'My assignment,' she said, nodding to the box. 'We all have to make blocks for the quilt by Friday. I don't know how I'm going to get it all done.'
'I'm sure someone will help if you get behind,' I said, to be helpful.
'They'll have to,' she laughed. 'Do you know your grandmother has been wondering what happened to you?'
'We went for a walk,' Ryan volunteered.
Carrie looked from Ryan to me and back again. Then she smiled. 'I hope it was a productive one.'
She shifted the box to one side to reach into her pocket, and as she did, the box tumbled to the ground. Ryan knelt down to gather up the mess and Carrie stood there, looking a little helpless.
'I was trying to get my keys,' she said, and took a large set out of her pocket. It was tangled up with a small set of keys that also fell, hitting Ryan on the head. 'I'm so sorry.' Carrie leaned over to grab the errant set, but I grabbed them first and handed them back. There were just two keys held by a worn black leather key chain.
'You should put these on the same key chain as the others,' I said.
'These,' Carrie quickly stuffed them back in her pocket, 'they're to my husband's office. I really don't even need to carry them.'
Ryan handed back her box.
'Marc had a key chain…,' I started, suddenly remembering where I'd seen that black leather before.
'I really need to get home and start dinner,' she said quickly and headed for her car. 'Ryan, thanks for picking everything up.'
'No problem.' He smiled and waved as she drove away. 'She's a nice lady.'
I nodded. 'A little frazzled, don't you think?'
Ryan gave me the 'you're crazy' look I'd seen a hundred times before, and we headed inside.
'Nell,' I heard Eleanor calling me from the moment I opened the door.
'We're back,' I said. 'Sorry we were gone all day.' I rushed to the living room, expecting to see her alone and feeling helpless. Instead Nancy, Bernie, and Susanne were with her eating lasagna.
'There's plenty,' Bernie said, gesturing to their plates. 'Have some.'
'How did your meeting go?' I asked.
'There's lots of work for everyone to do, including you,' Nancy said.
'I thought I was supervising at the shop.'
'You disappeared, so you got drafted.' Eleanor laughed. 'Ryan here is lucky we didn't drag him into the cause.'
'I have enough on my plate,' he said and winked at me. If it was meant to be subtle, it wasn't. All the women looked at us, with the hopeful expectation that gossip was soon to follow. Instead I sat with Nancy to find out what part of the quilt I was going to screw up.
'You ladies enjoy taking over the world. I'm going to heat up a slice of lasagna,' Ryan said as he headed out of the room.
He was gone exactly three seconds before Bernie broke the silence. 'So, are you going to fill us in?'
'Leave her alone.' Eleanor, surprisingly, came to my defense.
But for once I didn't need her help. 'He wants to get back together, to get married as planned. He seems to have been really shaken by everything that's happened, and he doesn't want to wait anymore.'
'What do you want?' Eleanor asked sharply.
'I want… I want what we were… what we were supposed to be.' I shrugged. 'A part of me wants to forget everything that happened and just be what we were, what I thought we were.'
'And the other part?' Maggie asked softly.
I sighed. 'The other part doesn't think it's possible, or even a good idea.'
'Well, whatever happens, you know you can stand on your own two feet, and that's important,' Bernie offered.
Had I been standing on my own two feet? I didn't bother to ask. 'It's all going to be okay,' I said. 'It is okay. We just have to get through this whole Marc thing.'
'Jesse doesn't think Ryan had anything to do with it, does he?' asked Susanne.
'No,' I said empathically, but I wasn't sure what Jesse thought.
'I think it was a lover, anyway. It seems like a crime of passion,' offered Bernie.
'Jealousy is passion,' Susanne pointed out.
'Maybe it was someone who was jealous that Marc had taken to Nell,' Bernie said. 'Maybe Marc had a girlfriend hidden away somewhere.'
'Several girlfriends, I'd bet,' Susanne sniffed. 'God knows what the women saw in him, but he was never short of company.'
I could feel Eleanor staring at the back of my head, but I didn't turn around. I ignored the dissection of Marc's character going on around me and sat with Nancy while she explained how I would be responsible for cutting out two dozen fabric flowers using a pattern she had drawn. Seemed simple enough.
'Whoever it was,' Eleanor stated as if to end the discussion, 'they must have felt very desperate. Whatever anyone thought of Marc, murder is a terrible thing.'
Bernie nodded, and looked toward Susanne, who looked toward me. I just was grateful that Nancy was focused on the quilt project.
After I got my instructions on my part of the quilt, I headed to the kitchen in search of Ryan and food. He wasn't there, but the lasagna was on the kitchen table. Susanne appeared as I took the food out of the microwave.
'I'm heating up the lasagna,' I said. 'It looks good. Who brought it?'
'Bernie. She left you the recipe.' Sure enough, on the table was a beautifully handwritten lasagna recipe on pale pink paper.
'That was sweet of her, but I'll never make lasagna. It's too much trouble.' I put our plates on the table.
'We all do things we once said we'd never do,' Susanne murmured as she made herself a cup of tea.
I grabbed a fork and started eating without looking at her.
An hour later, the women were all out of gossip and food, so they started heading home. I walked Nancy to the door first, promising to be at the shop to keep an eye on 'the new one' as she called Jesse's brother-in-law. Then I walked Bernie out, and she gave me a tight hug.
'We're all getting very fond of you, dear,' she said.
'It's mutual.'
As Bernie walked to her car Susanne said good-bye to my grandmother and came up behind me.
'I think I warned you that if you stuck around, you'd get drafted into the quilt club.' She smiled.
'You guys may come to regret that decision.'
'No.' Susanne reached up and touched my hair lightly, sweeping a loose strand behind my ear. 'We love having you here, almost as much as Eleanor does.' She stepped through the door into the darkness. 'It's nice to see someone coming into her own.'
'You mean someone getting into trouble.'
'You can't get into too much trouble making a quilt. It's too bad you didn't start making one the moment you arrived.'
'Is that your way of saying that I wouldn't have gotten involved with Marc?'
She shook her head. 'You dodged a bullet with that one.'
I decided to go for broke and ask what had bothered me since I saw Jesse talking to Natalie. 'What did Marc do to Natalie?'
'Leave it alone,' Susanne almost whispered. 'Be grateful that he didn't stick around to destroy what you have.'
'But he didn't destroy Natalie either. I keep hearing about her wonderful husband and baby,' I protested.
'You're right. I'm very grateful he didn't have his chance.'
I hesitated for a second, but I had to say what I was thinking. 'Did he get killed before he did?'
Susanne tilted her head slightly, as if wondering whether to answer. 'I suppose he did. My guess is that whoever killed him was just trying to protect someone they loved. And can you really find anything wrong in that?'
