I had said exactly that on a number of occasions, but I never supposed Lee would take me up on it.

"Well, why not invite them?" he asked. "It doesn't cost any more effort to cook a twenty-pound bird than it does a twelve-pounder, does it?"

"Not really, but it's not extra work I'm concerned about, it's extra money."

"We don't need money," he replied. "We've got a farm, remember? The hens aren't laying as much right now as they were before, but if we skip our breakfast omelets this week, we'll have enough to make deviled eggs for appetizers. We can do a nice microgreen salad with candied walnuts, beets, and goat cheese. The root cellar is loaded with potatoes, squash, and onions. We've got pumpkins and apples for pies. Charlie offered to bring a few bottles of wine. We can bake some loaves of bread over the weekend and let them dry out for the stuffing, and we've got plenty of herbs for seasoning." Lee grinned proudly.

"Do you realize," he continued, "that we can just about feed ourselves right off the farm? We may be broke, babe, but we're not poor. I've been doing a lot of thinking lately. We've had some setbacks, but I feel pretty good about what we've accomplished. Thankful. I'd like this Thanksgiving dinner to reflect that and I'd like to share it with others."

Lee moved toward me, backing me up against the counter and looping his arms around my waist.

"This might be the best Thanksgiving we've ever had. It'll certainly be the most authentic. The only thing we'll have to buy is some cranberry sauce for the turkey."

"Well, what about the turkey? We don't raise turkeys."

"Kevin Heath does. We're going to do a little bartering-apples, greens, and cheese in exchange for one of his birds. So? What do you say, babe?"

I wrapped my hands around the small of Lee's back. "I say the Woodruffs are going to have a Thanksgiving to remember."

And it was.

When we sat down for dinner a week later, our numbers included the original eight invitees plus Margot; Ivy and her two children, Bethany and Bobby; Gibb Rainey, an elderly gentleman who held court in a lawn chair outside the New Bern post office every day except Sunday and was well-known to everyone in New Bern and was a particular friend of Virginia's; as well as Dana, the first woman who'd completed her New Beginnings internship at the Cobbled Court Quilt Shop, now a full-fledged employee; and Wendy Perkins. We were fifteen in all. If Abigail, Franklin, and Evelyn's son, Garrett, hadn't flown to Chicago to spend the holiday with Liza, Abigail's niece and Garrett's girlfriend, we might have been eighteen.

My dining room table only accommodates eight, but Lee took the guest room door off its hinges, set it atop two sawhorses he brought in from the barn, and voila! Instant table! With a white tablecloth, some candles, and a basket filled to overflowing with ornamental squash, you couldn't tell it from the real thing.

Dinner was delicious, though I suspect that may have had more to do with the ingredients than any sudden improvement in my culinary skills. Have you ever had a fresh turkey? If not, you should. One bite and you'll never settle for frozen again.

I did have to buy a few things at the market. Besides cranberry sauce I bought b.u.t.ter, sugar, and flour, and some canned goods. Even so, we fed fifteen people an enormous repast for twenty-two dollars and sixty-eight cents. Not bad.

Amazing what a year can bring. A year ago, Lee and I barely knew a soul in this town, and now? We had to turn doors into tables to find places enough for our friends.

If Josh had been there, it would have been a perfect holiday, but he called at about ten o'clock that morning with a question that brought a smile to my face.

"Mom? You know that green bean ca.s.serole? How do you make that?"

Ah, the ubiquitous green bean ca.s.serole. It's as much a part of Thanksgiving as the turkey. My mother made the green bean ca.s.serole every Thanksgiving, just as her mother did before and I did after. And now the torch had pa.s.sed to Josh.

"I don't want to show up empty-handed at Ted's place, so I thought I'd bring the ca.s.serole. I'm standing here in the kitchen. I've got cans of green beans, cream of mushroom soup, and some of those French fried onion thingies. What do I do now?" I laughed because at that moment, I, too, was in the kitchen, looking at that exact same lineup of ingredients. Personally, I detest green bean ca.s.serole, but some holiday traditions just refuse to die, and that's probably a good thing.

For the next thirty minutes, Josh and I rolled up our sleeves and donned our ap.r.o.ns and worked side by side, albeit long distance. It was nice. Not quite as nice as it would have been to have him home, but nice.

And I learned a few things cooking with Josh long distance that I probably wouldn't have if he'd been home for the holiday. Though Josh was far from home, he still valued our family traditions and my advice. Also, at least some of the lessons I'd tried to pound into him over the years had stuck-he remembered that you never come to someone's home empty-handed. And, in a way, talking him step by step through that awful recipe made me feel closer to him than ever. He would always be my child, but now he was becoming my friend, too, someone I would have been happy to invite to dinner even if we weren't related.

I was proud of him. We had a nice Thanksgiving together.

But the best part came at the end of the day, as I looked down the table, the groaning board, past nearly empty bowls of potatoes and squash and creamed onions and green bean ca.s.serole and jellied rubies of cranberry sauce, the bread plates decorated with a confetti of crumbs and brush-stroke smears of b.u.t.ter, beyond the carca.s.s of the n.o.ble bird, the bones picked clean, to the head of the table where the head of my heart, my beloved, my husband sat smiling, laughing, attending his guests, presiding over this banquet he had labored to provide and then offered with open hands.

Lee was happy again. That was the best part, the answer to my prayers and the reason for my grat.i.tude, the picture I'll never forget.

39.

Madelyn January 2010 The doorbell rang at ten and, for a moment, I panicked. She wasn't supposed to arrive until four!

I still had to put sheets on the beds and dust upstairs. There were no flowers in the vases, no m.u.f.fins in the oven, and no curtains at the windows. I wasn't ready!

There was no help for it now. I took a deep breath and told myself to calm down. I couldn't very well leave my guest standing on the porch. Ready or not, the Beecher Cottage Inn was officially in business.

I smiled and opened the front door. "Welcome!"

Margot and Evelyn burst into a rousing, loud, and partially on-key rendition of "Happy Opening to You!" Margot had a beautiful voice. Evelyn, not so much.

Evelyn thrust a bottle of champagne toward me. "We come bearing gifts."

"And good wishes!" Margot chirped.

"Oh! Thank you. What a nice surprise."

"But wait! There's more!" Margot said with all the gusto of an infomercial pitchman before bending down and picking up one of two large Cobbled Court Quilt Shop shopping bags from the porch. Evelyn grabbed the other bag. I stepped back so they could carry their cargo into the foyer.

"Don't worry. We're not going to stay," Margot a.s.sured me. "We just wanted to drop these off. Happy grand opening from the Cobbled Court Quilt Circle!"

Her announcement pretty much gave the gift away, but even so, when Margot and Evelyn pulled out two beautiful pink and blue quilts on a white background, I was completely taken aback.

"Don't cry," Evelyn instructed. "Your mascara will run."

Good point. I didn't have time to redo my makeup, so I blinked a few times and took a few deep breaths to calm myself.

"Well. I . . . Thank you. They'll be perfect for Room Three. It has twin beds. The walls are all white, but the floor has a blue braided rug I found in the attic. It's just that color. I can't believe you went to all this trouble."

"The pattern isn't as hard as it looks. A lot of quilters stay away from the Carolina lily block because of the Y-seams, but I've got a special technique that eliminates that step. Appliqueing the stems takes a little extra effort, but Virginia is a whiz at all kinds of hand work."

I smiled and nodded as Evelyn spoke, trying to pretend I understood but, in truth, she could have been speaking Turkish for all I knew. What I did know was that the quilts, with bouquets of pink lilies bowing gracefully over the edge of sky blue baskets, were beautiful.

"I am so touched. Please tell everyone I said thank you and that as soon as I get a moment to come up for air, I'm going to drop by on a Friday night with a plate of m.u.f.fins."

Margot cast a delighted glance in Evelyn's direction. "Told you!"

"Margot!" Evelyn chided.

Margot blushed and ducked her head. "Sorry."

"Told her what?" I asked.

A guilty smile tugged at the corner of Evelyn's mouth. "The quilts are gifts," she a.s.sured me, "no strings attached. We just wanted to get you off to a good start. After all, yours is the first new business to open in New Bern in more than a year. If things work out for you, it could bring more tourists, more shoppers, maybe even more jobs."

"We could sure use a few of those," Margot added.

"But," Evelyn continued, "neighborliness aside, we were sort of hoping you might reconsider our invitation to be part of the quilt circle."

I launched into my list of legitimate excuses, but Evelyn stopped me before I could get very far.

"I know. I know," she said sincerely. "You don't have time to take up quilting right now. And I completely understand. But there's a lot more to quilting than actual quilting, you know. It's about camaraderie as much as making quilts, making connections and friends.

"When I was growing up in Wisconsin, my mother, Virginia, and her quilting buddies got together every Tuesday for almost thirty years. They were beginners when they started, but by the time I was in high school, every one of them was an expert quilter-everyone but Louise."

"What was wrong with Louise?"

"Nothing," Evelyn answered. "Except Louise didn't quilt. Not a st.i.tch. She liked the women in the circle, and she liked getting together with them every week, and she liked watching the others work on their quilts, but she had absolutely no interest in making a quilt for herself. As it turned out, she didn't need to. The women in Mom's circle were avid quilters. But after a while, they started to run out of beds to put their quilts on, so, like many quilters, they tended to give them away as gifts-often to Louise."

Evelyn spread out her hands. "Look, I know you're too busy to take up quilting right now and I know I don't know you very well, not yet. But I'd like to. We all would. So, what do you say? Would you like to be our Louise? We've got plenty more quilts where those came from."

She gave an exaggerated wink, making the bribe obvious, and I laughed. I couldn't help myself. Evelyn and I didn't know each other well, but I liked her already.

Margot's blue eyes sparkled and she clasped her hands together in front of her chest. "Does that mean you'll come?"

"It means I'll think about it."

"Fair enough," said Evelyn, raising her hands. "That will do for now. In the meantime, we'll clear out and let you get ready for your guest. Good luck!"

I walked out onto the porch to wave good-bye. "Thank you again for the quilts," I called. "I just love them!"

"It was our pleasure," Evelyn called as she and Margot crossed the street and walked toward town.

Something in her voice maybe, or perhaps the spring in her step, gave me the idea that she was telling the absolute truth.

As soon as they left, I went back to work. I'd stayed up half the night sewing the curtains. The only thing left to st.i.tch was the hems. Evelyn's machine was faster, but I decided to do those final seams on the old foot treadle machine I'd found in the attic. Something about that just felt right to me.

When the hems were sewn and the curtains ironed, I carried them upstairs along with piles of freshly laundered sheets and stacks of quilts.

My reservation book was all but empty. Who knew how long it would be before some of these rooms were occupied? Yet I felt the need to make up every single room just to prove that I really was open for business.

I hung up curtains in each room and made up the beds. The new lily quilts looked like they'd been made for Room Three, which, I reminded myself with a smile, they had. I hung a set of big fluffy white towels in each bath and set out little baskets of miniature For the Love of Lavender soaps, shampoos, and lotions on the counters. Tessa had ordered the tiny bottles just for me. I liked the idea of using locally made bath amenities for my guests. Those little touches make all the difference.

As four o'clock approached I had only Room Two to finish. It was not my biggest or most elegant room, but it was my favorite. It had new paint, new wallpaper, new light fixtures, a new bath, new everything. Of all the rooms in the house, Room Two had undergone the most complete transformation. It was my room. It had been my room, when I was a girl. I saved it for last.

Sitting at the front of the house, it had a big bay window that let in plenty of light. I'd added a built-in bench beneath the window and topped it with an upholstered cushion. It made a lovely spot to sit with a book or look out at the garden and the bushes heaped with snow like thickly frosted cakes.

I took off my shoes and stood on the window seat to hang the curtains, then climbed down and stood back to admire the effect. The white eyelet curtains looked fresh and pretty against the yellow walls. The b.u.t.tercup cotton lining peeping through the eyelet openings pulled the whole room together, making it look cheery and warm even on this cold winter day. And if that didn't do the trick, there was a stack of dry wood and kindling standing at the ready in the recently reopened fireplace. I pulled the blue wingback chair nearer the fireplace and put a basket filled with magazines next to the chair. With the fire blazing, filling the room with the light and warmth it lacked in former days, this would be a cozy haven.

After making up the bed-that beautiful bra.s.s and mother-of-pearl bed I'd found up in the attic-with fresh sheets and fluffing the pillows, I added the final touch, the quilt. The clean white background fabric and blue double-chain pattern added just the right touch to the room, giving it a fresh and forward-facing look with a nod of appreciation to the past, just as I had intended.

The quilt was beautiful but, to me, it was more than that. It was a touchstone, a reminder of the person I once had been, an invitation to gather up the best of myself and carry it forward, to pa.s.s through the slender door, a difficult feat, but not an impossible one. It was a symbol of restoration, of work in progress.

No one who would stay in this room, no one who knew me, not even Tessa, who had restored the quilt and our friendship, would fully understand that symbol, but it didn't matter. It was a beautiful room now, a place of rest and respite. I hoped that everyone who stayed here would find both.

When the doorbell rang the second time, I was ready.

Even with her blond hair pulled back into a ponytail, her eyes hidden behind dark gla.s.ses, and her body swollen by pregnancy, she was still beautiful. But when she pulled off her gla.s.ses and I saw the hard, bitter edge in her eyes, I knew things had changed. Angela Radnovich was no longer young. She didn't believe in fairy tales and happy endings, not anymore.

After finishing the chicken sandwich, bowl of vegetable soup, and gla.s.s of milk I served for dinner, Angela said she was tired and went upstairs to her room. I washed up the dishes, put the leftover soup in the refrigerator, and followed shortly after. Pa.s.sing by her room, I heard crying. I came very close to knocking, but thought better of it. She was ent.i.tled to her tears.

I couldn't wave a wand and make it all better. I couldn't remove the sting of her husband's betrayal, or the shame of having it played out in public, but I could give her a good meal, a soft bed, a private place to cry and, when tears were spent, mentally prepare her to greet the little life that she carried inside her and face her future as a single mother. Before continuing down the hall to my own room, I paused to lay my hand flat on Angela's door and silently wish her well.

It had been a long day and I was grateful for my bed, but when I turned out the light, I couldn't sleep. My body was tired, but my brain was working overtime.

I kept thinking about what Evelyn had said about Beecher Cottage and what it might mean to the town if I could make a go of it-more tourists, more shoppers, more business, more jobs. I only had five rooms to rent, but in a town the size of New Bern, five rooms filled with tourists ready to shop and eat and spend a little money could make a big difference.

If I was a success. If.

I wanted success; I had from the first. But now I wanted it in a different way, not just for myself.

I wanted it for the town and the people who had welcomed me. For Tessa and Jake and Lee and Evelyn, and all the other merchants in town. For Margot, Virginia, and Ivy, and all the people who worked for them. For the high school kids who needed summer jobs, for the lady at the bakery who looked so tired and told me she was working two jobs since her husband lost his.

I wanted it for Angela and everyone like her, people who needed a peaceful place to recharge their batteries and remember that life was still good, just like I'd told Jake that day at the restaurant. It wasn't all that much, I knew. It wasn't a cure for cancer or the solution to peace in the Middle East, but it wasn't nothing either. For the first time in my life, I might actually be able to help people.

Lying in the dark, my eyes staring up into a chasm of black, I felt a tightness in my chest, like a hand clamped around my heart.

This is what it's like to be a part of something, of someplace. This is what it's like to care. I never knew.

40.

Tessa February The holiday season had put us in the black for the year, but barely. As I sat next to Lee at the kitchen table after dinner to go over the books, I could see the writing on the wall. The Christmas b.u.mp was over. Sales in January were even slower than the year before.

And so I faced a choice: soldier on through the winter in hopes that the spring tourist season would lift our sales and max out my credit line in the process, incurring more debt at sixteen percent interest, or cut bait now, slash the prices on my remaining inventory, use the proceeds and that slim border of black ink to pay off my creditors, then lock the doors and walk away.

There really wasn't a choice, but to help me save face, Lee pretended there was.

"Babe, if you want to keep going, then we'll just figure out a way to do it. Things'll work out somehow."

He said it with such conviction that for a moment, I almost believed it was possible. I certainly wanted it to be. But no amount of wishful thinking could trump the cold reality of my balance sheet. As far as For the Love of Lavender was concerned, I'd reached a dead end. It was sad. I was sad. But it could have been worse.

That holiday sales spike would allow me to pay off my creditors; I would walk away minus the capital we'd invested in the shop but also minus any additional debt-no small thing. And Josh had called the week before to say that Professor Kleypas had chosen him as one of his three summer research a.s.sistants. The experience would be a great addition to his resume and pay enough to cover his tuition for the fall semester. We were so proud-and more than a little relieved. I didn't know what we'd do about tuition for the second semester, but I supposed we'd cross that bridge when we came to it. As my morning devotional recently reminded me, "Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."