My face felt hot.

"Madelyn? Are you all right?"

"I . . . I'm fine. I . . . Late for an appointment. I just remembered." I grabbed my handbag from the counter and started frantically searching for my car keys.

That stupid bag. Why did I bring that big, expensive, stupid bag? I could never find anything in it.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you."

Finally, my fingers felt metal. I yanked the keys out of my bag.

"No, no," I said quickly, blinking as I walked. "I'm not upset. Just late. Thanks for your help. I'll be back . . . another day," I lied, gave him a short, hollow smile, and then lied again.

"It was nice to see you again, Jake."

20.

Madelyn My hands were shaking so hard it was a struggle to fit the key into the ignition. I backed out of the parking s.p.a.ce quickly, without bothering to check my mirrors, and came six inches from getting my b.u.mper hit by a beat-up green and white pickup truck. The driver slammed on his brakes and his horn. I lifted my hand in a limp apology and drove away as quickly as possible, taking a right out of the parking lot because it was easier and ending up downtown because I didn't know where else to go.

There was an empty parking spot in front of the Blue Bean Coffee Shop and Bakery, so I pulled in and turned off the ignition. I sat there for a moment, with my elbows resting on the steering wheel and my head buried in my hands.

I'm sorry. You didn't deserve that.

His words echoed in my brain and summoned up a fresh threat of tears. Why? It wasn't like I hadn't thought the same thing a hundred times, a thousand. I'd been feeling sorry for myself for a long time, even before I'd met Sterling. Why should hearing the same thing from Jake Kaminski make my hands shake and bring me to the edge of tears?

Because Jake Kaminski knows you. He knows everything.

I took in a breath and let it out, steadying myself, and shushed the voice in my head. I didn't have time for this. Not now.

I lifted my head and looked at myself in the rearview mirror. "Enough," I said aloud, wiping a smear of mascara from under my eyelashes. "Get hold of yourself. You look like fifty miles of bad road."

I hadn't had anything besides coffee and my stomach was growling, whether from hunger or distress I wasn't sure, but I decided to get something to eat.

I reached over to the pa.s.senger side to get my purse from the seat, spotted the big shopping bag with the quilts inside on the floor, and decided to bring it along. The quilt shop was just down the block from the Blue Bean. After I ate, I could walk over and look up that Margaret person, see if she thought the quilts were worth trying to save.

The Blue Bean is really more of a cafe than a bakery, though they do offer delicious, homemade cookies, m.u.f.fins, scones, and rolls. I was famished. I ordered a small brewed coffee with cream and a raspberry scone.

It was Sat.u.r.day morning and the cafe was full. I spotted a couple getting up to leave and sat down, putting the bag with the quilts on the floor next to me. The previous occupants had left their newspaper, so I took a pen from my purse and started reading the cla.s.sified listings for auctions and estate sales, circling any that seemed promising.

My coffee cup was about half empty when I heard a giggle and a woman's voice say, "Oh, look who's here! Madelyn, right? I'm Margot. We met at the grocery store. Remember?"

I looked up from my newspaper into the pretty, beaming face of a tall woman with blond hair and eyes the color of sapphires. Margot. Not Margaret. Now I remembered.

"What a coincidence. I was planning on coming to the quilt shop to see you."

"Really?" she said with a giggle, not a self-conscious giggle but a delighted one, as if she was genuinely pleased that I'd wanted to look her up. I couldn't think why she would be; we barely knew each other. What a strange woman.

"Well, it looks like I saved you a trip. I'm here to have breakfast with a friend, but it's so crowded! Would you mind a little company?"

Without waiting for me to answer, she pulled a chair out from the table and sat down, then called to her friend, who stood with her back to us, scanning the room for two empty seats. Margot motioned for her to come join us and started making introductions. She could have saved herself the trouble. The moment the woman turned around, I knew who she was.

Though I hadn't laid eyes on her in more than thirty years, I could still pick Tessa Kover's face out of a crowd.

21.

Tessa The night before, Friday, as we were leaving the quilt shop after my first night as a member of the Cobbled Court Quilt Circle (and a great night it had been, too! I'd already sewn my very first quilt block and couldn't wait to get started on the others!), Margot suggested we get together for breakfast the next day.

"It'll be fun!" she exclaimed. "We can talk about quilts and you can tell me the story of your life. Now that we're in the same quilt circle, I need to know absolutely everything about you!"

Of course, Margot was teasing. I'd never planned on telling her much about my past. Not so soon. Not until I turned around and saw Madelyn Beecher, and Madelyn Beecher looked up and saw me, then ran out the door of the Blue Bean without saying a word.

Margot laid her hand on her chest and blinked back a sheen of tears. "Oh, Tessa," she whispered. "Tessa, that is just so sad. Poor thing."

"I know. I don't blame Madelyn for bolting. We were friends, true friends. I wish I'd realized back then how rare real friendship is."

I picked up my fork and moved my eggs from one side of the plate to the other. I'd lost my appet.i.te.

"I just tossed her over. For what? The approval of a boy with wandering hands and bad breath? A bunch of cliquey girls? Sure, Madelyn was a little weird, but at twelve, who isn't? She didn't deserve to be treated like that. No one does, especially somebody whose only crime was trying a little too hard to be a friend. There are worse things, believe me."

I laughed at my own stupidity. "Do you know how many times my old so-called friends from work have called me since I moved?" I held up two fingers. "That's it. And both of them phoned within the first three weeks after I left-and then only in response to the e-mail with my new contact information. I sent it out to about thirty people, my thirty 'closest' friends. Two called me. That's all."

"Do you ever phone them?" Margot asked.

"I did for a while. Not anymore."

I bit my lip, wondering how much to share. This was just supposed to be a casual get-together for coffee and conversation, nothing more. I didn't want to scare her off by unloading my whole life story. Yet she didn't seem to mind. And I needed to talk.

"It must be hard," Margot said. "You've had a lot of changes in a short period of time, haven't you? New home, new business . . ."

"Two new businesses," I corrected. "For the Love of Lavender, plus the farm. Neither is thriving. Could we have picked a worse time to give up two steady but staid jobs and go into business for ourselves? Could our lives get any more complicated?"

I took another sip of coffee and thought better of what I'd said. "Don't listen to me. It's not like we're the only ones with financial problems. It could have been worse," I said with a wry smile. "We could have invested our money with Madelyn's husband."

Margot frowned, her expression still concerned. "Pity on the people who did. I just can't believe she's married to that terrible man. She has such a nice face."

"After she left New Bern, I guess she started hanging out with the wrong crowd."

Margot nodded. "I'll say."

"But don't blame Madelyn for any of that. There's no way she knew what he was up to," I said emphatically.

"How do you know that?"

"She was cleared of everything in the investigation. If they could have pinned anything on her, I'm sure they would have. But it's more than that. Madelyn is . . . well, she's just not capable of something that low."

I couldn't explain it to Margot, but some things you just know. Some things don't change. Madelyn was the one who raced across the snow, swinging her book bag over her head, prepared to beat the stuffing out of the boy she thought was attacking me. She was the one who threatened to pound anybody who said anything bad about me. Madelyn had guts. And character. And for a long time, she'd been my friend.

"Did you see her face when she saw me?" I asked. "Like a stone. If she never saw me again, I'm sure it'd be too soon."

Margot was listening intently, her head bobbing slowly, but when I stopped to take a breath she said, "That is sad, but that's not what I meant. I was talking about you. I'm sad for you. You've been carrying this around for all these years, haven't you?"

That pulled me up short. Sympathy was the last thing I expected, or deserved. I turned my head away and looked at the wall.

"You don't understand. I was so awful to her, so often. Not overtly, not the way I was that day in the snow, but over and over again, year after year.

"After I ended our friendship, she changed. Not in a good way. She started getting involved in all kinds of self-destructive behavior-cigarettes, alcohol, boys. Especially boys. She collected them like merit badges-trinkets she pinned to her chest to prove that she was . . . well, I don't know what she was trying to prove. Maybe that she was worth something to somebody?

"Teenage girls are always falling in and out of love, but this wasn't that. She didn't care about those boys. She tossed them aside as fast as she gathered them up. There was something frantic about her, like she was h.o.a.rding hearts. But those boys didn't love her any more than she loved them. They used her and she let them. I don't think anybody loved Madelyn-not ever. Her mother never wanted her, her father died when she was just little, and her grandmother was awful to her, cruel. Abusive, even.

"When I went outside, sometimes I could hear Edna screaming at her. Once, I looked out my window and saw Madelyn's stuff thrown out on the front lawn. Edna was out there, slapping her over and over again, and Madelyn was just standing there, taking it. Like she was used to it....

"I guess she was," I whispered, wiping guilty tears with the back of my hand. "Somebody should have reported Edna. Somebody should have done something. I should have done something," I said, finally turning to look at Margot's face, expecting to see the condemnation I deserved. It wasn't there.

"Like what?"

"A million things! Stood up for her. Told her I was sorry. Told her that Edna was wrong about her. I could have been her friend. How hard would that have been?" I asked. Margot didn't answer.

"Do you know something? When Madelyn dropped out of school I felt relieved that I wouldn't have to see her every day, relieved to be able to forget about her."

Margot nodded understandingly. "But you never did."

I let out a short, derisive laugh. "Oh, no. You're wrong. Once I left New Bern, I did a great job of forgetting about Madelyn. I stuffed that all into a closet, put a lock on the door, and resolved never to think of it again. Then I went on with my life and got a job in human resources, where you're pretty much paid to be a friend. There's a lot of explaining of benefit packages and administrative stuff, but mostly I just listened to people's problems and encouraged them to make good choices. I was a professional friend. Another irony."

"Sounds to me like you might not be quite as good at locking the past away and forgetting it as you'd like to believe," Margot said.

"Maybe not. Anyway, here I am, back at the scene of the crime. So is Madelyn."

Margot picked up her cup and wrapped her hands around it, resting her elbows on the table. "So? What are you going to do about it?"

"About what?"

"All these ironies you keep talking about? What you call a coincidence, I call an appointment. Do you think it's possible that G.o.d knows about the anguish and guilt that you, and possibly Madelyn, have been laboring under all these years and has arranged for you two to come back to New Bern so you can do something about it?"

"Like what? Kiss and make up? You saw the expression on Madelyn's face when she spotted me. You can't possibly think she's going to forgive me."

Margot's blue eyes bored into me as she quoted a verse I remembered vaguely from childhood Sunday school lessons. " 'If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with everyone.'

"So far as it depends on you. If you reach out to Madelyn and try to make amends, she may rebuff you. But then again"-Margot smiled-"she might surprise you. Either way, you'll have the peace that comes from knowing you did the right thing."

"The right thing? What's that? How am I supposed to know what to do?"

With that calm, knowing smile still on her face, that smile that was starting to annoy me a little, Margot said, "The path to peace is paved with knee prints." Then she took a sip from her coffee cup as though this explained everything.

" 'The path to peace is paved with knee prints'? What are you? The oracle of Cobbled Court? What the heck is that supposed to mean?"

Margot giggled and I smiled in spite of myself.

"Seriously," I said, shaking my head. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"It means that we can know peace in every situation, no matter how difficult, by turning that situation over to G.o.d. The apostle Paul said not to worry about anything. Instead, he said we should let all our requests be made known to G.o.d through prayer and with thanksgiving. And that when we do, we'll know peace that pa.s.ses all understanding, the peace of G.o.d."

Margot was obviously very sincere, but this just didn't make sense to me.

"Margot, I believe in G.o.d, but I have a hard time believing He's personally interested in my little worries. I mean, doesn't He have better things to do? Famines? Wars? Natural disasters? That sort of thing? Who am I to bother G.o.d?"

"His child," Margot said simply. "You've got a child, right? If Josh called you, worried, distressed, and sincerely seeking your advice, wouldn't you stop what you were doing long enough to help?"

"Yes, but that's different."

Margot swiveled her head from side to side. "I don't think so. G.o.d cares about you just as much as you care about your son-more, even."

She closed her eyes for a moment, summoning another verse from her memory. " 'Before they call, I will answer; while they are still speaking, I will hear.' Isaiah 65:24. That's not me talking. That's what G.o.d says about Himself. You believe in G.o.d; why not believe what He says?"

Margot was sweet and kind, and she made it sound so simple, but it couldn't be. Could it?

"I'm not sure. I'd like to," I said cautiously. "But . . . what if it doesn't work?"

"Work as in, what if G.o.d doesn't patch things up between you and Madelyn? He won't. That's up to the two of you. He's just providing you with the opportunity. It seems to me that G.o.d wants you to at least try to reach out to her.

"And," she said in a somewhat softer tone, "I think that's what you want, too, isn't it? Think. You've been sitting here beating yourself up over all the opportunities you had to reach out to your old friend and ease her pain, opportunities you ignored. G.o.d has gone to such a lot of trouble to give you another chance," she said earnestly. "Are you going to let this one pa.s.s too?"

I looked down at my hands. "No. I don't want to let that happen. Not again."

"Good. Good for you."

"So . . . what should I do? Pray?"

"Good idea," she said, then immediately closed her eyes and lowered her head.

She was going to pray here? Now?

I looked around nervously, afraid of being conspicuous, but no one was looking at us. Feeling a little awkward, I followed Margot's lead, closed my eyes, and ducked my head down.