Crazy as a Quilt (A Harriet Turman/Loose Threads Mystery Book 8) (8 page)

“Is that your boyfriend?” Sharon asked when Harriet had returned to the kitchen. So, they hadn’t been as concealed in the shadows as Aiden had thought.

Harriet rubbed the back of her neck.

“It’s complicated, but the simple answer is yes.”

Sharon looked at her but didn’t say anything. Harriet ran her hand through her hair then dropped it to her side.

“Look, this is going to be a long week if we keep walking on eggs around each other. If you have something to say about Steve or anything else, just say it. If it’s that you’re uncomfortable around me and maybe you didn’t expect to be, we can find you a room somewhere else. Foggy Point has a motel not far from downtown. I’ll pay for a room for you. It’s not the Hilton, but it’s clean and we could move you there tonight. The workshop organizers reserved several rooms just in case there were problems, so I know we can get you in there.”

Sharon twisted a hank of her fine blond hair in her fingers.

“Harriet, no. You’ve got it all wrong. I
am
uncomfortable, but not for the reasons you think. I feel terrible about how everyone treated you when Steve died. We weren’t there for you.”

“Would you like some tea?” Harriet asked as she put the kettle on the stove.

“That would be nice.”

It was the first genuine thing Harriet had heard come out of the woman’s mouth since she’d arrived.

“I didn’t expect anything from any of Steve’s friends when he passed. We’d never really been friends. You all were a close group who had known each other since you were children. I get that I was never going to fit, even if Steve had lived.”

“You make us sound like monsters.”

“Not at all.” Harriet handed her a box of mixed flavored tea bags to choose from. “I had a very nontraditional childhood. I don’t fit in many people’s groups of friends. Thankfully, Steve understood that and didn’t expect me to be anything but what I was.”

“That’s what I’m talking about. We didn’t even bother to know that. Steve brought you to a dinner one day, and all we knew is you weren’t from Oakland. I’m not making excuses, but where we went to school, we were the minorities.

“Except for Niko—about a third of our school was Asian—but less than ten percent of our school was Caucasian. Most of the white parents had the money to send their kids to private schools. Ours didn’t. We had to stick together. Jason was bullied by some of the other kids, and that brought us closer than we already were. After that, it was us against the world.”

“Steve told me about your group. Frankly, he was getting tired of it.” Sharon started to say something, but Harriet held her hand up. “He was clear that he still liked his friends. He was just tired of doing everything as a group. He felt like a traitor if he went to a baseball game with his coworkers instead of the gang.”

The kettle whistled, and Harriet poured water into their mugs and carried them to the kitchen table.

“I know Steve used me as an excuse to do things apart from the group, and I didn’t mind because, like I said, I was never going to fit in the group. I mostly grew up in Europe. My schools didn’t have a baseball team or a football team, because football is really soccer there, and most of the schools I went to didn’t have boys. Every now and then, I’d be sent to stay here with my aunt. She taught me to quilt, but I didn’t make any friends here. Just about the time I’d meet someone my age, my parents would ship me off somewhere else.”

“It sounds glamorous.” Sharon attempted a smile.

“It wasn’t. I had some amazing experiences, to be sure. I met the Queen of England and the Emperor of Japan, Queen Margrethe of Denmark and a bunch of lesser dignitaries. My parents are internationally renowned scientists. My job was always to be seen but not heard, while maintaining a suitable list of accomplishments for them to recite when the subject came up. Their great disappointment was that, after graduating college with the required degree in physics, I switched to studying textiles.”

“Pretty impressive, if you ask me.”

Harriet dunked her teabag up and down in her mug then plopped it on an empty saucer she’d put on the table for that purpose.

“Not really. I wasn’t always able to come back to Foggy Point, so I spent a lot of holidays with paid employees while everyone else in my school went home to their families.” She sipped her tea. “Enough about my pathetic past. I’m grown up now and have a great life. If you aren’t here to punish me about Steve, why
are
you here?”

“I’m here because of you, but not because of Steve’s death. I’ll admit it was easy to blame you at first. Eventually, we—or I should say some of us—realized that if we’d been the friends we always pretended to be maybe Steve would have felt comfortable getting treatment. We knew he had a health condition, but no one realized how serious it was.

“After my accident, I realized just how much we’d picked at other peoples flaws growing up. Hours of therapy later, I know it was a defense mechanism on our part. If we pretended we were cooler than everybody else, the bullies left us alone. We had safety in numbers. But, Steve must have thought we’d turn on him if he had a weakness.”

“That all sounds rather dramatic. I can believe that was the case in high school, but you all went off to different colleges, didn’t you?” Harriet spooned a glob of honey into her cup and stirred. “I think it’s much simpler than all that. Steve was in denial. He didn’t want the condition, and if he didn’t acknowledge it, it didn’t exist.”

“Maybe I’m giving us too much credit.”

Harriet tasted her tea. She’d added too much honey, but she took another long sip, hoping Sharon would reveal why she was really sitting opposite her at the kitchen table.

“Since my accident, not very many modeling jobs are coming my way. I can do hand modeling, but those calls are few and far between. I majored in partying in school and then quit after two years to model in Europe.”

Harriet waited in silence for her to complete a sip-tea stalling maneuver.

“You probably don’t remember, but Rick and I came over for dinner one night, and your quilting friends were just leaving. One of them had a beautiful quilt draped over her arm, and you were putting away some pretty quilt pieces. I didn’t think too much of it then, but while I was in the hospital I had a lot of time to think. It really hit me—I don’t create anything.

“I was always totally dependent on my looks, which I know now are only too fleeting. I thought about those quilts. Your family will have them forever, no matter what happens to you. I know that sounds morbid, but I was in the hospital on drugs.

“I realized I want that. I want to make something…anything. I may turn out to be a wretched quilter, but I at least want to try. Besides, you and your friends seemed so happy. I’m not sure I know what that word means anymore.”

Harriet folded her hands in her lap.

“Okay,” she finally said. “Have you ever quilted before?”

The other woman’s shoulders sagged.

“Have you sewn anything?”

Sharon brightened. “I can hem pants with a stapler.”

“It’s a start,” Harriet said with a laugh.

They sipped their tea.

“Let’s go into my studio. I have a couple of books on beginning quilting. Maybe you can page through them tonight before you go to bed. That will at least help you get familiar with the terminology.”

“That sounds great. I’m actually a pretty quick learner.”

Harriet took their cups to the sink then led the way to her studio. Maybe this wasn’t going to be so bad after all.

Chapter 9

A fine sheen of sweat frosted Marine’s brow as she and Harriet left their classroom in the basement of the Methodist church. Jessica came up behind them and put her hand on Marine’s arm.

“Are you okay? You don’t look well.”

Marine glared at her.

“Do you have something that will cure what ails me?”

“No, and if I did, I wouldn’t give it to you. You know that wouldn’t help you. Are you in a program?”

Marine jerked her arm free.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about. My breakfast didn’t agree with me, that’s all.” She stormed off down the hallway and up the stairs.

Jessica laughed. “Was it something I said?”

Harriet shifted her tote bag up onto her shoulder.

“Do you really think she’s using drugs?”

“I don’t have a single doubt. She’s a user, and it looks like her supply ran out. She’ll have to make an excuse and go find something on the street.”

“In Foggy Point?”

“Come on, you’re not that naive. Drugs are everywhere. She might be trying to clean up, but she’s not succeeding. Not today, anyway.”

“It must have been hard for her, sitting through this morning’s lecture on the history of crazy quilts.”

Jessica laughed again.

“It was hard for me, and I wasn’t coming off of anything. That lady was a really dry speaker.”

“I thought the first part was interesting,” Harriet said. “I’d heard people say that crazy quilts were the first patterns made in America. She makes a good argument for why that isn’t true.”

“You’re right. I hadn’t realized they were constructed on a larger piece of backing, making them not a good choice for the early settlers who didn’t have big pieces of fabric to work with.”

“There’s also the age-old problem of no surviving samples from before the late eighteen-hundreds, at which point suddenly there are a lot of them.” Harriet pulled her smartphone from her pocket. “Lauren just sent me a text. She and my aunt and our friends Connie and Mavis are waiting for us by the front door. My roommate needs to buy a little more fabric for her afternoon session, so we thought we’d go to lunch at the sandwich place just down the block from Pins and Needles. We have two hours for lunch. Does that work for you?”

“Sounds great if you have room for me.”

“My car can take seven if the three in back are agile enough to get in,” Harriet told her as they reached the stairs and went up to join the others.

Harriet put her phone to her ear but couldn’t hear her caller.

“Wait a minute, I need to walk outside so I can hear.”

Pins and Needles was full of crazy quilt students, and it sounded like they were all talking at once. Harriet stepped outside to the sidewalk.

“Hello? Michelle, is that you?” She listened for a minute. “Yes, I still plan to have my weekly session with Lainie…Sure, I can pick her up on my way home from my afternoon class. Tell her I can be there around four-thirty…No problem. Bye.”

“Everything okay?” Aunt Beth asked. She’d followed her niece outside.

Harriet slid her phone back into her pocket.

“Yeah, that was Michelle. She wanted to be sure I was still going to give Lainie her weekly quilting lesson. Since we’re on our own for dinner tonight, I said yes. I’d told her that before, but she asked if I can pick her up at Aiden’s.”

Beth shook her head.

“Why can’t she drive the girl herself? It is her daughter, after all.”

“I didn’t ask, and she didn’t offer a reason. If it’s easier on Lainie for me to pick her up, I’m happy to do it.”

“What about your roommate?”

Harriet smiled.

“Funny thing, that. It turns out she really does want to learn to quilt. I told her about Lainie, and she asked if she could join the lesson, too.”

“So, all that worry about her coming here to torture you about Steve was for nothing?”

“That may still be in play, but we’ve talked, and it would seem that things are a lot more complicated than what I was thinking.”

Aunt Beth picked a stray thread from her jacket sleeve.

“You just be careful. I still don’t like the way she was talking to you when she first arrived.”

“I will, but I think she was as nervous about coming to my house as I was to have her come.”

“It was her idea, though.”

“Aren’t you the one who always says ‘Don’t borrow trouble’?”

“Don’t you throw my words back at me, Missy,” Aunt Beth said and then laughed. “I hope you’re right is all I’m going to say about it.”

Music came from Harriet’s pocket, and she pulled her phone out and tapped the face.

“We better round up our crews. That was our twenty-minute warning.” She slid the phone into her pocket and followed her aunt back into the store.