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.

At the bottom, I stood amazed at the sea of boxes. Both Nancy and Eleanor were fans of keeping the latest new tools and fabric in stock, but with the shop already crowded, it meant that only one or two of each design made it upstairs and the rest waited in the basement. As something like six-inch rulers sold out, they had to make a trip downstairs for more. With the shop as busy as it was, that could mean as many as a dozen trips a day.

It took me several minutes to find the box of rulers in the back corner and several more to find the six-inch ones. I had the brief idea of bringing up a twelve-inch ruler as a joke, but decided it would amuse only me. Instead I grabbed what I had been sent for and started back upstairs. But before I'd reached the third step, I'd almost tripped over a bolt of fabric. I put the rulers down and cleared the steps, moving everything to the corner of the basement.

"Nell," I heard my grandmother call.

"Coming."

With that task done, I perched on a chair behind the register for the next hour and watched Eleanor wait on person after person. Everyone that came in gravitated toward her, and she seemed to have exactly what each person wanted. I liked my job most days, but I didn't excel at it like this. I didn't love it. One more way my life wasn't working. Could I be any more self-pitying? My name-sake would have been proud.

When I saw her stop to talk with Carrie, I made my way over. Carrie's children were having quite a time tossing books from the low shelves of the book rack, but neither of the women seemed to notice.

"It was something my granddaughter thought up," Eleanor was saying. "It seems like a lot of trouble."

"What's that?" I interrupted. If the word on the street was that I thought up something that was a lot of trouble, it was enough of an invitation to join the conversation.

"The diner," said Carrie. "Susanne mentioned to me that Eleanor might take it over."

"Just talk," Eleanor said. I got the feeling she was reassuring the woman. "It's just that we are getting crowded in here."

"Well, you could use the space," admitted Carrie. "But, of course, we could also use a good coffee shop in town." She turned to me. "The only place to get espresso in Archers Rest is at the pizza parlor. And it's instant."

"I think a coffee shop is a great idea, too," I responded, trying to be nice. No sense in stepping on anyone's dream.

"Well, it's a lot of work," Carrie said, seeming to back off the idea. Carrie's daughter was tugging at her leg, and Carrie was ignoring her. "My husband thinks it would be a waste of money since I don't really have the time."

"Nor do I," agreed Eleanor. And then my grandmother reached down without looking and caught a bolt of fabric that Carrie's son was about to pull down on his head.