The Quilt Before the Storm

by Arlene Sachitano

  “It isn’t your business,” Harriet agreed. “And we aren’t going to discuss my relationship with Aiden.”

  “I’m sorry. I said I wouldn’t pressure you, and I won’t. I’m just surprised he isn’t checking to be sure you’re okay, or have a plan or anything.”

  “He knows I’ll be with my aunt and we’ll be okay.”

  “If it were up to me, you wouldn’t be riding out a major storm with only your aunt for protection.”

  “Now, that’s insulting,” Harriet said. “My aunt and I can take care of ourselves, thank you very much.”

  “I’m doing this badly. I’m just saying, if I had the chance, I’d be there to make sure you were okay. I know you can take care of yourself, but you don’t have to always do that alone. You can let someone else help sometimes.”

  A gust of wind hit the side of the car, causing it to swerve before Harriet fought it back to her lane.

  “Can we not do this while I’m driving?”

  “Okay. Just don’t be surprised if I come calling. The people I’m staying with live near you, I think. Don’t you live on the hill above town?”

  Harriet sighed and gripped the steering wheel tighter.

  “Okay.” Tom pulled a card from the pocket of his jacket and wrote something on the back of it. “Here’s my phone number and the name of the people I’m staying with. Your aunt knows them. If you need anything call…please.”

  She sighed again.

  “Thank you, I do appreciate your concern, but we’ll be fine.” She pulled to the curb in front of Pins and Needles.

  “I guess I’ll see you on the other side, then,” Tom said, and got out.

  She watched until he had turned on his lights and started the engine before she drove to the vet clinic.

  “Are you looking for Aiden?” Shannon, the receptionist, asked when Harriet entered the waiting area.

  “Yes, and I wanted to check on Scooter one last time, if that’s okay.”

  “Sure,” the young woman said. “I think he’d like that. We’re closing down early so we can all get home before the winds pick up.” The plate glass front window rattled hard in its frame. “Well, before they get worse.” She gave a nervous laugh. “Do you want to go ahead and go back to the socialization area?”

  Harriet followed her to the converted storage room and sat in one of the rocking chairs, shrugging out of her coat as she lowered herself to the seat. Shannon brought Scooter and set him in her lap.

  “The vet techs all took off already,” she explained as she draped a soft blanket square over him. “I told Aiden you’re here. I’m going to be leaving, so he’ll have to let you out.”

  Scooter shivered in that way little dogs do, more a nervous reaction than from a lack of warmth. Harriet carefully settled him closer to her chest.

  “Don’t worry about all the noise outside,” she told the little dog. “It will all be over before you know it. You’ll be all set. Aiden said they have a generator here so you’ll have all the heat and lights you need. Don’t expect that when you come to live at my house. We’ll be using oil lamps and wearing sweaters.”

  “Did Carla go home?” Aiden asked without preamble as he came into the room.

  “Yes, Tom drove her and Wendy home a little while ago.”

  “What’s he doing hanging around here in this weather?”

  “He’s hardly ‘hanging around.’ He was visiting friends of his mother and got trapped by the slide.”

  “And he just happened to take Carla home?”

  “If you must know, he and a number of other people helped us move Marjory’s fabric up to her attic. The weather people are predicting the Muckleshoot will jump its banks within the next twenty-four hours and that could flood Marjory’s store.”

  “Convenient.”

  “What is wrong with you? Everything was fine, and then all of a sudden you’ve got an excuse every time I want to see you, and now you pull this jealous routine? You’re giving me whiplash.”

  “I’ve been busy. You know how my job is.”

  “It’s never caused you to freeze me out in the past. Something else is going on. I can feel it. This isn’t you.”

  “You don’t know me. You may think you do, but you don’t. I’m not who you think I am.”

  “Where is this coming from? Is it your sister? What has she done to you?”

  “Are you done with Scooter? I need to lock up and get out of here.”

  “That’s it? We’ve spent almost every day together for nine months, and now I don’t know you?”

  The muscle in Aiden’s jaw pulsed with tension. He picked Scooter from her lap and was out the door almost before his intention registered. She waited a few minutes, but he didn’t reappear. She knew employees left by the back door when the clinic was closed.

  She put her coat back on and went into a hallway, through the employee locker room and out into the storm again.

  Harriet drove around to her garage and pressed the button on her automatic door opener. She was surprised to find two cars already in the large space. She carefully guided her car into the remaining spot.

  Fred meowed loudly when she entered the kitchen.

  “Oh, good, you’re here,” Mavis said. “We were starting to worry about you. A big branch fell onto my car as I was driving home. It like to scared me to death.”

  “I hope you don’t mind, but we told Lauren she could park in the garage, too,” Beth said.

  Lauren was at the kitchen bar, talking on the house phone.

  “With all the trees around this place, we didn’t want anyone’s car getting damaged,” Beth continued. “There are branches and debris all over the road between here and Mavis’s.” She pulled her sweater more closely around her ample body and shivered.

  Mavis rifled through the junk drawer in the kitchen then triumphantly held up a box of wooden matches.

  “I want these to be easy to find,” she said.

  “Jorge says he’s coming by with more food,” Lauren said and hung up the phone. “I should have asked him to bring nachos.”

  Harriet went to the closet and hung up her coat. She could tell already this was going to be a long night.

  The phone rang, and Lauren answered it.

  “Yeah, hang on. It’s Carla. She wants to talk to Harriet.”

  Harriet crossed the room and took the phone, turning her back on her audience. She listened for a moment.

  “Sounds like you did the right thing,” she said. She listened again for an extended period then recounted her visit to the vet clinic and Aiden’s failure to reappear to say goodbye. She listened again. “I’m sure he’s fine and will be home soon. He’s probably just making sure the dogs are taken care of…Okay…You, too.”

  She hung up.

  “Okay,” Lauren demanded. “What was that all about?”

  “Lauren…” Mavis scolded.

  “I take it Michelle is causing problems,” Aunt Beth guessed.

  “She doesn’t know anything for sure, but that’s what she thinks. She says Aiden hasn’t been acting like himself. And he’s not arguing with Michelle like he usually does. She thinks he’s bought into whatever his sister is selling.”

  “What do you think?” Mavis asked.

  “I have to agree with Carla. Aiden is definitely not himself. He won’t talk to me. He just told me earlier he’s not who I think he is.”

  “Lordy,” Mavis said. “What is that girl filling his head with?”

  “Are you sure we know everything about him?” Lauren asked. “He was gone from here for a lot of years, first to vet school and then his jaunt to Africa.”

  “We know everything we need to know. He’s Avanell’s son,” Beth said.

  “She gave birth to Michelle, too,” Lauren reminded her.

  Harriet ignored the comment.

  “Carla also said she was getting worried people might try to go back to Marjory’s store to ‘raid the piggy bank,’ so to speak. She caught Duane eyeing the register, a
nd she was afraid Marjory’s sister and her family might break in. It turns out Marjory just hides the money in a bag in the kitchen when the store is closed. Carla wanted to tell someone that when she went to check on Wendy, she moved the bag to her diaper bag and took it to Aiden’s with her.”

  “I hope she didn’t tell Michelle about it,” Lauren said.

  “As a matter of fact, she made a point of telling me she didn’t. It’s hidden in her room. She wanted us to know so nobody would think she was stealing.”

  “It is surely an ill wind that has blown into this town,” Mavis said.

  As if on cue, the kitchen lights flashed off and then on twice before steadying again.

  “Anyone want a cup of tea?” Harriet offered.

  “I say get it while we can,” Lauren said.

  “I agree,” Mavis said.

  “Me, too,” Beth agreed.

  “What are we agreeing to?” Jorge said as he came into the kitchen from the studio. “I hope you don’t mind I came in,” he said. “I knocked on the door, but probably you couldn’t hear me over the storm. You need to lock your door, you know? You can’t be too careful.” He set bags of food on the counter.

  “Would you like a cup of tea before you go?” Lauren asked.

  Beth glared at her before turning to Jorge.

  “Let me take your coat,” she said, and took Jorge’s wet jacket. She hung it on the back of a chair.

  Harriet filled her teakettle and set it on the stove then filled her electric kettle and plugged it in as well.

  “Grab those two thermal carafes from under the counter there,” Mavis directed her. “We might as well heat the kettles again and fill those up, just in case.”

  Harriet did as instructed, and she and Mavis filled mugs with tea bags and water then filled the carafes before joining the rest of the group, who had moved to the big table in the formal dining room. A five-branch brass candelabrum sat ready in the middle of the table, flanked by two oil lamps.

  “I feel sorry for that truck-driving couple,” Jorge said and took a sip of his tea. “They came in and had me make them some breakfast burritos and some chicken burritos for tomorrow in case they can’t get around. They were trying to decide if they were going to try to stay in the truck or move into the restroom. I told them they should go to the church, but I guess they wanted to have their privacy.”

  “They aren’t going to find it at the park,” Lauren said. “I think some of that homeless bunch is planning on camping in the bathrooms.” She tucked Carter into her sweatshirt and partially zipped it.

  The group turned and looked up as one as a loud thump sounded somewhere above them.

  “That can’t be good,” Harriet said. “It sounded like something hit the roof upstairs.” She got up.

  “Don’t go outside,” Aunt Beth cautioned. “If a tree limb broke off and fell onto the roof, it might roll off just as you go outside.”

  “Come on, let’s go look out the upstairs windows,” Lauren suggested.

  She and Harriet got up and left the room. They returned a few minutes later.

  “It was a broken branch,” Harriet reported. “The pine tree outside my bedroom window dropped a limb on the roof. It’s now in the flowerbed.”

  Aunt Beth looked out the dining room window. The sky was a roiling black, the ground littered with debris.

  “I’m afraid there’s going to be a lot of cleanup when this is all over. The number of the yard cleanup guy I used is on a magnet on the side of the fridge. He does a good job, and he’s reasonable,” she told her niece.

  “I might have a big picture window that could blow in, but at least there aren’t any trees at the—”

  A huge boom cut off the end of Lauren’s sentence. Blue, yellow and white light lit the dining room in rapid succession before the room went dark.

  “Here we go,” Mavis said.

  Harriet got up and went to the window.

  “The whole hill is dark,” she reported.

  Aunt Beth lit the candles and the oil lamps.

  “Do you have wood?” Jorge asked.

  “Yes,” Harriet said. “There are fireplaces in the living room and the bedroom directly above it, and I have wood all set up in both.”

  “I’ll go light them,” he said.

  Lauren pulled a hand crank radio from her purse and turned it on. She listened for a few moments then turned it off.

  “Hope you’ve got room for one more,” she said to Harriet. “And I hope Jorge didn’t have anywhere he needed to be, either. The radio said a tree fell on the power line at the bottom of this hill. It broke the lines and tore up the power pole. They’re closing the street for a quarter-mile on each side. The radio signal was cutting in and out, too, so they may not be good for much longer.”

  “That blue flash was more than a power line going down,” Mavis said sagely. “Mark my words—that was a transformer.”

  “It doesn’t really matter which it is,” Beth said. “No power is no power, whatever the cause. I say we get our hand stitching and move to the living room in front of the fireplace. I think we have enough light to do our work.”

  “I’ve got an LED light on one of those elastic headbands,” Harriet said. “I hang it around my neck, and it’s just the right level to shine on my stitching.”

  “Aren’t you the clever one,” Aunt Beth said.

  “I have something similar,” Mavis said. “Only mine was meant to hang around my neck.”

  “My radio has an LED flashlight on one end,” Lauren said.

  Jorge came downstairs in time to hear the discussion.

  “Don’t worry, Señora Beth,” he said. “I forgot to bring my stitching, so my hands are free to hold your light for you.” He smiled at her.

  Harriet raised her left eyebrow and looked at Lauren, who gave a barely perceptible shrug.

  “Anyone need a refill on hot water before we move to the other room?” Harriet asked.

  Everyone agreed to nurse the tea they already had in their cup, so they all migrated to the living room and found seats.

  Lauren was cutting out small green leaves, her arms stretched around Carter, who was still tucked in her sweatshirt. The dog quilts the Threads had donated to a silent auction that benefited a dog adoption program had generated a number of requests for commissioned quilts. Lauren was making a variation on their hand-appliquéd quilt that had featured Yorkshire terrier faces in wreaths of green leaves. This one would feature West Highland white terrier faces, but was otherwise the same.

  Harriet had needed to cough to cover her gasp at the price Lauren had quoted the woman who requested the quilt after the silent auction had concluded. She was equally shocked when the woman didn’t bat an eye but instead pulled out a checkbook and asked how much of a deposit she wanted to get started.

  “I still can’t believe how much that woman is paying for that quilt,” she said now.

  “I figure if everyone who worked on the original one does their same part on this one, we can split the money and it will go a long way toward paying for our trip to the quilt show next year.”

  “Maybe we should make another one and enter it in the quilt show as a group project,” Mavis suggested.

  Whatever the group thought of that idea was lost in a roar that sounded like a freight train going through a long tunnel. It ended as the windows on either side of the fireplace bowed in and then out violently.

  Harriet put the kaleidoscope block she was piecing down on the foot stool in front of her.

  “I can’t concentrate on stitching with that going on,” she said and gestured toward the window.

  “Maybe we should play cards or something,” Aunt Beth suggested. “That’s what we used to do when you were little, remember?”

  “Now you’re talking,” Jorge said. “Where do you keep the cards?”

  Aunt Beth pulled open a drawer in the lamp table next to the recliner she’d bought to replace her own favorite chair, which she’d taken to her smaller house
when she’d downsized.

  “What are we playing?” Mavis asked. “Canasta? Bridge?”

  “Poker,” Jorge said as he carried the cards and an oil lamp back to the dining room.

  “Deal me in,” Lauren said and followed him.

  The raucous card game was just the distraction everyone had needed. Jorge commandeered one of Aunt Beth’s old sun visors he’d seen in the coat closet and used two rubber bands as sleeve garters on his white shirt to dress the part of a Vegas dealer. Harriet donated the jar of change from her bedroom dresser in lieu of poker chips, and the game was on.

  In spite of Mavis’s tamer card game suggestions, she turned out to be quite the card sharp and ended up with the lion’s share of the money by the time the rest of the group gave up several hours later.

  “It must be time to eat,” Jorge said. “These bands are squeezing the feeling out of my hands. I need to cook while I still can.”

  He took off his visor and the bands and headed to the kitchen. Rain was hammering the windows, but the wind had eased slightly.

  “I’m taking Carter out whether he wants to go or not,” Lauren said.

  “Let me go get Curly, and I’ll join you,” Mavis said. “Beth, you want me to bring Pamela down?”

  “Thanks,” Beth said. “I’m sure she’ll come out from under the bed if Curly leaves the room.”

  The rescued dogs were all dealing with the storm noises in their own way. Curly had holed up in her carry bag while her sister Pamela had retreated to the dark space under the bed. Lauren’s Carter was the only one of the dogs who was willing to tough it out with the humans. For his part, Fred was meowing a running commentary on the storm’s progress.

  “Between the storm settling, Jorge’s wonderful meal, and all the poker frivolity, I think I can sleep, so I’m going to turn in unless anyone needs something,” Harriet said when they’d finished the delicious pork burritos.

  Jorge had insisted he would sleep on the sofa downstairs so he wouldn’t displace any of the women upstairs.

  “I think it’s because he snores,” Aunt Beth said with a knowing glance over the banister as she and Harriet climbed the stairs behind Lauren and Mavis.