The Lover's Knot Read Online Free PDF Page B

is not to get stubborn about it. If the project doesn’t work, then you have to let it go.”
    “That must be frustrating,” I said.
    Bernie’s eyes lit up and she leaned toward me. “It’s freeing,” she said, exaggerating the length of the words to, I’m guessing, make their importance clear. And they must have been important words, because the others all nodded in agreement. “With every quilt you make you have a picture in your mind of what it should be,” Bernie continued. “Then you start. You pick fabrics, you cut the fabrics, you sew the pieces together. All along there are compromises, mistakes, inspirations. When it works, then you are truly holding your dreams in your hands. When it doesn’t . . .” She shrugged.
    “You just throw it out?” I asked, looking to my grandmother for confirmation. Eleanor saved bags of two-inch pieces of fabric, “just in case.” She kept a plastic bag with fabric and a needle to sew whenever she had time to kill. I couldn’t believe my grandmother would endorse wasting hours of work for artistic reasons. But she was nodding along with the rest of them.
    “We trade sometimes,” Carrie admitted. “Or sew them into charity blankets.”
    “I have a lot, so I usually give mine to Nancy,” Natalie admitted. “She finishes them off and sends them to her son’s college friends, who I guess don’t really care what the quilts look like as long as they’re warm.”
    Maggie patted Natalie’s hand, as if to comfort her for having so many UFOs. It was an odd pair. Watching seventy-five-year-old Maggie laughing easily with Natalie, nearly fifty years her junior, made me a little envious. Aside from quilting, the two seemed to have little in common, but quilting was enough to bind them together. I wondered if my friendships were as tight.
    But envy was one thing; joining the group was an entirely different matter. Suddenly, all I wanted was to head back to the house and sleep. I yawned.
    “Oh, she’s tired,” Carrie pointed out.
    “You should get her home, Eleanor,” suggested Bernie.
    “The poor thing, she needs her rest,” agreed Susanne.
    “I am sleepy,” I volunteered, and yawned again.
    My grandmother nodded and patted Barney’s head. “Barney, take her home.”
    Barney got up, went one more time around the circle to say his good-byes, and led me to the door.
    “We’ll see you next Friday,” the group said in unison.
    “Oh,” I stammered, “I don’t think so. I’m only here for the weekend.”
    I opened the door and was almost free when I realized that all night I’d forgotten something. I turned back. “Thank you all for the quilt you made me. It’s more beautiful than I could have imagined.”
    They each looked at me as if they were about to cry. As I left the shop, I knew the subject of my breakup had started up again.

CHAPTER 6
    Morning came too soon. I could hear my grandmother downstairs and I knew it was only a matter of time before she came up looking for me.
    Instead she sent her assistant. My door started to open slowly, and a blond furry snout sniffed in the opening. There was a grunt, more pushing, and then Barney was in the room, wagging his tail and sniffing at the bed for signs of life.
    There was no point in staying in bed with this hairy alarm clock drooling and whimpering. I got up and made my way toward the kitchen to find myself some coffee.
    “Are you up?” My grandmother stood at the door to the kitchen.
    “Nope.” I smiled. “Still in bed.”
    “Then you should get dressed.”
    “I was going to eat first.”
    “No food,” she said, and she walked past me to the front of the house.
    No food? There was always food at her house. And not just food. Hot out of the oven blueberry crumble, melt in your mouth pot roast, garlic mashed potatoes. How could there not be food?
    I love my grandmother, but one of the reasons I came to visit was the food. In New York, I’d gotten used to grabbing a muffin for breakfast, a salad