Pieces of the Heart (13 page)

Jewel heard the sound of a car door slamming next door and jumped up from the bed where she’d been reading. Looking out her bedroom window on the side of the house, she spotted her grandmother’s truck pulled up in the Colliers’ driveway. Quickly stowing the diary under her mattress, she raced from her room and down the stairs, calling out a quick, “I’ll be next door,” to her father’s closed workroom door as she raced outside.

She’d just caught up with her grandmother on the front porch when Mrs. Collier opened the door. Her eyes widened when she caught sight of Grandma Rainy. “I can’t wait for you to see this—it’s going to be such a surprise!”

“Oh, boy,” said Rainy. “Can’t imagine what this could be. Last time I saw you this excited you’d just discovered that fast-acting laxative.”

“Oh, hush,” Mrs. Collier said, eyeing Jewel standing behind her grandmother. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re referring to.”

Rainy snorted and followed Mrs. Collier into the house, Jewel tagging along close behind. Mrs. Collier kept talking as they walked. “Drew helped me with this. He started before Caroline came from Atlanta, and just waited for her to leave the house to put on the finishing touches.”

“Where is Caroline?” Jewel addressed the back of Mrs. Collier’s perfectly curled and sprayed hair that looked as if it would take a hurricane to loosen a strand.

“I sent her to the grocery store for some soy milk. I wanted your grandmother here when Caroline got back so we could surprise her together.”

They wound their way through the kitchen to the laundry room and the connecting storeroom that Mrs. Collier explained had once held old furniture and other stuff from before the house’s most recent redecorating. Jewel hadn’t seen the house before, but she thought it now looked a lot like those pictures she saw in the magazines at the doctor’s office. It was pretty, but she couldn’t imagine putting her feet up on any of the sofa cushions to watch a movie.

As they entered the laundry room, Jewel smelled fresh lumber and paint, reminding her of her dad. Mrs. Collier paused by the closed door to the storeroom and put her hand on the door handle. “Are you ready?”

Both Jewel and her grandmother waited with raised eyebrows, wondering what could be so wonderful about an old storeroom that had just received a new coat of paint. Rainy smirked. “Glad I remembered to take my medication this morning so I won’t have a heart attack from the excitement.”

Ignoring her, Mrs. Collier turned the door handle and pushed it open. “Ta-da!”

Jewel and her grandmother stood looking past Margaret into a room that resembled a small craft shop. Cedar shelves had been built against the longest wall and were now stocked with rolls of brightly colored fabric and batting material. Clear plastic bins lined the lower shelves, all clearly labeled by thread color and needle size to indicate their contents.

Jewel looked up at her grandmother, surprised to see her frowning. Rainy turned to Mrs. Collier. “What’s all this for?”

“For Caroline, of course! Remember how much she loved quilting? I think this is just the thing she needs to get started again.”

Grandma Rainy was still frowning. “Do you think she’s ready?”

“Of course she’s ready—she’s just always too busy with her job to quilt, but now that she’s here for a few months, it’s the perfect time to get back into it.” Mrs. Collier’s expression faltered as she stared at Rainy’s frown.

Rainy continued. “That’s not what I meant. Remember when my Bill was sick in the hospital, right before he passed on? I used to love to knit, always had a knitting project and my needles in a bag at my feet wherever I went. I was knitting a blanket for Shelby and nearly finished it, too, sitting by Bill’s hospital bed. But when he died, I couldn’t stand the thought of knitting. It reminded me too much of a bad time in my life, no matter how much I had used to love it.” Grandma Rainy took one of Mrs. Collier’s hands, as if to soften her words. “I think quilting for Caroline is that way. It makes her think of . . . a tough time. And I don’t think she’s ready to go back there yet.”

Mrs. Collier pulled away, her back to them, and nobody said anything for a long moment. Then her shoulders seemed to droop, reminding Jewel of a flower that had been left in a vase without water too long. “How could I not know this? How can I continue to do the wrong things where Caroline is concerned?”

Grandma Rainy surprised Jewel by leaning forward and hugging her friend. “Just keep loving her. And keep trying. Eventually you’ll both figure it out.” She gave Mrs. Collier a smacking kiss on the cheek. “Assuming you live that long, seeing how long in the tooth you are already.”

Mrs. Collier’s cheek trembled into a small smile, and Jewel saw her grandmother squeeze her friend’s hand again. Feeling the need to say something, Jewel said, “I think it’s pretty cool. I wish I could quilt. Then I could use all this stuff.”

The two older women looked at her with identical gleams in their eyes, but before they could say anything, they heard the front door slam shut and Caroline call out, “I’m back. You can call off the search party.”

Before the three of them could decide on a plan, Caroline had stuck her head through the laundry room doorway. They remained where they were, like three Goldilocks caught by Baby Bear.

Caroline walked toward them, clutching a paper grocery sack in her arms. “What are y’all up to?” As much as they tried to cluster and hide the open doorway behind them, Caroline apparently had no trouble seeing what was there. Jewel saw the light in her eyes fade.

Jewel was the first to speak. “Your mom and my grandma are going to teach me how to make a memory quilt so I can help with my mom’s.”
Why did I say that?
There was nothing so lame in the world as quilting, and if the kids at school ever found out, they’d never let her hear the end of it.

Caroline looked suspiciously from Mrs. Collier’s face to Rainy’s. “Oh. That’s nice.” She peeked inside the room again, and Jewel could tell from the way she held her body forward that she wanted to go in and look closer. But when she caught Mrs. Collier’s hopeful expression, Caroline backed away. “Well, have fun. I’ve got to go put the milk in the fridge.”

They all watched Caroline’s retreating back until Mrs. Collier said, “Well, that went better than I expected.”

Jewel felt her grandmother’s hand on her back, pushing her forward. “Yep, and it looks like we’d better set up a sewing circle in your living room, Margaret, so we can start Jewel’s quilting lessons.”

Jewel didn’t try to hold back her groan as Grandma Rainy propelled her out the door.

C
AROLINE TURNED OVER IN HER BED AGAIN, SEARCHING FOR A comfortable spot, and stared at the sliver of moonlight on the wall. She’d had the dream again, the same one she’d been having since she’d returned to Hart’s Valley. She’d had it the first time the night she’d come home from the hospital after Jude had died. In the dream, she’d been walking down a dark path where she couldn’t see anything except for the path in front of her. She wasn’t scared, because she knew there had been somebody walking with her. She couldn’t see, but she was sure it was Jude.

She glanced at the glow of numbers on her alarm clock. It was still the middle of the night, and a long way until dawn.

She flopped over again and closed her eyes, but still she could see shelves of fabric and quilting supplies, could smell the fresh lumber and paint. She had wanted to go into that back room and explore, feel the cotton beneath her fingers and lay the patterns out in her mind. Sitting up, she pressed her backbone against the headboard and forced her mind to stay in her dark bedroom and out of the back storeroom where her heart and mind were not allowed to go.

The loon called from the lake, its cry strident against the solid wall of night that surrounded Caroline in her bed. Pushing the covers back, she slid her feet into her slippers and shuffled out to the back door, surprised to find it already open. She paused with her hands on the latch of the screen door as she caught the sound of a sigh coming from one of the chairs on the porch. Pressing her forehead against the screen, she spotted her mother.

Margaret sat unmoving in the rocking chair, her body poised on the edge of the seat as if she, too, had been listening to the call of the loon. Her mother still wore her outfit from the dinner party, and her helmet of hair reflected the moonlight like a solid sheet of steel.

Caroline started to open the door but stopped when she heard a sob and noticed for the first time that her mother’s shoulders were bent forward, like the stem of a flower weighed down by rain.

The crying melded with the loon’s, and Caroline looked toward the lake trying to seek guidance as to what to do next. But the loon lapsed into silence, the night broken only by the soft sobs of her mother.

Quietly Caroline pushed the door open. She stared for a long moment, seeing only a stranger. Her mother didn’t sob, and her shoulders never slouched. Even when she had come to the hospital to tell Caroline that Jude had been buried, Margaret had stood stoically erect, a delicate lace handkerchief occasionally dabbed at her eyes. She remembered her mother looking at her own dry eyes, and how Caroline couldn’t explain to her how mere tears could never express the endless wells of grief that echoed through her body and in the new heart beating there.

She watched her mother turn her face up toward the night sky, her elegant features outlined by the forgiving strokes of moonlight. Caroline froze, her mother’s expression mesmerizing in its awfulness. It startled her, made her want to turn back inside and not look anymore, but she stared hard, and the knowledge of what she saw grabbed her heart and squeezed. For the first time in almost fourteen years, Caroline saw the face of a mother whose child had died. In all those years, Caroline had always known herself to be the girl who’d lost her brother, but she had never—not once—seemed to recall that her mother had also lost a son.

She wanted to go to Margaret, to offer words of comfort, but she remained where she was, unsure of what she would say. They had never spoken the same language, their words always seeming to get lost in translation. And Caroline would always, always be the child who had lived instead of the beautiful boy who hadn’t. She thought she could see that every time she looked in her mother’s eyes.

A small cluster of fireflies rose out of the grass and onto the porch, encircling Margaret. They bobbed up and down around her head, like little pats of a mother whispering
hush
to a crying child. Her mother bowed her head, her sobs now intermittent and her shoulders still. The loon called out to the restless moon, its voice closer and more insistent.

Gently Caroline let the screen door close, then backed away, leaving her mother to her own grief and the cries of a lonely loon.