“Then I guess we better go talk to Miz Maudie about the adoption paperwork,” Kent said. “But you have to promise me to not beg for another one.”
Callie didn’t budge from her spot on the rug. “I won’t if you’ll make a playdate with April. She likes cats just like me. I want her to come see my room and play with the kittens with me. Promise me?”
“Heaven help me,” Kent groaned, but he promised.
“Miz Maudie isn’t here. She left for lunch,” Stella said, “but I can fill out those papers for you. April, you might come on with me, and I’ll show you where they are and how to get them done.”
“I’ll be right here playing with the puppies,” Vivien said.
Callie carried the kitten into the office right behind Stella. Kent had stepped to one side, but when April passed him, her arm brushed against his. Sparks danced all around the whole room, but she took a deep breath and gave herself a lecture.
This isn’t the first time you’ve been attracted to a man, so ignore the electricity between the two of you. Besides, this is not, absolutely not, something you should even think about. He’s a lawyer, and you work in an animal shelter. He’s only humoring his daughter, so if and when he ever calls to set up a playdate, tell him you have plans.
“Okay, the adoption papers are always in this drawer,” Stella said.
The squeaking noise the drawer made brought April back to the present. “Here, April.” Stella handed three sheets stapled together at the corner to her. “I’ll tell you what to write down. Once you do one, you will know how the next time.”
When April finished, she had Kent’s address and landline and cell numbers, as well as Callie’s full name, her birthday, and what she planned to name the kitten. She gripped the pen so hard that her fingers ached when she finished. But dammit, Kent was leaning over her shoulder while she wrote, and his warm breath on her neck sent shivers up and down her spine. And that wasn’t all—remnants of his aftershave lingered in the air, filling her nostrils with something woodsy with hints of cedar and ginger all mixed up together.
“Now, Kent, you and Callie sign your names on these lines.” Stella whipped the paper around to face them. “Then we’ll make a copy for you and put these in our files.”
“When are you going to call April?” Callie asked her father as she carefully printed her name.
Kent’s cheeks turned a little pink. “Well.” He drew the word out to four syllables.
“I’ll check my calendar for a day when I’m not working,” April assured Callie. “You’re going to be busy for a few weeks getting Cindy used to your big house and used to Belle.”
“Thanks again,” Kent mouthed over the top of Callie’s head.
April smiled and nodded. She didn’t expect him to ever ask her to babysit. And she wasn’t sure what she would say if Kent called her and asked her to come spend time with his daughter. She really didn’t have to worry about any of that, or the attraction she felt for the man, because she would probably never see him again.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Flynn found that sewing through two layers of fabric and the batting in between them was nothing compared to hemming a big quilt by hand. He was all thumbs when it came to doing something that Nessa called blind stitching. If the women from the quilting club didn’t like the part of the quilt that he had hemmed and didn’t pass them on their job, he would never know what was in the hope chest. More importantly, Nessa and April would never forgive him.
“Y’all need to stop hemming about three inches from the corners,” Nessa said from her side of the quilt, which was draped over the kitchen table. “Mama taught me how to make perfect angles, so I’ll do that part. Looks like we just might get finished by bedtime. Stella said she and Vivien are coming by tomorrow morning to look at it.”
Flynn looked up at the clock above the stove and muttered, “Yeah, if we work until midnight.”
April used a tape measure to figure out where the three inches fell and marked it with an extra pin. “Nanny Lucy always told the quilting club that she would do the corners, too. She was a perfectionist when it came to her sewing. And it’s only eight o’clock, Flynn. I remember Nanny Lucy saying it took about an hour to do each side, so with three of us working, that’s maybe an hour and a half.”
“We need music.” Nessa reached for her phone and brought up a playlist. “That will make the time go by faster. When I was a little girl, I figured out that each hymn Daddy played as we traveled was three to four minutes. That meant that about seventeen songs took up about an hour, and it was five hours from Canyon to Blossom, so I kept count with the gospel songs. Now I do it with what I have on my playlist.”
“Don’t tell me it’s church songs,” April groaned. “That’s all Granny wanted to listen to when I was home, and I felt like religion was being shoved down my throat.”
“Not a single hymn on the list,” Nessa said as she hit the icon to start the music. “I think you’ll like this first one.”
The first notes of a guitar were joined by fiddle music, and then Travis Tritt started singing “I’m Gonna Be Somebody.”
Flynn sang with Travis that someday he was going to break the chains and be somebody. “You’re right,” he said when the song ended, “music helps, and I believe that song was written just for me.”
“This next one is for April,” Nessa said.
April smiled when Travis started singing “Where Corn Don’t Grow.” The song talked about leaving home and going somewhere where corn doesn’t grow. “I did feel I could find the answer where corn didn’t grow, or in my case, anywhere but Blossom, Texas.”
“And this one is for all of us.” Nessa stopped sewing and wiped a tear from her eye when Chris Stapleton began singing “Broken Halos.” The words talked about not going to look for answers because they belonged to the by-and-by.
By the time the song ended, all three of them had laid their needles to the side as tears welled, and then soft piano music began and those tears began to flow as Vince Gill sang “Go Rest High on That Mountain.”
“We should have played this at her funeral,” Flynn said. “It’s Nanny Lucy from beginning to end. Like the words say, she wasn’t afraid to face the devil, and she was no stranger to a lot of pain.”
“I listened to this on the day she was buried,” April said. “Her life on earth was troubled. I hope she’s found the peace in eternity that we’ve found while we’ve been working on this quilt.”
“Me too.” Nessa nodded.
“Yes.” Flynn’s voice had become hoarse.
They listened to several more songs while they kept sewing, and then Flynn finished his last stitch, tied it off, stuck the needle he had been using in a spool of thread, and held up both hands.
“This one is for all of us, and it’s not as sad as some of the others,” Nessa said. “It’s ‘Storms Never Last.’ We need to remember that as we go on with life.”
April put the last stitch in her part of the quilt. “All done, and I never want to quilt again. How you can enjoy this is beyond me, Nessa.”