Quilted by Christmas (9781426796142)

by Bailey, Jodie

  Maybe the events of the last ninety minutes had made her hysterical, but Taryn barked a sharp laugh, drawing glances of reprimand from the handful of people waiting silently in the room and earning a sympathetic smile from the woman behind the information desk, who had probably seen everything at some point in her career.

  Taryn smiled sheepishly and sat back in her chair. Jemma would be just the one to threaten a couple of burly paramedics with green thumb duty. She chuckled, and the heaving of her chest coaxed a tear out of her eye. She could lose Jemma. Could have already lost Jemma. Even if she survived, this was proof positive Jemma wasn’t going to live forever after all.

  Tears pressed into her throat, but she refused to cry in front of Justin. She studied the tip of her big toe where she’d scraped her shoe on a shingle on the roof. She’d like to go back and choose an alternate timeline, one where Justin told Jemma about the house and she railed for a few minutes, then went into the kitchen and started frying chicken and whipping mashed potatoes for dinner.

  Taryn glanced at her watch. She should be washing up right now, getting ready to dig into something wonderful like mashed potatoes or squash, not waiting for a doctor to decide if a broken arm was the worst of Jemma’s issues. “I’m sorry you got tangled up in this.”

  “No worries. It’s not every day I get to rescue a damsel in distress.”

  She pretended not to understand his meaning. “Yeah, Jemma really needed you today.”

  He opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again. “McKenna, your grandmother is the toughest bird I know. Jemma will be fine. She’s probably back there telling the doctors they have no idea how to do their job the right way.”

  “True.”

  Before Justin could reply, the door on the other side of the room swung open. “Hope Brodigan’s family?” A blue scrub-clad doctor glanced around the room. And he did not look hopeful.

  5

  Before Taryn could fully take in the doctor’s expression, Rachel burst through the glass double doors on the near side of the room and skidded to a stop beside Taryn. Her hair hung in wet strings around her face, and her sweatshirt hung heavy and soaked from her shoulders. She wrapped an arm around Taryn’s shoulders, breathing heavily and soaking Taryn’s shirt with cold rain.

  The gray-haired doctor bounced his eyes back and forth between them before they came back to rest on Taryn as though asking permission to speak in front of the crazy lady who’d just bolted in like a wild stallion during a hurricane.

  She nodded, her absurd nervous giggle from earlier threatening to raise the curtain for an encore. “This is Rachel. My cousin. On my dad’s side.” As if the doctor even knew or cared.

  “I had to drop my son off at my mom’s,” Rachel said lamely.

  The doctor raised an eyebrow. Like the girl at the information desk, he’d probably seen it all at one point or another.

  “How’s Jemma?” Rachel finally reached the point where she couldn’t wait any longer. Four seconds. A new record in patience for her.

  Doctor Archer—Taryn scanned his name tag—fingered the business end of the stethoscope sticking out of his pocket. “She’s just finished having some tests run and will go into CICU for observation as a precaution when she’s finished, so you will only be able to go in two at a time for a few minutes at a time. We believe she experienced a syncopal episode. She essentially fainted. Her right radius was fractured in the fall, and she took a pretty good lick to the forehead, probably from the ladder or the floor itself.”

  “But she’s going to be okay?” Now Taryn was the impatient one. She wanted to motion for him to speed up and tell her Jemma was going to be up and about and bossing everyone around and nosing into the whole town’s business again in no time.

  “She seems to be lucid, and I don’t believe there is any lingering head injury, though we’re waiting on the results of the MRI to tell us for sure. However, the blow to the head isn’t our biggest concern.” And then he stopped talking. It was as though he was hoping they wouldn’t notice there was more to come and he could get off the hook from delivering the Really Bad News.

  “What?” Rachel and Taryn were in stereo now, voices laced with impatience.

  Dr. Archer pulled the stethoscope from his pocket and draped it around his neck. “She’ll have to have minor surgery to reset the bone.”

  Taryn’s shoulders relaxed. “Minor surgery?” Jemma had carpal tunnel surgery just the year before, the product of years of abusing her wrists at the sewing machine. Minor surgery? Taryn wanted to laugh with relief.

  The doctor didn’t appear to find it amusing. “For a woman with her condition, even minor surgery with anesthesia can be tricky.”

  Rachel tightened her grip on Taryn’s shoulder, and their gazes met.

  Taryn could feel her lip lift with confusion as she turned back to Dr. Archer. “What condition?”

  His jaw tightened as his eyes flashed wider. “I’m sorry. I thought . . . You’ll have to discuss it with her.”

  Pulling in a deep breath, Taryn squared off. “What’s wrong with Jemma?”

  A hand rested on her shoulder and pulled back slightly. Not Rachel. Justin. She’d completely forgotten he was still in the room. The fierce surge of anger ebbed, replaced by the irrational need to lean back against his solid chest and draw strength from him, a near stranger to today’s Taryn. Something told her he’d be okay with it if she did such a thing.

  Instead, she tilted her chin higher and faced the doctor. “I know. You can’t tell me.” She dragged her hands down her face and pressed her fingers against her mouth.

  “When can Taryn see her?” Rachel finally spoke. She’d been quiet so long it made Taryn wonder whether her cousin had lost the ability to speak. The restless hyperactivity that blew in the door with Rachel had stilled into dead calm.

  “Right now if you wish. But until we evaluate her head any further, I’d suggest against any sort of confrontation.”

  Taryn bit back a retort. There wasn’t a confrontation planned. She just needed answers from her grandmother. Right now. Answers that would clearly have to wait.

  Justin squeezed Taryn’s shoulder and leaned forward, his breath tickling the hair away from her ear. “Want me to call Marnie? She’ll get the prayer chain at the church started. I know she’ll want to get here as soon as possible.”

  Taryn winced and nodded. There was going to be a high price to pay for not calling Marnie herself as soon as the ambulance doors closed behind Jemma. As her grandmother’s best friend and Taryn’s confidante, Marnie stuck closer than family and would be none too happy they’d waited this long to call. “Please.” She pulled her cell phone from her hip pocket and handed it to Justin. “Her number’s in my contacts.”

  Justin stepped away, and the spot where his hand was on her shoulder cooled immediately.

  She reached for his arm. “Justin?”

  He turned, but the look in his brown eyes sucked away all of the words she was going to say. Taryn’s jaw twitched back and forth, trying to form words before her brain landed on something guaranteed to make her look like a total loon. “Tell Marnie . . . Tell her to wait to come up here. I know she’s a spitfire like Jemma and wants to march in here and take charge, but the time’s not right. Not until probably tomorrow morning.”

  A grin as slow and sweet as warm molasses tipped the corners of his mouth. For an instant, there was a kindred spirit in the room, one who knew how her grandmother and her best friend were because he grew up with them, too. One who could imagine what it would be like to know the most invincible woman in your life had taken a hit that might be worse than it seemed. “I’ll tell Marnie,” he assured her. “I just can’t guarantee she’ll listen.”

  “She won’t. Jemma wouldn’t listen if it were Marnie up there in pain.” Taryn chewed the inside of her lip. “Oh. And tell her there’s no need to bring food.”

  Justin chuckled. “I’ll tell her. But again—”

  “You can’t control her. I
know.” She gave him a soft smile and glanced over at Rachel, who eyed the two of them with interest.

  Taryn shook her head slightly as Justin gave her shoulder one final squeeze, waved to Rachel, and stepped out the glass door into the parking lot, reminding Taryn just how cold the room was.

  * * *

  “If Jemma bumped her head and fractured her arm, why is she in cardiac intensive care?” Rachel’s voice was low, almost drowned out by the sound of their footsteps in the hallway.

  Taryn stopped walking. “What are you talking about?”

  “He said she’s in CICU. Cardiac. Heart.” Rachel started walking again. “And he said she fainted. Since when does Jemma faint? Something’s going on with her heart.”

  “This makes no sense. Other than the one issue she’s had her whole life, there’s nothing.” It took a few of her own heartbeats before Taryn’s legs received the brain’s call to start moving again. Even then, they wobbled more than they should have. “Her last checkup was in May, and she came back and declared she was healthy as could be.”

  “May?”

  “Yeah. Right before she went to Asheville to see her cousin.” Taryn’s feet dragged. “A sudden, unplanned trip to Asheville. And she repeated it again in August. She was seeing someone at the hospital there.”

  This was why Jemma had taken to long walks through the orchard in the early mornings. Why she’d suddenly started telling Taryn where certain family valuables were hidden, how to access her accounts . . . Why she’d led more than one dinner table conversation about how she never wanted to be hooked up to machines or left to waste away in a nursing home.

  The realization was just settling into a tremble in Taryn’s hands when they pushed through the metal doors of the small CICU and found a nurse who led them to Jemma’s curtained cubicle.

  Rachel turned to her before they reached the curtain. “Let her rest. Don’t bring this up tonight.” Taryn opened her mouth to protest, but Rachel held a finger up. “Don’t.” She pulled back the edge of the curtain and ushered Taryn in.

  Taryn didn’t know what she’d expected, but it sure wasn’t Jemma sitting up in the bed, working a find-a-word puzzle with her left hand, while her right lay wrapped in a sling across her stomach. She slipped the pencil into the book awkwardly and closed it when the girls appeared. “And where have you two been?” The white bandage on her forehead crept toward her hairline in question. Far from looking frail, Jemma simply looked like Jemma in strange surroundings, a penguin on the beach in Bermuda.

  “W-waiting to come see you?” Taryn felt off-balance, like she’d ridden a roller coaster too long and couldn’t find her footing.

  “Well, here I am. Waiting for someone to get a lick of sense and send me home. Foolishness, me sitting here in this ICU excuse for a room when surely someone else needs it more than I do.”

  There it was. The perfect opening to ask why all this was necessary, but Rachel’s elbow in the small of Taryn’s back stopped her. If the doctor hadn’t warned her and Rachel wasn’t here to keep her in line, there’d be a whole lot of questions flying right now. Instead, Taryn curled her fingers tightly and redirected her words. “You can’t come home ’til they set your arm. It would be more trouble than good.”

  Jemma wrinkled her nose and cast a glance at her arm. “Old lady bones. When I was your age, this never would have happened.” She looked up again. “Rachel, I will be up and around in time to make the cake for your wedding. Don’t you go worrying.” She lifted her left hand. “My mixer only requires one arm, and Taryn can help with the finer points of the decorating. Soon as they cut me loose from here, I’ll pull everything together. We’ve got a few weeks. All will be well.” She reached out in the small space and patted Rachel’s arm. “You just rest easy. I can’t believe your wedding is less than a month away.”

  Taryn wanted to throw her hands toward the ceiling and scream. Jemma lay in a hospital bed under constant watch, and she wanted to talk about cakes and weddings?

  Rachel patted Jemma’s hand as if this was the most normal conversational setting in the world. “I’m not worried. And if you can’t do it, it’s okay too. Kerry’s Bakery can bake a cake for me at the last minute if we have to. You worry about getting better.”

  Jemma “pshawed” her with a twitch of her hand, then turned her attention to Taryn. “I saw you up on the roof with Justin.”

  Oh, yeah. One more thing she and Jemma had to hash out. Probably one more thing she shouldn’t bring up here and now too. The way things were going, she’d never get answers to any of her questions. Still, it wasn’t the time to bring up the roof, not with Jemma’s health on such a precarious ledge. “Jemma, why are you here?” The question popped out so fast Taryn’s brain hardly registered it was going to speak.

  Rachel gripped Taryn’s wrist as Jemma’s nostrils flared. “Because I fell off my stepladder, broke my arm, and banged my head.”

  No way was this the whole story. Jemma had a “tell” when she withheld information. Her face tensed so much in an attempt to look innocent that her wrinkles flattened out and she looked ten years younger.

  “Not here in the hospital. Here in cardiac ICU. What’s wrong with you? Why did you go to—”

  “Not a thing is wrong with me other than a touch of osteoporosis making my bone weak. Let it lie.”

  “But Jemma—”

  “Now, I need you to do me a favor.” Jemma moved on, switching topics as fast as her mind could race. “I need you to bring me my makeup. And my curling iron.” She tapped her thumb to her fingers on her left hand, ticking off the items as the list grew. “And hair spray. Please hair spray. Tomorrow when you come. I don’t need to be in here looking like an old lady.”

  Rachel stifled a giggle beside Taryn and turned her eyes toward the ceiling.

  “Know what I could use right now, though?” Jemma plucked at the stark white blanket. “One of those warmed blankets from the dryer. Those feel so good. Almost makes it worth being in here. I’m gonna have to remember when I go home and throw my blanket in the dryer every night.”

  Taryn was at attention before the sentence was even finished. “I’ll go right now.”

  “Actually, Rachel, could you step over to the nurse and ask her for one?”

  “Sure.” Parting the tiny curtain, Rachel vanished.

  Something was up. A couple of solid clicks passed from the IV next to Jemma before she spoke, her voice low. “I need you to work on Rachel’s quilt for me. Get it finished.” She lifted her hand and dropped it back to the bed at her side. “I’m good for nothing with my left hand. I mean, I could sew it, but even with my quilter’s hoop it would be a mess. My left hand’s just not steady with a needle.”

  She wouldn’t deny her grandmother anything, but inside, Taryn groaned. Hand-sewing a quilt of such magnitude would take everything she had, every free minute after school. Not to mention hand-sewing was an activity she enjoyed about as much as a root canal. But she’d do it. Because Jemma had asked. Knowing her grandmother could see everything in her expression, Taryn arranged her words in her head before she spoke. “I’ve never sewn one by myself. I mean, I know my teacher was the greatest out there, but you’ve never set me loose all on my own before. And I know you’ve gone behind me in the past and resewn some of my stitches.”

  “Because I’m too much of a perfectionist. Believe me, little girl, you are a far better quilter than you think you are. You’d be surprised, and this has to be done. With her mama and her grandma gone and not able to do it, I promised myself she’d have a piece of her history on her wedding day. And I want to keep my promise. Rachel deserves this after all she’s been through.”

  Jemma was right, as usual. Taryn calculated in her head and knew she was cutting it close. “It’s a lot of work.”

  “You can do it.” Jemma said with a mysterious grin. “I’ll be praying for you. And God just might send you some help from where you least expect it.”

  6

  The packed dirt of t
he driveway held puddles of mud that squished and splashed under the tires. This brief break in the weather was scheduled to end with a sweeping cold front tomorrow night, and if this afternoon’s downpour didn’t dry before then, Hollings and the whole mountain would be in a world of slippery hurt. Up the hill, the lights on Jemma’s roof twinkled above the trees, making the house look like a fairy gingerbread home. Jemma would love it if she could see it right now, sparkling away exactly like she’d pictured.

  Taryn and Rachel had gone their separate ways in the parking lot of the tiny hospital. It wasn’t until Rachel’s taillights faded on the road up the mountain toward her parents’ house the thought hit Taryn. Rachel would go home, call Mark, snuggle Ethan, talk to her parents . . . And Taryn would step into her tiny little house without even a dog to meet her at the door.

  With her dash clock transmitting a blue 9:40, she’d decided to check on Jemma’s house one more time to make sure the door was locked, stove off, dishes washed. Heaven knew, Jemma would definitely have a massive heart attack if dishes were left in the sink overnight.

  Taryn smiled as her small SUV splashed through another puddle just before rounding the house. Guaranteed, Jemma would ask her about the dishes tomorrow, right after she asked if Taryn had brought her makeup.

  The back lights shone brightly against the dark, illuminating the entire backyard all the way to the barn. They highlighted Justin’s red pickup, sitting right by the back door.

  Taryn’s stomach dropped somewhere around her knees. What was he doing here? Asking the question kept her from acknowledging the tiny little flutter in her stomach. It was surprise, right? A jolt of shock at seeing a vehicle in the driveway. Not joy at seeing Justin. Not at all.

  He rounded the house and leaned against the bed of his truck as she shifted into park. The instant Taryn opened the car door, Justin asked, “How’s Jemma?”