Jillian was thankful for Joe Dunaway. He seemed to know the right times to step close. Being near Connor and not touching him was hard on her. She wanted him so badly in every way. Somehow, Joe saw through their polite manners. He didn’t say anything, but in little ways he offered comfort.
“Look at this, Jillian.” Joe pointed to Gram’s quilt, pulling her from the window where she’d been staring across the street for several minutes. “See this light gray line that follows along beside Jeanie’s lifeline?” He lifted a corner of Gram’s quilt.
“I see it.” She’d notice the line before.
“It’s me. My lifeline is parallel to hers.”
Jillian was amazed. Through growing up, marriage, and deaths, the one line moved with Gram’s life. Side by side. Never touching. “You’ve always been there, haven’t you, Joe?”
He nodded. “I hope I always will.”
Gram patted his wrinkled hand. “We used to dance in the sixties.”
“That we did, Jeanie. Remember how Benjamin used to laugh at us every time we’d try one of the new dances. He made fun of us for weeks when we learned the twist, but the bump made him laugh so hard I feared he’d have a stroke.”
Jillian swore she saw a fog in Gram’s eyes, but somehow Joe was still clear in her sight. When she focused on him, she came back. She was time traveling, just like Sunnie said Gram did sometimes.
Joe kept talking. Gram settled, smiling, as her fingers moved over her quilt.
“I better get going. Connor’s waiting.” Joe nodded at Jillian, silently asking her to watch over Gram.
He left with the last of the lunch crowd.
For the first time all day, it was quiet in the shop. Bits of dust danced in the sunshine slicing through the front windows. The sudden stillness seemed strange, like the pause between a dying man’s breaths.
Jillian moved close to Gram, wondering if she felt it, too.
Gram smiled at her. “I remember Jefferson James,” she said, as simply as if they were talking about the weather.
Her thin, withered finger pointed to an embroidered lasso on her quilt. “Jefferson James got hurt. The girl with him got blood all over her pretty white blouse.”
Jillian knew Gram’s memories were fragile now. She sat down carefully beside her as if the movement of the air might shatter her mind.
“You saw my mother? You knew my dad?”
Gram shook her head. “No, not him. I just thought his name was nice, but I heard folks talk about her.”
Jillian knew she was walking on thin ice, but she had to ask. “What did folks say about her?”
Gram leaned back as her fingers pulled at a thread. “She was visiting relatives that summer on a farm not far from where we used to live. She was younger than Jefferson James, much younger. Folks said she made such a show when he was hurt that she must care a great deal about him. She couldn’t stop crying that night at the rodeo after he got hurt.” Gram spread her hand over the material laced so beautifully together. “She liked the attention, that one.”
Jillian was afraid to breathe. Gram was time traveling back thirty years. If someone came in? If the phone rang? This thread of conversation would snap.
“What else did folks say?”
“Some said she got pregnant and gave the baby away, but no one knew for sure. After that summer, she kept to herself on the farm, and then sometime after Christmas she was gone. I remember someone saying Jefferson James just walked away from his job about the same time.”
The baby, Jillian almost shouted. Me.
“Do you know why she left?” Jillian kept her words low. “Maybe she followed Jefferson?”
Gram was busy, hand pressing the tiny wrinkles across her quilt. “No.”
“She might have.” Jillian knew she was trying to rewrite a story...her story. “Why didn’t she follow him?”
“Probably because she was already married. A neighbor told me her husband was off at med school up north somewhere. They said Jefferson was a drifter. Oil field trash. Some folks whispered that she would have divorced her husband and married Jefferson anyway, but her family made her see the light.”
“Is she still alive? Did she ever come back to Laurel Springs?”
Gram shook her head. “No. Her relatives said she went to live with her husband and that wasn’t Jefferson even if folks claimed they acted like they were married for a while.”
“Do you remember where the husband lived? His name?”
“Someplace up north. She went by a funny first name. I don’t recall her husband’s name, if I ever knew it. The family she’d stayed with moved away soon after that.”
Jillian wanted to run out of the shop. She needed to be alone. She needed to think. After all the years of wondering, of asking, or looking, she’d finally found a scrap of information. Her mother hadn’t wanted her. Not enough to stay with Jefferson. But her dad kept the baby—her, Jillian. Her dad, who never said he loved her, had cared enough to keep her.
She couldn’t run outside. She needed to be here with Gram. No one else was in the store. Connor and Joe had already left for some mission Joe seemed to think had to happen today.
“What did the girl look like?” she asked Gram.
“Who?”
“The woman who was with Jefferson James. The one with blood on her shirt.”
Gram looked blank. “I’m sorry, dear, I don’t remember what we were talking about. Is it time to go home? I want to go back to the Acres and watch a movie. My friends are waiting for me.”
“It won’t be long.” Jillian answered as she fought back tears. The time traveling was over. Gram might never go back again.
An hour later when she asked a few of Gram’s friends if they remembered the rodeo, they both shook their heads and Gram looked blank again. Her mind was traveling somewhere else.
Jillian tried to comfort her as the afternoon aged, but Gram was tired. She’d be polite and distant one moment and upset the next. The third time Jillian asked about the woman with blood on her shirt, Gram grew frustrated.
As the last hour passed Jillian wished she hadn’t walked to work. She didn’t have a car to take Gram home, even if she wanted to.
She tried calling Connor. No answer.
People came in, distracting Gram. For a while, everything would be fine. But as the sky grew cloudy, fewer people dropped by.
Jillian tried Sunnie’s cell as soon as school was out. No answer. Connor’s cell and office. No answer.
She watched as Gram withdrew. She moved her hands, as if washing them with invisible soap.
When she began to cry softly, Jillian knelt down in front of her chair. “It’s all right, Gram. They’ll be back soon. Do you want me to try to call Connor again?”
Gram shook her head.
“Do you want to go home?” Maybe she could call the Acres and they’d bring the bus.
“No,” Gram whispered. “I can’t remember.” She spread her hands over the quilt. “I can’t remember.”
Jillian wanted to pull her in her arms and hold Gram tight until the fear passed, but she knew with the broken leg it would only hurt her.
“What can’t you remember?”
Gram shook her head and whispered, “Everything. It’s all leaking out of my head like sand does in an hourglass. All the memories are leaving.”
She was shivering now and Jillian couldn’t leave her side even to call someone. “It’s going to be all right, Gram. You’re fine. Connor will be back soon.”
She wasn’t listening. Tears worked their way past wrinkles down her face as she whispered, “I’ve lost them.”
Jillian started shaking as she tried to think of some way to help this wonderful woman who was the heart of an entire town. Telling her it was going to be fine didn’t seem to help. Gram appeared to be curling into the chair, shrinking before her eyes. She’d had a rich, full life collecting memories, and now they were slipping away.
And Gram knew it. The saddest part of all was that Gram knew.
Jillian felt panic climbing up her spine, but she had to keep calm. She had to help. She had to be there to help.
She glanced around the shop, hoping, praying for something that might help calm Gram’s fears.
The beautiful quilt caught her eye. She picked it up and wrapped it around Gram like a huge tent, covering the chair and Gram from her shoulders down to the floor.
“Here are your memories,” Jillian said as she forced a smile. “They’ve been right here all along. They’ll never go away. They’re all around you.”
Gram stopped shaking as she patted the quilt. In a weak voice, she whispered, “I was born in thirty-six. The same year as my Benjamin.”
“That’s right. You lived on a farm right outside of town. Wild roses grew up to the roof in summer.” Jillian could see Gram coming back. “Connor took me there. It was so quiet. The only sound was of the windmill ticking in the wind, almost like a clock.”
Gram nodded. “I remember. That windmill kept me awake on windy nights.”
As they talked, Gram slowly began to calm. She talked about opening the shop and how she loved it when Connor’s parents worked at the paper just across the street. “They were always busy, so Connor would come over here after school. One day I wasn’t paying attention to him, and he took apart one of my Featherweights. I never did get that machine to sew right after that.”
Jillian laughed in relief.
When Connor and Joe finally came through the door, she and Gram were laughing about the time Stella thought she was in labor during the quilting bee. All the ladies were breathing with her through the contractions because she wanted to finish quilting before she headed to the hospital.
Jillian stood, giving Joe her chair beside Gram.
He took Gram’s hand. “You ready to go, Jeanie? It’s almost suppertime and your friends will be waiting for you.”
“I’m ready, Joe.”
He gave a Christmas morning smile. “I got a surprise for you. Connor and the kids helped me move into Autumn Acres this afternoon. I figure since I’m rich now, I can afford to have folks cook my meals and clean up after me. And the best part is I’ll be able to keep watch over you.”
Gram smiled. “Just like always.”
He nodded. “Just like always.”
Connor lifted Gram and carried her to Joe’s pickup while Jillian folded up the wonderful memory quilt.
“Now don’t you worry about missing your quilting, Jeanie,” Joe said as he followed along. “I bought the apartment between yours and mine. We’re knocking out a few walls and turning it into a crafts room and Reese and me figured out how to build a quilting frame that’ll come down from the ceiling with the push of a button.”
“I think I’d like that,” Gram said as Connor tucked her quilt around her. “Only you don’t have to worry about me, Joe Dunaway. I’ll be watching over you. Now we’re eating meals together—no more bags of donut holes for breakfast.”
“Now, Jeanie. I’m too old to be a-changing.”
Connor closed the door on their argument and turned to Jillian. “I saw the calls I missed. Everything all right?”
They stepped back into the shop as Joe drove away. “I know you have to go with...”
He followed her in. “I don’t have to go anywhere. Sunnie and Reese are waiting for Gram. They’ve been with Joe and me for two hours getting him all settled in.” He seemed to be trying to read what she wasn’t saying. “The old guy didn’t have much to move.”
Connor stopped rambling and asked, “What is it? What’s wrong, Jillian?”
She turned to him. “Would it be too much to ask you to hold me one last time?”
Jillian was in his arms before she could let out a breath.