Wild Goose Chase (23 page)

Buster disappeared through an
outside door I hadn’t noticed before. I went in the opposite direction, back through the award-winning quilts alcove. The room was packed with quilters, elbow to elbow, generous hip to generous hip, all chattering as they examined the best in the show. I heard Myra’s name mentioned.

I headed for the main entrance to go outside for better cell reception. I would call my dad to find out what he knew. Didn’t I have the right to know how my mother died? Obviously, Dad and my brothers didn’t think I was adult enough to handle the truth. I could handle the store, but not the details of my mother’s death.

The problem with a sheltered life was that the pain didn’t lessen when you found out the bad things later rather than sooner.

His cell rang and rang, until finally his brusque voice exhorted me to leave a message. I knew that this was only a feeble stab at phone etiquette. He refused to learn how to retrieve messages. I hung up.

I called Kevin next. He answered on the first ring. His cell was an extension of his person. With Pellicano Construction booked solid and Dad gone, Kevin spent most hours of the day with the phone to his ear.

Noises from his workmen infiltrated the phone. “What’s up?” he asked over the din. “How’s the show going?”

I had no time for niceties. “Kevin, why didn’t you tell me Buster was with Mom when she died?”

I could still hear the background noise, but nothing but breathing from my brother. His lack of reaction made me angrier still.

“Did you think I’d never find out that Mom didn’t die right away?” I asked. “That she lived on, probably in pain.” My voice broke. I stuffed down thoughts about how she might have suffered. Kevin had kept this from me, and I needed him to explain why.

“I can’t talk now, Dewey. I’m about to go into a progress-report meeting.”

I wouldn’t let him put me off. “What else don’t I know? Does Dad have a girlfriend on the side? Was Mom running drugs out of QP? Are you really my brother?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

I caught my breath, ragged and painful as though I were trying to breathe inside a burning room. My throat felt seared. “You told Kym.”

There. I’d said it. I could probably live with the knowledge that they hadn’t told me, if Kym hadn’t known.

“Kym knew more about my mother’s last moments on this earth than I did. How do you think that makes me feel?”

He went on the defensive. “She’s my wife. I needed to tell her.”

“What about me?”

“You? Miss Independence? You don’t need anyone, Dewey. You never have.”

“Is that what you think?” I said, the sadness leaking through my voice. He’d completely bought my act of self sufficiency. Mistaken my bravura for true courage.

“I can’t do this now. I’m working,” he said.

My anger rose. My brother was gone, in his place a guy I didn’t recognize. All my life, I’d thought Kevin would be there for me. My little brother, but the one I could count on, talk to. Until Kym came along and got between us.

“Do me a favor. Give Dad a message. Myra Banks is buying Quilter Paradiso. We’ll sign the papers as soon as we can.”

I hung up and sat by the fountain, trying to breathe but finding it hard to draw a full breath. The pressure had returned under my sternum, the one that had begun to dissolve this weekend.

I would not go back to not talking about my mother.

A steady stream of chattering women passed me, walking two by two, pulling their overstuffed rolling carts and tote bags. The show was closing. Another day of the Extravaganza over. I couldn’t wait for the end.

The laptop. I pushed myself up. If I was going to sell to Myra, I needed the laptop up and running. I bucked the tide of shoppers and headed for the booth.

Once I got past the bottleneck of people exiting the show, the aisles were mostly empty. Around me, vendors were shutting down their booths for the night. I heard the scrape of coins and shuffling of bills and a strained voice counting loudly, “Twenty, forty, sixty, eighty, two hundred.”

The closing routine—so normal, so far removed from the day I’d had.

Kym was alone in the booth when I got there, putting the day’s receipts and cash into the mesh bag.

“Can we talk?” I began. Kevin’s words had stung, but I still wanted to know everything Kym knew about my family. Kevin told her everything, I knew that now.

Kym interrupted. “Here’s the thing. I knew your mother borrowed the money.”

The POS system. I’d momentarily forgotten that Mom had borrowed ten thousand dollars from Claire.

“I didn’t know what she wanted it for,” she continued. “I believed her when she said the software was a test program. I didn’t know we were going to actually use it.”

“You thought the software program was just my mother’s way to get me to work in the store.”

“Not permanently.”

I flinched at her choice of words.

She waved me off. “I mean, I thought your mother was trying to help you out while you were out of work.”

“Then I would leave, and things would go back to the way they were.”

I saw tears in the corners of Kym’s eyes. “With your mother gone, nothing is the same. I hate it!”

Tears flowed down her cheeks. I’d never considered that Kym might love my mother, too.

She stepped away from me, dabbing the skin under her eyes carefully with a forefinger, and grabbed her purse and the deposit bag. “I’m out of here,” she said, pretending to be composed.

A huge sigh escaped me as she walked away, and I realized I’d been tensing for a scene that never came. I wasn’t the only one confused and missing my mother.

I felt the adrenaline drain from my body, leaving in its wake a feeling of being slightly sick, like I’d been running full out and hit the wall.

Eve’s voice came over the loudspeaker, thanking the vendors for sticking with her through the hard times. Her voice broke, and she abruptly reminded everyone that they had five minutes to close up and leave. The sound of static ended her announcement. Poor Eve. How would she get through the night now?

The laptop sat next to the cash register. I ripped off Kym’s calico cover. I needed only a few minutes to see if it was up and running. Around me the vendors filed out. Some that I met earlier shouted goodbyes.

Freddy was one of the last ones out, and he stopped. “Want to go for a drink?”

I shook my head. He shrugged and went on without another word. His invitation seemed forced and I wondered if he was mad at me for exposing Claire’s secrets.

In a booth somewhere a cell phone rang, forgotten or maybe purposefully left behind. My cell beeped ominously; the battery was about to run out. I glanced at the screen. One missed call—Buster. I wasn’t going to return that call. I had no idea what to say to him.

I grabbed the laptop cord. Parting the full calico skirts that were velcroed to the table next to the cash register, I reached under blindly, but couldn’t feel the power strip to plug in the cell and the laptop. The floor space under the table was a jumbled mess of plastic bins.

The power strip had gotten pushed all the way to the back of the booth. I had to get down on my knees and crawl underneath the table to reach it. Misjudging, I hit my head on the edge of the table and sat down hard, rubbing the sore spot. The sharp pain brought tears to my eyes, disproportionate to the ache. I felt the tears welling and swiped at my face. I pushed the plugs in roughly.

I heard footsteps and stilled myself, adjusting the calico curtain so I wasn’t visible. I felt ridiculous sitting underneath the table, but I knew I would feel sillier if that jerky little security guard found me scrambling around on the floor, crying.

I scooted backward to conceal myself better. My feet got tangled. I pulled up whatever it was I was struggling with. By the dim light cast by my charging phone, I could see it was Kym’s apron. I pushed the cotton pinney off me like it was a slimy beast and heard cellophane crinkling.

I’d knocked out a pack of Winstons. What were cigarettes doing in Kym’s apron? I rummaged through the other pocket and found a neon pink butane lighter, decorated with hearts. No doubt about it, the cigarettes and lighter belonged to Kym.

Tears still hot on my face, I laughed right out loud, then clamped my hand over my mouth. These were Kym’s cigarettes. I wondered if Kevin knew. I doubted it. I’d never even smelled smoke on her. She must have gone to elaborate means to conceal her habit. I had a secret on her, but I couldn’t enjoy it like I would have earlier.

I heard footsteps going past and froze again, holding my breath. The security guard must be on his way back out. I wanted to be sure he didn’t find me so I withdrew farther back, moving something else out of the way. The smell of lavender and mothballs wafted toward me. It was the bag with the Wild Goose Chase quilt from my mother. I pulled the quilt out. I couldn’t help but stroke the yielding bulk. I pictured a young married couple lying beneath it, planning their life together.

I needed to feel the quilt around me. I struggled to get it out of the bag quietly in the limited space. I felt the tears coming freely now and stuffed down a sob with a fist in my mouth. With a final yank, the quilt was out, and I cuddled it. Under the table, wrapped in the quilt my mother had bought for me, I couldn’t stop crying.

The quilt was tangible proof of a true love over a century old. The woman who’d made the quilt waited for her man for years, never losing hope. The love behind the quilt spanned the decades.

This old quilt laid my feelings bare. The beauty of the quilt, the simple juxtaposition of color and texture and form, reached in and wrung my heart out.

My mother’s hopes for her little girl to find love were infused in the quilt. This quilt, which my mother had never seen, never touched, connected her so deeply to me.

A week after her death, my mother had appeared in my room. It was a vision. I wasn’t dreaming. I hadn’t even been sleeping. I was scrunched against the headboard, watching the sunrise send watery pink rays of light on my walls. I felt a shift at the bottom of the bed as though someone had sat down. When I looked up, she was perched at the foot, smoothing my bed quilt and smiling at me. My face ached as I grinned, testing muscles I hadn’t used in a week.

She patted the end of the bed where my toes had just been. I felt the heat coming off her hand. A sense of well-being washed over me. I felt comforted by her touch like I had as a child. All I’d needed then was one touch, and pain had disappeared. One kiss on the bruised knee, the sting miraculously gone. One strand of hair tucked behind my ear was enough to take away whatever hurt my brothers had inflicted.

That early morning, I felt the certainty that she hadn’t left me. I knew in that moment she would always be with me. She was in her quilts. In her family. In her store.

Curled in a ball on the cold concrete floor in the convention center, I cried all the tears I’d been holding in for months. She was here in this quilt.

I wept until I ran dry. When I finally crawled out, the large room was completely quiet. Auxiliary lamps were on, dimly illuminating the aisles. Natural light leaked in through the high windows.

I folded the quilt and returned it to the bag. I would take it home and put it on my bed.

I turned on the computer. No need to hurry out now. I might as well take a few moments to make sure it booted up okay. I’d come in early in the morning and finish the setup.

The POS screen came up. I could fix the inventory easily now that I knew why money was going to WGC. I’d wipe the account off the books and pay back Claire’s estate once I’d sold the store.

Another gift from my mother. Like the pink and brown antique quilt, the POS system was meant as a gift to me. Neither one was meant to come to me after her death, but that’s what happened. I felt incredibly sad.

The database and point-of-sale systems looked fine, so I closed down the computer and felt for my car keys on my hip. I grabbed the Wild Goose Chase quilt and walked away from the booth. I would find my way out of here and to my car. I might have to find the security guard to let me out, but I’d try to get one of the back doors first. I needed to go home, be in my own living room, wrapped in the quilt, watching
Pride and Prejudice
.

After tomorrow, I would be done with the quilt world. I could sell the shop to Myra and get out from under the daily grind of following in my mother’s footsteps. I knew now she had never meant for me to make the shop my life’s work. Like Kym had said, it was only supposed to be temporary.