Connor wasn’t surprised when Sunnie climbed onto the Autumn Acres bus with Gram that evening. Everyone knew grandchildren were always welcome at the Acres, and tonight his daughter didn’t seem to have anywhere else she’d rather be. Like Gram had been to Connor, she was always there, always loving, never judgmental.
“I’ll call you, Dad, when the movie’s over,” Sunnie yelled out the window. “Gram says we’re watching Grease tonight, and they’re serving banana splits at intermission.”
Connor nodded. “The Acres’s movies always have at least one intermission for restroom breaks and snacks.”
He noticed most of his daughter’s black makeup was missing from around her eyes. “You know, Gram’s seen Grease a dozen times.”
“I know. We both sing along with all the songs. Pretty lame, I know. I’m trying to talk the event planners into doing a Grease-style dance one night. Mr. Dunaway said he and Gram used to dance together when they were young.” Sunnie smiled as she hadn’t smiled in weeks. “Later, Dad.”
Connor backed away, watching them go. It seemed only a few days had passed since he’d watched her leave for first grade on a yellow bus. He’d offered to drive her, but she shook her head. “I’ve been waiting years to ride the bus, Daddy.” So she danced with excitement up the steps, and he stood in the driveway watching until the bus disappeared.
“She’s a good kid.” Jillian locked the shop door with the key he’d given her. “You should have seen the way she took care of Gram.”
Connor crammed his hands into his pockets. “I know she’s got a good heart, but sometimes I wonder where her brain goes. Point one being that jerk of a boy she planned to go out with tonight. His senior picture is probably a mug shot. Why would she pick that walking train wreck to be seen with?”
“I know.” Connor couldn’t have missed the anger in her voice as Jillian added, “For a while he had his eyes stuck to my chest. I think that may have been what started the fight they had.”
“The one in the street for half the town to see?”
“Yes.” Jillian laughed. “Both of them looked so livid I wasn’t sure which one might throw the first punch. If it had turned physical, my money would have been on Sunnie.”
“You don’t know how hard it was for me to keep from storming out and decking the guy. Thanks for saving her.”
“I just gave her a choice. A way out. As to why she picked him, I’m guessing it was simply because he is tall.”
Connor shook his head. “She’s got to have more requirements than that. Like potential, or manners, or at least a dozen functioning brain cells.”
“She’ll have a longer list, next time.”
“There’s going to be a next time? I was hoping she’d give my inevitable heart attack a reprieve and not date again until college.”
Jillian turned toward the bed-and-breakfast, pulling the collar of her jacket up against the cool breeze from the north. After a few steps, she glanced back at Connor. “Aren’t you walking home?”
He swore he heard a hint of disappointment in her voice and wondered if she enjoyed the walks, too.
“My Audi and my truck are both behind the shop. Since I didn’t take Gram to lunch, I didn’t bother to take it back to the house. I was thinking I should take you out tonight to celebrate. Maybe someplace other than Mamma Bee’s Pastries.”
“If you celebrate every time your daughter turns down a jerk, you may be eating out a lot.” She glanced up at the cloudy sky. “Looks like rain. I might catch a ride since you’re heading that way.”
He didn’t move as he watched her closely. “I’m not celebrating losing Derrick for a son-in-law. The party is for you. Two hours after I emailed in your articles this afternoon, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram picked one up.”
“Really?” She covered her mouth as though holding back a cry of joy. “Tell me all about it.”
“Over dinner,” he insisted. “I didn’t have lunch today so I’m starving. When I came over to pick up Gram, she was already eating a sandwich. So, lady, you owe me a dinner partner for an hour.”
“Fair enough, but you’re right, not Mamma Bee’s. Every time I eat one of her great sandwiches I can feel the pounds layering on my backside.”
He opened his mouth to comment about the nature of her backside but quickly reconsidered. After a moment he said, very formally, “Where would you like to go, Miss James? It’s your party, after all.”
“Lennie’s Tacos and More.”
“I had no idea you loved Mexican food.”
“I don’t. I plan to eat the More.”
Thirty minutes later they were crowded shoulder to shoulder at the restaurant’s bar. He ordered a taco plate, and she ordered a steak with fried eggs and hot sauce on top. Huevos rancheros, with eight ounces of steak as the bottom layer, pure Texas style.
It was so noisy they had to yell unless their heads were close. Once, her hair touched his cheek. A slight brush, nothing more, but his senses came alive. He could hear her, but had to fight the impulse to close the distance between them. Connor couldn’t remember being so attracted to a woman.
She was excited about being paid for her writing and kept swiveling on her stool, bumping his leg now and then. It was accidental, a casual touch, but so rare in his world that he had to keep reminding himself it meant nothing.
Once he knew her better, they’d settle into being friends. That’s how it always happened. He was too steady, too boring, too nailed down with baggage to be spontaneous. He had a wealth of worthless information to talk about—books, politics, ancient history—but he suspected women didn’t want that these days. Maybe they never did. They wanted excitement.
He wouldn’t even know where to start.
But Jillian didn’t flirt with him, didn’t even try. If she was waiting for him to make the first move, good luck with that. He was attracted to her, but that didn’t mean he planned to do anything about it.
This dinner, one-on-one, alone with a woman near his age, was so unusual he wasn’t sure how to react. He’d dated a few girls in college before he met his wife, and he’d gone out a few times after she died, but he’d never felt like he did now. Jillian was a friend, almost. An employee, almost. A stranger still, for sure.
After arguing over who paid, they ran back to his truck, dodging huge raindrops. He put his arm around her shoulders lightly, protecting her as much as he could and wondering if she felt the pull, too. If she didn’t? If he guessed wrong? One mistake, stepping too far, could ruin the fragile alliance between them.
She was kind to Gram. She’d helped his daughter. They talked. They laughed. He’d helped her sell her article. None of that added up to anything more than friendship.
Better he keep things the way they were now. Venturing out into feelings had never done him much good.
He drove back to the bed-and-breakfast, staying on safe topics.
“You could build on this one article, maybe even do several? I’d be happy to help with the editing. I’ve published a few dozen articles in research journals and a few in travel magazines.”
He’d even done three books on early Texas—way early, before Columbus. They’d sold to a university press and the royalty check usually paid for a nice dinner out every six months. But he wasn’t about to mention those. One chapter on the Clovis culture a thousand years ago would work better than the Queen’s apple did in Snow White.
She asked questions about what the newspaper in Fort Worth paid and how often they might buy one of her articles, but didn’t say if she planned to do more.
When he pulled in front of her lodging, she didn’t move to get out of the truck. Both just watched rain running down the windows for a few minutes. The streetlights were fuzzy and the town looked like a fresh watercolor painting left out in the rain.
Finally she broke the silence. “I forgot to tell you about a quilt Gram showed me today.”
He turned off the truck and shifted to face her, enjoying the stillness of the inside of his Ford compared to the noise in the restaurant. The sound of the rain was almost background music, and he liked being able to hear her sigh.
“It was a friendship quilt a group of women made. All done in Laurel Springs High School colors, purple and white. The women who put it together had been cheerleaders back in the early eighties. Most only kept in touch by Christmas cards and eventually emails, but they considered themselves a sisterhood. After twenty-five years they decided to have a reunion weekend. No husbands or family, lots of wine and laughing.”
“I get the picture,” he said, almost wanting to interrupt her story just to tell Jillian how much he loved all the stories she told. Gram never talked to him the way she did this stranger. Jillian was accomplishing exactly what he wanted her to. She was collecting the town’s stories.
Maybe Jillian simply had the time to listen, or maybe Gram thought everyone else had already heard the stories. But Jillian was sharing them with him, as if letting him in on a treasure hunt.
She leaned back, relaxing, as she continued, “Each ex-cheerleader was to bring a quilt square picturing a memory of their high school glory. A football game won. The night they dropped Kandy and she broke her leg. The slumber party they had out at a scary cabin. The night it snowed on the way home from the state competition. The all-night party after graduation, when their last cheer routine stopped the dance with the crowd roaring.”
He hadn’t been popular in high school, but in small towns the cheerleaders are kind of like the local celebrity gossip channel. Everyone kept up with what they were doing, who they dated.
Jillian stretched her leg and bumped his knee.
Neither one commented. An accidental touch. Nothing more.
“So the story goes, according to Gram. They all spent two days drinking, singing old songs, trying to do all the old cheers, then on Sunday morning they each wrote their name with disappearing ink on the big square one of the girls had quilted in the school colors.
“By this time most were hungover from wine and several rounds of shots. They wanted to get home. They’d talked the high school year through. All except for the all-night party. The last night they were all together. Gram said they’d made a pact at the party when they were all eighteen. They promised in twenty-five years, if they all came together, they’d tell any secrets kept from the others.”
“This is getting interesting.” Connor leaned closer, wishing he could see her face clearer in the darkness. “Let me guess. Any murders? Secret babies? Wild affairs?”
“No. Only one real secret. Seven of them had kept it from one girl. It seemed this one, a cheerleader they called Mag, was engaged and planned to marry at the end of summer after graduation. She was still a virgin and so was the shy boy she was marrying.”
Connor didn’t miss the tear that slid unchecked down Jillian’s cheek and knew her story wouldn’t have a happy ending.
“The women took the quilt to Gram’s shop that last morning. Then each embroidered her signature on the quilt before the ink vanished. Little by little, they told what they’d all kept silent about. What all seven had tried to forget.
“The secret came out in pieces while they finished sewing. Several of the girls got the shy boy off by himself and, as Gram put it, ‘tried to teach him a few things.’ At first he must have thought it a harmless joke, but a few of the girls went too far. He fought them off and finally broke away, embarrassed by what they did, what he’d seen. It made the girls mad that he got so upset, and they told everyone he was gay.”
“Was he?”
“I don’t know. Gram said she thought he and Mag were planning to be missionaries. She thinks he was just naive. But he left town that night. Engagement broken. He’d changed his mind.”
Connor followed the logic. “If he had played along, the story would have gotten out and Mag would have probably broken up with him anyway. The boy couldn’t win with seven-to-one odds, plus groups tend to push each other. The girls probably went further than they’d planned.”
She nodded, agreeing with his logic. “As the girls confessed their secret, Mag grew angry. It seemed she’d never loved another like him, and she’d spent years looking for him. Mag picked up the quilt and stuffed it in the trash. She swore they’d all be sorry.”
Jillian jumped when she heard thunder roll. She bumped his knee again, and this time she didn’t try to pull away. Connor didn’t move his knee either. The coming storm was making her on edge. Maybe touching him, even slightly, was calming. But it was having the opposite effect on him.
“Folks heard about the fight at the quilt shop. A few said the women were running out the front door like the devil had come to town.”
“I guess that broke up the weekend.”
“It did. Gram said, as far as she knew, none of the girls kept in touch with each other after that. Gram found the quilt that Monday morning after they’d used her shop machine to put the names on as a final touch. She finished the border on it. She said she noticed all eight names were on the school colors square.”
Connor could guess the rest. “Gram finished it off and no one ever came to pick up the quilt. She called a few of the girls and heard the story, but none wanted to claim the quilt.”
“Right, but that’s not all the story. Every now and then Gram takes the quilt from the shelf and refolds it. She says that’s what everyone knows to do with quilts.”
“Makes sense.” He shrugged, guessing Jillian hadn’t heard of that rule either.
She lowered her voice to a whisper and added, “One by one over the years, all the names have disappeared. The block where they’d been put is empty.”
“You think Mag killed them, then came back to town, snuck into the shop and ripped out each dead cheerleader’s name?”
Jillian laughed. “Sunnie told me you write mystery stories sometimes, but that’s a little too much for a town named Laurel Springs, don’t you think? Besides, if they’d died, Gram would have heard about it. Most still have family here. She says she asks about them now and then, like folks do with people that were high school stars. One had cancer, but lived. One’s been married three times, but she’s made a good income from it. None of the seven seemed to have any more heartache than anyone else their age.”
“But the names on the quilt disappeared.”
She smiled. “But the names disappeared.”
He grinned at her. “Great story for a stormy night. You mind if I do some digging for a few facts?”
“No...”
Lightning crackled across the sky and he swore he saw sudden panic in her stormy blue-gray eyes.
Before he could react, the next flash lit up the sky and she was gone. She’d opened the truck door and was halfway to the porch before he thought to move.