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wedding.” Eleanor grabbed Allie’s hand. “Why don’t you come with me to the living room. We’ll practice there.”
    Allie took my hand. “You too, Nell.”
    â€œComing with us?” I asked the men.
    Jesse shook his head. “Oliver and I have bachelor party plans to discuss.”
    â€œA trip to Vegas, I assume,” Oliver agreed. “Something that requires bail money.”
    We all retreated downstairs. Allie, Eleanor, Barney, and I went off to the living room while the men returned to the dining room talking about scotch and cigars.
    I sat on the couch and watched Allie walk down the aisle we’d formed between the couch and the two chairs that sat opposite. Allie took each step carefully, pretending to hold a basket of flower petals that she tossed onto the floor. She was followed by Barney as ring bearer, then Eleanor. I smiled and applauded each time, trying to look as if I were completely immersed in the proceedings, but all I could think of was what Roger had said to Jesse years before. “Vigiles keep vigil.”
    Was Roger coming to Jesse for protection, or did he spend the last night of this life watching Jesse’s back one last time?

C HAPTER 11
    I choose three different blues, all tone-on-tones so the pattern wouldn’t distract. They were my background sky colors. The blues were close in tone so they almost melted together, but still they were three distinct fabrics. I cut a five-and-a-half-inch by twenty-two-and-a-half-inch strip of each and sewed them together so I had a piece that was fifteen by twenty-two. Then I sewed that to two green strips that I’d cut at the same size as the blue. Five strips sewn together to make the background for my gazebo quilt. It was a modern start—stark, simple lines that abstracted nature rather than imitated it.
    My gazebo, too, was a simplified version of the real thing. Oliver had once done a painting of it as a raffle prize for the town, so I felt extra pressure by using the image, but I knew I had to use it. He loved the structure as much for its beauty as for the symbol of small-town America, and Eleanor loved it because it was a familiar part of home. As I sketched out a large drawing of the gazebo to use as my pattern for the appliqué, I realized suddenly that I was making them a piece of Archers Rest to take with them to their new place in South Carolina.
    â€œIt’s just their winter home,” I said aloud to Patch, the only other creature in the shop with me. She didn’t hear me or didn’t care. She was busy chasing a piece of scrap yarn around the shop floor, attacking it, then moving back so she could attack it again.
    After our guests had left last night, Eleanor and I were so tired we went to bed and never discussed the shop or the house, and what would happen during the months every year she and Oliver were gone. Eleanor could close up the house for the winter, but not the shop. In order to stay profitable, it would have to stay open, and be staffed, through the winter, or close altogether. The thought brought tears to my eyes.
    In the morning I’d gone to register for a figurative drawing class, then went to the shop to relieve Natalie, who had to bring her daughter to a doctor’s appointment. Eleanor and Oliver were meeting with the pastor to discuss their wedding, but she would be in on time to let me head off to meet the quilt group at Jitters for another one of our secret meetings. The schedule was a carefully choreographed dance as it was. How would the shop manage with just Natalie and me to keep things going? I tried not to think about it.
    One thing Eleanor had taught me was that when the big questions of life seem overwhelming, focus on something small that’s right in front of you. So I looked at my drawing, which had turned out pretty well. We had several white and off-white fabrics I could use to imitate the color and shadows of the gazebo. The flowers I