The Beach Quilt Read Free Page B

she had certainly never heard her mother, or Cordelia, or any of her teachers talk about. At first, it had terrified her. But over time, she had come to befriend her feelings. Eventually, she had given in to them; she had let them overwhelm all sense of caution or embarrassment. After all, sexual feelings were natural, weren’t they? You weren’t supposed to feel bad about having them. Her health teacher back in freshman year had stressed that.
    â€œHere,” Justin said, holding out a little white paper bag, his eyes fixed on the road ahead. “I have something for you.”
    Sarah smiled. Every time they met, Justin gave her a little gift. She wished he wouldn’t spend his money on her—she knew he didn’t earn a lot—but he seemed to get real pleasure out of giving her the tiny stuffed animals and the hair baubles. The hair baubles were more appropriate for a frillier girl, but it was the thought that counted.
    Sarah took the bag and peered inside. It was one of those thingies you clipped onto your key chain. It had a green plastic disc on which was printed the image of a grinning chimpanzee.
    â€œYou like it?” Justin asked. She heard the unmistakable note of hope in his voice.
    â€œI do,” she said. “It’s wonderful. Thank you, Justin.”
    Justin smiled, and Sarah felt an intense rush of warmth. She couldn’t wait to get to his place, and the pizza had nothing to do with it.

Chapter 3
    Later that same wintry Saturday afternoon, thirty-eight-year-old Adelaide Kane, Cordelia’s mother, was sitting at the small island in her kitchen with a fashion magazine and a cup of orange-and-cinnamon-flavored tea, enjoying a few minutes of downtime before she would have to start dinner. Cordelia was taking a nap, and Jack, Adelaide’s husband, had been out shoveling snow since about two o’clock.
    Adelaide’s hair was dark blond, and she wore it in a swingy bob. Her eyes were very blue. Cordelia had inherited their color and also her mother’s poor eyesight. Unlike her daughter, Adelaide was comfortable wearing glasses. She was a little taller than Cordelia and over the years had put on a fair amount of weight. But she had made peace with it. She was always fashionably dressed and was very smart about what suited her. She glanced at the slinky sleeveless minidress advertised on the page in front of her and laughed. That was not going to happen.
    For the past ten years, Adelaide had owned a successful quilt shop called The Busy Bee: Quilts and Quilting Needs. She had first gotten interested in quilts in college when she had taken a class called American Women and the Domestic Arts. Though she did occasionally make quilts, over time she had become more focused on restoring, preserving, and selling other people’s work. Opening her own business had been a scary enterprise, but she had proved to have a good business head, and with Jack helping her with what heavy labor was required to get the shop in shape, The Busy Bee, which occupied the front rooms of an old house on Meadow Street, had soon become a success. Her dear friend Cindy Bauer helped her run the shop. She was an expert quilter who had learned the craft from her mother and grandmother before her. The fact that Cordelia and Cindy’s older daughter, Sarah, were best friends, was, Adelaide thought, the icing on her professional cake.
    Adelaide took another sip of her tea and thought about how different her upbringing had been from Cindy’s. While Cindy had grown up locally, Adelaide had been raised in a pretty suburban town in Connecticut, the only child of well-to-do professional parents. She had gone to excellent private schools. She had spent summers swimming at the Olympic-sized pool at her parents’ country club and school holidays skiing at fancy resorts in Vermont. The family had traveled to New York City once a year, just before Christmas, and stayed in an old and very