The Lover's Knot: A Someday Quilts Mystery

by Clare O'Donohue

  Except, apparently, today.

  I went after her to at least get her to make me some scrambled eggs. I found my grandmother by the front door talking quietly with Nancy.

  "Well hello." Nancy smiled as I walked toward her. "I wondered whether our paths would cross this weekend."

  "Hi, Nancy." I hugged her lightly. "It's been a while."

  "Well, a city girl can't be expected to find many reasons to come up here," she said.

  "Thanks," my grandmother responded sarcastically.

  "Don't take offense, Eleanor. It's good she has her own life." She looked me up and down. "Are you staying for a while this time?"

  "No. I'm leaving tomorrow."

  "See, what did I tell you. A life of her own." Nancy picked up a bundle of small quilts, each about two feet square. The top one was an appliqued autumn tree with leaves in at least a dozen shades. The piece was simple but it had such depth.

  Nancy's work was a combination of sewing, threadwork, and beading. She made landscapes, scenes of people at play, animals, and abstracts. I'd seen Nancy's beautiful handiwork before, and it always amazed me. Before she could stop me, I grabbed the bundle and began looking at the others.

  "This is a work of art," I told her.

  "Nonsense," she said, taking the quilts back from me. "It's just something I do as an outlet."

  "You could sell those," I said.

  "I've been saying that for years," my grandmother agreed.

  Nancy just blushed. "I make them for my children," she answered, patting the quilts smooth.

  My grandmother changed the subject. "Nancy volunteered to open up the shop today, so we can spend some time together." Then she nodded toward me. I understood the gesture immediately. My mother used to do the same head nod when my uncle gave me a piece of candy.

  "Thanks, Nancy," I said obediently and looked toward Eleanor, who smiled.

  "No worries at all. Happy to do it. I'd do anything for your granny, you know. Just like most people in town."

  Nancy headed for the door, and so did we.

  "Did you take the deposit to the bank last night?" my grandmother asked as Nancy was leaving. "You know I hate leaving money in the shop overnight. Makes a great target for thieves."

  "Honestly, Eleanor," said Nancy with a laugh. "I'm the one who makes the deposits. And I did it last night like I do every night." She left quickly, not waiting for Eleanor's usual sharp reply.

  My grandmother just muttered to herself and handed me something. "It's chilly. Take this."

  It was a worn-out leather men's jacket, the sort of jacket that would sell in Manhattan for hundreds of dollars, and in Archers Rest would be donated to charity.

  "Where are we going?"

  "I thought you were hungry" was all she would say. It was a beautiful fall day. As we walked, I found that I was enjoying the sunshine, the falling leaves, and the quiet of small-town life. And then I thought, how romantic it was, and I was depressed again.

  Heartbreak requires concentration. If you forget for a moment that you've been dumped, you might enjoy a bit of sunshine and then, wham, you remember. Then you feel bad about being dumped all over again. I needed to stay depressed, but I couldn't think of anything in Archers Rest that was bad enough to keep me that way.

  CHAPTER 7

  Archers Rest, like a lot of towns on New York's Hudson River, was first established in the 1600s by Dutch settlers. The head of the group was man named James Archer, who died the first winter. He was buried in a small field on the edge of a town that in the nearly four hundred years since grew into a large a cemetery, with almost seven thousand graves. Since Archers Rest had only five thousand living residents, there were more dead than alive in the little town.

  I thought it was a delightfully morbid fact about the town, but my grandmother dismissed me. "It's big enough that you don't know everyone but small enough that even strangers have friends in common," she had told me once. And everyone had friends in the cemetery.

  Archers Rest runs along the river, so we followed the river's edge from my grandmother's house to Main Street. We turned down the street past the hardware store, a pharmacy, and the post office.

  As we got to the end of the street I saw Someday Quilts just ahead. Inside lights were on and Nancy was in the doorway changing the sign from CLOSED to OPEN.

  "Why doesn't Nancy come to your quilt club?" I asked.

  "She does when she can," Eleanor said tiredly, as though this were old territory for her. "Her husband isn't well and it's difficult for her." She seemed to be choosing her words carefully. "Sometimesshe likes to leave a little early on Friday. She closed the shop an hour early yesterday."

  "She just wanted to get home?" I asked.

  "Perhaps." Eleanor looked at me. "I believe you said you were hungry. So I expect you to eat plenty."

  My stomach was making quiet rumbling sounds that were about to get a whole lot louder. But in a typical bit of grandmother irony, we arrived at the one restaurant in town that made me nearly lose my appetite--the diner next to her shop.

  The place seemed old and tired. At the front were four small Formica tables with two chairs each, and every one was taken. Past them were booths on either side. The seats were reddish-brown leatherette, but small rips at the seams revealed hints of the bright red they must have been thirty years before. There was a sign on the wall that announced the special of the day, meatloaf. It looked as if that had been the special since the diner's opening. There was no decoration anywhere, unless you counted what was obviously a thin layer of dust covering everything. I didn't care, though. I just wanted food.

  "I can't believe this place still exists," I said. "Has the food improved?"

  "It's not about the food. It's about the people," my grandmother said as we walked in. "The owner was good to me when I opened the shop, and I like to support her."

  Natalie and Susanne were at a table near the back, with Natalie's ten-month-old son, Jeremy, in a high chair. They waved us over and handed us menus, which I immediately began studying.

  "It's a shame this place is closing," my grandmother said.

  "Carrie was talking about opening up a coffee shop. This would be a good space," Natalie offered.

  "Oh, she's just talking," Susanne disagreed, and then as if explaining to me, she continued. "Carrie sometimes misses being a high-powered businesswoman."

  "Who wouldn't?" interrupted Natalie. "It must be so exciting to live in New York City and have a cool job and go out to fancy restaurants all the time."

  "Yeah, it must be," I laughed. "Most of the time I eat a salad in my cubicle."

  "What are you talking about? Eleanor said you work at a news magazine. I don't read it, but it sounds glamorous. My husband and I are pretty simple high school graduates." She laughed. "A hairdresser and a mechanic. Nothing glamorous, like your life."

  "That's nonsense. There's nothing simple about either of you," her mother interrupted. "Anyway, where does glamour get you? Carrie gets ideas in her head all the time about opening a business. Last year it was an antique shop, this year it's a coffee shop."

  "Last year it was a child care business. The antique shop was the year before," Natalie corrected her.

  "Regardless," said Susanne, "she never follows through."

  It was like being at a tennis match, going back and forth between mother and daughter while my grandmother silently drank her coffee.

  "She doesn't go through with it," Susanne continued, looking just at me, "because as your own grandmother can tell you, owning your own business is a twenty-four-seven job."

  Then they switched topics, talking about a favorite quilt show they all watched. My food had arrived, so I kept busy wolfing down pancakes and bacon. Only baby Jeremy had less concern for etiquette.

  "How do you stay so thin?" marveled Natalie, watching me.

  "Depression eating." I laughed, but I put down my fork.

  "You're allowed," Susanne reassured me.

  Both Susanne an
d Natalie gave me that "poor thing" look that I had seen last night at the shop.

  "Yes. This weekend." My grandmother suddenly sounded stern. "After this weekend you have to get on with your life. He made a big mistake, and gaining twenty pounds won't change that."

  She was right, of course, but rather than admit it, I changed the subject. "What will happen to this place if Carrie doesn't buy it?"

  "She won't," said Susanne, a little too sure. "Probably someone from New York will take it. Someone coming up in search of a nice quiet life."

  "Turn it into a hip little restaurant like they must have in your neighborhood," said a suddenly excited Natalie. "Put in WiFi and serve chai tea."

  "Are you speaking English?" Susanne looked at her completely perplexed.

  Natalie just rolled her eyes. "They'll make it like a city place, is what I'm saying."

  I looked around. It wasn't impressive. Even though it was a diner, it would still have to be stripped to the joists to turn it into the kind of trendy place the women thought it would become. I had a better idea.

  "Why don't you take it?" I asked my grandmother.

  "Me? What do I need with a diner?"

  "Expand the shop." I looked around again. Since it needed a major remodeling, it could be anything. "You could knock down the wall between your place and this and double your selling space."

  "Someday is packed to the rafters, El," agreed Susanne. "You could put in a classroom. You've always wanted a classroom."

  Eleanor looked around the diner. "Needs work," she said.

  We all nodded. It was impossible to ignore that it was a big job. "Well, maybe it is too much for you," I started to agree.

  She looked at me. Even Natalie and Susanne recognized that I had challenged my grandmother, and she would find it irresistible.

  "Could be done," Eleanor finally admitted. "Where's the bill? I need to go to work."

  Susanne, Natalie, and Jeremy had already said good-bye and left, and I walked to the door, but my grandmother hesitated. I could see that she was quietly examining the diner. I knew what I saw-- torn leatherette booths and soda machines--but I could tell by the look in her eyes that in her mind the place was already filled floor to ceiling with fabric.

  CHAPTER 8

  We walked next door to the shop my grandmother had owned for more than thirty years. And looking at it, it might seem as if she hadn't gotten rid of anything the entire time.

  The quilt shop had a treasure hunt quality to it. While there were organized shelves with bolts of fabric lined up by color, there were just as many bolts leaning up against the wall. Fabrics of colorful flowers, cute baby animals, and Christmas prints were piled on top of one another near the cash register at the front.

  To get to the rest of the shop, you had to make a semicircle around a dangerously overloaded rack of books and down an aisle that was one person deep.

  If you did, you would be rewarded with a dazzling display of quilts. Eleanor had made the large, wildly colorful ones with abstract patterns that appeared to follow no rules. Nancy, on the other hand, was clearly the creator of the small, carefully constructed and elaborately quilted pieces. In the center was one of Eleanor's favorites--a small, bright log cabin quilt that Grace, the woman who taught her to quilt, had made. Each was enough to inspire even me to take up quilting.

  Nancy caught me staring at the quilts. "Are you ready to make one of your own?"

  "At some point," I admitted.

  "Well, I'd be happy to help you learn, if you like." She reached her hand out and touched one of her wall hangings. "Making a quilt can be the answer to so many problems."

  Then she sighed, grabbed a ruler from a nearby basket, and headed back to the front of the shop. I'd liked Nancy from the moment she came to work at my grandmother's shop more than ten years ago. She seemed rooted to Archers Rest. I don't think she'd been more than fifty miles from it for years, but she'd made sure her sons had the chance to go off to bigger things if they wanted. One was in medical school and the other, Nancy proudly told me, was planning to spend his junior year of college in Italy.

  "What are you doing?" My grandmother's voice snapped me to attention. "Are you caught in a trance over there?"

  I turned quickly, knocking over a display of scissors and rotary cutters.

  "You could definitely use more space," I said to justify my clumsiness. "If you knocked a wall down you could put up more shelves and get some of this stuff off the floor."

  "Knock a wall down?" Nancy asked as she moved back in our direction.

  "I was telling my grandmother that she should lease the diner space and expand the shop."

  "What a nice idea. Eleanor, do you think you will?"

  "For heaven's sake, Nancy, I have enough on my hands with this space, let alone taking on more expense and trouble." My grandmother walked away from us to help a woman pulling bolt after bolt of fabric off a shelf.

  "I think she's worried that she's getting too old for so much work," Nancy said in a low whisper.

  "Really?" was all I could say. To me, my grandmother had always been old and always ageless. When I was born she was almost fifty, and now she was in her midseventies. Even now she seemed to have more energy than I did. Or maybe it was just that she used her energy in more focused ways.

  "I think it would be exciting to expand the shop." Nancy looked around. "Give it a little face-lift."

  "If you want a face-lift . . . ," Eleanor started as she finished up with her customer.

  "Too late to do me any good," Nancy laughed. "I just think it would be fun."

  It would be, I thought. I considered writing down some ideas, making myself useful.

  "I know we have more six-inch rulers." My grandmother was done dreaming and had returned to the business at hand. "But I can't find any."

  "Downstairs," said Nancy. "I'll get them."

  As she said that, two more women came into the shop. And behind them Carrie entered with two small kids in tow.

  "I'll get it," I volunteered. "You guys are getting busy."

  "Will you know what they are?" my grandmother asked, concerned.

  "Six-inch rulers are rulers that measure six inches, right? Or is that some clever quilting code to fool nonbelievers?"

  My grandmother was not a fan of sarcasm. Well, that's not true. She wasn't a fan of my sarcasm. She was perfectly fond of her own.

  "They're in a box by the back corner," said Nancy. "I think they're under a pile of other boxes. Just bring up three or four. We haven't room for more."

  "Just be careful," Eleanor said.

  "What's the worst that could happen? I'm in a quilt shop," I threw back at her as I headed toward the stairs.

  At the very back of the shop stood a long, narrow staircase that led down to a small storage room and office. With space at a premium, even the stairs were piled with boxes. A small chain with an EMPLOYEES ONLY sign was supposed to keep out the customers, but the regulars always ignored it, as there was a bathroom downstairs.

  The stairs were not only narrow but also steep. I slowly went down, with one hand on the wall for safety. This was not something I wanted my grandmother to see--my being careful--but these were not stairs for the faint of heart.