Alice bit back a retort and watched him go into his room. If Stevie told Leah—or Dat, heaven forbid—what she and Adeline had been doing, there would be no end to the lectures and punishment . . . and they would probably have an adult monitoring their moves every minute of every day.
“We’ve got to make sure we closed those drawers,” Adeline whispered.
Alice nodded, and they quickly stole back into the bedroom. Her stomach was clenched in a knot at the way Stevie had taunted them. “What if he just said that to irritate us?” she whispered as they quickly checked the dresser drawers. “What if he has no idea where that cell phone is?”
“Do you really think he’s smart enough to threaten us that way, if he doesn’t know?” Adeline mused aloud. “He’s just a little kid. Not even in school yet.”
“Maybe Leah put him up to it.” The thought curled Alice’s lip as the two of them slipped out of the bedroom and into the hallway. It seemed like something Leah would do, and the unfairness of it all really galled her. “Maybe she heard us walking around up here and—well, for sure and for certain she deserves a little payback for such meanness, and for using Stevie to trap us. I’m thinking she’s going to be sorry she did that, come time for Lenore’s quilting frolic.”
Chapter 15
On the following Friday, Leah felt as nervous as a newborn colt. Neighbor ladies and their daughters were arriving to begin quilting her mother’s newest quilt top—and it would soon become obvious that Leah didn’t quilt, nor was she much good at the chitchat most women engaged in so effortlessly. Still, she felt happy. Mama was beaming, welcoming their guests, while Alice and Adeline took pans of cinnamon rolls from the oven to go with the cupcakes and brownies they’d already made.
“Oh, but it smells yummy in here!” Delores Flaud declared as she entered the kitchen with her two teenage daughters. “And look at this little angel you’re holding, Leah. Why, I think she’s grown since we saw her at church last Sunday.”
Leah smiled, realizing that this frolic would be as much about Betsy as it was about Mama’s quilt—and that made the day seem easier, because she wouldn’t have to rack her brain for topics of conversation. “She’s doing well,” Leah agreed, bouncing Betsy against her shoulder. “And she’s not a fussy baby, either.”
“Such an angelic face!” Frannie Flaud exclaimed as she gently touched Betsy’s cheek.
“And dressed all in pink, like a little doll,” her sister Kate said with a big smile.
“Mama made this dress—and stacks of new diapers and other clothes,” Leah said with a nod at her mother. “She’s kept the sewing machine busy ever since she got here.”
“I can’t wait to work on your quilt, Lenore.” Delores set a covered casserole on the counter, and she and her girls removed their coats. “It’s a real pleasure to see the patterns and colors other gals use. My quilts for around home all seem to look the same, because I’m using up remnants of fabric from our clothes—and I’m not inclined to go looking for a new pattern every time I make one.”
Mama smiled as she hung up their wraps. “Truth be told, this quilt top is made from scrap triangles left over from a lot of my previous quilts,” she said. “If I didn’t make a scrap quilt every now and again, I’d have to build an annex onto the house to hold my fabric pieces!”
The two ladies laughed as they poured steaming cups of coffee from the big urn Mama had brewed earlier. Leah enjoyed the easy way the Flaud sisters joined Alice and Adeline as they stirred a big bowl of frosting for the hot cinnamon rolls. Within the next few minutes, Cora Miller and her three daughters arrived—and when Emma, Lucy, and Linda joined the other girls, the chatter level rose immediately. It was so good to hear happy voices filling the kitchen after the intense, unpleasant confrontations with the twins these past weeks—and nice that the ladies always brought casseroles to these frolics for an easy lunch so the hostess didn’t have to do all the cooking.
Soon Anne Hartzler and her mother-in-law, Martha Maude, arrived along with Rose Wagler and her little girl, Gracie. When the maidel Slabaugh sisters stepped into the kitchen, Leah forced herself to smile brightly as she welcomed them. Jude had suggested that she should invite them to the frolic to dispel their notion that she was a poor housekeeper—and bless them, Mama and the twins had spent a lot of time this past week helping her clean thoroughly. Leah couldn’t miss the way Naomi peered around the kitchen while Esther set the pan of corn bread they’d brought on the counter.
“Mighty nice of you to invite us today, Leah. Supposed to get some snow later—even if we thought it was supposed to be spring—so we might as well be quilting,” Naomi remarked stiffly. She sniffed the air and squinted through her rimless glasses at Betsy, as though she thought the baby’s diaper needed changing.
“Been ever so long since we had a quilting frolic,” Esther said, observing the girls across the kitchen as they spread frosting on the fresh rolls. “My word, Lenore, if all of us are working on this quilt, I hope you’ve got it on an especially long quilt frame.”
Adeline and Alice turned toward them before Mama could respond, their frosting-coated knives suspended over the pan of rolls. “Not to worry,
