Elisa smiled, delighted. “I do. Look at that.”
“It’s just a silly quilt,” Helen said. “Nothing to fuss over. Reese likes monkeys, that’s all.”
Nancy pulled out several others, each completely different from the last. Obviously Helen enjoyed variety.
Elisa touched the last one Nancy took out and felt as if she had come home.
“This one is...” For a moment English failed her. She thought in English as often and fluently as she thought in Spanish, but sometimes the right word was in the wrong tongue. “You did this by hand? All by hand? And the colors? This is a rainbow.”
“So you like quilts?”
“I know very little about them.” As always, she paused, then decided to go ahead. “In the place where I grew up, there were weavers who made beautiful cloth in every color. This reminds me of that.” She fingered the quilt. Tiny vertical strips in bright colors met horizontal strips in a variety of lengths and widths. “This quilt would keep anybody warm, wouldn’t it? Like sunbeams.”
“I just tried something new, one of those art quilts, only I didn’t see any reason not to make it big enough to use. I take my art on the bed, and that’s the only way I want it.”
“Utility and beauty. That’s what the weavers believe. And each piece is part of who they are and where they come from.” She turned. “The way your quilts are.”
“Nancy told you to say all this, didn’t she?”
Nancy sputtered. “I didn’t tell Elisa to say a blessed thing.”
Elisa laughed. “I’ve been in trouble a time or two for not doing what I’m told, but never the reverse.” She glanced at her watch. “We’re keeping you too long.”
“Did you ever learn to weave?” Helen asked.
“It’s like so many things. I thought the chance would be there forever, and now I’m here and the chance is gone.”
“You could quilt.”
“I have never sewed much,” Elisa said doubtfully. “I don’t have a machine.”
“I have three. You’ll be living right here. You can have your choice, and I’ll teach you.”
Surprised, Elisa heard the offer and everything that came with it. She had a home if she wanted one. She also had a responsibility to this woman if she accepted the offer. This would not be as simple as she had hoped. If she packed and left in the middle of the night, Helen would be alone. And Helen would not take in another companion.
Yet what could she do? She was certain that if she refused, Helen would not offer this invitation to anyone else. And living here would solve Adoncia’s problem, as well as Elisa’s own.
“I would like to try,” she said carefully.
“Just so everybody in the room knows it,” Helen said. “I like Miss Martinez, and that’s the only reason she has been invited to stay here.”
“Mama, there’s not a person in this room dumb enough to think you’d do anything just because we wanted you to,” Nancy said. “You can count on that.”
* * *
Elisa was surprised at the way the remainder of the afternoon developed. Instead of going home, she and Sam stayed at Helen’s house to help. Assuming that his fiancée was still in town, she had expected Sam to make their visit short so he could spend the rest of his day off with her, but he had explained—too casually, she thought—that Christine had driven to Washington on Saturday to spend some time with old friends before she returned to Georgia.
Sam’s personal life was none of her business, but she wondered about his engagement. She knew from the little she had picked up that Sam and Christine rarely saw each other. If Sam were her fiancé, she would not be inclined to spend so much time with other people.
As the others packed, Elisa was pressed into service as Reese’s nanny, while Sam helped Zeke Claiborne pack the old minivan he had bought for the trip. Zeke was a young man still growing into a lanky physique, but Elisa could see how seriously he took his responsibilities.
Manual labor agreed with Sam. He seemed to relish physical activity, running up and down the stairs with boundless energy. For someone who spent so much of his life in spiritual and intellectual pursuits, he had the body of an athlete. Ten minutes into multiple trips outside, he had changed from khakis and a sport shirt into shorts and a T-shirt he kept in a gym bag in his car. He had muscular calves and thighs, and arms strong enough to have lifted George Jenkins off the ground Wednesday night and held him there until he sobered up.
Tessa came downstairs and showed Elisa where to put the baby, who had finally fallen asleep in her arms. Tessa had managed a brief hello earlier, but there hadn’t been time for more.
“Gram tells me you’re moving in?” she said when Reese was safely tucked into a port-a-crib in the back of the house.
“You approve?”
“You’ll be great for her. We’re all so relieved.”
“I’ll enjoy living here.”
“How would you like a tour? Outside, I mean. It’s a little chaotic to show you much about the house, but I need to stretch my legs. Mom and Cissy will keep an eye on Reese, but I can guarantee she’ll sleep at least an hour.”
Evening was on its way, but the temperature was in the high eighties, at least, and Elisa needed to stretch. She followed Tessa outside, taking a quick breath when the wall of heat and humidity hit her on the third step of the porch. “Your family has lived here a long time?”
“For generations. There were Stoneburners and Lichliters all over the area until World War II. Gram lost nearly everybody to the fighting or the aftermath or the economy. Her husband was killed at Pearl Harbor. He was a distant cousin of the Claibornes, so he had roots here, too. Gram raised my mother alone.”
Elisa was never surprised at the sadness people could recount. “It must have been hard to keep the farm.”
“That’s why she’s so stubborn, and why she doesn’t waste time on tact. She never had time for anything but plain speaking and doing what she knew was right. Whether it was or not.”
Elisa laughed softly. “We’ll get along. Most of my life I’ve been surrounded by people who were sure they were right.”
“Were they? Right?”
Elisa sobered. “Too often for their own good.”
Tessa remained silent, as if inviting Elisa to share. But she had already shared more than she was comfortable with. She changed the conversation’s direction. “All this land belongs to Helen?”
“Yes. She leases chunks to local farmers, some for corn, some for cattle.” Tessa pointed out boundaries in the distance and the locations of fields. “There are more farms to the west and south of us, and about fifty acres of woods and fields over toward the river that someone’s bound to build on someday. Let’s go this way and I’ll show you the pond. Last summer we were afraid it would dry up, but all the rain this year has filled it again.”
They passed a fenced-in area with something that looked a little like a gypsy’s wagon. It was surrounded by chickens pecking in the grass, chickens of different colors and sizes.
“The chickens are Gram’s weakness,” Tessa said. “And that’s a portable chicken coop in the center. When they’ve pecked up every weed and bug inside the fence, we hitch it up to the tractor and move it to another spot, stake out the fence again and let them have at it.”
“Ingenious.”
“Gram never kept a pet. But you’ll find she comes out