The hours flew by on Jillian’s first day without Gram at the quilt shop. Most people just came in to ask about the accident, and they all wanted details.
She finally realized how important the shop was to the town...how important Gram was to them. It reminded her of a fairy tale where one old woman was the heart of the village. Gram kept the stories. Lived through all their lives with them.
Over and over she heard them say things like, “She was there when...” or, “It wouldn’t be Christmas if Gram wasn’t...”
Gram had walked through all their memories. At birthdays, weddings, christenings, funerals. She’d woven herself into the fabric of their lives simply by caring.
A few times, as people talked and reminisced, Jillian would ask if anyone remembered a Jefferson James or maybe his wife Marti James who might have lived here thirty years ago. Jefferson was tall, thin, and had Jillian’s dark hair and eyes.
No one offered one clue. Jillian might have her papa’s logbook with this zip code penciled in, and Laurel Springs was within the circle around Oklahoma City that was close enough to drive to in one night, but if he ever stopped here, he didn’t stay long enough to leave an impression.
The next zip code was in southern Kansas. Maybe in a few months, she’d try up there. Deep down she knew she was wasting her time looking for a ghost, but somehow, living in this town, among these people, made her long for something she’d never had. A home. A place she was from.
If her father had wanted to find her, all he’d had to do was read the letter she’d left him. But he hadn’t opened it.
Closing her eyes, she forced back tears. If he didn’t care about her, or think about her, why had he taken the picture? It had to be her father. Anyone else would have left the school snapshot and taken the money.
Sometime in the past few years he’d stopped by the library. Maybe he didn’t take the time to read the letter. Maybe he didn’t care enough to leave her a note. But he’d taken the picture. One memory of his daughter. The school picture was nothing special, only it was the one memory he’d ever taken away with him that she knew about.
It made no sense. Just one more mystery in her life packed with unanswered questions.
Connor called a few times while she worked, with updates on Gram. He reported them like news blasts. “The head nurse informed me Gram made it through the night in the hospital without problems. They’ll be releasing her around five. The nurse also ordered a hospital bed delivered to my house. With the new wing at the Acres not ready, we all agreed, with a few adjustments, my place would be best. Gram’s insisting Sunnie and I keep our schedules but she’ll never be alone. I’ll make sure of that.”
“She comes with her own bed?” Jillian tried to lighten his mood.
He didn’t take the hint. “It’s going to have to be set up in the dining room of my place before I get her home. All my bedrooms are upstairs, but there’s a bathroom off the kitchen that has a shower. We’ll make her comfortable there.”
Connor also conveyed that, since the shop opened today, Gram had asked him, at least once an hour, how Jillian was handling the quilters. “You’d better say great or she’ll steal a wheelchair and come check on you.”
“I’m fine. You’re the one with your hands full.”
Connor didn’t argue. “I plan to keep the night nurse coming to the house until Gram is mobile again, then we’ll switch to just having a caregiver come by during the day. Between Sunnie and me, we can handle the meals, and thanks to Stella, she’ll have round-the-clock friends dropping in to keep her company or bring lunch.”
“Is there anything I can do?” Jillian was surprised at just how much she meant the words.
“You’re doing the most important job. You’re taking care of her shop. Don’t be surprised if she wants a full reporting each day.” He hesitated. “Thanks for being by my side through all this.”
She didn’t know if he meant during the day at the hospital, or Monday night when they’d slept curled up on the couch.
The door chimed and she said a quick goodbye, then went to greet two ladies who were looking for OOP fabric—out of print—by Tula Pink. They said they wanted to finish a quilt started years ago.
Jillian had no idea what they were talking about, but she said they were welcome to look.
Joe Dunaway stopped by the shop about noon with a bag of donuts. He’d finally abandoned his post by Gram’s hospital bed. He claimed there were too many people around to really talk to her. “She ran me off, telling me I needed to get some rest. You’d think all last night would have been enough. I slept like a baby with all them machines humming away around me. But when Jeanie makes her mind up, she’s a hard woman to argue with. You’d think every decade or so she’d let me win one argument.”
Even in his grumbling, he seemed tickled that Gram was fussing over him and Jillian did the same, offering him coffee and trying to talk him into eating one of the salads she’d stocked in the tiny fridge.
Jillian also suspected Joe was Gram’s spy. When she confronted the old man, he didn’t bother to deny it. His assignment from Gram was to check up on what was happening at the shop at least once a day. “Course, I won’t stay long. I got a business to run.”
He did, however, plant his old body at the counter stool and answered questions like he was a newly installed information desk attendant.
Joe tried to play down his part in the rescue, but everyone knew he was Gram’s hero. He’d found her in the tall grass by the creek and carried her back to his truck. When they arrived at the hospital the emergency staff claimed it was hard to tell which one had the most mud caked on—the patient or the rescuer.
He told the same story over and over to everyone who walked in.
“I knew her leg was broken, just by the angle of it, but I didn’t want to scare her, so I told her it was just a sprain. I wrapped my jacket around her knee and tied it with the sleeves so I wouldn’t bump it against anything and cause her more pain. Jeanie don’t like to be lied to, but I figured she’d forgive me this one time.” He laughed. “Course, I lied again this morning when I said she looked great. Truth is, she’s got scratches on top of scratches and is as pale as the sheets. I’m just hoping she heals a bit before she gets near a mirror.”
After he finished off most of the donuts, Joe left, claiming he needed to get over to Connor’s house and make sure them boys from the delivery service had Gram’s bed put together right.
“You staying there until Connor brings her home?” Jillian asked.
Joe shook his head. “I’ll check on her later, after she’s settled in. I need to get back to work. Those Toe Tents won’t make themselves. I got to get a dozen ready. I got investors coming in later today.”
No one believed him, but a few of the quilters offered to drop by his workshop and help him with the stretching of material over his frames.
Jillian couldn’t help but feel that Joe was slowly drawing people into his crazy plan to get rich. He even offered her a half-price special on the first dozen made.
Joe stayed true to his word. The next morning he was back with his bag of donuts and a new report on how Gram was doing.
Jillian loved having him near. This way she could know everything that was going on with the Laradys without having to question Connor.
About five, Sunnie stopped by to collect a few things from the shop for Gram. Apparently she needed her sewing basket because the quilting club was bringing supper tonight, and she might feel like working on one of the projects she kept stuffed in the bottom of her huge bag.
Sunnie lifted the bag in one hand and the sewing basket in the other as if they were dumbbells. “Gram calls this her UFO bag. It’s full of UnFinished Objects. I think all quilters have them.”
The girl hesitated at the door, then added, “Dad said if the women do come over, I can go get a pizza with Reese. He’s been hanging around helping get everything installed that Gram needs.” Sunnie grinned. “The guy is kind of growing on me. And, face it, anything’s better than sitting around that circle.”
“Reese the new boyfriend Joe told me about?” Jillian winked as if silently agreeing to keep a secret.
Sunnie shook her head, making her sunshine hair fly. “No. Well, maybe. Yes, I guess. He’s more just a friend. He can’t even drive legally, but he does it anyway. He started hauling building material for his dad before he was fifteen. Our part-time sheriff, Thornton Daily, says as long as Reese doesn’t have a wreck or go outside the city limits, he can help his dad out, but that’s all. So, if we go for pizza, he’ll probably be hauling toilets for the remodel.”
She still looked confused. “So it’s not a date. Or, if it is, it’s a really strange one.”
Jillian just nodded as she started logging in another quilt. She guessed that the girl simply needed to talk, and she didn’t mind listening while taking pictures of the next quilt. “The strange dates can be fun.”
Sunnie helped Jillian as she rattled on. “Old Thornton has his own way of doing things. He’s been a sheriff since the Stone Age. Every Fourth of July, when all the oil field workers for a hundred miles around come over for our rodeo and dance, Sheriff Daily sets up horse trailers in both directions leaving the rodeo grounds. When the drunks walk out looking for their cars, he walks them right into the trailers. Locks the gates. Lets them out in the morning.
“Dad says, come dawn, they’re hungover and mad as hell, but when they find out there is no fine, they thank the sheriff and go home.
“If we go for pizza, that will leave Dad with Gram and the quilters.” Sunnie seemed like she was finally getting to the point. “How about you talk to Dad and ask him out to eat? You’d be saving his life, trust me.”
“So if this Reese is more friend than boyfriend, maybe your dad could just tag along with you guys and eat pizza.”
Sunnie giggled. “Oh, no. If you ask him out, promise you’ll take Dad somewhere else. It’ll be embarrassing enough to be with a guy younger than me. The last thing I want is Dad watching, or worse, trying to talk to us.”
“I’ll think about it.” Jillian watched Sunnie lug Gram’s bags to the door. “Don’t worry. I’m sure your father will find someplace to escape to besides the Pizza Place.”
As Sunnie disappeared, other people were coming inside. To talk. To buy a few things. To look around. There would be no more logging quilts today.
By closing time Jillian realized one other fact. There was no one in her life, not one person, like Gram. She’d never thought to ask her father what his mother’s name had been or where his people had come from. He probably wouldn’t have answered her anyway. All he’d ever told her about her mother was that she went by Marti.
They must have married, because she’d put Marti James on Jillian’s birth certificate and left most of the other information blank. When she’d asked him to tell her about their marriage, Papa had said there wasn’t much to it. They just said the words to each other one night.
Jillian could almost hear his sad words crossing twenty years of time in her mind. Your mom said it counted because we meant it forever. But it turned out that kind of ceremony doesn’t count. She was wrong about the forever part, too. I didn’t see her much after her family found out she was pregnant, but she promised she’d call when the baby came. She said we’d run away as soon as she could leave the hospital and I promised I’d be there to raise the kid we made.
When I got to the hospital she was gone and I knew there was never going to be a forever, but I swore I’d keep up my side of the bargain.
Her father probably never even told Marti that he loved her. He’d never told Jillian. Maybe her family talked her out of keeping the baby. Jillian didn’t know, but she had a feeling her mother never planned to keep Jefferson James either.
When Jillian locked the door and circled the store, she felt alone, really alone, for the first time since she’d been a little girl, curled up as the wind blew against their trailer and monsters scratched at the door.
She hadn’t followed Papa’s rule: Never get involved in other people’s problems.
She’d slipped. Let it happen. This was just a job like the dozens of others she’d had over the years. She was making good money, living cheap, staying under the radar. This should have been easy. In a couple of months, she’d move on. Somewhere like Atlanta, or Kansas, or even New York. Somewhere she’d just be one of the crowd. Invisible. Usually, after she left a place, no one even remembered her name. But here, they might.
She smiled. If Gram was in her right mind, she’d remember Jillian. Folks had commented several times that she never forgot a name. Joe even said once that she remembered every person she ever met. Someone might pass through town and stop in at the shop and five years later she’d call them by name when they returned.
Jillian told herself she’d never think of this little town or its people again once she walked away. Missing someone only brought pain, regret.
“Never. Never.” She could hear the word echoing off the shop’s walls, but that didn’t make it sound any more true. She’d collected memories here. This time, the people would be hard to forget.
As she passed the cutting table, she remembered the quilt Stella told her Gram used to work on.
No one would notice if she looked now. The door was already locked. She was alone.
Hesitantly, she opened the almost invisible drawer beneath the table. Jillian had no idea what to expect, but what she saw was beyond any quilt she’d ever seen before. Bright colors mixed with embroidered names and numbers in a crazy pattern that had no beginning or end. No balance. No symmetry.
It didn’t fit with any of the quilts in the room, not blocked or patterned in any order. It was like a piece of modern art among Renaissance paintings.
As if handling a treasure, she slowly spread it out on the table. It was so wide the unfinished quilt hung over the sides almost to the floor.
She stared at it, having no idea where to start the description. Pieces of color bright as shards of glass, writing and dates seemed to flow in a whirlpool, bumping into each other, interfering, almost as if crossing over one pattern to form another on top.
She didn’t know if she was looking at a genius’s or a fool’s work.
A light tapping on the door made her jump.
As if she’d been spying into state secrets, Jillian quickly folded the quilt up and shoved it back into the drawer.
She was out of breath when she finally opened the door.
Connor had already retreated toward his pickup. He turned. “Sorry. Sunnie told me you were waiting for me. She said you wanted to take me to dinner.”
Multiple-choice answers bounced across Jillian’s brain. The truth was, she hadn’t said yes; Sunnie had just made the suggestion. But if she admitted it, he’d know his daughter had lied to him.
“I was just folding up a quilt. Can’t wait to go to dinner and hear all about how Gram is settling in at your place.”
Connor’s smile was all the proof she needed to know she’d picked the right answer.
He held the truck door for her, then circled around and climbed in. “Where to?”
“Somewhere quiet. I’ve been surrounded by people all day.”
“I agree. The house has been full of friends since I got Gram home. I managed to run most of them off early last night so she could sleep and and again this afternoon to let Gram rest a few hours before the quilters swarmed in.”
He drove through the Hamburger Hut, picked up malts and burgers, then crossed the bridge to the old part of town. The boards over the water were uneven, rattling her from side to side like a cheap, twirling carnival ride.
Jillian raised her eyebrows but didn’t say a word. Where they were going didn’t matter. She was with the one she wanted to be with. She needed to stop worrying about lingering memories and just relax.
He parked by a three-story building and climbed out.
She waited, not sure what to do. The malts and burgers were still on the seat beside her. Surely they weren’t stopping here. This place was scary even in daylight. She didn’t plan on staying around to see how it looked in less than an hour.
When he opened her door, he raised his arms to catch her. “Come with me.” He encouraged as if offering far more than a lift down from the high seat.
Her legs were plenty long enough to take the step out, but she slid into his embrace. He lowered her to the ground. For a moment they were so close they touched as they breathed. She thought he might lean in slightly and kiss her, but he simply brushed his cheek against her hair. “Trust me, Jillian, you’re going to like this restaurant.”
He grabbed his raincoat from behind the seat, handed her the drinks and picked up their meal.
Following him into the building, she was surprised to see how sound the old factory seemed to be. The ceiling was tall, over twenty feet. Decaying ropes still hung from pulleys, and worktables stood dusty, silently waiting for craftsmen to arrive. The windows were high, ribboning the building with natural light.
Staying close, she whispered as though she might disturb ghosts, “What did they used to make in here?”
“I’m not sure. I think parts of oil rigs were shipped in and assembled here. I don’t know much about it, but there’s an old Christmas tree over there in the corner.” He pointed to a six-foot structure that was formed from a mixture of valves, spools and fittings welded together. “They’re used at oil or gas well sites. I see them in the oil fields around. I’m not really sure why they call them Christmas trees. A roughneck would have to be drunk to mistake this jumble of metal for a tree.”
She turned in a complete circle. “Nice restaurant.”
“Oh, we’re not there yet.” He pointed to a staircase along one wall. “We’ve got rooftop seating.”
Suddenly excited, she climbed ahead of him, her shoes tapping a rhythm in double time. At the top, she waited impatiently with a malt in each hand.
He juggled the bag of burgers as he shoved the heavy door open. They stepped onto the rooftop with no one else around. She could see for miles in every direction. The trees, the fields. Oil rigs, scattered homes and barns, schools and churches.
“It’s beautiful!” The sun’s low glow gave everything a golden light.
He set the bag down and spread his raincoat out like a tablecloth on an air vent cover. “It’s not yet, but it will be.” He pulled up two empty five-gallon buckets to use as stools.
She sat the malts down. “You’ve been to this restaurant before.”
“Guilty. But I’ve never brought anyone here. Only you.”
While he unwrapped his burger, she looked around, pointing out everything as if he was also seeing it for the first time. “Look how winding the creek is.
“I had no idea there were so many trees.
“Oh, look at those horses running.” She loved the way the evening clouds moved over the land, darkening the hues of the earth in shadow as they drifted.
“It’s winter now, not near as pretty as it’ll be come spring.” He set his hamburger beside hers and came to join her near the roof’s edge. “I lease that flatland out to a farmer who plants cotton every spring. That brown dirt will look like a green carpet in a few months.”
“I won’t be here in spring.” She let the wind catch her words as she turned away from him and the view. The black tar roof beneath her feet was all she saw now, but she stared hard, willing not one tear to fall.
This time. This place she would miss. When she left, Jillian knew memories would be packed in her heart. A year from now, a decade, a lifetime, she’d still remember the beauty of this view in winter and wonder how it looked in spring.
Silent for a minute, his words came calm, questioning. “Is there someone pulling you away? Are you running away from someone? Or to another?”
He’d asked before. She’d answered. But he must not have believed her.
“No one is waiting for me or looking for me.” She walked to the edge of the roof and stared down at the alley in shadows. “No one cares about me, or for me, Connor.”
Moving up behind her, he whispered, “I do, Jillian.” He seemed to be dragging the words out. They didn’t come easy. “I care. I think I have since the day you first walked into my office. There is something about you that draws me to you.”
Pulling her gently against him, he kissed her as she fought back tears. Part of her wanted to run, like she always did, but this time she decided she’d stay long enough to feel just a bit. Connor was a kind man. He’d be easy to care about but she wasn’t sure he’d be easy to leave.
She kissed him back, knowing she was gambling. Loving the way he held her as if she were a treasure. He kissed like a man thirsting for one drink and he’d suddenly found an ocean in her. Feeling every touch not just on her skin, but all the way to her bones. When they were close she swore she could hear his thoughts. No one had ever gotten so near.
“I’ve been wanting to hold you all day.” His words blended with the evening wind.
“I know.” How could she explain that she’d been sleepwalking all through the day and now, for the first time, she felt awake?
Without a word, he turned her to face the sunset. With his arms wrapped around her, they watched nature’s grand show. “This is why I reserved the rooftop table. I wanted to show you this.”
She didn’t say a word. Couldn’t. The calm beauty of this quiet place melted into her soul.
Just as the last bit of sun disappeared, she had to admit, “It’s breathtaking!”
“Yes, it is,” he answered against her ear. “I’ve been up here dozens of times, but it’s never been as gorgeous as it is tonight.
“You know, Jillian, you affect me as no one ever has. Like a warm wind blowing away a kind of loneliness that settled over me years ago. I know it doesn’t make sense. We barely know each other. But you make my world feel whole.” He laughed, nervous at his admission. “When I look in those stormy-day eyes of yours, I feel like I’ve found a safe harbor.”
A tear slowly slid down her cheek. She understood him. But he’d never understand why she had to leave.
And leave she would.