The Double Wedding Ring (18 page)

B
y the time I returned to the table the group had most of Eleanor's bachelorette party planned, and it centered around food—a long, calorie-laden meal, a few bottles of wine, a half dozen desserts . . .

“The tiny ones,” Bernie declared, “so we can taste as many as we like.”

“And gifts. Something personal for Eleanor.”

“Keep it clean,” I demanded.

Maggie stared at me. “Honestly, Nell. What can you be thinking? We've already decided on what to get her.”

“A baker's dozen. It's a quilting tradition that every bride have twelve quilts for ordinary use and one for special use,” Susanne explained. “We're making her the special use one as a group, so we're each digging into our stash of finished quilts as a gift.”

Natalie jumped in. “We figure when she moves to South Carolina she'll need quilts for the new house. She can take five of her own, our six stash quilts, and one that Grace made her. That way she has a piece of all of us with her.”

I liked that. Grace Roemer was the woman who had taught Eleanor how to quilt years before, and she was the unofficial patron saint of the group.

“They can be anything?” The gazebo quilt would qualify as my contribution, but I also had a blue and cream bow tie quilt I'd made over the summer that Eleanor had liked. I decided to give her both.

“A baker's thirteen,” Susanne said. “Why not?”

“That sounds like a great bachelorette party.”

Bernie looked over at me. “Then, after we open presents, the stripper will arrive.”

At that the group burst into laughter, in large part because of the stricken look on my face.

Natalie and I had been away from the shop for the better part of an hour, but I had an errand to run before I went back to work. I snuck back into Someday, grabbed my coat, and left. I wasn't trying to avoid helping customers, just an overly involved pair of women I loved deeply. When they weren't driving me nuts.

I headed toward the police station. I was intent on keeping my promise to Susanne. The more I thought about it, the more convinced I was she was right. We were in over our heads. Jesse knew Bob Marshall and Anna, and he had met Ken Tremayne. He might have come to the same conclusions about them that I had—which was that any one of them could have done it—but without knowing about the scratch on Dru's car, he could be looking to match up the right pair of killers, instead of singling out one.

At the station, I walked past the front desk without bothering to stop and ask for Jesse. I just went to his office door and knocked.

“I said I didn't want to be disturbed.” The voice from inside was Jesse's, and he was annoyed.

“It's me.”

I waited. For a half second I contemplated opening the door, to catch Anna and him in the act of . . . I didn't know. Jesse wasn't that kind of man. I didn't have to imagine scenarios for too long, though. Jesse opened the door wide.

“Hey, there.” Now his voice was gentle. “How did I get so lucky?”

“I wanted to talk with you.”

He grabbed my hand and pulled me into his office, closing the door behind us. “What's on your mind?”

He was alone in his office. Aside from his laptop, his desk was empty, as usual. He hadn't been working on a case file, so I couldn't figure out why he'd been so gruff at the knock.

“Am I catching you in the middle of something?”

“No.” He paused. “Yes.” He turned his laptop around so I could see the screen. Caskets. “Anna asked me to work with the funeral director in New York to pick out the casket and music. You know, just make the arrangements.”

“If she doesn't want to do it, surely he had other family . . .”

“Not in the area, and nobody close.”

“Can I help?”

Jesse sat at his desk. “I did this twice before. For my dad twelve years ago, and for Lizzie. It just doesn't get any easier.”

“When's the funeral?”

“The wake is Tuesday in Queens, the funeral is Wednesday, and then back home for Oliver's bachelor party.”

“I'm sure Oliver would understand if you skipped it.”

“I wouldn't. We're taking over Moran's Pub, drinking good scotch, eating bad pizza, and playing pool. That type of event is easy to plan.” He sighed and looked back at the screen filled with rows of caskets.

It seemed like a lousy time to discuss the case, so I sat with him and together we chose everything necessary for Roger's friends to say good-bye. When we were done, Jesse was blinking back tears.

“I don't know what I'd do without you,” he said.

“You won't ever find out.”

“Promise. Because when this is all over with we should have a long talk about, well, everything.”

“
You
want to talk about our relationship?” I lightly mocked. “Let's get through Roger's funeral and Eleanor's wedding first, then I'm all ears. In fact, there's a lot to discuss.”

“All good?” he asked.

“Are you nervous?”

“Your mom . . .”

“Isn't in charge of what I do with my life. And she likes you, Jesse, she just doesn't know you yet. And she hasn't met Allie.”

“We should change that,” he said. “How about tomorrow?”

“How about tonight? Eleanor and Oliver are going to stay at the house and have dinner with my parents, so why not let Allie hang out there as well? And we can go to dinner and talk.”

“I thought we were going to wait until next week to talk.”

“Different subject.” Dinner, just the two of us, sounded romantic except for my plan to tell him everything I knew about the murder case.

“Okay. Dinner.” He got up and I did, too. He kissed me lightly. “Don't get into trouble.”

“I'm going back to the shop. How much trouble can I get into?”

A
s it happened, I didn't get into any trouble between the police station and the quilt shop. I walked quickly, kept my head down, and although I thought I saw Anna walking into one of the shops at the end of the street, I said nothing and kept moving.

I pushed open the door to Someday ready to get back to work after the longest coffee break on record, when Natalie whispered to me, “Stop. Don't move.”

I stopped. “What's going on?” I whispered back, ready to dash out and get help.

“Walk quietly. I'll show you.”

Together we crept toward the back of the shop where the sale fabrics and Barney's workplace bed were kept. Sure enough, Barney was curled up on it, nose to tail. Natalie put her finger to her lip and then pointed. I looked toward the spot and saw a little black and white tail coming out from under Barney's chin.

Patch was curled up just like Barney, only her tiny body fit perfectly in the circle between his graying snout and his back paws. They were both sleeping soundly. We backed away slowly until we reached the checkout counter at the front of the shop.

“When did that happen?” I asked.

“No idea. I noticed it about twenty minutes ago.”

“Has Eleanor seen it?”

“Not yet. She and your mom went out to buy a dress your mom could wear to the wedding. Where were you?”

I told her about my time with Jesse, and got her advice on the best way to tell him all we'd learned despite being told to stay out of it. Then we heard stirring from Barney's dog bed. Rather than wake our furry friends, we stopped our conversation and Natalie went back to working on Eleanor's quilt and I went to the classroom to work on the gazebo piece.

I've heard that meditation is a great way to calm down and refocus. For me, quietly sitting with a piece of hand appliqué has the same effect. As I slowly added to the gazebo, making layers of white and cream fabrics into a representation of our town symbol, my breathing calmed. Time was slipping by, and I felt centered.

In two hours I had sewn on most of the gazebo. There was the quilting to do, and when that was done I would add on the embroidered flowers, but in a few short days I'd accomplished a lot on the quilt. There was even a chance I'd have it ready for Saturday. I went back into the main part of the shop to see if Natalie would be able to quilt it for me with such a short turnaround.

But Natalie was too busy to approach. She had left Eleanor's quilt in the frame and was cutting fabrics for a regular of ours, a man who came up from Dobbs Ferry every other month for fabric to make pillows he sold to high-end design shops in New York.

There were a few other customers looking for fabrics, and I made the rounds to see if anyone needed my help. One woman was gently petting my Amish bars quilt with the appliqué flowers.

“We're making a pattern of that,” I said.

“Good. I like the soft, rounded shapes of the appliqué against the stark design. You wouldn't think the two things go together, but they do.” She pointed toward Barney and Patch, now awake, but sitting together. “Like those two.”

A big yellow dog and a tiny black and white kitten did seem an odd match, but they did go together. Barney laid down, stretching his paws in front of him, and he leaned over and touched his nose against Patch's. I grabbed the camera from Eleanor's office and every time they did something cute together, I took a photo. I had my logo for Someday Quilts Designs.

The woman who liked my quilt went back to shopping and eventually got about twenty fat quarters that she brought to the counter along with a book of traditional quilt patterns. “What do you think of these? I'm making a Chinese coins for my nephew. Lots of blues with a brown border. Very male, I think.”

Chinese coins was a simple pattern, vertical rows of fabric strips, set apart by sashing. Since the strips and sashing could be any length or width, the pattern was easy to translate from wall hanging to bed size, and fast to make.

“It's great,” I said. “And you've got the right colors there for any guy.”

Maybe this would be the quilt I made for Jesse. I'd put it off, wanting to find just the right pattern, but I was overthinking it. I made quilts and he needed one. There was a quilting superstition that the first night under a new quilt, an unmarried person would dream about their true love. I liked the idea of being in his dreams.

The customer flipped through the book to show me another choice. “I have another nephew, and I'm thinking maybe this for him, but I don't like the name.”

I looked at the photo. “A double wedding ring.”

“I'd love the challenge, but I'm afraid if I made it for him, he'd think I was dropping a hint to finally meet a nice girl and settle down.”

“He would.”

“But it's pretty, don't you think?”

“I've got one started in the back,” I told her. “I just didn't know what to do with it.”

She nodded emphatically, as if we had stumbled across one of life's great mysteries. “It's more than just a nice bedcover, it's the sort of quilt that says ‘forever,' doesn't it?”

“It does,” I admitted. I lightly traced the blocks in the photo with my finger. Sometimes you can stare at a puzzle piece for hours and not know where it fits, and then suddenly you know. Like my relationship with Jesse, the double wedding ring was complicated but worth the effort. No matter how much work it was, this was the quilt I wanted to make for him.

I still had several unfinished quilts, including the gazebo quilt, but there's an urgency when an idea hits you. After the woman left, I headed back to the classroom and grabbed the paper-pieced arcs I'd made. They were in blues and greens, perfect for the quilt I had in mind. I rushed back into the main part of the shop, looking for a neutral background, going through a half dozen fabrics before I came up with the perfect choice: a creamy white that looked hand dyed. I wanted to piece at least one complete block of the quilt before I lost that feeling. Once a quilt like this was on its way, I knew I would finish it.

One block turned into two, which turned into ten. I wanted a nap quilt, large enough to fit Jesse's tall frame, but not big enough to be turned into a bed quilt. I pictured him curled up on the couch and watching TV, wrapped in something made just for him.

The blocks were large, but each one had dozens of pieces. Natalie helped out by cutting the background pieces while I sewed. By closing time we had half the blocks already pieced and a few more ready to go.

“Why has it taken you so long to do this for him?” Natalie asked. “I made my husband a quilt on our third date.”

“I don't know,” I said. “It's bugged me that I haven't done it. I've made quilts for Allie, for charity, for Eleanor; I just wanted something perfect for him.”

“You know it's not going to be perfect. No matter how hard you try, you'll just have to accept that nothing is exactly the way you want it to be, but that's okay.”

“We are still talking about quilting, aren't we?”

She laughed. “If we're talking about marriage, then it's definitely not going to be perfect. But it is good, if you let it be. The question we all want to know is, are you going to let it?”

As Natalie talked, I examined my sewing. I'd been leaning close to the fabric, checking my seams, which were a little crooked. I could have focused on that and been satisfied. But when I pulled back, the inaccuracy wasn't even noticeable. Maybe all I needed was a little change in perspective to answer Natalie's question, and to figure out my future.