seam split open to the knee to accommodate the soon-to-be-removed cast.
'It could have been, but I'm doing a dense stippling pattern in the cream-colored background areas. It looks real nice, but it's taking me a little time.'
'Anyone waiting for a taxi?” Mavis asked with a smile as she came through the door without knocking.
'I promise, I'll make this up to you two,” Harriet said. “I'll drive you everywhere when you're not allowed to drive anymore.'
'Honey, I plan on going to my grave with the keys to my Town Car in my hand,” Mavis said and laughed.
'I'll see you ladies at Harriet's,” Beth said as they all went outside.
Harriet wasn't sure how it was that you could have the first appointment of the day at the clinic and still be made to wait for twenty minutes before they called you in. She spent another twenty minutes getting the heavy cast removed before she was able to finally move into the doctor's examination room.
The wait turned out to be worth it when Dr. Eisner came in and proclaimed her healing process to be better than average and offered her a lighter, removable air cast if she would promise to continue to mostly use her crutches for another week. She agreed, and after a few probing touches to her still-tender kidney, she was released back into Mavis's care.
'Well, what did he say?” Mavis asked when they were back in the car.
'He said I was healing nicely. He said if I use my crutches most of the time, I can wear this removable air cast.'
'We should be only fashionably late to the Threads meeting,” Mavis said. “What did he say about your kidney?'
Harriet gave her a full report as they drove back to her house, where they found the driveway full of Loose Threads cars.
'Harriet,” Lauren said as she came through the door to the studio, “I was just telling DeAnn you'd found some really interesting information on your computer.'
'Lauren,” Harriet said in exasperation, “what happened to not running the world and letting the detective deal with things?'
'Oh, so if you meddle it's a virtue, but if I open my mouth I'm a troublemaker?” Lauren grabbed her long blond hair and swept it off her shoulders to her back.
'What are you two talking about?” DeAnn asked.
Harriet glared at Lauren, who merely shrugged and turned to talk to Jenny, who was sitting on her left. She looked for Mavis or her aunt, but neither woman was in the studio. They were probably in the kitchen getting refreshments.
'If you know something, spill it,” Robin urged. She was dressed in the fall version of her usual yoga outfit, the seasonal difference being that her black stretchy pants were full-length and she'd added a fitted pastel hoodie to her costume. Her clothing might have been casual, but she was using her best courtroom voice, and Harriet found it very compelling.
'This is more of a show than a tell,” Harriet said, and crossed to her computer desk. She turned the machine on and pulled up the website with the picture of the Samoan family. She'd also e-mailed herself a copy of Lauren's cleaned-up version of the picture, and she displayed that, too.
DeAnn was silent. A minute passed, then two. Without saying anything, she pulled out her cell phone and dialed the tollfree number listed on the screen under the picture. She listened, and then said, “English.'
Harriet returned to the sitting area, giving DeAnn privacy to deal with what had to be a very painful conversation. Robin joined her.
'That's really tough,” Harriet said.
'I'm sure DeAnn's thinking it's nothing compared to what that family has to have been going through, thinking they might have lost their daughter forever.'
'So, what's the next step?'
'I'm going to recommend to DeAnn they have a DNA test done, just to be certain, but I imagine they could learn all they need to know by showing the picture to the little girl.'
'Should we call Phyllis?'
'She'll have to be told, so she can figure out where the breakdown in her system occurred. It could be Joseph, or it could be they were dealing with a corrupt person on the other end who produced good quality forgeries for the required documents,” Robin explained. “I don't think she needs to be involved right now. This…” She pointed to DeAnn. “…will be between two families and be about doing what's right. The blame game can come after that.'
'I need to go home,” DeAnn said when she'd finished her phone call. “The quilt is in my bag. Can you deal with it?” she asked Robin.
Robin assured her her family should take precedence and offered to drive her home, but DeAnn insisted she was okay to drive.
'It's really for the best, don't you think?” Lauren said when DeAnn was gone.
'Actually, yes,” Harriet snapped. “I do. My problem is with you. We agreed to one thing, and then you did the exact opposite. If we're going to work together on projects, it isn't going to work for me if you always do the opposite of what we agree on.'
'That's a two-way street, you know,” Lauren fired back.
'Shall we look at the quilts, ladies?” Connie stood, speaking in her best schoolteacher tone, silencing them both.
A knock sounded on the door, and Carla came in with Wendy balanced on one hip and a canvas quilting bag on the opposite shoulder.
'I hope it's okay that I brought Wendy with me,” she said. “We're going to Toddler Time at the library when we're done.'
Connie took the little girl from her.
'Wendy's always welcome,” she said and tickled the child's tummy, causing her to shriek in delight.
Carla sat on one of the folding chairs Aunt Beth had set up in a circle around Harriet's gray easy chair.
'I'll start,” Jenny said, and unfolded the dog-bone applique wall hanging. She turned it around so the chocolate-brown back showed, revealing the label and sleeve, both sewn into their proper place with almost invisible stitches.
'That came out really nice,” Harriet said. “The dog faces capture the essence of small dogs everywhere.'
'I love the way the flower stems intertwine with the bones to form the wreaths,” Robin said.
'Kind of makes you feel sorry for the Small Stitches and the bone blocks they're copying,” Lauren said.
'Why is that?” Sarah asked. “If they do a decent job of copying my design, they should be great blocks.'
'I'm sure they won't copy them with anywhere near the skill you made the original with,” Lauren said with a wicked smile. “It's really too bad we couldn't use them, but after they copied them it was out of the question.'
Harriet whacked her on the arm.
'Behave yourself,” she muttered, but she couldn't stop herself from smiling.
The group revealed the rest of the quilts one by one, oohing and ahhing over the finishing work and the overall result. Mavis's and Beth's snowball quilt had come out beautifully, and Harriet's tumbling block design with its three-dimensional effect was striking. The star block quilt had perfect points and charming fussy-cut dog images. Connie and Lauren's doghouse quilt was raised from nice to exceptional thanks to their skilled choices of color. They declared themselves as done as they were going to get, and Aunt Beth retreated to the kitchen to fetch a plate of brownies Jenny had brought.
'Have you had any news about Kissa?” Robin asked Connie.
'Absolutely nothing,” Connie replied. “I've taken her for her well baby exams, and other than being a little underweight for her age, she's healthy. She's meeting all her developmental milestones, too.'
'Do they have any idea where she came from?” Lauren asked.
'She seems to be African, but that's guesswork on our part. So far, no missing person reports match her. They did a simple blood-type matching between her and Neelie Obote and Rodney Miller and she doesn't match either of them, but that only rules them out as potential parents as a couple. One of them could still be her parent if you assume she got her blood type from the unknown parent.'
'So, what will happen to her?” Jenny asked.
