like she’d faced this dilemma before. “And did you know, Connor?”
He nodded. “On some level I think I did. I guess I chose to ignore it. I thought if I didn’t think about it, didn’t ask questions, that things would go on as always. Every time she forgot to do something, I just took over. I wanted to ignore all the signs.”
“That’s what Gram is doing, but you’ve got to deal with it from now on. Joe can’t handle it all.”
Connor straightened. “Joe knew?”
She nodded. “He was with her the day we tested her. The Autumn Acres bus brought her in for her checkup, but Joe was there just like he usually is. When they left, he must have driven her back because I heard him say that they were stopping for malts on the way home like it was just an ordinary day and an ordinary checkup.”
The nurse was called away by a beep on her phone.
Suddenly, Jillian was alone with Connor in a little hallway that smelled of antiseptic and old age. She had no idea what to say. Part of her wanted to yell that she was an alien and didn’t want to experience this kind of human pain. She’d lived her whole life away from people. Her father had been right. Don’t get involved. It hurts too much to watch, much less feel.
But she couldn’t turn away. Not this time.
As she leaned into him, he pulled her close. Hugging her.
For a while, they just stood here. She felt his heart beating, his breath drawing in and out.
Slowly, his tight muscles relaxed and she knew this strong man, who cared about an entire town, was taking on one more problem, one more worry, one more job.
Finally, he kissed the top of her head and pulled away. “Thanks. That was a great hug.”
She shoved a tear off her cheek. “You all right?”
“Yeah.”
“Plan to call your brother?”
“No. He knows. What else could I add?”
“But he steps out of all responsibility. Shouldn’t he help?”
Connor’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “But don’t you see? I’m the lucky one. I get to be here. I get to help her through this. I get to know, when she’s gone, that I did all I could.”
He looked at her and she could tell he believed every word he said. “I’m the lucky one. I’ll walk with her through this. Maybe pay back an ounce of the ton of love she’s given me all my life.”
He pulled Jillian toward Gram’s room. “We’d better get back. You still with me, Sundance?”
“Yep,” she answered. Good or bad, she’d walk through this crisis with him.
As the afternoon aged, there were more tests. Connor left to go get Sunnie. Jillian stayed behind with Joe to watch Gram sleep. Hospitals, big or small, seem to have their own kind of time.
When Sunnie showed up, she crawled up beside Gram and asked one question after another until Joe said, “Now, Button, ease off. She’s all right.”
To everyone’s surprise, she stopped with the questions but stayed close to her great-grandmother.
Jillian watched the odd little family. They might be years apart in age and very different people, but there was a bond between them that didn’t seem to need words to convey their love.
Midafternoon the doctor arrived and banished the family to the tiny waiting room. After an hour he stepped out of Gram’s room long enough to say that he’d decided to keep Gram in care overnight. She’d suffered a fall that broke her fibula just below her knee, plus she had cuts deep enough to require a few stitches. He wanted to ease her pain but not overmedicate.
When they all crowded back into the small room, Gram greeted each as if she hadn’t seen them in days.
She kept telling everyone, including the doctor, to stop worrying about her, but he still wouldn’t let her go home.
Jillian felt like she was in the way. When Connor said he needed to go back to the office and at least lock up, she jumped at the chance to catch a ride. She wasn’t doing much good here, and Gram didn’t need more company. She’d seen airports with fewer people walking the hallways once the word got out that Gram was in the hospital.
After Connor kissed his grandmother, they silently moved out to his pickup. His touch was light along her back when they stepped outside, and lingered a moment longer as he helped her into the truck. The hug they’d shared had erased any awkwardness between them.
Finally, as he climbed in, he said, “As soon as I lock up my office, I’ll be back at the hospital if anyone is looking for me.”
“I think I’ll work a few hours cataloging quilts. I need to match my notes up with pictures.” She smiled. “When Gram is able, she’ll be back in the shop and wondering what I’ve been doing besides eating her stash of cookies.” Before, the timetable to finish the cataloging job was hers, and now Jillian felt like it was also Gram’s.
He nodded. “I’ll call if there is any change, but I think all she needs now is rest.”
She could hear the sadness in his voice. They both knew rest would not heal Gram, but it might mend her broken leg.
When he pulled up to the quilt shop, he asked, “How about I pick you up for dinner at seven? Where will you be, here or home?”
“You don’t have to...”
His smile was easy. “I owe you a meal. Joe and Sunnie can watch over Gram for an hour.”
“All right. I’ll be here. Call me when you’re on your way.”
His gaze held hers. “I think I needed you all day. Thanks for being there.”
She thought of saying that all she did was tag along, but maybe even Batman needed Robin on a bumpy ride.
She’d shown up to help and it felt good, even though they’d faced troubles.