The Healing Quilt Read Online Free PDF

red berries among the green. Strawberries could hide better than small children. “Besides, with only one breast, I should only have to go in every other year.”
    “Teza!” Leave it to her aunt to come up with that. “How much more do you have to go?”
    “On the berries or my year?” Teza stopped to pop a perfect berry into her mouth, closing her eyes as the flavor exploded over her tongue.
    Kit groaned and followed suit. Some berries pleaded to be eaten immediately. The season had been perfect for strawberries, just enough moisture and plenty of sun. She was convinced that nowhere else in the world would strawberries grow with more flavor than in the Pacific Northwest. As with other plants, the soil had a lot to do with it, but unlike large growers who planted varieties that could be shipped without so much loss, Teza insisted on planting the more flavorful Ogallala.
    “Do you think there are strawberries in heaven?” Teza pushed her crate forward. “You know how Amber always loved strawberries.”
    Kit swallowed the tears that hit the backs of her eyes and blinked to keep them inside. No fair, Teza, I've been doing fine up to today, up until now. Why after all this time, do I fight the tears? God, shouldn't I be over them by now? “I…” She swallowed again and willed her throat to unclog so she could speak normally. “I don't know.” What she did know was that it was a rhetorical question.
    Or was it like so many other things in her life for which there were no answers?
    “She'd come out here to help me weed, and we'd have a contest to see who found the first ripe strawberry. In August our hunt was for the first ripe peach, and in the fall—ah, how she loved apples. I never trusted her to tell me when they were ripe. Amber loved them green.”
    “Just like Ryan and Mark. You always said they'd get a stomachache from too many green apples, but they never did.”
    “Speaking of which…” Teza stood at the end of the row and handed Kit the crate mounded halfway up the handles with berries. “Make him strawberry shortcake for dinner and he'll love you forever.”
    Apparently Teza didn't realize Mark hadn't been home lately either. Good. Kit had decided to keep this as her secret. “You sure you don't need these?” Kit ate the biggest one before it could roll off its perch, ignoring the clutch in her stomach.
    “No, there's plenty more where those came from. Make Mark some freezer jam.” She kneaded her middle back with strong knuckles. “By the way, remind him he promised to build me some more of those planters, would you? I need to get the flowers out of the greenhouse before they take it over.” Teza lifted her face to the sky, her straw hat falling over her shoulders, dangling by the rawhide string. “I sold every planter he made last year. People went nuts over them.”
    Kit let her aunt talk on. Who knew when Mark would be home? Even more, where in thunder was he? Six months he'd been gone, a record. Surely she was worrying unduly. Surely he was just busy. Surely she knew better.
    The two women headed for the house, walking shoulder to shoulder, looking more like sisters than aunt and niece. Both with shoulder-length hair worn pulled back in a rubber band, Tezas more salt and Kit's still pepper. Tall at five nine, Teza had long legs that still looked good in jeans and a stride that covered the ground with unconscious grace. They'd inherited their strong facial bones from a Sioux warrior generations earlier and their wide smiles from a Norwegian grandmother. Tezas gray eyes could be turbulent like a storm-tossed sea or, more usually, quiet and gentle as a garden pond. Kit inherited her father's hazel eyes with flecks of green, the only one of her siblings to do so. Hands with long fingers and nails clipped short were equally adept with needle as trowel—they both had the quilts to prove it—and both were imbued with a sensitivity that brought comfort to whomever they touched.
    As if strung by