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knee.”
    “Ah.” He moved the desk away from the wall and leaned down behind it.
    Angie rose from the bed. “I’ll leave you to your work.”
    “Any dogs in the backyard?” Eric asked before she reached the bedroom door.
    “No.”
    “Okay. Thanks.”
    Angie went downstairs to the kitchen, where she poured herself another cup of coffee, then she sat at the table, her thoughts drifting to the summer she was seventeen. There weren’t many job opportunities for teenagers in a town the size of Hart’s Crossing. Not then, and she supposed not now. She and Terri had considered themselves lucky to get jobs as lifeguards at the public swimming pool.
    But Eric and his friends…
    She smiled to herself. Maybe it hadn’t been so bad. Those boys had flirted with the female lifeguards in the obnoxious ways only young boys could.
    She remembered the hot summer sun baking the concrete, and the glare reflecting off the water’s surface. She remembered the noise of kids at play, splashing and yelling and laughing. She remembered the mothers with their babies, and toddlers in the shallow end of the pool, and the teenage boys, darkly bronzed, showing off for the girls on the high dive.
    Simpler times. A time when all her dreams had still seemed possible.
    “I don’t think you’ve been truly happy since the day you moved away.”
    Was Terri right? Angie wondered. Had true happiness escaped her? She’d been successful in her profession—or at least, had thought she was—but what about other parts of her life? Who were her friends, people she could call and ask to go with her to a movie or a concert or a play? What, as Terri had asked her when they talked last night, did she do for fun?
    I like to run.
    Running was one of the ways Angie kept fit so she would have enough energy for the long hours she put in at the newspaper. Besides, running gave her time to think about the articles she was working on.
    But did running bring her happiness? Did it make her any friends?
    Why is it the only real friend I have is in my hometown and not the city where I live?
    A frown furrowed her brows.
    Terri seems happy. Am I?
    Angie’s best friend had so little in terms of career success and financial security. Terri’s deadbeat ex-husband had taken off with another woman and left her to raise their daughter alone. All she had was an ancient car, a small home with a medium-sized mortgage, and her beauty salon. And yet…and yet Terri was happy.
    Angie pictured her friend in her mind. She remembered the way Terri smiled as she ran her hand over Lyssa’s strawberry blond hair, a look of motherly pride and unquestionable joy in her eyes.
    Terri was more than happy, Angie realized. Terri was content.
    A wave of restlessness washed over her. Maybe she needed to go for a run now. She couldn’t say she cared for the direction her thoughts had taken her. Not at all.

    The Thimbleberry Quilting Club had been in existence for more than thirty years, and Francine had been a member almost from the beginning. She never missed the weekly meetings if she could help it. She loved to quilt, of course, but mostly she enjoyed the time of fellowship with the other women. Most of the quilts these women made went to people in homeless shelters and other places of need. Francine hoped having something beautiful—as well as warm—to wrap up in at night would bring someone a moment of pleasure in a time of hardship.
    She looked up from her needlework to trail her gaze around the long table. There were six of them present today. Francine had invited Angie to join them, but her daughter had declined while rolling her eyes, as if to say, “You’ve got to be kidding.”
    Till Hart sat at her left, wire-rimmed reading glasses perched on the end of her nose. She was easily the most skilled of the all the quilters in the Thimbleberry Quilting Club. Not only were her fingers surprisingly agile for a woman her age, but her mind was equally nimble. She could carry on a