Harriet paced the kitchen. How dare her aunt make a decision that affected her life? Granted, Aunt Beth had done a lot for her as a child, but she wasn't a child anymore. At thirty-eight, she could make her own decisions, even if that meant not deciding anything. And Aunt Beth completely missed the point where Steve was concerned. Yes, she felt a deep, aching void when she was able to get past her anger, but that didn't happen often. Steve had betrayed her on such a deep level, and his family and their friends had helped him. The relationships she'd had with those people were all based on a huge lie.
On her third pass across the kitchen she picked up her cereal bowl and Fred's milk dish, rinsed both and put them in the dishwasher. She contemplated changing her outfit again and wondered why. In Oakland her wardrobe had consisted of black and baggy; it was what she was comfortable in. She would have looked better in navy or brown, but she liked the harsh look black gave her. It suited her mood.
When she'd met Steve she'd fancied herself a fashionista, favoring asymmetrical lines and the color purple. After they were married, her tastes had become more sophisticated as she and her girlfriends ferreted out neighborhood boutiques and up-and-coming designers in both San Francisco and Oakland. It had all been a lie, though. If your friends couldn't tell you your husband had a life-threatening disease, how could you trust anything they said?
The morning after Harriet arrived Aunt Beth had driven her to the Wal-Mart in Port Angeles and purchased five T-shirts in primary colors, two white turtlenecks, a red flannel shirt and an off-white fisherman-style pullover. She had also put two pairs of jeans and one pair of khakis in the cart.
Aunt Beth wasn't willing to have the argument that would have ensued had she asked Harriet to participate in the selection.
"This will be a start,” she'd said. “As grey as it is here, we can't have you skulking around in widow's weeds. You'll scare the customers away."
Finally, Harriet put on jeans and a white T-shirt and, in last-minute defiance, wrapped a long black chiffon scarf around her neck, tossing the tail over her shoulder.
She glanced at her watch; it was five minutes fast. She did a quick calculation and decided her first customer would be here in seven minutes.
The first customer of the day would be Aunt Beth's oldest friend, Avanell Jalbert. Avanell was a charter member of the group Aunt Beth belonged to; they called themselves The Loose Threads. Harriet used to go to meetings with Aunt Beth during the summers, when she was in junior high school; but according to Aunt Beth, only Avanell and longtime Foggy Point resident Mavis Willis remained from those days.
The group met every Tuesday morning in the classroom of Foggy Point's only quilt store, Pins and Needles.
She left the warm safety of the kitchen and entered the long-arm quilting studio. The studio had been a large parlor on the first floor of the three-story Victorian home. On the outside wall of the rectangular room, Aunt Beth had added a bow-windowed alcove and a door to the outside. The room was separated from the rest of the house by two locking doors-one leading to the kitchen, the other the dining room.
The alcove, which functioned as a reception area, held two chintz-covered easy chairs and a dark cherry piecrust table. Harriet crossed the room to the table and picked up the electric water pot. She went back to the kitchen, filled the pot and returned it to the table. Unmatched china cups, a basket of teabags and a full assortment of sweeteners crowded the tabletop. She arranged the cups and tea basket twice and, when she was satisfied the alcove looked sufficiently inviting to her customers, crossed the room to look for more of the decorated napkins she knew Aunt Beth had stashed somewhere.
She was bent over, opening lower cabinet doors in succession, searching, when the doorbell jingled and her first customer walked in.
"Hello,” she said and banged her knee on the open cabinet door. She couldn't believe she had greeted her first-ever customer with a view of her rear end.
She grabbed her knee as she stood up and dropped the napkins in the process.
"I'm sorry,” she said. “I'll be right with you."
"Take your time,” Avanell said. “I'll just help myself to some tea, if that's okay."
"Oh, yes, please.” Harriet picked up the napkins and brought them over to the table. Avanell had her tea steeping, had clipped the end of a honey straw and was stirring her tea with the open straw, dumping its contents into the hot liquid.
"You look just like you did when I left for college” Harriet asked.
"Aren't you sweet! I still had dark hair when you left, but it was from a bottle, even back then.” She laughed. “I quit that nonsense a few years ago.” She tucked an errant gray strand behind her ear. You look like you just got on the plane yesterday, and of course, your aunt has told me everything that's happened with you since the day you left."
"Only the good parts, I hope,” she said, and wondered exactly how much Aunt Beth had told her friends in Foggy Point about her recent past. At the very least, the women would know she'd been widowed. Whether she'd filled them in on Steve's genetic illness that probably could have been treated, had he and his family not worked so hard to keep it a secret, would remain to be seen.
She poured her own cup of tea, sizing up Avanell in the process. She was a short stocky woman in her late fifties. She wore a tailored skirt in charcoal-grey wool flannel and a maroon paisley blouse with a cardigan sweater that looked like it had been hand-knit. Her grey hair was in a loose bun on the top of her head. She looked like the grandmother most children only dream of.
"Beth says you can run that long-arm machine even better than she does,” Avanell said.
Harriet felt herself blushing. “I'm not sure I would go that far. My style is a little different from Aunt Beth's."
"Honey, no two quilters stitch exactly the same."
Harriet knew that was true, but she was also aware that most machine quilters had a signature pattern they used so often the judges at competitions could generally tell who had done the stitching on a piece without being told. She hoped to break that mold. She wanted her stitching to complement each individual project, not outshine it.
She pulled a stack of quilted squares from a shelf under the large layout table.
"Here are samples of the quilting patterns I do,” she said. She had purposely used an array of fabrics in her samples-she had batiks, Civil War prints, thirties reproductions, brights, Asian prints and flannels. She hoped the woman would find something that matched her vision for her quilt.
"Let's spread the quilt out on the cutting table, and you can tell me what you have in mind."
Harriet gasped. Avanell had hand-dyed white cotton and made a series of pieced blocks she then alternated with squares of off-white. She had used trapunto, a technique typically done on a neutral-colored background fabric, using dense stitching and extra batting or fill material to create raised areas, often in traditional wreath or flower designs. This design would only need machine stitching in the pieced areas.
The dyed-fabric colors were vibrant and had been pieced in intricate patterns. The points in the pieced areas were perfect and the color transitions seamless. It was utterly different from anything Harriet had ever seen. If this exemplified Avanell's stress level, she hoped it didn't go down anytime soon.
Avanell favored a wreath-like pattern from the samples that would give a circular impression to echo the curved lines of the trapunto. The border areas would be stitched with closely placed parallel lines that were set on a diagonal and would pull the eye inward toward the design. Harriet made careful notes regarding the lines and patterns.
"I'll put your quilt on the machine first thing,” she said.
She gathered the sample squares up, carefully organizing them by stitch type. She fumbled and dropped the stack.
"Let me help you,” Avanell said and smiled. “Are you nervous with your aunt being out of the country?"
"Does it show?” Harriet asked, knowing that it wasn't Aunt Beth's absence as much as her aunt's preemptive strike on her future that had her distracted. If she dropped anything else, Avanell was likely to gather her quilt up and run for the nearest exit.
"Only a little,” Avanell replied. “Listen,” she said “The Vitamin Factory is just down the hill. It wouldn't be out of my way to drop back by when I go to lunch to see how you're doing."
"That would be great,” Harriet said. She couldn't believe she was acting like such a nervous fool. She was confident in her quilting ability; and when she'd moved to California, she'd made unique home furnishing accent pieces for an upscale furniture shop, so it wasn't like she hadn't ever had her work scrutinized by a paying customer.
Somehow, though, being in Foggy Point, where she would have to see those customers every time she went into the grocery store or picked up her mail at the post office was intimidating. And in spite of everything, she did want to do a good job, and Aunt Beth would be a hard act to follow.
It seemed like only moments had passed, but she had loaded the pieced top and its backing and batting onto the long-arm machine's frame and had stitched the first square area. She straightened and was rubbing the small of her back when the doorbell rang and signaled Avanell's return.
"I just finished the first part,” Harriet said. “Come see."
Avanell didn't need an invitation; she came over and inspected the work. Harriet held her breath as Avanell rubbed her fingertips lightly over the closely spaced rows of parallel stitching.
"This is just what I'd imagined,” she said and smiled.
Harriet took a breath of air. Maybe she would survive the next couple of weeks after all.