Quilted by Christmas (9781426796142)

by Bailey, Jodie

  Taryn tried not to acknowledge any jealousy.

  Jemma clucked her tongue, drawing Taryn back into the conversation. “Both of you so young to lose so much.”

  “So why make the quilt?”

  “You’ve heard this story before.”

  “Humor me.” Taryn was looking for clues, unable to fight back the notion she should keep quiet about her attic find. “Tell me the story.”

  “It’s been a tradition for as far back as anyone knows for the McKenna women to make quilts for their children when they marry. Boy or girl, they get those quilts on their wedding day. Hand-sewn.” Jemma reached over to her sewing table and lifted the edge of the partially finished quilt, heaped in a riot of blue and white. “With your Gramma McKenna and Rachel’s mother both gone, there’s no McKenna woman to sew one for Rachel.” She seemed lost in the fabric. “I can’t bear for her not to have a quilt for her wedding day. She’ll be thinking of it. I know. So I’m filling in. But it’s a secret.” Jemma stood and swiped at invisible lint on her pants. “And don’t you tell her. If she knew, she’d want to help, and the bride can’t help sew her own quilt. Your Gramma McKenna told me all about it. There’s a lot of rules with this particular tradition. Like it absolutely has to be an Irish chain. Nothing else.”

  Now they were coming to information Taryn needed. She dropped her feet to the floor and sat forward in the chair. “Why?”

  “The McKennas can trace their roots all the way back to Ireland. So many legends about them. Makes the Brodigan in me jealous.” Jemma flashed a grin and straightened a stray ornament. “They’re proud of it. When Rachel’s mother died and your Gramma McKenna knew she didn’t have too much longer herself, she sat me down and let me in on the entire story. And I’ve told you before too.”

  “But I never get tired of hearing it.” It was true, even if it wasn’t exactly true at the moment.

  “We Irish love a good story, don’t we?” Tilting her head, Jemma studied the bow on the tree. “You’re taller than I am. Come and straighten this so it hangs right.”

  Taryn obeyed, knowing Jemma would get back to her tale soon enough.

  “The long and short of it is each wedding makes a new link in the chain, sort of like other families would have a new branch in the family tree. When the McKennas came over from Ireland, they chose the simple chain pattern to represent the family and how it would continue on even in a new country. Beautiful story.” She nodded as Taryn tipped the bow to the left. “Perfect. Now let’s go finish the other tree.”

  Following the pint-sized whirlwind that was her grandmother, Taryn couldn’t help feeling there was more to the story, more than she’d heard before. If the Irish chain was a McKenna tradition, why did her Brodigan grandmother have an unfinished quilt in her attic?

  3

  Here.” Jemma dropped a bundle of fabric into Taryn’s lap as she passed and settled herself into the glider rocker near the fireplace. “All we need to do is go out to the back of the orchard to get the live tree for the den here, and we’ll be finished. I can’t wait for the house to smell like Christmas as much as it looks like Christmas.” Breathing in deeply, Jemma smiled at the room. “So far, the rest of the house looks wonderful. Thanks for your help.”

  Taryn glanced around the small den as she unrolled the cloth in her lap. The tiny room couldn’t compete with the larger, airier living room at the front of the house, but Jemma loved the den, its stone fireplace dominating the space, hardwood floors gleaming, white walls reflecting the multicolored lights strung through the evergreens hanging from the mantel.

  The rough-hewn mantel dripped with lights, while Mary and Joseph and the shepherds waited patiently above for baby Jesus to make an appearance. “I only did it because I knew you were making gingersnaps today. I’m expecting a container of them before I leave.” Pushing deeper into the leather recliner by the door to the kitchen, Taryn ran a finger along the blue- and-white fabric in her hands. “And what would you like me to do with this?” She knew, but her distaste for sewing was legendary, and there was nothing more fun than needling Jemma.

  Jemma’s chair rocked gently as her needle flashed through her own blue-and-white stack almost as fast as any sewing machine. That took practice beyond Taryn’s years or patience. She smiled but otherwise ignored Taryn’s teasing. “It’s Rachel’s quilt. If I’m going to get it pieced before the wedding, you’re going to have to help me.” She tossed a spool of white thread to Taryn without missing a beat in her rocking.

  Rachel. Taryn licked the end of the thread and aimed it through the needle Jemma had stuck in the center of her fabric. At some point, Taryn would have to choke down her pride and have a conversation with her cousin. Rachel had only said what everyone who knew Justin and Taryn thought, what she’d thought herself many times. Stalking away had been childish. Warranted maybe, but childish nonetheless.

  And then there was Justin. Catching the tip of her tongue between her teeth, Taryn joined two strips of fabric and started stitching a blue-and-white nine patch. Sewing left too much time to think. What she needed was a good, body-pushing, muscle-grinding hike up Brown Mountain. Then she wouldn’t be able to think about anything except pacing her breath and watching her step. Any thoughts about missing Justin after his brief reappearance would be forced to the side of the trail.

  “Why don’t you just talk to him?” Jemma glanced at her watch and went back to her task.

  “I’m sorry? Talk to who?” Taryn knew who, and it scared her a little. For as long as she could remember, Jemma had this uncanny ability to read her mind, like she could reach in and pull out the thoughts whenever she wanted. It was by no means supernatural. With Jemma, it was all about knowing how to read her granddaughter. It didn’t make the occurrences any less creepy. At some point, Taryn had to develop a poker face to keep her thoughts away from her grandmother’s too astute observations.

  “You know very well who. And you need to be talking while you sew. I’m behind on this quilt. The wedding’s coming up faster than we think, and there’s Christmas baking in the middle.”

  At some point, Jemma was going to have to give up the hand-stitching and move on to sewing machines for family quilts, but it didn’t look like the time would be today. With a sigh that started somewhere around her toes, Taryn went back to stitching, slower than Jemma, but quick enough to appease her.

  Why didn’t she just talk to him? The fire popped, and a log shifted in a firework of sparks before Taryn answered. “Because it’s awkward. Too much time has passed. I mean, he’s practically a stranger at this point, even though there was a time I kind of thought . . .” This was the hard part. “One day we’d get married—do the whole have a kid thing . . .” The needle nearly caught the end of her thumb. She’d better slow down, or Rachel would have bloodstains on her wedding quilt. An errant hair tickled her nose, and she blew hair out of her mouth. “And it didn’t happen.”

  “You protected his future at the cost of your own. Is it possible you resent him because of it?”

  This was the most Jemma had talked about Justin in more than a decade, though she’d held Taryn’s hand and supported her when the world cracked apart. It was like breaking open the seal on King Tut’s tomb. Taryn’s cheeks flared hotter than the fire crackling in the stone fireplace. “I don’t resent him. What I did was the right thing.” She’d learned from her father’s example and saved all of them from a heap of trouble, even though it hurt.

  The only sounds in the room were the tick of the Regulator wall clock in the kitchen and the crack of the fire. Jemma silently glided her rocker back and forth so long, it gave Taryn hope the conversation was over.

  But then, her grandmother spoke. “Maybe I’ve kept quiet too long.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Before Jemma could answer, the sound of an engine glided close. Taryn sat up and laid her quilt pieces on the arm of the recliner. The house sat half a mile off the road, almost hidden by the orchard. Accidental drive-bys simply di
dn’t happen. “Are you expecting company?” True to Jemma’s Wikipedia research, the graupel had stopped almost as quickly as it started, leaving the roads clear, but it was still too cold for most of Jemma’s septuagenarian buddies to venture out this afternoon. Besides, most of them knew it was decorating day, and there would be far too much activity for Jemma to be interrupted.

  Jemma glanced at her watch with a slight nod. “Sure am. I decided last year climbing on the roof to hang tree lights is for the birds. Hired me somebody to do it this year.” She slipped her feet into her tennis shoes and stood, setting aside her sewing in the vacated chair.

  “Jack Truewell’s older than you are, Jem. He has no more business being on the roof than you do. I’d have done it for you.” Jack had been the go-to handyman around Hollings since before Taryn was born. It was well known he’d fix anything, would do anything for a few bucks or a few jars of homemade apple butter. Still, the man was getting up there. Sooner or later he’d have to retire, if for no other reason than to keep Taryn from worrying herself into an ulcer over the possibility he’d slide off the roof and break his hip.

  “Jack Truewell got married last week. He’s honeymooning in Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic.”

  “Do what?” Now this was news worth talking about. “To who?”

  Jemma flashed a grin as she passed Taryn’s chair on her way to the kitchen and the back door. “Emma Westin. Surprised everybody. Went down to the justice of the peace at the courthouse in Asheville, got married, and hauled outta here before anyone even realized they were sweet on each other.”

  “Well, wonders never cease.” It was one of Jemma’s favorite expressions, and Taryn lobbed it out there now. Jack Truewell and the owner of the only beauty shop in Hollings, where all of the women of Jemma’s generation went to get their hair set on Friday so they’d look good for church on Sunday. Aqua Net and rollers ruled Emma’s world. And she was easily ten years Jack’s junior. Taryn grinned. Good for both of them. “So who’d you call if Jack’s gone?”

  The weather stripping on the back door popped as Jemma pulled the door open.

  “Afternoon, Jemma.” The deep voice wafted through the laundry room, across the kitchen, and into the den where it rested on Taryn’s ears like a heavy blanket, almost suffocating her in shock.

  Justin. Jemma had hired Justin.

  Just what did she think she was up to?

  * * *

  This must be what a panic attack felt like. Or a heart attack. Taryn laid a hand on her chest and tried to press her thumping heart back into place. Dropping into the bentwood rocker in Jemma’s upstairs sewing room, she laid her head back and stared at the ceiling. Stupid. This was all stupid. It was just Justin. Her best friend growing up. The guy she dated for two years in high school.

  The man she thought she’d grow up to marry.

  The man whose baby she’d put up for adoption without telling him.

  She groaned and dropped her head between her knees, rocking chair creaking at the movement. This was the mountain she had to climb.

  It was the right thing to do at the time. He was in basic training, embarking on the career he’d dreamed of all of his life. She was headed to college, bruised by their breakup during a fight driven by her neediness and his truthfulness.

  He needed to go. She’d stood right by him until it was time, then begged him not to leave, even tried to manipulate him into staying. It was a brutal good-bye because of her impatience and neediness. What should have been a temporary good-bye wound up lasting more than a decade.

  Because she’d listened to her father.

  Taryn closed her eyes against the sight of him storming out the back door of Jemma’s house, where Taryn had lived since her mother’s death, craving the love missing from her house with her mother gone.

  She’d had her hands in dishwater, cleaning up after dinner while Jemma was at her women’s group meeting at church. Head reeling from the appearance of two pink lines on a pregnancy test, Taryn found the dishwater warm and soothing. She couldn’t call Justin in basic at Fort Benning, and there was no way he would call her, not after the things she’d said and done. She’d have to call his parents later and see if they’d be willing to give up the address. It was certainly not the way she’d choose to tell him, and as bubbles popped against her hands, she prayed he wouldn’t think she’d done this on purpose to bring him back.

  When her father stepped through the back door, it had capped a day already fraught with emotion. She hadn’t seen him in months. When she moved to Jemma’s, he made himself even scarcer than in the fourteen years before. His wife was gone, and he viewed her death as a release from all obligations. He was content to live the carefree life he’d always resented Taryn for stealing from him, the life he’d always felt her mother had denied him when she got pregnant at eighteen.

  Just like Taryn.

  Taryn dried her hands and forced herself to face him. He smelled of the sticky sweet tar from his day of work with the road commission, while dust and asphalt caked his neon yellow shirt. He had a white plastic grocery bag in hand. “Know you’re heading out to Pennsylvania tomorrow for college.” He dropped the bag with a clatter on the counter. “Thought I’d at least come tell you good-bye. Bring you some pens and stuff to use at school.”

  It was the nicest thing Taryn could ever remember him doing. It figured. Just as she was leaving town to move seven hours away, he decided to do a dad thing. Just as she figured out she was about to become a parent herself, he stepped up to the plate and kicked a little of the dirt off his shoes.

  What would have happened if he hadn’t settled his bag on the counter right next to the empty pregnancy test box? If his face hadn’t reddened under the weathered skin and his eyes hadn’t hardened like the same roads he slaved over every day? He’d snatched the box up, stalked across the small kitchen, and nearly backed her against the counter, shoving the white- and-pink indictment into her face with such speed the thin cardboard tweaked her nose.

  “Are you pregnant?” The words were so quiet, they could hardly be called a whisper, but they were so much worse than any shout. So much worse.

  Taryn didn’t have to answer. She knew the truth was all over the fear in her face.

  “It’s the Callahan boy’s baby, isn’t it?” His voice dropped deeper as the box shook between them, blurred by its closeness and wreaking havoc on eyes already hot with unshed tears. “You will not ruin his life.” The words vibrated. “He has a future ahead of him, and you will not ruin his life the way you and your careless mother ruined mine. You will not tie him to you by getting pregnant.” His eyes were granite. “Do you hear me?” The final shout pounded hard against her ears, leaving them ringing, stinging almost as badly as the sheer contempt in his eyes. “You’re just like her. I should’ve known the apple wouldn’t fall far from the tree.” With a bitter chuckle at his own irony, he threw the box at her feet, grabbed the bag from the counter, and stalked out the back door, slamming it so hard behind him the Franciscan dogwood plate Taryn had just washed slipped from the edge of the counter and shattered on the floor.

  Taryn pressed her hands hard against her eyes, sagging hard against the counter. The decision had solidified then. She would not, could not, trap Justin the way her mother had trapped her father. Couldn’t stand to see his eyes fill with bitterness toward her, toward their child, the way her father’s had always looked at her. She would not wreck his dreams.

  So she scuttled her own instead. The only way to keep Justin from finding out was to keep everyone else in Hollings from finding out. It was so old-fashioned, so 1930, the way she ran off to the University of Pennsylvania as planned and refused to come home for the entire first year, until the baby was born in May. She never held her baby girl. The decision still gutted her. She should have, just once.

  A few times a year, she heard from Sarah or from her adoptive parents. Short notes. School pictures. Although Taryn had wanted a fully closed adoption, all parties anonymous
to one another, Sarah’s adoptive parents had pleaded for an open one so Sarah could know her history, have a connection to her roots. It had been a reluctant agreement, but as the years passed, Taryn found herself looking forward to those letters more and more, though she’d long ago silenced any requests from the parents to come and visit. If Sarah wanted to see her birth family, she’d ask herself, unprompted.

  In her grief after the baby’s birth, Taryn had needed her grandmother, someone to let her know she was loved, even though she’d all but abandoned her own child. She moved closer to home to UNC-Asheville and decided to be a teacher.

  Oh, the irony, the absolute unfathomable mind of God, that Taryn McKenna taught history to high schoolers and stood in front of them as a role model.

  Footsteps stomped across the roof, bringing her back to Jemma’s sewing room, the gently swaying rocking chair, and the mildly sweet smell that would always be uniquely Jemma in her memory, of fabric and thread and the faint hint of sewing machine oil.

  Now here was Justin, clomping around on Jemma’s roof twelve years later, after looking her in the eye and turning away less than twenty-four hours before. Yeah, this day was coming, but did it have to be today?

  Her grandmother had some ’splaining to do about what exactly she thought she was up to bringing him here. Jemma had grieved over the adoption and the secrecy right along with Taryn, but having been seated in the front row for her daughter’s marriage to Taryn’s father, the course of action had been clear to her just as it had been to her granddaughter. In fact, she’d encouraged it.

  Speaking of Jemma, it was time to have her answer a few questions. Taryn pressed her hands to her knees and stood as the footsteps stopped directly over her head, followed by a thump and repeated vague scrapings. Yeah, now was as good a time as any to go anywhere else but here.