I opened the door and found my porch crowded with laughing and chattering women carrying suitcases, project bags, and, in some instances, sewing machines, with more streaming up the walkway behind them. I greeted the ones I knew: Margot, Virginia, Abigail-whose luggage was Vuitton, the same style as the pieces I'd sold to pay for the plumbing-Bella, Connie, Dana, Ivy, and, of course, Bethany-who proudly showed off her "Disney Princess" roller-board suitcase, purchased for the occasion-and introduced myself to the ones I didn't, the other students from the GED program, Melissa, Cathy, Lauren, and Antoinette.

I directed everyone to leave their suitcases in the foyer for now, then find the sewing station with their name on it and set up their machine if they'd brought their own before following Tessa into the dining room for tea and cookies and a quick orientation before we handed out keys and roommate a.s.signments.

The last one through the door was Mary Dell. Even if I hadn't seen her on television, I'd have recognized her immediately. One look and you knew she wasn't raised in New England. Her smile was nearly as big as her earrings, her lipstick was the color of a candied apple, her hair was bleached a shade of blond that would have done Marilyn Monroe proud, and her outfit? I'd never seen anything quite like it.

Evelyn had said that Mary Dell liked animal prints. I like them too. I have a pair of leopard pumps and a faux cheetah belt that I just love. But when I do wear one of those items, I make sure that everything else I'm wearing is as plain as possible, a monochromatic outfit in a neutral color: black, cream, perhaps brown. Or, if I'm looking for a casual but fun look, a pair of jeans and a plain white blouse, something simple. Otherwise, you run the risk of appearing to be "open for business," as Edna would have put it.

Mary Dell, who apparently had not heard or did not subscribe to the "less is more" rule of fashion, was wearing alligator shoes and a belt in two completely different shades of brown, leopard-print jeans, and a tight zebra-striped shirt with a black collar and cuffs embellished by three rows of rhinestones along the edge. She carried a pink cheetah-print project bag with her name emblazoned on the side, also in rhinestones. The woman was a walking menagerie.

I stood at the door, open-mouthed and completely at a loss for words. But that didn't matter. Mary Dell had no problem filling the silence.

"Well! Look at you!" she hooted as she mounted the porch steps. "You must be Madelyn. I'd have known you anywhere. Evelyn said you were as pretty as a picture and had more curves than a c.o.ke bottle. She wasn't exaggerating, was she?

"Tell you what, I'm glad Hub-Jay decided to take Howard off for a boys' weekend in San Antonio instead of coming out here with me. I just might have had to put a brand on that steer to make sure he didn't stray. You're sure a looker!" she exclaimed as she crossed over the threshold and dropped her bag on the floor and took a look around.

"My! Your place is just as pretty as you are. This is nice, real nice. You know, my Hub-Jay is an innkeeper too. He owns the Hollander Hotels. I don't know if you've heard of them?"

The Hollander Hotels? Indeed I had heard of them. It was a small chain that bought up old buildings in downtown areas and refurbished them into beautiful little boutique hotels. Most of their properties were in the Southwest, places like Dallas, San Antonio, Santa Fe, Oklahoma City, and Tulsa, but they'd recently opened a hotel in New York and another in Boston, to favorable reviews.

Hubble James Hollander was that Hollander? The one whose hotels had a reputation for excellent service and understated elegance? And he was dating Mary Dell?

Mary Dell looked at me expectantly. When I failed to answer her question she said, "Oh my goodness, where are my manners? I didn't even introduce myself, did I? I'm Mary Dell Templeton."

"Yes. I'm Madelyn Beecher. It's nice to meet you." I stuck out my hand for her to shake, but she ignored that and wrapped her arms around me in a hug that was not quite bone-crushing, but nearly. Mary Dell hugged like she meant it.

"It's nice to meet you, too, darlin'! Evelyn's told me so much about you. I feel like I know you already. You're just so sweet to invite all these gals to stay. We're going to have ourselves a time! Aren't we?"

"Yes," I replied, though I'd already picked up on the fact that most of Mary Dell's questions didn't actually require answers. She used them more as a means of conferring affirmation than seeking information.

I liked her. I don't know that I'd ever encountered anyone with such enthusiasm or energy, and as the weekend went on, I saw that it was entirely genuine. There's something very attractive about that. It helped, too, that I knew her story, how her husband had deserted her upon the birth of their son, Howard, and how Mary Dell had soldiered on alone to raise a child with special needs, eking out a living as a quilt teacher. Mary Dell was optimistic, not because she didn't know hardship but because she had overcome it. Oh, yes. In spite of the fact that any room she was in seemed a little short on oxygen, I liked Mary Dell Templeton. It was impossible not to.

"It was awfully kind of you to volunteer to teach this weekend, especially since you're on your vacation."

"Oh, it's my pleasure," she said sincerely. "These days, Howard and I are so busy with the TV show that I don't get much chance to teach. I miss it."

"Well, everyone is very excited that you're here."

"And I'm excited too. Now, Madelyn, honey," she said in a more serious tone, "do you have anything to drink? I'm dying for a Dr Pepper. I'm so dry I'm spitting cotton."

"We're just about to serve tea in the dining room."

"Tea?" she said, briefly lifting her eyebrows to a skeptical arc. "Well . . . sure. All right. Tea will do just fine for now."

Some of the ladies knew one another well and some were meeting for the first time, but they seemed to find an almost instant bond, the way I've noticed quilters do. It's interesting.

After tea and introductions, everyone went to get settled in their rooms and then came back downstairs to start quilting. The weekend's project was a wall hanging based on a variation of the card tricks block. An original design by Mary Dell, the "Texas Hold 'Em" pattern would appear in her next book. The ladies were thrilled to be among the first to make it.

While everyone else got to work cutting out their fabric, I cleared away the tea things and then got to work on dinner. Tessa came in a couple of times, wanting to help, but I shooed her out of the kitchen, reminding her that the weekend was my gift to her as well.

"Are you sure you're all right in here?" she asked. "You look like something's bothering you."

"I'm fine. If I look bothered it's only because standing here talking to you is throwing off my schedule. Now, scoot!"

She did, and I went back to my work, setting the table, warming up the soup, dressing the salad, preparing and baking big loaves of garlic bread, opening the wine, and making pots of coffee and fixing platters of brownies to serve for dessert. While I worked, I could hear the sound of conversation and laughter, sometimes gales of it, rising above the whir of sewing machines. I was glad they were enjoying themselves, but in spite of what I'd said to Tessa, I'd admit to feeling a little melancholy, or maybe just introspective. I'm not sure why.

After serving dinner-which seemed much appreciated; I bet they all thanked me ten times each-and cleaning up the kitchen, I went into the living room for a while to chat and see how their projects were coming. But when Bethany started to yawn around nine o'clock, I volunteered to take her up to the attic and put her to bed so that Ivy could keep quilting.

"Are you sure you don't mind?" Ivy asked.

"Not at all. I'm tired too. I was going up soon anyhow. You all stay up as late as you want; just make sure to turn out the lights before you go to bed. Breakfast is at eight. See you all in the morning."

I showed Bethany where the bathroom was and, after she was washed and had her pajamas on, I tucked her into bed and read a chapter of Little Women to her. It was her fourth time reading it. At certain pa.s.sages, I noticed that her lips moved silently as I read, echoing the dialogue between the March sisters. At the end of the chapter, she snuggled down under the quilts and yawned. I sat on the edge of my bed, took off my slippers, and hung my robe on the bedpost.

"It'd be nice to have a lot of sisters," Bethany said in a drowsy voice. "I have a little brother, Bobby, but that's not the same. Do you have any sisters?"

"I'm an only child. No brothers or sisters."

"I've got a best friend, Erica. She's almost like a sister. Do you have a best friend?"

"Yes," I said as I slipped in between the sheets and pulled up the quilt. "Tessa is my best friend and she's practically like a sister. I've known her since I was about your age." I reached over to turn out the lamp and found a little hand clutching at my wrist.

"Madelyn? Could you leave the light on until I'm asleep? It's nice up here in the attic but it's kind of scary too. It seems like there might be ghosts up here."

I got up and flipped the switch to illuminate the string of white Christmas lights, thinking that they'd be dimmer, before getting back into bed and turning off the lamp.

"Those are nice," Bethany said, looking up at the ceiling. "They look like stars. Good night, Madelyn."

"Good night, Bethany. Sweet dreams."

She was asleep within minutes. I was tired too, but sleep eluded me. I stayed awake for a long time, staring at the ceiling, listening to Bethany's breathing, the soft laughter that emanated from the floors below, and the voices of ghosts.

When we sat down to our breakfast of homemade m.u.f.fins and fruit the next morning, I learned that about half the group, Mary Dell included, had stayed up and quilted until long past midnight. Mary Dell looked as fresh as a daisy, but some of the others were definitely dragging. Still, that didn't deter them from doing the same thing on Sat.u.r.day night. I guess they wanted to squeeze every last drop of fun, companionship, and quilting from the weekend. And they seemed to do just that.

The only somber moment came when Janelle, a counselor at New Beginnings, called to say that the results of the GED exams had arrived. Everyone pa.s.sed, everyone except Ivy. She had gotten excellent scores overall but was two points short of the minimum score needed to pa.s.s the science test. When she heard the news, she sat down in a chair and burst into tears. Bella, Connie, and her cla.s.smates immediately surrounded her, murmuring sympathetically and patting her shoulders.

"I'm so sorry. You worked so hard," she sobbed, looking up at her teachers, "and I let you down."

Ivy's eyes were streaming and her nose was running. Dana fished a tissue out of her pocket and handed it to her friend, looking as though she might start crying herself. Lauren ran into the kitchen to get her a gla.s.s of water.

"Don't be silly," Bella said. "You didn't let anyone down. You'll pa.s.s next time."

"There's not going to be a next time. What's the point? All that stuff about atoms and photosynthesis and whatnot. I don't get it. I'll never get it. I'm too stupid to understand."

Connie got down on her knees, eye level with Ivy, and looked her in the face. "No, you're not. Remember, Ivy, the rest of the girls had taken some science cla.s.ses before they dropped out, so this was review for them, but it was all new material to you. You've come so far and learned so much. The progress you made in these past few weeks is amazing. I'm very proud of you. We all are. You'll pa.s.s next time. You're not stupid. The only stupid thing would be to give up after you've come so far. That'd be more than stupid, it would be tragic. You can do this, Ivy. I know you can."

Bethany pushed her way through the circle of sympathy and looped her little arm around her mother's neck. Ivy looked up, her eyes still full of tears.

"Mommy, do you remember when I was trying to learn the multiplication tables and I kept failing the test because I couldn't get the eights and nines? And how mad I was because Mrs. Ramirez made me stay inside at recess to work on them? Remember what you said?"

Bethany began speaking and Ivy joined in, finishing the sentence with her little girl. "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again."

"That's right," Bethany said solemnly. "You can't give up now, Mommy. If you do, how can you help me with my science homework when I go to high school?"

Connie tilted her head to the side. "She's got a point there, Ivy."

"Yeah," Ivy said, sniffling and swiping her fist across her eyes. "I guess she does."

"I've got a chocolate cake out in the kitchen," I said. "I think we should have tea a little early today. Tessa, Margot, Abigail? Would you mind giving me a hand with the plates? We're having a party."

The weekend flew by; I've never known forty-eight hours to pa.s.s so quickly. Tessa had insisted on setting up my sewing machine at that table under the stairs, but I never did any quilting and, as near as I could tell, neither did Mary Dell. With fourteen quilters to help, she spent all her time going from table to table, offering encouragement and advice. Though I did spend some time hanging around the fringes, admiring the quilts-in-progress, listening to the jokes and stories, telling a few of my own, most of my weekend was spent making meals, doing dishes, and cleaning rooms, although the girls insisted on tidying up after themselves, reusing their towels and making their own beds, which I appreciated. Even so, it was a big job. But I didn't mind.

Mary Dell and I did have a few moments together, sitting at our table under the stairs, resting our feet.

"Tired?" Mary Dell asked.

I nodded. "A little bit. It's worth it, though. Everybody seems to be enjoying themselves."

"They sure are. Give a quilter a sewing machine, some fabric, and time to st.i.tch it, and she's just as happy as a hog in mud. Madelyn, honey, you spend all this time with all these quilters, you've got an eye for color and fabric, and Tessa told me how good you are with embellishing-how come you've never tried it yourself?"

"I don't have time, Mary Dell. My plate is full as it is. Too-and don't say this to Evelyn, I wouldn't want to hurt her feelings-but I've never seen the point in buying fabric just to cut it apart and sew it back together." I smiled as I said this last bit, but Mary Dell didn't laugh, just looked at me with a soft smile.

Why did I know that she knew there was more to the story than I'd been telling? I took a deep breath.

"And, you know," I said with a shrug, "quilting just doesn't hold good memories for me. My grandmother was a quilter. She tried to teach me how to do it a couple of times. It never went well. I've never been much good at following directions or rules. I kept trying to take shortcuts, change patterns, invent my own blocks. That always made her so mad. One day, we were cutting out blocks-the old-fashioned way, back when you traced around templates, penciled in st.i.tching lines, and then cut out each individual patch with a pair of scissors. Anyway, we were cutting out blocks and I wasn't doing it the way she wanted me to, so she reached across the table with a wooden ruler and smacked me so hard on the hand that it broke. I kind of lost interest after that," I said with a hollow laugh.

"If you think about it, it's kind of a miracle that I ever joined the quilt circle, even as the 'Louise.' Guess it goes to show what a great bunch of women we've got in there," I said, tilting my head toward the living room where most of the group was working.

Mary Dell smiled, not with her customary beaming grin, but with warmth. "Well, that all makes sense and I can see you've got your reasons. Tessa told me a little about your grandmama. Sounds like she was meaner than a whole skilletful of rattlesnakes. But let me ask you something: Just how long were you figuring to let Edna rob your joy? She's been dead for months, hasn't she?"

Before I could respond, Cathy's voice called from the living room, asking Mary Dell to come see why her points wouldn't meet up.

"Be right there!" she called back, then got slowly to her feet. "Maybe it's none of my business, honey, but if it were me, I'd tell that old rattlesnake to hush up and rest in peace."

She gave me a wink and headed to the living room to check on her other students.

By three o'clock on Sunday, everyone had finished their projects. The whole gang lined up on the front porch for a group photo, holding up their wall hangings as I called out, "Ready? Say 'fabric'!"

"Fabric!" they shouted and I snapped the picture. Everyone, including me, was smiling. After that, and over my protests, they all pitched in and helped me change sheets, take down the sewing tables, run the vacuum, and dust the furniture from cellar to dome, leaving everything almost as clean as it was when they'd arrived. We'd have to move the furniture back in from the garage, but Jake and Lee were coming to help with that on Monday morning.

By five, I was standing in the foyer, giving out hugs and kisses, saying good-bye, thinking about doing it again next year.

Mary Dell was the last one out the door. Carrying her pink cheetah bag, she stopped to thank me, locked me in another all but bone-crushing hug, then shoved a pink gift bag tied with orange and blue ribbons into my hands, declaring it was just a little something, before clattering down the porch steps in a pair of zebra-striped platform heels and jumping into Evelyn's waiting car, waving and woo-hooing as they drove off. I stood on the porch and waved until they turned the corner at the top of Oak Leaf Lane, then sat in one of the rocking chairs to open my present.

I untied the bows from the gift bag and pulled out the tissue paper to reveal three pencils, a pad of graph paper, and two books, Quilting Outside the Box by Julie Lebreaux and Sc.r.a.ppy and Happy: Design Your Own Paper-Pieced Quilt Blocks by Mary Dell Templeton.

"Oh, Mary Dell. You just don't give up, do you?" I laughed and flipped through her book, glancing at the photographs of the different quilts, lingering over some of the more unique selections, until I found a note on the inside cover.

Dear Madelyn, Thank you for your kind hospitality. You're the Hostess with the Mostess, ma'am. Soon, I'm sure everybody will know it.

In St.i.tches, Mary Dell Templeton P.S. There are more presents for you on the kitchen table. Hope you like them.

P.P.S. When you get a minute, can you send me the recipe for those peach m.u.f.fins?

Curious, I put the gifts back in the bag and carried it with me into the kitchen, where I found a good-sized cardboard box tied with a bow, and a six-pack of Dr Pepper.

Inside the box were hundreds of fabric sc.r.a.ps in every color and shade imaginable-blue, yellow, red, pink, orange, peach, green, turquoise, brown, beige, purple, and everything in between. They were the sc.r.a.ps left over from the group's wall hangings.

Fifteen sets of sc.r.a.ps from fifteen different quilters made quite a pile of fabric, and quite a world of possibilities.

50.

Tessa June "That's what you're getting?" I asked. "Black? Plain black? That's it?"

That's it. Nothing else," Madelyn said. She laid the fabric bolt down on the cutting table and looked at Virginia. "Can I get two yards of this? Oh, and a spool of black thread."

I sighed with disappointment. When I told Madelyn that I needed to run down to the quilt shop after work to pick up some batting for my "Texas Hold 'Em" wall hanging and she'd announced that she was coming along, I'd hoped that this was her way of announcing she'd decided to give quilting a try after all. She's told me ten times that she's never going to become a quilter, but never is a long time. I hoped that hosting the quilt retreat had changed her mind.

But when we walked in the door and she made a beeline for that plain Amish black, my hopes were dashed. She obviously needed the fabric for some other project. After all, you can't make a quilt out of plain black, can you?

I shuffled off to find my batting and almost ran into Margot, who was trotting out of the back office with a grin a mile wide.

"Well! That was quick!" she exclaimed, beaming at everyone.

"What was quick?"

"The way you two got down here. It wasn't five minutes ago that I left the message."

I looked at her blankly.

"The message," she repeated. "About coming on down here so we could watch together. Mary Dell's producer called and asked me to call Madelyn and tell her to watch today's show. I called the inn but no one answered, so I left a message on voice mail. You didn't get it?"

Madelyn shook her head and took her purchases over to the checkout counter for Dana to ring up. "We just stopped in to get some fabric. Why would Mary Dell care if I watched her show?"

"Don't know. With Mary Dell you never can tell. She likes to surprise people. Anyway, you're here. Come into the office-we've got a television in there. It'll be on in just a couple of minutes."

Forgetting all about my batting, I crowded into the office with Madelyn, Margot, Virginia, and Dana. Margot told us that Evelyn was over at the Grill on the Green, helping Charlie pick out new tablecloths for the restaurant, but she called Ivy down from the workroom where she was cutting and packing Internet orders.

Margot turned on the television and we gathered around expectantly as the theme music for Quintessential Quilting came up and the camera moved in for a close-up of Mary Dell and Howard, who told the audience that on today's show they'd be talking about using color wheels for quilt design and fabric selection, quick and easy tips for paper piecing, and that they were very excited because they had a special guest, Julie Lebreaux, quilt designer and author of Quilting Outside the Box.

When she heard this, Madelyn sighed impatiently and sat down in the nearest chair with her arms crossed over her chest. "Okay, Mary Dell. I appreciate the thought, but enough already. I get it."