Her intelligent eyes looked straight at him, and he guessed she was one of those rare people who listened, really listened.
“I can put in overtime and will work Saturdays, but I can’t promise you I’ll stay in town more than three months. If you think I can complete the job by then, I’ll give it my best shot.”
“I understand,” he said, even though he didn’t. Why couldn’t she stay longer? Who moves to a town for three months? Someone just killing time, he reasoned.
A mix of conversation and laughter came from the back of the shop where the ceiling lowered to eight feet, allowing room for a storage room above and a meeting room below.
Connor took the lead. Unlike the stranger, he knew exactly what he was walking into. The twice-a-week quilting bee. An old frame hung from the beams, allowing just enough room for chairs to circle the quilt being hand-stitched together. It might be a lost art in most places, but here, the women seemed to love not only the project, but the company.
The moment the ladies saw him their voices rose in greeting. All eight of them seemed to be talking to him at once. As soon as he greeted each one, he introduced Jillian James to them. “I’ve hired Jillian to help catalog my grandmother’s collection. Gram’s got a great treasure here in her shop.”
The ladies agreed with his plan, but two reminded him that it would be a long time before his gram retired.
His grandmother, Eugenia Ann Freeman Larady, slowly stood and offered her hand to Jillian. Where Connor had been told his eyes were Mississippi River brown, his gram’s had faded to the pale blue of shallow water. Every year she’d aged he’d grown more protective of her, but today he needed to take a step backward and see how she got along with a stranger brought in to work with her.
Gram winked at Jillian as if she already counted her as a friend. “Call me Gram if you like. All Connor’s friends do.”
“Gram,” Jillian said with a genuine smile.
“I’ve decided.” The willowy old dear cleared her throat before continuing. “I’ll probably be working on a quilt when the good Lord calls me home and I’ll have to say, ‘Just give me time to finish the binding, then I’ll come dancing through the Pearly Gates.’”
He’d heard her say those words a thousand times over the years. Now, most of what she said were old sayings like that. New ideas, new thoughts, were rare.
“Gram,” he said gently. “Jillian wants to help you get these quilts all in order so someday they’ll be on display in the county museum.”
His grandmother nodded as she looked around the shop, every inch of its wall space covered in quilts. Gram smiled. “I’d like that. I’ll even get out my pioneer quilts. The ones brought here in covered wagons. Some are worn. They were used, you know, but then, that’s what quilts are made for, too. Plain or fancy, they wrap us in our families’ warmth.”
“She’ll write down the details and take pictures so you can show them all off at once to your friends,” Connor pressed, hoping Gram understood.
Eugenia had lost interest in talking to him. She took Jillian’s hand and tugged her to the only empty chair around the six-foot square of material pulled so tightly on the quilting frame it could almost have served as a table. “Before we start, we have to work on this quilt. Dixie pieced it for her niece, and the wedding is in two weeks. Hand quilting takes time.”
Connor moved away as the ladies folded Jillian into the group. She glanced over at him, looking as if she hoped he’d toss her a life preserver.
He shook his head. “We’ll go over the details later,” he said, low enough for only Jillian to hear. “As of right now, you’re on the clock. I’ll return at a little after five.”
At the door he looked back, wondering if the tall woman would still be there at closing time.
Once on the street, Connor walked left toward the natural park entrance near the bridge. He dodged traffic, three cars and a pickup, then headed down a trail to the creek. A stream meandered through Laurel Springs as wild as it had been when his people settled here. The tall grass, dry now, appeared bunched in thick clumps over the uneven land. Huge old cypress trees huddled by the water, hauntingly gray in their dusty winter coats. February. The one month he’d always thought of as void of color.
Connor could breathe here by the stream. He could think. He could relax.
The rambling acres running untamed through town were more swamp than park now, but next spring the city would have the money to clean it up. They’d fight back nature to make running trails and small meadows spotted with picnic tables.
But Connor craved the wildness of this spot in winter. The cold. The loneliness of it. As he strolled near the water, the sounds of the town almost disappeared, and he could believe for a few minutes that he was totally by himself. That he was free. No responsibilities. No worries.
Duty would pull him back soon. It always did. But for a while he could allow his mind to drift, to dream. There were days in his organized, packed routine that all Connor wanted to do was run away.
Only he never would.
Some people are meant to grow where they’re planted.
Jillian’s words echoed in his thoughts. I can’t promise you I’ll be here in three months, she’d said, as if it were a possibility for everyone. Didn’t she know that the people in this town of Laurel Springs were like the residents of the mythical Brigadoon: they lived here forever, and she was simply a visitor for a day?
A story danced in his head as he walked through the dried buffalo grass of winter. The stiff stalks made a swishing sound, like a brush lightly moving over a drum. His imagination was all the escape he needed most days.
He was leaving his world, his reality, his home, if only for an hour. If only in his mind.
Jillian closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. She loved the smells of the quilt shop. Lavender soap left on the women’s skin as they routinely washed their hands so no perspiration stained the quilt. Lemon wax on the eighty-year-old counter that had been left behind when a mercantile became the quilt shop. The smell of cotton, fresh and new, blended with the hint of dyes pressed into material. She even liked the scent of the oil on the hundred-year-old Singer Featherweight machines lining the back wall. Soldiers waiting to do their duty.
Eugenia served orange blossom tea and gingersnap cookies when the ladies took a break. Her hands were worn, with twisted bones covered over in paper-thin skin so fine not even fingerprints would show.
Jillian was surprised that they’d accepted her into their group without many questions. She’d never spent much time with women more than double her age and found it fascinating that they talked in stories, flowing from one to another. No hurry, no debates, no lectures. Just a gentle current that moved as easily as the sharp needles through the padded layers of material.
Paulina, with her funny tales of living in Dallas in the sixties.
The three Sanderson sisters, who finished each other’s sentences and laughed at their own jokes.
The classy lady, dressed in a silk pantsuit, who didn’t seem to mind a bit that everyone called her Toad.
Dixie didn’t say much; she worked with her head down. Neither did a pixie of a woman named Stella, but she laughed at everyone’s jokes as if she’d never heard them before.
Stories they’d all probably heard a hundred times circled around them like classical music, comforting and welcoming to their ears.
Eugenia Larady sat on Jillian’s left, showing her how to make the stitches. Jillian tried her best but didn’t miss the fact that Paulina, on her right,