Threads of Hope: Quilts of Love Series Read Free

idea where deadline originated, and I don’t need to know at this moment because I’m less than an hour away from meeting mine.” She pulled out an empty Twix wrapper, two smashedcheese crackers, and an aging peppermint. Her stomach rumbled in disappointment. “What’s up? And the microwave version.” They’d been roommates a little over a year, and Nina learned Aretha couldn’t tell someone the time without detailing where, when, and why she bought her watch.
    “Well, if you’d bother to listen to your voicemails you’d know what’s up. The fact that you’re so cranky ought to remind you we’re waiting for you at Carrabba’s. It was your idea to eat Italian this month. Remember?”
    Girls’ Night Out. She forgot. Again. “It can’t be seven o’clock already . . .” Had it been that long since Daisy left? She stood and looked around the room. With the exception of a few interns huddled around
Grey’s Anatomy
, she was the lone staff writer left in the office.
    Squinting to check the clock in the corner of her computer screen, she heard Aretha’s voice, “No. It’s almost thirty minutes later.”
    Nina figured by the time she finished checking and rechecking the article before sending it off to Elise, the girls would already be ordering or eating dessert. Doubtful they’d want to wait for her to catch up. Not that she could blame them. And if she wasn’t already holding her breath to button her jeans, she’d go straight for the tiramisu and skip dinner altogether. With enough misery threaded into her voice to gather a bit of sympathy, Nina said, “I’m so sorry. I have to get this story in on time. Especially after today . . . but I’ll tell you more about that later. Please ask the girls to forgive me for making them wait.”
    She truly meant the part about being sorry. In college, Nina chose not to rush for a sorority, mainly because she never received an invitation. It wasn’t until she and Aretha became roommates that she began to let loose of the notion that all women her age were younger versions of her mother, eager toprovide a list of her shortcomings in the name of helping her become the way God meant her to be. Nina felt comfortable with this group, and she didn’t want to jeopardize that friendship by being the lone no-show every month.
    “You’re just lucky we all like you or else we’d have voted you off the dinner table by now,” said Aretha. “I suppose you want an order to go.”
    Nina thought she felt her stomach applaud. “Yes, please. Pasta Weesie.”
    “You know you order that every time? I think you just like saying the name,” she said and sounded less frustrated and more amused. “Let me hang up or else they’ll start thinking I’m redecorating the kitchen or something.”
    Aretha, in her last semester of interior design school, had a “fabulous idea to make this room pop” almost everywhere they went. At the last dinner, the group threatened to blindfold her just to have a conversation not focused on window treatments or paint colors.
    Knowing she’d be met by fettuccine Alfredo with shrimp motivated Nina to push herself through the article, assembling what remained like puzzle pieces, snapping them into place until the picture was complete. Not that profiling candidates for local county elections made for riveting writing. And that was exactly the problem. Nina hoped there was a story waiting for her to find it. A story that would prompt Elise to maybe send a two-line email. A story that would begin to pave her way to the Big Apple.
    “Miss O’Malley?”
    Startled, Nina’s body hiccupped. She took a deep breath and recognized the lilac perfume Shannon, one of the interns, typically wore. Nina turned to face her. “Now that I know it’s you, what scares me more is your using ‘Miss.’ It ages me five years.”
    “I’m sorry.” A smile flickered across Shannon’s face as she slid her pearl drop back and forth on her necklace chain. “We’re