Jodi Thomas - Mornings On Main

No. 1

Helen Harmon Green’s memory quilt. Made as a wedding gift to her future husband. Completed 1971. Never delivered.

* * *

As Jillian ate the apple she’d brought from the bed-and-breakfast, she walked around the shop. She’d have to do two or three handmade treasures a day to get them all logged. And she’d have to hear every story. Some might be short, but she’d bet they’d all be interesting. If only Gram’s memory would hold up just a little longer, she’d get them all down.

When Connor brought Gram back from lunch, Jillian showed him what she’d done and he approved of her system. “You know,” he added as an afterthought. “If you want to write up a few of the stories, they might make nice human interest pieces for the Laurel Springs online paper I put out. It’s mostly just a blog, a bulletin of what’s happening, but something like this might interest people.”

“I’ll give it a try after work. See what you think.”

He handed her a key to the shop. “If you want to work after hours when the shop is closed, that’s fine with me.”

“Thanks. I might do that.”

To her surprise, he smiled. “I’m not trying to run you off early or keep you longer than you want to stay. I get a feeling you have somewhere else to be.”

She thought of denying it. No matter what she said, she’d be giving away too much information, so she simply smiled back.

That evening, they walked home together, each talking about their day. When she turned into the gate at the bed-and-breakfast, he didn’t say goodbye. But this time he did smile as he waved.

She stood on the porch, watching him vanish. A paper man who would disappear from her mind as fast as a match fired. Maybe she’d describe him on her “Laurel Springs” journal page.

Yes, she could mention how normal it had felt to just walk and talk about nothing really. Her father had called it passing time like it was a waste of energy, but he was wrong. Invisible threads were binding people who took the time to talk, helping them to care about each other even in a small way, to know each other. Making them almost friends.

She’d seen it happen with doormen in big cities or clerks in stores she’d frequented in towns. Not friends exactly, but no longer strangers.

This was something rare for Jillian, but she realized Eugenia Larady had been doing it all her life. With Joe Dunaway, with customers, and with the quilters. Talking, caring, relating with everyone she met.

Invisible threads. Invisible bonds. Not strong enough to hold her down, but nice to feel.

5

Connor Larady’s world of routine shifted as the days passed. After a week, Jillian James had become part of his life as easily as if a piece had always been missing and she simply fit into the void.

He liked the easy way she greeted him every morning, not too formal, not too friendly. He looked forward to the few minutes they’d talk before the bus chauffeured his grandmother to the door of the quilt shop. He liked collecting little things he learned about Jillian, the pretty lady who never talked about herself.

Some mornings he’d studied the way Jillian dressed, casual yet professional, as if every detail about her mattered somehow. She might be tall, but she wasn’t too thin. Her eyes often caught his attention, stormy-day gray one moment and calm blue the next. She watched the clock, always aware of time, and she seemed to study people as if looking for something familiar in their faces. And she listened, really listened.

All the women he knew in town seemed shallow water, babbling brooks. But Jillian was deep current and he had a feeling it would take years to really know her. She never started a conversation, but if she disagreed with him she didn’t mind debating.

Who knew, maybe they’d become friends. But no more. The one thing Connor had figured out about himself a long time ago was that he was a watcher, not a participant, where women were concerned. If life were a banquet, he was the beggar outside the window looking in. He’d rather put up with the loneliness than take another chance.

He’d stepped out of his place once. He’d married Sunnie’s mother, Melissa, a few months after they slept together on their first date. He’d been home from school for the summer the year he turned twenty-one and she’d been nineteen. He’d used protection, but she’d told him it hadn’t worked.

Marriage had seemed the only answer. She went back to school with him. He took a part-time job and rented a bigger apartment. He’d known the marriage was a mistake before Christmas that year, but Connor wasn’t a quitter. He carried on.

Funny, he thought, he’d been caught in her net like a blind fish, but he hadn’t minded. It was just the way of life, and Sunnie made it all bearable.

Melissa loved that he was from one of the oldest families in East Texas. Almost royalty, she used to say. He was educated, a path she had no interest in following. His family might be cash poor at times, but they were land rich, she claimed, though none of them seemed inclined to sell even one of their properties.

Sunnie was eight months old when his parents were killed in a wreck. Afterward, Connor, Melissa and Sunnie had moved back to his childhood home, where he finished his degrees online. The house was roomy, but Melissa hated it from the day they moved in. She went back to her high school friends for entertainment, and he spent most of his days learning to handle the family business and his nights in his study with Sunnie’s bassinet by his desk.

He wanted to write children’s stories, blending Greek myths with today’s world. Though he rarely left Laurel Springs, his character, a Roman soldier, traveled through time visiting battlefields that changed the world. In his novels, Connor’s hero collected knowledge in hopes of ending all conflict.

But in reality, Connor simply fought to survive. To keep going when there never seemed enough time for his little dream; reality’s voice was always outshouting creativity’s whisper.

When Sunnie started school, he moved his stories to the newspaper office and set up a writing desk. As the newspaper dwindled to a one-man job, he set up a business desk across from his editor’s desk to handle his rental properties in town and his leasing property outside the city limits. Next came the mayor’s desk, with all the city business stacked high. Of all the desks in his office, the writing desk was the most neglected.

It had been that way from the beginning of his marriage. There was always too much to do. Too little time for dreams of writing.

Even when Melissa had started needing her nights out after Sunnie was born, he never thought to complain. But after they moved back to Laurel Springs, the nights turned into long weekends. She needed to feel alive, she’d say. She needed to get away.

About the time Sunnie started school, the weekends grew into weeks at a time.

When Melissa would return, she’d bring gifts for Sunnie, and her only daughter would forgive her for not calling. They’d go back to being best friends, not mother and daughter, and Connor would prepare for the next time she’d leave with only a note on the counter.

Even before she could read, Sunnie would see the note and cry before he read it.

He learned to cook. Kept track of Sunnie’s schedule. He was there for the everyday of her life. Melissa was there for the party.

Until three years ago, when she didn’t come back at all. A private plane crash outside of Reno. Both passengers died. Connor hadn’t even known the man she’d been with.

That day, he became a full-time widower, not just a weekend one. No great change. But Sunnie’s world had shifted on its axis. That one day, she changed.

Connor lost himself in the order of his repetitive days. He ran the paper his grandfather had started, even if it was little more than a blog, except on holidays. He looked after his daughter and his grandmother. Ruled over the monthly meetings of the city council. Paid the bills. Showed up.