Threads of Hope: Quilts of Love Series Read Free Page A

all leaving. Do you want us, me, to wait for you?” The other interns, three young women who looked like they shopped in each other’s closets, hovered a cubicle away.
    Nina stretched back in her chair, mowed her fingers through her entirely-too-short hair, then stared at her monitor. “Not much more to go.” She looked at Shannon and realized she didn’t even know her last name. Or even what she did for the magazine. Have I been that cocooned in my own life? Earlier, Elise encouraged her to network. Nina realized at that moment she better begin in her own office. But clearly not now.
    “So . . . um . . . does that mean it’s okay for us to go?” Shannon asked as if she had dropped Nina off for her first day of kindergarten and needed the teacher’s permission to leave.
    Distracted by her own shortcomings, she’d created another by not answering Shannon’s question. “Oh, of course, of course,” she replied and sounded perkier than she meant to. “I shouldn’t be long, and Nelson can walk me to my car.”
    “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow,” said Shannon, and she trailed after her friends as they headed out the door.
    It didn’t register until after Nina had clicked “send” that she forgot to thank Shannon for thinking about her. How inconsiderate.
    Nina didn’t know if she heard her mother’s voice just then or her own.

    Did her mother always have to be right?
    Nina had asked herself that question, she supposed, since she could first express a coherent thought. The answer didn’t change. Sometimes Sheila wasn’t 100 percent right, but onsome weird pie chart of probabilities, there would always be a slice for her mother. Little wonder her father spent so much time shrugging his shoulders and shuffling into his mancave when his wife’s pronouncements fell like stinging rain.
    In sixth grade, Nina became friends with Elizabeth Hamilton, and Sheila told her she should stay away from her because “that girl’s nothing but trouble.” With every trouble-free year that passed, Nina reminded her mother what she had said about her friend. Four years of trouble-free, until the tenth grade when Elizabeth had a “stomach virus” that eight months later was named Andy. And Sheila reminded her daughter what she had said about her friend.
    During her junior year of high school, Nina started being invited to parties given by girls who wore shoes that cost more than all of her clothes. They didn’t seem to mind picking her up in their sleek cars, the ones that didn’t have names, just initials. They even let her wear their dresses to school dances where the beautiful girls met the handsome boys, and they moved inside their own force field that kept everyone else away. One day, on the way to the women’s Bible study at church, her mother said, “Those girls are just buttering you up to use you. One day, they’re going to drop you like a hot potato.”
    Nina laughed. “What could I possibly have that those girls would ever want? Is it too hard for you to believe popular kids could like me?”
    Some days after school, Nina would be invited to one of their houses, the ones kept behind gates. They’d ask their maids to fix them something to eat, escape to the kids’ den where they would listen to music, watch television, and complain about homework. They were so very impressed with Nina’s ability to understand calculus, analyze poetry, and write essays. They asked for her help, flattered her. It felt good to be needed. She noticed, though, as weeks passed, that the moreshe did to help them, the less they did to help themselves. When Nina refused to write Courtney’s research paper because she could barely complete her own, she faded from their sight a little bit every day. Until one day, she was completely invisible. And Sheila reminded her daughter of what she had said about her friends.
    Her first relationship in college ended when, after almost a year of dating, Adam informed her he wasn’t