Lord, please let Stella and Vivien give us a pass on the quilt, and help me to not look at Jackson’s eyes when I tell him what I think about the way he’s treated me, she said silently.
When she opened her eyes, Stella was standing right in front of her. “Are you all right, child?”
“I’m fine. Just a little headache.” Nessa couldn’t say that the headache was over six feet tall and had gorgeous blue eyes.
“Should we wait to look at the quilt?” Stella extended a hand to help her up.
Nessa took it and forced a smile. “Thank you, but no, let’s go take a look at it. We’re all anxious to see what’s in the hope chest. If I put off letting you see it for a week, Flynn and April would disown me.”
“Then let’s get it over with, but”—Stella lowered her voice—“what is Jackson doing in the living room?”
“The will says he has to hear you, or some member of the club, say that the quilt passes muster,” Nessa said.
Stella’s laughter echoed off the walls and drowned out the noise of the washing machine. “Lucy really took care of things, didn’t she? We were just told to make sure the quilt was finished. We didn’t come here to rake you over the coals about your stitching. We just want to have a look at the final product.”
Nessa bit back the tears that were dammed up behind her eyelids. She wasn’t sure if they were tears of relief that the quilt wasn’t going to keep them from opening the hope chest or if they were tears of anger.
Or jealousy? the aggravating voice in her head asked.
Nessa shook that idea from her mind and led the way into the house. “I’ll bring it out, then, and you can see that it’s all done.”
“Great, then me and Vivien can be on our way.” Stella followed close behind her.
“Well, look at you. If you’re not the image of Lucy when she was about your age,” Vivien said from Lucy’s rocking chair. The woman was pretty much a mirror image of her sister, Stella, except that she’d dyed her hair jet black and wore bright-red lipstick.
“Thank you.” Nessa managed a weak smile.
“You are quite welcome. Lucy had her bad moments, but when she wasn’t suffering, she was the best friend we ever had,” Vivien said.
Talk about bad moments. It took all of Nessa’s willpower not to shoot a knowing look right at Jackson.
Vivien went on, “She was a good Christian woman, and I always thought she was a beauty.”
“Well, then, thank you a whole bunch more times.” Nessa went to her room and brought out the quilt. She flipped it out on the back of the sofa. “What do you think?”
“It’s the ugliest thing that Lucy ever made,” Stella answered.
“And we both told her so.” Vivien nodded. “But it’s finished, and you kids did a great job, so our part of this—whatever this is—has been done. You can open the hope chest and put this in it.”
“Then my work is done. I’ll be seeing all y’all around, I’m sure.” Jackson pushed himself up out of Grandpa’s rocking chair and waved over his shoulder as he left the house.
Dozens of thoughts vied for first place in Nessa’s head. She was relieved and yet sad at the same time that the quilt was done. What had started out as a chore had turned into something she looked forward to doing each morning with her cousins. She wanted to clear the air with Jackson, but she didn’t. What if it turned into a big fight that put a virtual fence between them even just as neighbors?
“Looks to me like Jackson done found a cockroach in his morning bowl of cereal,” Vivien giggled. “He’s never been that curt with us before.”
“Could be that he doesn’t want the O’Riley kids to open that hope chest,” Stella added. “We should be . . . Whoa!” She paused for a good fifteen seconds. “What are those loops on the side of the quilt?”
Nessa had hoped that they wouldn’t even notice, but it’s near impossible to put a cat back in the bag when it’s already out. She figured she might as well just tell the truth, and she did. When she was through explaining what she and the other two had decided, both Stella and Vivien had tears streaming down their faces.
“Are you crying because you think we’re doing the wrong thing by not following Nanny Lucy’s wishes?” Nessa wiped a tear from her own cheek.
“Oh, no, honey.” Vivien pulled a tissue from the box on the end table and dabbed at her eyes. “I just think that’s the sweetest thing ever.”
“Me too.” Stella wiped her eyes on a handkerchief that she took from her purse. “Hanging it up there on the wall means that you are remembering the good times and not the ugly ones. Lucy wanted you three cousins to be close.”
“Did she say that?” Nessa asked.
“More than once,” Stella answered. “She hoped that making y’all work on that quilt would help.”
“She got her wish. We’ve talked about the good, the bad, and the crazy while we worked on the quilt. We do plan to take down the one up there”—Nessa nodded toward the one hanging on the wall—“and put it in the hope chest. That way whoever gets married first will have a quilt that she made.”
Nessa didn’t miss the look that Vivien shot Stella or the nod that Stella gave her.
“We’ve got something to tell you. We knew that Lucy was dying, but it wasn’t the first time we intervened and made her go to the doctor. That quilt up there on the wall was the last one that we all worked on together. After that, she had trouble concentrating on sewing anymore. We helped her get the ugly one that she made with remnants of all you kids’ clothes in the frame just weeks before she passed. She had a bubble in her brain, and the doctor said that when it burst, that would be the end,” Stella said.
“We begged her to tell Matthew and Isaac, or even you kids, but she refused.” Vivien’s chin quivered, but she didn’t break down. “We think it was because she didn’t want to have the surgery, and the boys would have tried to force the issue. With it she would have had a fifty-fifty chance to survive, but she wouldn’t do it.”
“What kind of surgery?” Nessa asked.
“She had an aneurism in her brain,” Stella answered. “The doctor said there would be risks if she had surgery. Like she might lose her motor skills and have to go to a nursing home or live with her sons.”
“Did it hurt?” Nessa pulled two tissues from the box and blew her nose.
Vivien and Stella both shook their heads.
“No pain, but there at the end, she kept telling us that she wanted to go before Christmas Day. You kids usually found a way to come home sometime during the holidays, and she was afraid you might suspect something was wrong,” Stella answered.
“She just got absentminded. We didn’t know if that thing on her brain was pushing on something that made her forget things, or if maybe it was worry, or if the depression she’d fought for years was the cause,” Vivien chimed in.
“I’m so sorry, honey.” Stella sighed and headed for the door with Vivien right behind her. “We hate to leave you after telling you all that, but I’m glad you know. We’d best get on our way.”