So far the only "we" drinking was Emma, but Sarah said, "Sure," and signaled the waiter. "Three margaritas."

Jamie produced a small Chocolate Bar bag and held it in front of Emma. "Here. I brought medicine."

Sniffing, Emma pulled out a white chocolate truffle. "Everyone in town's going to think I'm crazy."

Neither Sarah nor Jamie had to ask what she was talking about. "Shirley had it coming," said Jamie.

"I think I'll move," Emma decided. "All those good deeds-why did we bother? This town has no heart and it doesn't deserve any angels. I'm never donating a quilt to anything again. I'm never making a quilt again!"

"You don't really mean that," said Sarah as the waiter arrived with their drinks. "It looks bad now, but think of all your favorite movies. It always looks bad for the heroine at first. But somehow she finds a happy ending."

"Unless she dies in the end," Emma said, and took a deep drink.

"You're not going to die," Sarah said firmly. "Now, a toast. Here's to new beginnings."

"To new beginnings," echoed Jamie.

Emma didn't say anything. She was too busy drinking.

They ordered dinner, but she ate little and drank more. By the time they left the restaurant she was singing "The b.i.t.c.h Is Back" at the top of her lungs. As they pa.s.sed a table of gawking middle-aged women who had stopped talking to stare, Emma announced that there would be a big fire sale on Sat.u.r.day at Emma's Quilt Corner. "Tell everybody," she finished, waving an arm.

"I'm sure they will," Jamie said, guiding her out.

"I'll put the ad in first thing tomorrow. Seventy-five percent off. What the heck! Eighty percent. Do I hear ninety?"

They took her home and helped her into bed, then locked the door and closed her in to sleep off the booze. If only she could sleep off the misery as easily.

"She's going to have a killer headache," Jamie predicted.

"That's the least of her problems," said Sarah. Poor Emma. She tried so hard, dreamed so big. She and Jamie both. Sarah wished she were a fairy G.o.dmother. She'd give both girls a pile of money and a handsome prince.

Except she'd tried to give Jamie the handsome prince and Jamie had slammed her heart's door on him. What, by the way, had she done with the Herald? She'd meant to show Jamie that article about Josh. It would have been good for Emma to see, too. Maybe it would have encouraged her to read that someone in Heart Lake was still doing good deeds.

But Emma needed more than encouragement right now. She needed money.

Sarah went home feeling suddenly p.o.o.ped. She put on her slippers and settled on the couch in front of the TV.

She began flipping through the channels toward the Food Network, past the latest search for America's top model, a stupid sitcom, and a rerun from the seventies on the oldies station. And there on AMC was It's a Wonderful Life, which would, of course, play all month long on one channel or other. She hadn't watched it in years. She set down the remote and got sucked into watching George Bailey and Mary Hatch fall in love.

By the end of the movie, she was smiling. She called Sam at the station.

"I'm behind you a hundred percent, babe," he said when she'd finished explaining her idea to him. "We've got that money for an emergency and this sounds like one to me."

TWENTY-FOUR.

Emma woke up with a screaming headache on Thursday morning. She took two aspirin and went back to bed. To heck with the shop. It wasn't like she had customers banging on the door to get in anyway. She pulled the covers over her head and played dead. It wasn't hard. Her life was over.

By afternoon the headache was gone and she had no excuse to avoid dealing with the details of death. She had to put an ad in the paper for her going-out-of-business sale, make signs for the windows, and cancel the fabric order she'd placed earlier with the Timeless Treasure rep.

She dragged her heavy heart to work where she called the paper and put in the ad. It cost her twice as much as usual because she was a day past the deadline. But at least the ad would come out on Sat.u.r.day, just in time for the sale. The woman taking the information was polite and businesslike. And uncaring. Not a single, "Gosh, I'm sorry."

Big surprise. No one cared. The campaign to put the heart back in Heart Lake had been a bust. You couldn't replace something that had never been there.

On Friday she sat all alone in her shop, feeling like a prisoner on death row and thinking about her stupid, rude behavior to Shirley. Boy, that had been the worst kind of movie moment. She hoped Mom and Grandma didn't find out.

Mom and Grandma. Just thinking about them made Emma want to cry. They had both given her money so she wouldn't have to take out such a big business loan. She had sure let them down. Mom had sacrificed her kitchen remodel. She should have redone the kitchen.

If ever there was a time when a girl could have used a comforting talk with her mother this was it, but Emma couldn't work up the nerve to call and deliver the depressing news yet. She wished she could talk to someone. Sarah probably was finishing up at the bakery, up to her elbows in flour, and Jamie was busy running her growing business. Pretty soon she'd be hiring help. She probably wouldn't call Emma, though, not after the way Emma had run Shirley Schultz off.

The memory of her dream came back to mock her. She had so envisioned the people of Heart Lake coming together to make something beautiful-what a bunch of hoo-ha.

A grand total of four women came in and bought fabric and that was the extent of her business. When she shut up shop at five she was ready to cry but willing to admit that deciding to pull the plug had been the right thing to do. She hadn't heard from Jamie to see if she wanted to hang out and she was too embarra.s.sed over her bad behavior to call her friend, so a lonely Friday night loomed ahead of her. Ugh.

That margarita she'd had on Wednesday had tasted pretty good. Maybe she'd swing by Brewsters and get another. She got as far as going into the pub, but all those tables packed with laughing friends worked like an invisible force field, keeping her out. She turned and fled, settling for running by Safeway and picking up a bottle of peach-flavored wine and a movie. She'd have her own party.

By ten o'clock the movie was over, the bottle was nearly empty, and Emma was facedown on her bed, fully dressed and drifting toward oblivion. No one in her family drank. She was charting new territory. Hometown girl makes good.

Sat.u.r.day her ringing phone about split her head open. She grabbed the receiver with one hand and the spinning bed with the other and managed a weak h.e.l.lo.

"Where are you?" demanded Jamie.

The words charged in through her ears and banged around in her head. "Don't yell," she protested.

"It's noon and your shop is closed and you have customers."

"Tell them I'm closed for the day. I'm sick," Emma said, and hung up. She squeezed her eyes shut and begged the evil genie whipping the bed around to please stop.

Ten minutes later someone was banging on her front door. She couldn't get up. She couldn't move. She was never going to move again. She was also never going to drink again, either. What had she been thinking, anyway? "Go away," she moaned.

The banging stopped. A moment later it started again at her bedroom window. "Get up and open the door." The voice came through the window m.u.f.fled, but it still wasn't hard to recognize. Jamie again.

"I'm sick," Emma called, then winced at the pain she'd caused herself.

"Let me in or I'm going to break this window."

Emma staggered to the front door. Her head was going to explode. Oooh, she would so never do this again. Ever. She opened the door and Jamie marched in. Blinding sunlight followed her. Emma held up a hand to protect her sensitive eyes and moaned. "Shut that."

"Geez, you're a mess." Of course, Jamie wasn't. She was wearing her favorite red leather jacket that she'd found in an upscale thrift store, her perfectly fitted jeans, and red cowgirl boots, and was carrying her favorite red leather purse. "You're hungover," she accused. "What would your mother say?" she added as she led Emma into the kitchen. She got a gla.s.s of water, then steered Emma to the bathroom, where she pulled Advil out of the medicine cabinet and shook out two pills. "Here. Swallow this," she instructed. While Emma swallowed, she started the shower running. "Strip and get in," she commanded. "I'll be right back with clothes."

Emma got out of her clothes and into the shower and got the shock of her life. Cold. Freezing cold! With a screech she fumbled for the shower k.n.o.b. Was Jamie trying to kill her?

"Don't you dare turn the temperature up," came a voice behind the shower curtain. "You need to wake up. Wash up and get out. I'm making coffee."

Emma washed up in record time and stumbled into her clothes. She blew her hair almost dry and stuffed it into a scrunchy, then went to the kitchen.

Jamie had shed her jacket and was now busy making toast. She looked Emma over. "Let's put some makeup on you."

"I don't need makeup," Emma said grumpily.

"Trust me," Jamie said as she poured coffee. "You do." She plopped the toast on a paper towel, placed the mug in Emma's hand, and then marched her back to the bathroom. "Okay. You drink. I'll work."

Emma's reflection was completely depressing. Next to her hot friend she always looked plain and boring. But today she looked plain, boring, and half dead. And she felt completely dead. All she wanted to do was go back to bed. "Why are you here?" she moaned as Jamie began smearing foundation on her cheeks.

"Because it's Sat.u.r.day and you are supposed to be open for business."

Sat.u.r.day. Open for business. Going out of business! "Oh, my gosh. My sale!" Emma set the mug on the bathroom counter and turned to dash out the door.

Jamie grabbed her by the arm. "You're already pathetically late. Five more minutes isn't going to make any difference." She returned the mug to Emma's hand. "I called Sarah and told her we were going to be another twenty minutes late."

"Called Sarah. Why?"

Jamie's eyes widened. She blinked, looking like a crook who had just made a misstep under interrogation. "Because she's waiting for the sale to start."

The sale, the sale. "I'm late for my own sale," Emma fretted.

"People will wait," said Jamie. "Eat your toast. Now, look up."

"Don't poke my eye out."

"I won't if you stand still. Quit fidgeting." She finished with Emma's eyes and surveyed her handiwork. "There. That's better. Now, lipstick. Where's your lipstick?"

"I don't know. I lost it. It doesn't matter anyway. Let's go."

Jamie growled and disappeared. A moment later she was back, her own lipstick in hand. "We are so taking you to Macy's for a makeover for Christmas."

Lipstick and a spritz of perfume and Jamie was finally done. "Okay, let's go. Bring the coffee."

And then they were off, Jamie driving as if she were at the Indianapolis 500. "Slow down. You're making me sick," Emma protested. Actually, the thought of having to preside over her going-out-of-business sale was making her a lot sicker than Jamie's driving.

Jamie took her foot off the accelerator and looked over at her. "It's going to be okay. Trust me."

Emma pressed her lips tightly together and nodded. Her friends had obviously committed themselves to getting her through this day. She'd make them proud and be brave. And gracious, even to Shirley.

"By the way, it's probably safe to tell you now that your sale ad didn't make it into the paper," Jamie said as they came down Alder to the four-way stop.

Emma's heart dropped clear down to her toes. "It had to. The woman I talked to promised."

"I know," said Jamie. "We canceled it."

"What?" What kind of friends did she have?

"Trust me," said Jamie as she squealed through the four-way stop and turned left onto downtown Lake Way.

Down the street Emma could see a crowd of people. Behind them . . . what? It looked like a marching band. She let down the car window and strains of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" floated in to her. "What on earth?"

"It's the welcoming committee," Jamie said, and started honking her horn.

"What are you doing? What's going on?" Was she still really in bed, having some kind of weird dream?

Now she noticed that every parking place on downtown Lake Way was taken, and the crowd extended all the way down the sidewalk and clear onto the little cobblestone street she usually drove down to park her car. Only one s.p.a.ce remained, right in front of her shop, and in the middle of it stood . . . "Santa Claus?"

He waved at them and stepped aside and Jamie pulled into the spot. The crowd cheered. Some people were holding up quilts like banners at a football game.

Jamie turned to Emma with a smile and said, "It's a wonderful life, Emma Swanson."

"What?" Okay, she was dreaming.

Santa opened the car door. "Ho, ho, ho. Merry Christmas, Emma," he said in Sam Goodwin's voice.

"Sam?" she squeaked.

"No. Santa." Behind him stood Lezlie Hurst from the paper, snapping pictures.

She began to take in familiar faces. There was Mom and Grandma and Ruth Weisman and Emma's friend Kerrie, and Hope from Changing Seasons Floral, and Kizzy who owned the kitchen shop. And there was . . . Shirley Schultz? Beaming at Emma as if Emma were her long-lost friend.

"I don't understand," said Emma.

"You will in a minute," a familiar voice said in her ear.

She turned to see Sarah standing in back of her, dressed like Mrs. Santa and holding a huge silver holiday ice bucket.

"I hear you've been a very good girl, doing nice things for the people of Heart Lake all year," said Santa Sam. "And now they want to do something good for you." He crooked an elbow for her to take. "What do you say we open for business?"

Still gaping, she took his arm and let him lead her to the front door of her store while everyone cheered and the band played "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town."

"Give me your key," he said. She fumbled out her key and handed it over and he ushered her into the shop, with people squeezing in after her.

In a matter of moments the shop was full. Sarah set the ice bucket on the counter. "Okay, people, it's time to celebrate Christmas early and show that we've got heart." Everyone cheered as she ceremoniously dropped in a check. Then, while the band stood outside and played "The Twelve Days of Christmas" people crowded forward to put checks and cash into the bucket. Shirley Schultz squeezed toward the front with her contribution, saying, "I think this squares us. Merry Christmas, dear."

Emma stared in wonder, tears streaming down her cheeks. Now Mr. Pressman from the bank was actually contributing to the bucket. "No one wants to see you go out of business, Emma," he said. "I hope this helps."

Was this really happening?

From nowhere, several little girls dressed up like elves appeared, bearing plates of Christmas cookies. Two of them Emma recognized as Lissa and Mandy Armstrong. And there was Josh and his dad.

"Merry Christmas, Emma," said Josh, and dropped a check in the bucket.

Her mom pulled her aside and hugged her. "Sweetheart, you should have told us you were struggling."

"So you could dip into your savings again?"