“Oh darling, I don’t think she was drunk. Not the way you might be worried about. The ladies weren’t getting along, and a little alcohol does loosen the tongue. She had a terrible accident, but that doesn’t mean she was drunk.”
Grandpa Ernie was growing agitated. “I always told her not to drink. My father was a drunk. A terrible drunk. I’d never allow alcohol in the house when she was a girl. Where she got off thinking she could handle it, I’ll never know.”
“She should have listened to you, Gramps.” Belle gave his shaking hand a soothing pat.
“It’s a different world than it was in our time.” Nancy shared a long sympathetic look with Grandpa Ernie. “Somehow drinking has become a social hobby for the average woman. I don’t understand it, truly.”
Grandpa huffed into his mustache but didn’t seem appeased. “If she hadn’t been drinking, she’d still be here.”
Part of Taylor wondered if he knew who he was talking about at this hour. He might not, but he did know he was missing somebody and that was bad enough.
Sadie brought their dinners balanced on two trays, like a pro. Her passing them around and asking what else they wanted gave Taylor an opportunity to organize her thoughts.
She wanted to know every single thing Nancy had seen and heard and done that weekend. Her hunger for knowledge of her mom’s last day felt insatiable.
“I sent flowers to the funeral. It was so nice of Andrea to make sure Gina and I knew about it,” Nancy said over her chef salad.
“Mom always loved flowers. We thought about donations instead, but she would have loved a room full of flowers so much.” Taylor swirled her spoon around the bowl of cream of mushroom soup Sadie had delivered. “Did you see much of Mom and Colleen before they fought?”
“Just a little. They seemed happy. Your mom, especially, was sweet to Gina. Gina had connected with her from that show. We Reese ladies have always been quilters.”
“That’s wonderful…” Taylor tried to think of ways to spin this back to the death of her mother, but was stumped. “Was Gina working on anything right now?”
“Gina? No, she just sent a bed spread sized blanket out to be quilted. It’s gorgeous. I think it was a pattern she got last year when they came back for a visit. We like to come to bring flowers to the family vault. Our family has been in this area since the 1845 wagon train.”
“That’s very sweet.”
“The quilt she sent out is a log cabin. All of the fabrics were from a collection of reprints…no colors or designs that existed after 1860.”
“Please send pictures when it’s finished.” Taylor didn’t want pictures. She wanted facts. She wanted this eye witness to tell them for once and for all that her mom’s death had been….She didn’t know. Was murder better? Because it would feel so good to have someone to blame? Someone to punish?
Yes.
She wanted to punish someone for this tragic loss. She wanted to pin the blame on someone and send them to prison. She wanted someone she could hate. Someone she could point to and say, “This is why”.
An accident was just too unsatisfying. Too painfully unfinished.
If her mother had died because of an accident, then anyone could at any time.
“I’d be honored to. I told Gina not to have it long arm quilted, so she hired a group of ladies that will hand stitch.”
“That’s…amazing.” Taylor was desperate to get them off the topic of Gina’s wonderful quilt and tapped Belle’s foot gently. She needed rescue.
“None of Mom’s other friends quilt. It must have been pretty great to reconnect with Gina.” Belle sat in front of her BLT and fries, all of the food untouched.
“Oh, Gina was thrilled. You know, your mom was quite the popular girl when they were in high school.”
Taylor couldn’t help but smile. Popular in a town this size didn’t mean much.
“It’s a pretty remarkable coincidence that Mom’s new best buddy just happened to be at the same B and B the weekend she was there.” Belle spoke wistfully, but Taylor wondered if Nancy would pick up on the investigative nature of the comment.
Belle frowned and chewed her lip a little. “I was surprised too, but I wondered a little if Gina had known.”
“Doesn’t seem normal to bring your mom to a party like that,” Grandpa said.
Nancy smiled, “Gina and I are very dear friends.”
Taylor sipped her water and didn’t comment.
“Did you happen to hear what the fighting was about?” Belle asked.
“Ah.” Nancy picked at her salad, and then stabbed a little round tomato. “I only heard a little bit, but something your mom said did stand out. Let me see if I can remember the words more exactly.” She paused to eat the tomato that hung on the end of her fork. “This is close anyway. She said ‘Don’t be such a snob’ which I couldn’t help but think was funny. I don’t know much about Colleen, but she had seemed very humble. Casually dressed, had helped the others carry their bags, walked at the back of the group, that kind of thing. I’m sure there was something else behind the words, some reason she said them, but it had come as a surprise.”
This kind description of Colleen did not fit together with what Colleen had said. Where was the hatred, the anger over the drugs problem? Why had Colleen tried to make this guest into a bad guy? Taylor didn’t like what she was feeling, that Colleen couldn’t be trusted afterall. “Could you hear how Colleen responded?”
“Not very well. Her voice was quieter, you know.”
It seemed like everyone was dancing around the fact that this wasn’t a fight at all, but instead was Taylor’s mom being mean to her oldest friend. Taylor sighed. It wasn’t like her mom, and it had to mean something. “Was that all?”
“No…I heard her say something wasn’t her decision, I mean to say wasn’t Colleen’s decision.”
“Could she have said ‘not yours?”’ Belle asked.
“Yes, funny you should ask. That’s how she said it. “That decision is not yours.”
“Nachos,” Taylor muttered. But what decision? Belle moving? Where Belle went to college? Maybe it was as simple as that. Maybe Colleen was being a snob about the state school, but the decision wasn’t hers, and…the other ladies had said something about the word cool…maybe mom had said something about “cooling it” as in, Colleen needed to cool it with her opinions on Belle’s future. Or maybe they had just misheard her saying ‘school.’
Maybe.
It fit, but did it make sense? Could it have led to her mom’s death? If so, then that meant Belle would always think her mom’s death was her fault. Taylor most definitely did not want that.
“The other ladies said you were a real comfort after Mom was found. Thank you.” Belle held a French fry between two fingers but hadn’t taken a bite of anything yet.
“I’m a mother. Mothering is what I do.”
“It’s getting late,” Taylor said. “Would you like to stay with us this evening? I hate thinking of you driving all the way home.”
“Thank you for the offer, but I’m going to stay with Andrea at the B and B as her guest. We’ve talked a lot since your mom’s death, and it will be nice to see her. We’ve sort of bonded.”
Taylor waited for her to say it was a bright spot in the tragedy, but she had the grace not to.
“Thank you for coming all the way here,” Belle supplied the necessary goodbye.
The waitress spotted their guest standing up and brought over the ticket.
Taylor took it quickly. “Let me, it’s the least I can do for your kindness to them all.”
Nancy took Taylor’s hand and held it warmly. “Please don’t be a stranger. Remember, mothering is what I do.”
When they arrived back home, Grandpa Ernie huffed off to his room, a tired, sad, old grandpa. Taylor wanted to go in and have a snuggle to make him feel better, but he shut his door firmly.
Belle paced the living room while Taylor checked her messages.
“It’s clear t
hey were fighting about Gina. Mom had invited her, and Colleen didn’t like it. Probably didn’t like breaking up the foursome. Mom told her she wasn’t being cool and that it wasn’t her decision to make.” Belle stopped at the doorway to the kitchen and paused, hands clasped behind her back. “Now that we have that sorted, I think we can dismiss the fight as her cause of death. It just wasn’t an issue worth killing over.”
“Likewise, I can’t see her getting so agitated over it that she’d fall like she did.”
“No. If she fell it was for some other reason. A surprise maybe.”
Taylor scratched the back of her neck, completely at a loss. “A falling tree limb?”
“No evidence of one.”
“A possum? Or raccoon?” Taylor shivered.
“That’s not unlikely, but Mom wasn’t usually scared of that kind of thing.”
“If she was a little tipsy, and the boards were a little wet, and some kind of animal startled her, and her heel caught in the gap…”
“If we got all of those ifs to line up, then sure. It was an accident. But doesn’t it make more sense that someone pushed her?”
“It seems more likely, but not when you try to picture any of those ladies as the one who pushed her. Making all the ifs line up seems more likely than murder.”
“Unless it was still an accident. Couldn’t someone have pushed her in anger, hoping to make her fall in and get a little wet?”
“Ah.” Taylor nodded. “Manslaughter.”
Belle resumed pacing.
Eventually, the words sort of spilled out. Taylor hated that she’d hurt this kid and needed to say so. “I’m so, so, so sorry.”
Belle stopped and sniffled.
“What I said was inexcusable.”
She gritted her teeth.
“So, I won’t try to excuse it. I only want to say how sorry I am that I said such cruel things to you.” Taylor could go on like this forever. Maybe now that her anger had been replaced by shame, she’d be back to her old plan of just apologizing for everything till Belle felt better.
“Let’s forget it.” Belle’s shoulders were stiff and her hands, still clasped dramatically behind her back, were white knuckled. She wasn’t offering forgiveness, just…a time out.
“Okay,” Taylor agreed, though she knew that like her, Belle would never forget.
“Andrea, Nancy, Gina, Amara, Melinda, and Colleen. Her three oldest friends and a new, good friend. A seventy year old who barely knew her, and the owner of the bed and breakfast. Who would have wanted to push her into the river?”
Taylor didn’t have any idea. Not one she could share with Belle anyway.
“Colleen,” Belle said sadly. “Being angry about the guest list for a special weekend away isn’t enough to kill for. But if I am anything like my birth mom, it is enough to make you push someone hoping they’d get all wet.”
“All we can do is ask.”
Belle took her pacing to the staircase and headed up.
Taylor wondered if Belle was ever sorry she was so smart.
* * *
The next morning the fight they’d had hung heavy in the air. Their conversation with Nancy had done nothing to reconcile them. Taylor’s apology hadn’t settled her heart. The sisters moved around each other, wary, wondering who was going to take the first punch.
Taylor didn’t have to go to work till opening. They weren’t filming today. The only thing she could think to do to calm down was watch more of her mom’s videos, so she nestled in her bed under the Dove in the Window quilt that had always been her favorite.
On the screen of her laptop, her mom ran her hands through a large pile of fabric pieces, the rainbow of pastels fluttered around her. “Quilters hate waste. We see these scraps and know we can make something beautiful out of them.” She and the camera moved six inches down the table. “Foundation piecing a quilt is a fantastic way to use up scraps.” She held up a piece of paper with several scraps sewn to it and flipped the fabrics back and forth so the audience could see how they were connected. “The paper shows us what the final shape should be, but the fabric determines how we get there. So long as we fit the bits onto the paper, we’ve done it right. And in the end, we can rip the paper off and no one will ever know it had existed.” She set down the mid-progress block and picked up a completed one. It was a beautiful swirl of strips in various widths and lengths making an accidental windmill shape. She ripped the paper off the back. The camera zoomed in. “Those little bits in the seams might scare you at first, but they’re just paper. They’ll wash away.”
Taylor’s heart thumped in disappointment. Her mom’s little wisdom moments had become her touchstones over the last few weeks. In each video she managed to say something that uplifted her and gave her courage that this was all going to be okay. But it wasn’t working this time. There was a paper that was holding everything together, but then you washed it and it was like the paper had never been?
All Taylor could think of was that the legal guardianship her mom had been granted for Belle was the only paper that held the family together.
She didn’t want it to wash away as though it had never existed.
In the video her mom was still talking, saying something practical about sewing. Taylor considered turning her off, but it felt like a betrayal.
She had tuned her mom out enough through the years.
“Listen, these are just scraps of fabric. Waste, by any other name. Don’t beat yourself up trying to make everything fit perfectly. Sometimes you have to cut it up and lose a bit, that’s okay.”
Part of her thought her mom was horribly cold-hearted, but then she didn’t know Taylor was trying to apply this video to life without her.
Laura Quinn, in the video, held up a finished lap quilt made of those topsy-turvy accidental windmills. “The paper disappears,” she was saying, “when all of your hard work is completed. Your stash of scraps that felt like waste has become a quilt as real and beautiful and beloved as any other.”
Taylor choked up a little. Her mom wasn’t talking about family, but Taylor was listening about family. Surely…surely after all these years Belle and Taylor were real family, as loved as any other even though the paper that held them together had washed away.
“I know where that quilt is.” Belle stood in her doorway, wrapped in a silky black bathrobe. “She gave it to Gramps, but since his memory is going, he won’t even notice when you sell it.” She smirked, a face that made Taylor want to smack her.
Taylor made a fist, digging her fingernails into the palm of her hand.
This was the kid she was so desperate to get forgiveness from? To keep close by her side? This moody, mouthy teen?
“I’ll ask him.” Taylor mirrored Belle’s smirk.
Belle’s mouth shifted ever so slightly into a snarl.
In her fevered rush to come here and envelope Belle in a safety net of sisterly love, Taylor never dreamed she’d feel so very glad Belle was leaving for college early.
The mood was ruined. Taylor flung the quilt off and stomped to the bathroom, but it was occupied, by Belle. The idea of living in a bright and shiny four bedroom four bathroom home in that new development sounded very good at this exact second. She stomped downstairs and made herself a cup of coffee.
Then the routine began, Grandpa getting his own bowl of cereal, Belle reminding him of his medicine and making his toast. Taylor, trying not to lose it as she watched two people she dearly loved who had become like strangers over the last decade.
Why had she done that? Why had she stayed away so long?
Why had she never made time for them?
Her phone rang saving her from a bout of self-pity. It was Dave Kirby. “Yes?”
“Hey Taylor. I wanted to catch you before work, to check in about the Neskowin trip. Do you think you’d like to come along?”
Taylor watched Grandpa Ernie laughing at something Belle was saying to him as she counted pills into his hand. “I’m so sorry. Can you give me anoth
er day to work out the details? I have been a little overwhelmed.”
“You got it. And really, Taylor, anything you need, Colleen and I are just a phone call away.”
“Thanks, Dave.” They ended the call.
Belle was watching her closely. The one eyebrow Taylor could see under her shag of black hair was slightly raised.
“Want to go to the beach?”
She shrugged.
“What about taking a trip to the beach with the whole Kirby family?”
She scrunched her mouth up in consideration.
“You can if you want. I’m invited too, but I think I’d better stay home.”
“Maybe.” Belle left before Taylor could respond.
Well, fine. Just fine. A maybe is a maybe. Nothing to call Dave about. Taylor didn’t need to go on the big family trip with them, no matter what the Kirbys said. She had adult responsibilities, something Belle would know plenty about soon enough.
Belle came back down the stairs with a back breaking back pack on. “I’ll call Dave,” she said, and then left.
Chapter Nineteen
As soon as Grandpa Ernie had his jacket and shoes, Taylor drove them up the street to Flour Sax. Belle would probably call Colleen and have the big conversation they needed to have without her. She’d learn exactly what happened that night with their mom, and never tell.
Taylor slammed things around as she opened the shop. For a moment it felt good.
“Knock it off or I’ll put you in time out.” Grandpa had ventured out of his little back area of the shop. He stood at the worktable, both hands pressed on its laminate surface.
“Sorry.” Taylor shut the register drawer with care.
“Teenagers are a pain in the butt, young lady. You were no better than her, and she’s not so bad.”
“No, she’s not.” Taylor moved over to the notions display where she liked to have her mom’s show playing and set it up.
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