you, honey. My camera guy is just going to love that pretty face of yours. It’ll be a relief after filming my ugly mug day after day. Every time he turns the camera on it’s a wonder the lens doesn’t crack.” She laughed and hugged me tight before I could argue with her, and I would have, too, if she’d given me the chance.
Mary Dell, with dangly silver and green crystal earrings that hung down to her shoulders, a hot-pink blouse with white cowgirl fringe, leopard-skin pumps that added an extra three inches to her five-foot-ten-inch frame, and fire-engine-red lipstick that clashed with absolutely everything she was wearing, might not be the picture of understated elegance, but she had beautiful brown eyes, thick, natural-blond hair, a slender waist, and skin so smooth you’d have thought she was closer to thirty than fifty. Mary Dell’s mother had been second-runner-up for Miss Texas of 1946. Obviously, good looks ran in the family.
“Whoo-whee!” Mary Dell cried when she finally released me from her grasp. “You are looking fine! Way better than last time I saw you when you were lying around in that bed, feeling sorry for yourself, and looking like a sick calf. But now look at you!” She stared pointedly at my chest. “If I didn’t know better I’d say those ta-tas you got under your blouse were the real deal!”
Garrett choked on his coffee.
“Really, Garrett, doesn’t your mama look good? I tell you what, there just ain’t nothing they can’t do with silicone these days. I might want to get some of those for myself. What do you think?” Mary Dell stood up tall and stuck out her ample chest.
Garrett swallowed hard, trying to catch his breath. He was grinning, but I could see the tips of his ears turn red just the same. “I think you look fine just the way you are, Mrs. Templeton.”
“Mrs. Templeton! Listen to you! You’re not a teenager back in Texas anymore, Garrett. You’re a grown man with a career. You can call me Mary Dell. Your mama says she couldn’t run this place without you.”
“Don’t listen to her,” Garrett said. “I handle the Web-related stuff, but Margot deals with all the marketing and accounting…”
“And don’t forget Liza,” I cut in and turned to Mary Dell. “Liza is Garrett’s girlfriend. She’s going to art school in New York now, but she comes up on weekends to help with our displays and to put together new fabric packs and medleys. She’s got a real eye for color. Howard would be crazy about her. Liza’s fabric medleys are some of our best-selling items.”
“She’s the niece of that other friend of yours, isn’t she?” Mary Dell asked. “The snooty one? Abigail?”
“Abigail isn’t snooty,” I corrected. “She’s particular. She comes from an old, very wealthy New England family, so she’s…well, it just takes time to get to know her, that’s all. People in New England don’t open up to strangers quite as quickly as they do in Texas, but Abigail is very kind and incredibly generous. Involved in all kinds of civic causes. She owns most of the commercial real estate in town. She rents me this place, plus Garrett’s apartment upstairs, and our new workroom…”
“And the new warehouse space up the street,” Garrett interrupted.
“And all for ten dollars a month, plus the time it takes me to teach a few quilting classes over at the women’s shelter. Something I’d have been happy to do for free anyway. So don’t you go saying anything against Abigail to me.” I shook my finger in mock indignation.
“Ten dollars a month!” Mary Dell whistled. “Well, in that case, I take back everything I said about the snooty, old…” Mary Dell stopped mid-sentence when she saw the look on my face. “Sorry! I meant to say, I take back everything I said about dear, darling Abigail. Bless her heart,” Mary Dell said, employing that old phrase that women of the South use when they want to say something catty about someone else…politely.
In spite of myself, I laughed. “Stop that. She may be an acquired taste, but Abigail has helped me and a lot of other people in this town. She can be prickly, I’ll admit, but that is changing. She’s dating her old attorney, Franklin Spaulding, and he seems to be a good influence on her. Plus, she’s very involved with the women’s shelter, not just on the board but spending time getting to know the residents. In fact, she’s the one who recommended I hire Ivy.”
“Ivy?”
“Remember? I told you about her on the phone. She and her kids are in transitional housing at the shelter. Ivy took my beginners’ class there. When I needed to hire someone, Abigail recommended Ivy. I’m glad she did. She’s a hard worker. Quiet, but cheerful and very dependable. We’ve got ourselves quite a team now.”
Putting down his coffee cup, Garrett boosted himself off the counter and walked over to me, laying his long arm over my shoulder. “Of course, she forgets to mention that none of this would work without the very able leadership of the boss here. When I started working here, I didn’t know top stitching from tap shoes, though I’m starting to, which, frankly, scares me a little. But Mom knows every square inch of this place. She knows what the trends are in fabrics and notions, chooses and teaches almost all the classes, and makes it fun for everyone who walks in the door. Half the time, I think customers come in here to talk to Mom as much as to buy quilting supplies.”
“Yeah. Yeah,” I said, brushing off his compliments. “Don’t listen to him, Mary Dell. He’s bucking for a raise. Won’t do you any good, sweetie. We’re doing better, that’s for sure. In fact, we’re on track to break even this year, but it’s way too soon to think any of us will be making more than minimum wage for a good while to come.”
“Not if I have anything to say about it, honey,” Mary Dell said. She looked out the shop window, where I could see a man and woman coming across the courtyard hauling bags, boxes, and metal poles that looked like light stands. Mary Dell walked to the front door and opened it wide.
“Get in here, y’all! Get that gear set up. Not only do we have to make a promo that will get quilters fired up about Quilt Pink, we’ve got to make one that’ll have folks running to their phones, booting up their computers, and driving halfway across the state to buy their fabrics from Miss Evelyn Dixon of Cobbled Court Quilts. Let’s get this show on the road, buckaroos! We’re burnin’ daylight!”
4
Ivy Peterman
“Oh, come on!” I yelled and slammed my fist against the steering wheel. “This is not happening! Not again!”
I turned the key in the ignition once more, but it sounded even worse than it had the first three times I’d tried it, the halfhearted vrum-vrumming of the motor giving way to a low-pitched, lethargic whine. If a car engine could yawn, this was the sound it would make. Clearly, my car wasn’t going to start. Not today.
I smacked my hand impotently against the wheel again, silently cursing all auto mechanics.
Ten days before, I had written the garage a check equivalent to two weeks’ salary from my job at Cobbled Court Quilts. It was money I’d been saving and desperately needed for a rental deposit. When the kids and I moved into our transitional apartment at the Stanton Center, my counselor made it clear that I had to find a job and start saving for a place of my own as soon as possible. You’d think two years would be plenty of time for me to get my act together and be able to house and feed my own family, but when you start out lying flat on the ground without even a bootstrap to pull yourself up by, learning to stand on your own two feet is harder than it looks. But I was better off than a lot of people; I had the good luck to find a decent job not long after we came to New Bern. Twice in one month, quilting changed my life.
On Abigail’s recommendation, Evelyn hired me as the fulfillment coordinator at Cobbled Court Quilts. Basically, I’m the one who cuts and packages up the Internet and phone orders and mails them out to customers. It’s not glamorous, but I enjoy my work.
The upstairs workroom, a large, rectangular space above the shop with exposed brick walls, and tall windows that let in plenty of light, is my personal domain. I spend my days laying out bolts