Jodi Thomas - Mornings On Main

“Right.” Connor turned to Jillian. “Will you be all right here? Gram should be dropped off any minute.”

“I’m fine. I’ll watch for her.” Jillian smiled at Sunnie. “Nice to meet you.”

The girl shrugged and walked out.

“I’m sorry about that.” Connor sounded as if he’d said the same thing often lately. “She’s just going through a stage. The doctor says it’s normal for kids who lose a parent in their teens. He claims Sunnie is mad her mom died, and I’m the only one left to take it out on. Hating me keeps her mind off death.”

“When did your wife die?”

“Three years ago. Sunnie was thirteen.” He shoved his hands in the pockets of his baggy pants and rounded his shoulders forward as if trying to seem smaller, or maybe hold his grief inside. “Sunnie wanted to meet you. I don’t think she’d ever admit it, but she’s protective of Gram. I told her she could maybe help out after school now and then. But don’t look for her until she’s at the door.”

Jillian thought of screaming No!, but she simply smiled and said, “I’d appreciate the help.”

He nodded, then hurried out.

Jillian stood by the front window, watching the town come alive. This street reminded her of a beehive. Everyone seemed to have their job and all were working frantically to get the day started. She almost wanted to tell them all that it didn’t matter how many flags or sandwich boards the shops put out—this one street would never draw much of a crowd.

The old warehouse buildings across the creek hung over the cute main street like death’s shadow. The stillness just across the water was a constant reminder that a few blocks away, half of the town had been abandoned. Jillian wondered if the people who lived here even saw the crumbling buildings anymore.

When the Autumn Acres bus pulled up, she went outside and waited for Gram to come down the steps.

The lady, still tall for her age even though her shoulders had rounded, was dressed in a very proper wool suit with lace on her white collar. Her shoes might be rounded and rubber, but she hadn’t forgotten her pearls.

“Hello, dear,” Gram shouted. “How nice of you to come help me again.”

“I had so much fun I just had to return. You don’t mind me hanging around?”

“Oh, no. I love the company and there is always plenty to do.”

They walked in with arms locked. Jillian wasn’t sure Eugenia remembered her name, but the Southern lady seemed to assume she knew everyone, and she treated all, old friends or strangers, the same.

“Let’s make a cup of tea first this morning,” Gram suggested. “That will start the day right. I do love tea in the spring.”

Jillian followed her back to a small kitchen, without mentioning it was still winter. They talked about the tea and the day as if they were old friends.

The morning passed like a peaceful river. Customers came in, mostly to talk. Jillian made note of the ones who had lived their entire lives in this town. A long-retired teacher named Joe Dunaway, most of the quilters she’d met yesterday, the mailman named Tap. As she settled in, she did what she often did in little towns: she’d ask if they knew a Jefferson James who might have lived around here thirty years ago. The answer was always no, a dead end. She’d found a few Jameses over the years, but none knew a Jefferson. Her father never allowed anyone to shorten his name.

Joe Dunaway said he thought the name might be familiar, but after forty years of teaching, all names sounded familiar.

While Joe watched the store, Gram took the time to show her around the tiny office after Jillian explained for the third time that she was there to make a record of all the quilts.

“Someday, your quilts will hang in a gallery at the county museum, and you’ll want all the facts to be right. I’ll compile that record for you, Gram.”

“Oh, of course you will,” Eugenia agreed as she sugared her tea for the second time.

When their cups were half-empty, they began to stroll through the colorful garden of quilts. Jillian kept her questions light. Never too many. Never too fast.

She noticed how Gram stroked each quilt she straightened as if it were precious. The kitchen and the office might be a cluttered mess, but all the quilts had to be in perfect order.

“You touch them as if they’re priceless. Like they’re your treasures, your babies,” Jillian said.

“Oh, they’re not mine. But in a way they are alive. Each one holds memories. I just put them together in the final step of quilting.” She pulled one from the shelf and spread it out on a wide table designed for cutting fabric. “This one belongs to Helen Harmon, who made it as a gift to give the man she loved on their wedding day. They’d known each other since grade school.” Gram pointed to one square. “See, that’s them as kids on the playground. He’s pulling her pigtail. I swear, Helen’s hair was stoplight red when she was little.”

Jillian saw thick red threads braided together and sewn onto the quilt.

Gram’s wrinkled fingers passed over another quilt square. A UT logo stood out in burnt orange. “That’s for their college days, and she made this one when he went into the army. When he came home a few years later and started work, his first job was in construction. Turned out he had a real knack for it.”

Jillian saw the square with tools crossing, almost like a crest.

“And here we have vacations they took camping, hiking, riding across the country on what Helen called hogs.” One square ran like a road map. “When they finally got engaged, both were thirty-four.” One square held nothing but sparkling material in the pattern of a diamond ring.

Jillian touched the square of a house. “When they bought their first house, right?”

Gram shook her head. “When he built what was to be their first house, she made that square. They both agreed neither would move in until after the wedding.”

“What happened?” Jillian realized she was holding her breath.

“I’d worked late into the night the evening before their rehearsal dinner. I wanted to have the quilt ready for her to give to him. She was not a natural seamstress, and was years away from being a skilled quilter. Each piece came hard for her. She’d laugh and say she really made ten quilts because she had to do each square over and over to get it just right.”

“What happened?” Jillian asked again.

“She didn’t come pick up the quilt the day of their rehearsal. When she woke that morning before her wedding, she found a note on his pillow. He’d had an offer for a new job up north and hadn’t known how to tell her. The note said he’d tried a hundred times to break off the engagement, but she was too busy planning the wedding to listen.”

“So he just left her?”

Gram nodded. “And she left this quilt. She told me I could sell it, but who buys another’s memories? She’d even embroidered the wedding date in the middle.”

Jillian looked at the quilt. June 19, 1971.

“You’ve kept this for almost fifty years?”

Gram nodded. “How do you throw away memories? It’s a beautiful quilt made with love. Helen eventually married a man named Green and moved to Houston, but she didn’t make anything for her next groom, and she never dropped by the shop to even look at this.”

Jillian helped her fold it up and gently lay it back on the shelf. This would be the first quilt she logged.

The story had been fascinating, but Gram’s memory of the details surprised Jillian. A woman who couldn’t remember if she’d sugared her tea had told every detail of something that had happened nearly fifty years ago.

As soon as Connor picked up his gram for lunch, Jillian put the be-back-soon sign on the door and spread Helen Harmon’s quilt back out. With care she took pictures and wrote down details. Then, the last thing she did before folding it back into place was to stitch a two-inch blue square of fabric in one corner of the quilt’s back.