Pieces of the Heart (19 page)

“What was that other thing about loons you were going to say back there at Rainy’s? You started, and then you stopped and you left me curious.”

Her hands closed into a tight ball again. “I don’t remember. Something to do with the loon’s call and what it meant to the Indians.”

He was silent for a moment. “I wish I had known him. Shelby talked about him all the time. He must have been a great guy.”

She looked at him, her face relaxed for the first time since he’d met her. It was a pretty face, and definitely one that he would have pursued if he didn’t know better.

“He was. Everybody loved Jude. He was one of those people who got along with everybody, and was good at everything he did.” She looked like she was going to say something else, but stopped and glanced down at her hands again.

“What? Say it.”

Her smile deepened and she ran her hand nervously through her ponytail. “Oh, it’s just that I always thought Shelby and Jude would get married. They were like two halves of the same person. She was two years older, but you never would have guessed it.”

“But then he died.”

She turned toward her window and nodded.

“Seventeen’s pretty young to die.” He didn’t know why he kept prodding her. At first he thought it was because it was such a challenge to get her to open up. But after he saw her smile, it became something else entirely.

He watched as her hand clutched at her heart, gripping the fabric of her shirt without her even seeming to notice it.

“Yeah. Way too young.”

“I remember the year. I was a senior at UNC and Shelby was a sophomore. I think I’d been in love with her since I first saw her in art history class her freshman year. I would have pursued her then, but she made it very clear that there was no room for anybody else but Jude. So we just became very good friends.”

Caroline’s brows drew together. “She certainly didn’t waste any time marrying you after Jude died. It was within a year. I think that’s why I lost contact with her. I don’t think I ever forgave her for that.”

He stared hard out of the windshield. Finally he said, “She never stopped loving him.”

She turned her head to look at him but didn’t say anything.

“I knew it when I married her, too.” He shrugged, trying to slide the heaviness off his shoulders. “She loved me, in a way. But I know she never really got over losing Jude.”

“Didn’t that bother you—knowing you weren’t her first choice?”

He stretched his fingers on the steering wheel, noticing the new calluses and chipped nails. “No. It’s hard to be jealous of a dead man. And I loved her. I always felt that having a little bit of her heart was better than nothing at all.”

Glancing over at her, he saw that her knuckles were white where she clutched at her shirt and she was practicing her breathing exercises again. It was time to back down. He let a lightness he didn’t feel into his voice. “Is that why you don’t like me—because Shelby married me?”

She relaxed against the car seat and dropped her hands to her lap. “No, that’s certainly a reason, but there’re plenty of others.”

He threw back his head and laughed. He could see her trying to hide her answering smile by turning her head toward the window, but he saw the creases in her cheek. “Good one. You know, I suspect there’s a lot more of that in you. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to letting some of that out.”

“That’s assuming I tolerate your presence long enough for you to try.”

He laughed again as they headed up the mountain, glad to have finally caught a glimpse of the girl who had once planned a trip around the world using her mother’s credit card.

Jewel closed the diary and went back to the room where her mother’s things were kept. She pulled out the quilt and spread it on the bed in the same way Rainy had spread her mother’s quilt out on the craft table. As she had been reading her mother’s diary, a niggling thought had kept bothering her, and she’d come to find out if she’d remembered correctly.

Closely examining each completed square, she tried to remember where she’d spotted what she was looking for. When she exhausted her search, she began at the top again, and worked her way through each square more slowly this time. She was about to give up and fold it back into the trunk when she had another thought. Picking up the top corner, she looked at the stitching in the border. There, in pale gold thread, was hand-stitched the outline of a bird shaped like a duck but with a long, flat beak and legs that were oddly set way back on its body.

A tingling at the back of her scalp warned her that a headache was on its way. But she sat on the bed with the quilt on her lap for several minutes, hearing a silent voice inside her head telling her that the quilt wasn’t ready to be taken out of the trunk. Her fingers toyed with the stitching of the bird as she sat and thought about what it all meant.

Eventually she got up and folded the quilt back, where it would wait until it was ready to be seen.

C
AROLINE WAITED UNTIL SHE HEARD DREW’S TRUCK PULL AWAY before she walked across the yard and knocked on Jewel’s back door. She was surprised to see Jewel already in her swimming suit.

“Hi. I know I’m early, but I wanted to make a quick phone call to my boss in Atlanta before our lesson this morning.”

Jewel opened the door wider. “Sure. You know where the phone is.”

Passing through the rear of the house, Caroline once again noted the incredible furniture in the rooms they passed. She paused at the dining room, empty except for a table and two chairs.

Jewel moved into the room ahead of her. “My dad’s not finished with this room yet. He’s planning on making more chairs and a buffet table to store my mom’s pottery.”

Caroline squatted to look at the large breakfront and ran her hand over the carvings, her fingers outlining the dips and creases of the wood, almost sensing the passion of the man as he created something beautiful from a solid block of wood. She jerked her hand away, as if she could feel the connection between herself and the craftsman.

“I think he means for this furniture to be all about my mom.” Jewel pointed to the top of the cabinet. “See—here’s an unfinished canvas of a painting she was working on when she died. If you look around the edges of the chest, you’ll find her paintbrushes and things she kept around her workroom that helped her paint.”

Caroline stood and walked around the table slowly, taking everything in and wondering anew at the artistry of the work and still not being able to associate it with the artist. “What did your dad do before he came here?”

“He was a partner in a big law firm. He always worked a lot.”

Caroline’s eyes widened. “You’re kidding.”

“No. Seriously. Why do you think I’m kidding?”

“Oh, nothing. I’m just . . . surprised. I mean, he really has a talent for furniture making. I just can’t see the same guy who makes this furniture as a lawyer, that’s all.”

Jewel sat down in one of the chairs and ran her hand over the smooth surface of the table. “Yeah, my mom used to say the same thing. They argued a lot about it. He said that he was as good a lawyer as he was a furniture maker. I think my mom understood that—but she hated that he spent all of his time as a lawyer. That pretty much didn’t leave any time for anything else.”

“Does he miss it? Being a lawyer, I mean.”

“Yeah, I think he does. He loves making furniture, but I think he misses being a lawyer; not that legal things got him so excited, but more like he misses mixing with other people, and arguing to get his way, and basically using his brain. After Mom died, he had this stupid idea that we needed to change our lives completely, so we sold everything and moved up here. He even bought a pickup truck. He looks
so
ridiculous in it.”

Caroline didn’t agree at all, but she kept the thought to herself. “So you don’t like it here in Hart’s Valley?”

The girl shrugged. “It’s not that bad—not that I’ll tell my dad that, of course. But I don’t think my dad’s any happier than he was before. He bought Grandma Rainy’s shop, but he doesn’t seem real excited about it. As much as he loves making his furniture, I think he needs to have his brain challenged in a different way, too, you know?”

“Tell me about it. I think I’m going to die of brain atrophy if I don’t start using mine again. Speaking of which, I’m going to go use your phone now. Why don’t you go outside and start your stretches? I’ll be there in just a minute.”

Jewel rose from her chair slowly. “What about you? You said you were an accountant. Didn’t you ever miss the quilting you used to do?”

Caroline stilled, amazed again at this young girl who always seemed to see things much more clearly than most adults she knew. “I kept myself too busy to think about it.”

Jewel stared at her with those eyes that made Caroline want to squirm under their scrutiny. “My mom used to tell me that it’s always the things you avoid that are the things you should do first. The more you avoid them, the harder they seem to chase you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, maybe you should get back into quilting again. I mean, what else are you going to do while you’re up here?”

Caroline pushed a chair under the table a little too hard, making it knock into the wood. “I don’t think so. I’m so out of practice, and I have no patience for it anymore.”

Jewel just stared at her, not saying anything.

“I mean, where would I start?”

“Well, there’s my mother’s quilt. You’d have your mom and my grandma to help you get started. Plus, you knew my mom. You’d be able to add stuff that would make it special.”

“I don’t know. . . .”

“Oh, come on. If you don’t like it, you can quit. Just give it a try.”

Caroline felt herself wavering, could almost feel the cotton fabric under her fingers and the tug and pull of a needle guiding thread. “Well, maybe just once, to get everybody started . . .”