Chapter 3

Warren left the folded schedule on the table between us. Odessa carried the blue pieces to the far end, giving me the courtesy of distance without pretending she wasn't listening.

I opened the tin again.

Four pieces. The largest would cover the center of a newborn quilt if I trimmed the frayed edge close. The next two could be joined, though the seam would run where every mother laid her palm. The last was scarcely wider than my thumb.

I lined them along the ruler. Then I moved them apart and counted again.

Four.

My pencil marks were already on the paper beneath the tin. Two sets of them, one drawn Monday and another after supper on Tuesday. I had counted twice before coming here. I had known exactly what remained before Warren ever unfolded his schedule.

Still, I turned the largest piece and measured it three times. The ruler gave me the same answer with each pass.

Warren pulled out his chair but didn't sit. His coffee had gone pale where cream dried around the rim. For twenty-four years, that cup had waited beside the doorway while I worked through every Wednesday afternoon.

"How many?" he asked.

"Four, if nobody grows."

Odessa's needle stopped above the blue square. Warren rubbed his thumbnail across the schedule's crease, worrying the paper soft.

"The Feeley baby is small."

"Small babies have an ugly habit of getting bigger."

The joke landed where I meant it to. Odessa lowered her eyes. Warren looked toward the unfinished border, because the child waiting for it made every other answer sound selfish.

I fitted the second and third pieces together. Their edges almost matched. Almost was the word that ruined cloth: almost square, almost enough, almost home before a granddaughter arrived.

"You could save the smallest," Odessa murmured.

"For what? A very cold mouse?"

Her mouth tightened, but she didn't cry. She picked up her needle again and set one careful stitch into the blue.

I had used that old cloth in the middle of every welcome quilt I made. Women who could not name half their neighbors could find it blindfolded, smooth beneath a fingertip after a hundred washings. They brought grown children back on Wednesdays to show me the faded square still holding.

Four pieces meant four children. Three, if one came broad through the shoulders. Two, if Odessa spoiled a cut and I chose to rescue her work.

There would be no more after that.

Warren finally sat. The chair gave its familiar complaint, the same small creak I had heard while binding hundreds of corners. He reached for the schedule, but I put my hand over the Wednesday column.

"Cross out my name after four."

His fingers stayed on the paper. "There'll be more babies."

"That's usually how towns behave."

"Then we'll find other cloth."

He meant kindness. That made my teeth meet hard enough to hurt.

I gathered the four pieces slowly, smallest first, and returned every thread to the tin. Odessa watched my hands. Warren watched the empty ruler.

I snapped the lid shut.