Flynn got to his feet and rolled the kinks from his neck. “Sounds like a good plan to me. I’ll miss our time together out here, though.”
April pushed back her chair and stood up to help fold. “Let’s get this folded and . . . Oh, my goodness!”
“What?” Nessa undid the last clamp.
“Look at the back side.” Tears flowed down April’s cheeks.
Flynn flipped the quilt over, and all three of them went speechless. There was a photograph, maybe an eight-by-ten, right in the middle of the backing. Nanny Lucy was sitting on a quilt with all three of them gathered around her, and underneath she had written: Good memories.
“How did we not see or feel this?” Nessa wiped tears from her eyes with the back of her hand.
“Dammit!” Flynn’s voice cracked as he moved from his spot and hugged both of his cousins at once. “Grown men don’t get all weepy.”
“They do at times like this.” Nessa soaked his shoulder with tears.
“I hope Nanny Lucy meant it when she said the quilt brought good memories for her,” April said between sobs. “She deserved to have something good in her life.”
Flynn took a step back, pulled a white hanky from his hip pocket, and dried his two cousins’ eyes before he wiped his own cheeks. “She wouldn’t want us to carry on like this. Let’s get this folded and taken in the house.”
“Putting a quilt in the frame needs more than one person. I bet Stella and Vivien helped her, but how did she know that she wouldn’t be quilting anymore? Did she ever tell y’all that she was sick?” Nessa blinked away more tears. Flynn was right. Nanny Lucy had been strong, and she’d expect the same from them.
“Not me,” April answered. “She didn’t open up to me about anything—ever.”
“Me either.” Flynn frowned. “Looking back, I don’t think she said much about herself to anyone.”
April moved from one side of the frame to another. “The only thing she ever told me was the story about the tornado.”
“I’m familiar with that one, but my dad told me, not Nanny Lucy. Sometimes when he was between women, he would share things that happened when he was a kid. That wasn’t often, and he had to be in a bit of a melancholy mood, but I liked it when he talked to me about this place,” Flynn answered.
Together they worked until the quilt was folded neatly. Nessa carried it into the house like what it was—a priceless piece of their history.
“That’s exactly what it is,” she muttered.
“What was that?” Flynn asked.
“This thing is worth more than whatever is in that hope chest,” she said.
“Yes!” Flynn and April said in unison again.
When they were inside the house, April stood back and stared at the quilt on the wall. “And Nanny Lucy got even more strict and twice as mean after we were all sixteen. I wonder if that’s because that was when my mother got pregnant, but that picture she had put on the quilt back says that she did have good memories of us up until then. I think it might make her happy if we hung the quilt we just finished on the wall behind the sofa. We could put the one that’s up there in the hope chest, and we could still abide by the rule that the first one married gets the chest and this quilt.”
Nessa nodded, but had misgivings. “But that wasn’t in the will. That wouldn’t be what she wanted, so we shouldn’t do it.”
Flynn kept walking straight to the kitchen. “Maybe she would be proud that we wanted to hang all those memories up to enjoy. Besides, according to her diary, she never got what she wanted in life anyway, so why start now?”
Nessa plopped down on the other end of the sofa. “That sounds a little harsh.”
“Not to me,” April said. “And truthfully, I think she’d be honored if we hung it up. It wouldn’t be disrespecting her wishes but showing her that we’ve accepted our past and are moving on to the future. We could even make a pact right now that it would always hang there instead of going to the one who gets married first.”
A wide smile covered Nessa’s face. “Maybe she wouldn’t mind if we did it with a good heart, and not out of vengeance. I’ll sew loops in the top of it so we can hang it up, and then I’ll get that one”—she pointed to the quilt on the wall—“washed and ready to put in the hope chest for the one of us that marries first.”
“I vote yes,” Flynn said.
“My vote is yes, too.” April went to the kitchen, and in a few minutes brought out a small lunch pail.
“What’s that?” Nessa asked.
April flipped its latch open to show that it was filled with stuff for her lunch. “I found this in the garage last night. I carried it to school every day until I was in the seventh grade, when Nanny Lucy decided that I could start buying my lunch. It was one of the few things that I had like the other girls, and it brings back good memories. So I’m going to use it. See you later, and Nessa, don’t worry yourself crazy about whether we’re doing the right thing with the quilt.”
Nessa opened her mouth to say something, but April and Flynn had already left. She went to her bedroom and pulled out the trundle bed, where she had stored the quilt tops that had fallen out of the closet. “I’m going to start with the double wedding ring one,” she muttered as she studied each of them.
The house phone startled her when it rang. She hurried to the kitchen and grabbed the receiver. “Hello,” she said with caution. After what she’d just said, she wasn’t sure where the answer might come from.
“Are you mad at me?” Jackson asked bluntly.
“Should I be mad at you?” she fired back.
“I hope not. I really like you,” Jackson said. “I waited for you by the waterfall the last few nights.”
“When you figure out why I’m mad, then you can call back.” Nessa returned the receiver to its base.
That was kind of mean, Nanny Lucy’s voice scolded her.
“I was expecting an answer to my question,” Nessa grumbled. “And besides, I’m not ready to talk to Jackson.”
She couldn’t get a clear thought pattern going. April had said she should give him a chance to explain, but the woman had kissed him right there in public. There wasn’t much to explain there. And yet the Jackson she thought she knew wasn’t that kind of man.
“It’s like trying to see the sunshine through mud,” she said as she took a step away from the kitchen.
In seconds the phone rang again. She picked it up on the second ring. “That was fast, and I’m not through being mad, so call back tomorrow.” She wasn’t ready to hear his excuses.
“What was fast?” Stella asked in her unmistakable gravelly voice.
“I thought you were someone else, ma’am.” A red-hot blush heated up Nessa’s cheeks.
“I’d be nosy and ask who you’re mad at, but I don’t have time. April told me yesterday that the quilt was about done. Vivien and I are planning a little two- or three-day road trip to Jefferson to do some antique shopping, so we were wondering when we might inspect it,” Stella said.
“Anytime tomorrow.” Nessa touched her face to see if it was as hot as it seemed. “We’re hemming the border tonight.”