by Lori Wilde
“But that was after she had a bit of a scare,” Jenny said, settling her arm around Emma’s shoulder as if they were old friends. In New York, people didn’t get this chummy this fast, and it made her a bit leery. “Patches herded her to Sam’s house from the bus stop.”
“I’m afraid of dogs,” Emma confessed.
“That darn Border collie,” said the elderly woman sitting to Terri’s right. “He once herded three of Clinton Trainer’s cows into my backyard garden. They wiped out my entire crop of black-eyed peas. Those fat little Herefords love black-eyed peas.”
“Okay.” Quilting bees and Hereford cows and black-eyed peas and close-knit friendships were so far out of Emma’s sphere of experience, she had no idea how to comment on that.
“Oh, I forgot to say, I’m Dotty Mae Densmore.” The elderly woman smiled. “And I remember you, although I’m sure you don’t remember me. You used to wash my windows for spending money.”
Emma remembered that. Her father—er, Rex—hadn’t given her an allowance, but all the little old ladies in Twilight had been very nice about finding chores for her to do for a dollar or two. Things had been far different when Rex had moved her to Houston after the quiet, friendliness of Twilight. “I remember.”
“Dotty Mae was the first female manager of Montgomery Ward’s,” Raylene said. “And if you’re ever in the mood for peppermint schnapps, she carries a flask of it in her purse.”
“You didn’t have to tell her that.” Dotty Mae glowered at Raylene.
Raylene stuck out her hand toward Dotty Mae. “I’d like a shot right now. Hand it over.”
Terri cleared her throat.
“What?” Raylene said.
“One glass of red wine a night, that’s what Ted told you.”
Raylene made a face. “Oh, go eat a bucket of worms.”
Emma raised an eyebrow.
“Terri won ten thousand dollars on that reality show Fear Nothing for eating a bucket of earthworms,” Belinda supplied. “Raylene won’t let her live it down.”
“No schnapps.” Terri pointed a finger.
Raylene blew out her breath in exasperation. “Fine. But how come Dotty Mae gets to drink it?”
“For one thing, she’s not one of Ted’s patients. For another thing, she’s eighty-five. When you’re eighty-five I’ll let you have schnapps.”
“Ladies, we still have one member to introduce,” Nina said. Nina seemed so out of place with the colloquial women, Emma couldn’t help wondering why she’d left Broadway at the height of her popularity to run a small regional theater. To her it made no sense. “Emma, our most patient member is Marva Bullock.”
The forty-something, dark-skinned woman with impressive cornrow braids sat sandwiched between Raylene and Dotty Mae. She smiled warmly at her, and Emma felt a flicker of recognition. “You were my freshman algebra teacher.”
“I was,” Marva said. “I was wondering if you’d remember me.”
“I was miserable at math, but you were so patient with me, taking time to tutor me after school.” Emma didn’t forget people who’d taken special attention with her. She’d had very little of that. “Thank you. Because of you, I got a solid grounding in algebra that I know I never would have gotten otherwise.”
Marva looked pleased. “That’s sweet of you to say.”
“Not sweet at all. I mean it. Do you still teach?”
“I’m the principal of Twilight High now.”
Jenny, who, to Emma’s amazement, had managed to stay silent during the introductions, tapped Terri on the shoulder. “Wanna help me with the refreshments?”
“Sure, sure,” Terri said, poking the needle she’d been sewing with into a partially quilted square of fabric. She got up and followed Jenny over to the kitchen area in the far corner of the room.
“Have a seat.” Nina waved at Terri’s vacated chair.
Emma sat. She couldn’t help wondering why she’d been dragged to the quilting club social.
“I imagine you’re trying to sort out who we are and just why in the heck we’ve brought you to Twilight,” Nina said.
Emma nodded. “I am.”
“We’ve got a very special project planned and you’re the key to its success.” Nina folded her hands in her lap. The other ladies sewed industriously, letting her have center stage. From the kitchen area came the sound of platters clanking and ice cubes clinking together. “We’re hoping you’ll be on board.”
What choice did she have? She was flat broke with nowhere to live, her acting career and reputation were in tatters, but for some reason, these women were offering her a second chance. “I’m listening.”
“Let me explain how this all came to pass.” Nina cleared her throat. “As you might recall from when you lived in Twilight, every year the town has a big Founder’s Day celebration during the week of Thanksgiving.”
“Vaguely.” She hadn’t participated much in the local events when she’d lived here. She’d been more the rebel-without-a-cause type.
“It’s one of the town’s biggest events.” Nina reached up to pat a hair that wasn’t out of place.
“In a town that loves its eventful celebrations,” Belinda added.
“Every year we put on a play reenacting how the town was founded,” Nina said.
“This is about the legend of the sweetheart lovers?” Emma asked.
“Exactly.”
“Jon Grant and Rebekka Nash were childhood sweethearts in Missouri when the Civil War hit. Jon’s family was on the side of the North. Rebekka’s family, who were originally from Georgia, aligned themselves with the South. Sadly, the lovers’ allegiance to their families tore their love asunder. Jon joined the Union Army, and Rebekka’s family fled to Texas. Fifteen long years passed, but Rebekka never married because she never stopped loving Jon, even though she didn’t even know if he’d survived the war.”
Everyone was listening to her, even though Emma figured they’d all heard the story a million times, but Nina had the kind of vocal control that commanded attention and wove a hypnotic spell.
“Jon was injured during the War Between the States and he was promoted to colonel. He stayed in the army, and in 1875 he was sent to oversee the fort being built along the Brazos to quell Indian uprisings. He arrived on Thanksgiving Day and stopped at the river to water his horse. It was getting dusky.” Nina lowered her voice. “Twilight settling. His horse nickered. Jon looked up. At first, he thought he was seeing a ghost.” Nina paused.
No one spoke a word.
“There stood his flame-haired Rebekka on the other side of the river, looking just as beautiful as ever. She’d gone out to check her fishing lines with her beloved Border collie, Rebel, at her side. Rebel started barking. Rebekka’s breath stilled as she recognized the love of her life. His face was scarred and the years had sprinkled his hair with gray, but Rebekka didn’t care. Jon had come back to her.
“Immediately, Jon jumped into the water and swam to the other side of the river. The minute they looked into each other’s eyes, it was as if fifteen years fell away. He took her in his arms and kissed her with all the passionate longing he had in him. They couldn’t believe they’d found each other again after all this time. They were married at the very spot where they were reunited, and the town of Twilight sprang up around that fort. The fort is gone now, but the town of Twilight remains, its roots forever entwined with the concept of true and lasting love.”
Everyone sighed happily and sat back in her chair.
“So every year, this is the skit we put on,” Nina said.
“From the reaction of this group, I’m guessing the skit is one of the highlights of the week.”
“Oh, it is. It’s performed on Thanksgiving Day. The playhouse is always packed to the rafters,” Belinda said. “We have to turn people away. It’s been an annual tradition started by Nina in 1975 on Twilight’s centennial celebration, the year after she first took over running the Twilight Playhouse.”
“An amazing accomplish
ment,” Emma told Nina.
A humble smile tipped Nina’s lips. “Thank you, but I can’t claim a perfect record at the helm.”
“What do you mean?”
“Last year, Nina canceled the skit,” Belinda whispered.
“How come?” Emma looked from Nina to Belinda.
“The actress who’d been playing Rebekka was sent to Iraq,” Nina said. “To honor her, I decided to skip a year. I just couldn’t see replacing her. She was killed by an IED while delivering medicine to an orphanage.”
“It was Sam’s wife, Valerie.” Belinda made a noise of regret. “She looked so much like Rebekka with those coppery locks. Just like yours.”
Valerie was a saint. A true war hero. How could she ever measure up to a woman like that? Emma reached up to run a hand through her hair. “That’s why you hired me? Because I have red hair like Rebekka and Valerie?”
“It’s not the main reason,” Nina said, “but it made us feel like you were destined for the part.”
Emma frowned. “How long have you been planning this?”
“Since Belinda brought the tabloids to the last quilting club meeting,” Jenny said, coming over to where they all were sitting, a tray of cookies and fruit in her hands. Terri followed behind her with a tray of drinks—coffee, iced teas, canned sodas.
“Once we saw the headlines, we knew what you were going through in Manhattan,” Nina said. “I know how tough it can be.” She moistened her lips. “I know what Scott Miller’s capable of.”
There was a story in there somewhere. Emma wondered if Nina would ever share it with her. “Were you the reason Miller dropped the sexual assault charges against me?”
“I might have made a phone call or two,” Nina admitted.
Emma was flabbergasted. “I can’t thank you enough. I so appreciate that. But why would you intervene for me?”
Nina leaned over and touched her arm. “Honey, you’re one of us and we look after our own.”
Unexpected tears pressed against the backs of her eyes. This much, she had suspected. Her memories of Twilight being a happy, loving place were real. She’d thought she’d just romanticized the town because of Sam, but she had not. These women were sincere. They wanted to help her.
“So what does this all have to do with quilting?” Emma asked, pushing aside the maudlin feelings mucking around inside her. If she was indeed going to have that career she always wanted, she couldn’t get too attached to this town, these people.
“After Valerie was killed,” Nina went on, “we started thinking about all the other soldiers from Twilight who’d been killed or maimed over the years, going all the way back to Colonel Jon Grant and how the Civil War almost cost him the love of his life.”
“So we went looking through history.” Marva pulled her needle through the quilt.
“And what we found was a great tradition of quilting during wartime,” Dotty Mae said. “When the troops were called out, the women in Twilight pulled out their quilting frames.”
“Twilight lost two soldiers during the Spanish-American War,” Raylene picked up the story. “Terri, did you bring the pictures?”
“I did.” Terri dug around in her sewing bag and produced a photo album. She flipped it open to a page with grainy, faded, old black and white photos of two young men in uniform, and below it was a color snapshot of a quilt that featured a map of Cuba. She slipped the album into Emma’s hands. “This picture is of a replica quilt, but the community came together to quilt this pattern. It was displayed on the north wall inside the courthouse for several years to honor the lives snuffed out too young. Flip the page.”
Emma obeyed. This one featured many more young men peering out from the photographs clearly taken during World War I. There were many quilts as well, one made for each casualty of war. She flipped the pages, past WWII and Korea and Vietnam, until she came to the last page, which had pictures of four servicemen in desert fatigues and one red-haired woman in uniform. The only woman in the entire book.
Sam’s wife. Valerie. She was very pretty, but she had a serious, no-nonsense look about her. As if she carried the weight of the world on her shoulders.
There were no pictures of quilts on this page. Emma assumed the club was in the process of making quilts for this war.
“In total, since Twilight was founded in 1875,” Nina said, “two hundred and sixty-four servicemen and women were killed in combat. Another three hundred and ten were wounded. Six were MIA presumed dead, and one, our own Sheriff Hondo Crouch, was a prisoner of war in Cambodia for three years.”
“Wow,” Emma said. It seemed like a lot for a town of just under six thousand, even if it did span more than a hundred years.
“This year, we want to expand the play to include skits from all the war eras, focusing particularly on the people who perpetuated the spirit of the town legend.”
“How romantic.”
“I’ve written the skits,” Nina said, “and we’ve cast the male lead.”
“We’re going to make quilts for the backdrops,” Nina said. “Each skit will have a quilt made honoring the era.”
“That’s ambitious.”
“It is, but the quilting club is up for the challenge. We’ll have seven vignettes. The original skit about Jon and Rebekka and then six additional skits for each war where Twilight lost a serviceman—Spanish-American, WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq. When the play is over, we’re going to auction off the quilts, and all the money we raise goes to benefit our men and women in uniform.”
Emma glanced around at the women who looked so earnest and eager. “But it’s only nine weeks until Thanksgiving.”
“We can make a quilt in a week,” Patsy said. “We’ve done it before.”
“Seven in a row?” Emma asked.
“It’ll be a first for us,” Belinda admitted, “but we’re up for it. We have two extra weeks as cushions.”
“The big question now…” Nina grinned. “Can you sew?”
“Sew?” Emma blinked. “You want me to quilt?”
“If you have some basic sewing skills we can teach you to quilt. You don’t have to worry about choosing the fabric or designing the quilt, we’ll do all that,” Nina said. “But it would be wonderful to claim you had a hand in creating them.”
“Well, I was a freshman at Twilight High—”
“And we require home economics for all freshmen, boys and girls,” Marva said gleefully, “so you did get a well-rounded education from us.”
“But I haven’t so much as sewn on a button in years.”
“It’s like having sex,” Raylene piped up. “Once you know how, you never forget.”
“I did make an A in home ec.” Emma couldn’t resist bragging even though she knew it was going to get her sucked into making quilts.
“Excellent.” Nina clapped her hands together. “We’ll rehearse during the day and at night we quilt. Be at the theater at nine o’clock tomorrow morning. Now that’s settled, let’s take a refreshment break.”
The women were up and out of their chairs, each coming over one by one to clasp Emma in a warm hug and tell her how excited they were to have her in Twilight. Her chest tightened and her nose burned. It was the first time she’d ever felt like she was really part of a loving community.
And it scared the living hell out of her.
CHAPTER SIX
Give a woman a quilt and you warm her for the winter. Teach a woman to quilt and you warm her soul for life.
—Terri Longoria, owner of Hot Legs Gym and member of the True Love Quilting Club
Later that same evening, Sam was watering Valerie’s vegetable garden in the backyard when he heard splashing coming from Jenny’s pool. Could it be Emma taking a late night dip? He turned off the water spigot, then went to the back fence. He tried to peek through the gaps in the wooden slats, but the red honeysuckle his sister had planted on her side of the fence obscured his view. He glanced around for something to stand on that would hold his weight and spied th
e picnic bench. He dragged it over next to the fence and stepped up on the bench.
Indeed, Emma was there in Jenny’s backyard, stepping out of the pool, her hair plastered wetly down her back. It shone like polished cooper in the moonlight, water sluicing down her body clad so provocatively in a white bikini.
Rationally, he knew she kept in shape. She was an actress. Regular workouts and healthy eating were a necessity in her line of work. But he did not expect her to look like she’d stepped from the pages of Playboy. She was curvy in all the right places, but there wasn’t an ounce of fat on her. She was lean and taut and…well…he’d never seen anything so incredible outside of a girlie magazine.
His brain shot urgent messages throughout his body. He forced himself to breathe normally, even though he had an overwhelming urge to pant. But he possessed zero control over his eyes. His gaze roved over her, grazing from top to bottom, ending with the perusal of her bare toes painted deep scarlet. He exhaled and took the return trip back up her slender ankles to her shapely calves. He suppressed the urge to vault the fence, grab her around the waist, and pull her against his chest.
She sauntered over to a lounge chair. She was strangely leggy for a woman so petite, and when she bent to snag the colorful beach towel flung over the arm of the chair, giving him an unobstructed view of the most spectacular rump on the planet, a pang of pure lust grabbed hold of him.
He must have made some kind of noise, because instantly her head came up like that of a cautious doe in the forest, and she swiftly whipped the towel around her. “Take a picture, Peeping Tom,” she shouted, “it’ll last longer…” She spun toward the fence, glaring. “Oh…it’s you.”
Sam felt his cheeks heat. Why hadn’t he jumped down off the picnic bench before she spied him? Now he felt like a total idiot.
A knowing grin twitched at the corners of her lips. “Did you just growl at me?”
He shook his head, lied, “No.”
She sauntered toward the fence, holding the towel securely around her body. “You were spying?”
