The Healing Quilt (3 page)

“Yes.” A silence stretched.

“Uh, thought I'd better let you know that I'll be moving on to another job.”

“Will you be coming home first?” There, she'd asked the question that should have been answered weeks ago. Or was it months now?

“Uh, no. Their time frame is too tight. Uh.

Kit waited. Her mouth dried as the moments melted away. Where had the words gone? Why had they fled like phantoms flitting away in the dusk?

“Uh, I just wanted to touch base with you. I better get going.”

Where are you, Mark, who are you? Why won't you even talk to me?
“Take good care of yourself.” The trite phrase squeezed by the sandstone boulder lodged in her throat. She listened for the click and the pause that turned to buzzing on the line. The receiver clattered into the base, and she fled to the sink. Water. Like a Sahara sojourner, she needed a drink of water. Taking a glass out of the cupboard, she ran it full and drained it just as fast. She set it on the tile counter, precisely and with a nearly imperceptible sound. Her jaw felt as though it locked with the same chink. She stared at the faucet.
Water. The flowers. Where was he?
She strode to the coffee table and picked up the arrangement, cradling the milk glass bowl in both hands.
God, where is he? leant even call him, since he never gives me the number and his cellphone always transfers to voice mail What is the matter with him?
She heard the sound of glass shattering against tile and saw flowers scatter across the counter and sink, one red carnation like blood on the floor. The water dripped off the cabinet and crept toward her living room carpet. Kit watched it, making no move to wipe it up.

The calendar never lies.

“Haifa year gone and I still haven't made a decision.”

Elaine Giovanni left off glaring at the calendar and moved over to the gilt-framed mirror in the hall. She frowned at the reflection and pushed her freshly tinted strawberry blond hair off her forehead. Pressing her palms against the sides of her face, she pulled backward, tightening the skin around her eyes, forehead, and jaw. She relaxed it somewhat to a more acceptable image and stared, all the while her mind teeming with all the reasons, both yea and nay, she'd been considering a face lift since January.

She'd look more like herself. The surgeon's scalpel might slip. She'd feel younger. The cost was beyond reasonable, not that they couldn't afford it. George might find her more appealing. She might look like a wax doll. Should she do dermabrasion? Only if she could hide out for weeks until her skin healed. Perhaps a spa where it could all be done at once and she'd be pampered as well. Her thoughts circled round and round like a carousel with a permanently imbedded microchip that made it run forever.

Why can't I make a decision? This isnt like me.

She glanced at her watch and saw that the mailman had surely come by now. Perhaps her order from Sharper Image had arrived. Leaving the front door open behind her, Elaine ambled down the Italian-tiled steps and out to the mailbox, checking along the way to see if the gardener had edged the front lawn properly this time.

“Mrs. Giovanni!”

The call made Elaine cringe. Only one voice in the entire world could sound like that. Had she been watching and waiting for Elaine to come out the door?
Why mei Why todaf.
She spun on her heel and faced her adversary.

“That fire was all your fault!”

Elaine clamped both hands on her hips, stretching her five foot, two inches as tall as they would go. Right now she wished she were a six-foot, three-hundred-pound linebacker. Perhaps then the fool who lived next door would pay more attention. But one had to have a brain in that case, and that was one thing she seriously doubted her neighbor owned. Mrs. Smyth-with-a-y had not displayed any kind of cerebral acumen in all the years they'd shared the fence line.

“If you kept those fir trees cut back, there wouldn't have been a fire.” Mrs. Smyth snorted and panted like the English bulldog at her feet.

“Mrs. Smyth, we've been over this a thousand times. You know my trees had nothing to do with the fire. The power line broke in the wind.” Elaine stepped closer to the shared property line. “The reason
you
had a fire in
your
backyard is obvious.
You
have oil spots on the concrete and greasy rags lying around to catch fire.”

“Your trees broke the power line.”

Elaine kept her voice in a lower register but cut each word with surgical steel. “I realize it's difficult for you to understand, but I will say this again. The power company admitted the lines broke due to high winds and old lines.”

“The fire
your
trees caused burned up Bootsie's house.
You
could have killed my Bootsie too!”

“And then we would not have had dog turds in our yard,” Elaine muttered. Bootsie had never slept in the doghouse in his entire slobbering life. “The power company…”

“Your trees started the fire.” Mrs. Smyth, now red of face and screeching voice, turned toward her house. “You can expect to receive a notice from my lawyer any day now!” The woman who closely resembled the mostly white bulldog now waddling toward Elaine paused only long enough to slap her thigh. “Come, Bootsie,” she commanded. Bootsie growled low in his throat and glared his hatred for Elaine before snuffling and snorting his way after his owner.

“Why do I even bother talking to her?” Elaine raised her hands shoulder high, then let them drop to her sides. She consciously unclenched her jaw and ran slender fingers through hair that always fell back into perfect sleek lines.
That woman is a menace. All these years, dug up daffodih, dog poop, motorcycles. Her kids were worse than the dog. Why I've put up with such misery, I'll never know.
The slam of Mrs. Smyths door set her in motion. “Forgive and forget,” Elaine could hear her mothers usual advice. “Love your neighbor,” she'd said.
Right, I'll show that old bag next door forgive and forget.

Back in the silence of her white-on-white house, Elaine paced from one end of the arched glass solarium to the other, running the four-teen-carat gold chain at her neck around her fingers. Call George? Waste of time. Her husband always had more important things to do than worry about her problems. For some reason his patients were more important.

Of course, now if I murder her that will gain his attention.
Elaine shook her head at the thought. No way would she ever beat a murder rap, even if every homeowner in the country sat on the jury.

Call Frederick. No, this had not escalated to calling in an attorney…yet.

Call the president of the homeowners association? “Fat lot of good that will do.” She'd complained to him about the grease spots, the unkempt yard, the blinding porch lights more than once. The homeowners board of directors had about as much teeth as a sixteen-year-old Chihuahua.

Speaking of which, she leaned over and picked up the quivering little Chihuahua at her feet. “Doodlebug, what do you think I should do?”

Having cleaned Elaine's chin, ears and neck, the fawn-and-white-spotted dog yipped his answer, then placed a slender paw on her collarbone and laid his head on it. His sigh said it all. Forget your worries and come lets cuddle.

Elaine eased down into a rattan chair with hibiscus flowered cushions and straightened the crease of her cream silk pants. Ankles crossed, she caressed her dogs head, staring out over the evergreen clad hills undulating toward the Cascade Mountains.

“I could send her a mail bomb. Even your ears are too tender, Doodlebug, for the names I want to call her. Strychnine in chocolates. Now, that's worth considering.”

She set the dog on the floor much to his displeasure and rose to pace again. A glass of Chardonnay. She glanced at the black-and-gold clock. No, the day was too young. “Chocolate, that's the answer. And”—she looked down at the dog—“if you quit whining, I'll share.” Doodlebugs oversized ears stood at attention. Chocolate, he understood that word for sure.

She returned to the sunroom with shortbread dipped in chocolate. They had a good thing going—Doodlebug got the buttery end, and she the chocolate, since it was bad for dogs.

Other women's husbands dealt with matters like fires and power lines, but George? She shook her head and fed her eager companion bits of the buttery shortbread. “Why can't I depend on my man, Bug? Why?”

The calendar never lies.

Especially not in this case. Beth Donnelly tried to focus on the desk calendar, but seeing through tears was like looking out a window beaten by a Northwest rainstorm. Only dim outlines were visible in either case. Regular as moon and sunrise, ever since her twelfth birthday, her period showed up on the twenty-eighth day of her cycle. Except for those two months in her sixteenth year. And the five short months she'd carried their long awaited son.

“Lord, is it too much to ask for a baby? You give everyone else babies.” She amended her monologue. “Well, most people, even those who don't want them or have too many or don't take care of the ones they do have.” She crossed to the window that overlooked her neighbor's yard, where two small children who had dim acquaintances with a bathtub and less with soap played with nary a hint of supervision.

Beth clutched her elbows with chilled hands. If they were hers they would be loved and cuddled, sang to and read to, dressed in overalls and T-shirts, or shorts for the boy and sunsuits for the little girl. Oh, such fun she would have sewing for them. But another month had passed, and all she had to show for it was a new box of tampons. Twenty-nine and still no children. Garths birthday was tomorrow, and how she'd prayed to be able to give him good news.

Tears again. “I hate crying.” She dashed the drops from her eyes, turned back to the sink, and ran water in the teakettle. A cup of tea, that's what she needed. Peppermint, since it was supposed to calm one's stomach. And the first day of a period she always needed calming, along with a Midol or two to kill the cramps.
Even a friend to drink it with is apparently too much to ask.
Or else the Lord ignored that prayer, too. Her Bible lay open on the table. “Ask and it will be given you; seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened for you.” She didn't need to read the words. They'd been drilled into her heart when she was a little girl in Sunday school.

“Well, I've been asking all right, I've sought, I've knocked, I've just about pounded the door down and still nothing.” She waited for the water to steam and poured it into the mug sitting ready.

“Honey, wake up.” Garth gently shook his wife. “Beth.” He wrapped his arm around her quivering body and pulled her into his warmth. “You're having a nightmare again.”

She burrowed close, clinging to his arm, blinking away the horror of someone snatching her baby from her arms. “I can't stand this anymore.” She hiccuped on a sob. “Garth, we wanted our baby, and he's gone.”

Gone wasn't quite the truth. Their baby had not made it full term. The doctor said it died in utero. He said things like that happened.