"She certainly does," Marc finally spoke.

"Thank you, Marc, but we'll talk with Eleanor about her plans." Maggie gave him an icy stare I hadn't thought she was capable of. Only Carrie smiled at Marc and said she'd be interested in hearing what he had in mind.

"Can I start doing anything now, boss?" Marc asked, smiling broadly.

I looked around at the shop. "We can move stuff away from the wall you're going to open up." I looked toward Nancy. "But only while I'm here helping." She nodded her approval.

"Why don't you bundle up some of the out-of-season fabric?" Maggie suggested.

Nancy leaned against the checkout counter. "I want to go through that for inventory first. Maybe pack up here, behind the register."

Marc moved toward the register, but I stopped him. "You grab a box and Nancy and I will take the stuff out of here."

"I'll help," Carrie volunteered, and stepped next to me.

I reached my arm into the deep shelf underneath the register, while Carrie hovered nearby.

"Be careful," Maggie said. And no sooner had the words come out of her mouth than something bit my hand. I pulled it out immediately. Blood was running from my fingers.

"Oh, dear," Carrie gasped, and grabbed antiseptic and a bandage from her tote bag. "One good thing about having small children is you're prepared for anything."

I went downstairs to the bathroom and tried to wash the blood away, but it kept coming. Just the tips of two fingers had cuts in them, but they were deep. I finally gave up trying and put the antiseptic and bandage on it, then went back upstairs.

Nancy was holding a flashlight and scanning the dark shelf. "Found it," she said. Carefully she held up a rotary cutter-a tool that looks like a pizza cutter but is designed for quick cutting of fabric. "It was open." She turned to me, a concerned look across her face. She put a cover over the sharp blade. "These are really dangerous. You're so lucky it wasn't worse."

I nodded. "Maybe that's enough for today," I suggested. "Marc, just clean up and we'll worry about all this stuff after Wednesday. I'm going home."

"I want to drop in on my son Brian," Maggie announced as she picked up her purse. "Nell, can you give me a lift? It's on your way."

While Nancy and the others stood watching Marc, he just smiled at me and went back to measuring. I grabbed my keys and headed for the door, wondering just what I had gotten myself into by volunteering to stay in Archers Rest to help my grandmother.

Maggie gave me the directions to her son's house as soon as we got in the car, and then we drifted into an uncomfortable silence. She fidgeted with her purse and looked out the window. I stared straight ahead at the road. Alone with her for the first time, I felt a little like a school child, afraid to talk in case she "sssh'd" me. With the members of the quilt club she seemed like a different person, relaxed, younger. But with me, she was every bit the stern librarian she'd once been.

"Is this the son who's a state representative?" I finally asked.

"It is, but that's just a stopping point. He'll be governor one day," she said proudly.

"My grandmother told me you have quite accomplished kids. Your son, plus a doctor, two lawyers, and an artist."

"Sheila isn't a artist. She owns a kind of art gallery. She doesn't actually make the art herself." There was a vague disapproval in her voice, but it quickly softened. "She does have a good eye, though. She always finds something."

"I wanted to be an artist when I was a kid. I used to love to paint. In fact, when I moved to New York I wanted to work in an art gallery, " I confessed. "Hanging out with artists all day seemed really fun. But I couldn't find a job, and I guess I sort of took a different road."

"You have time to choose whatever road you like." She took a deep breath and changed the subject. "I wonder if Eleanor knows what she's doing. She takes people at their word, an admirable quality if she isn't being lied to."

"What do you mean?"

"That's it on the left," directed Maggie, and I pulled over to a pretty brick house with a well-tended garden.

"Maggie, can you please tell me what you meant?" I asked again.

"I didn't mean anything, except I think that Eleanor needs to be careful, and if she won't be careful, then you need to be careful for her."

"Well, that certainly clears things up for me," I said as Maggie got out of the car.

"You have her sarcasm," Maggie said. "Never cared for that in Eleanor." She started to frown, but instead she shook her head and smiled. "You really are like her."

I laughed. "Is that a compliment?"

Maggie laughed back. "Sometimes," she said, and headed toward her son's house.

"I hear that you've been getting me out of trouble," my grandmother shouted to me as I walked in the house. "And getting yourself into it."

I peered into the living room, but she wasn't there. I walked back to the kitchen. She was hobbling around on her crutches, making sandwiches.

"What trouble am I in?" She pointed to my bandaged hand as she took a slice of bread from the loaf.

"I can do that. You shouldn't even be out of bed." I took the bread out of her hand. "What trouble did I get you out of?"

"At the shop. I guess Marc was a little enthusiastic. I hear you smoothed things over with the girls."

"I did good?" I was not about to let a possible compliment go unnoticed.

"No, you were just happy to see Marc, but you got me out of trouble anyway by putting off the renovation until Saturday. It gives everyone a chance to get used to it."

For just an instant I felt the need to deny my interest in Marc, then I decided it was better to let the comment pass. My grandmother was right, and she knew it. There wasn't any point in trying to explain something I didn't even understand myself. "You kind of surprised me too, hiring Marc," I said as I cut a pat of butter.

"You're doing it wrong." Eleanor had moved on to my sandwich-making skills.

"How could I be doing it wrong?" I was spreading butter on bread, not exactly a skill requiring an advanced degree.

"Less butter, and do both sides-it keeps the sandwich moister that way."

"Have you ever stopped to consider that we simply have different, yet equal, sandwich-making techniques?"

"Not really, no."

I buttered both sides her way, put the turkey and tomato slices on the sandwich, and cut it on the diagonal, as instructed. Eleanor sniffed at it a bit, refused to say anything nice about it, but finished it in seconds.

"I'm dying to hear what you and Marc have planned for the shop," I finally admitted.

A glint came into her eye. "We'll cut a hole in the wall, make a doorway to the other side, and add shelves for more fabric." She started sketching on a napkin. "And here in the back we'll build an office where the kitchen was, and next to it there will be a small classroom."

"Is Marc doing all this?"

She made a face at me. "Don't get too attached."

"I'm not attached. I just wonder if he's up to the task."

"Well, when he called me he was so enthusiastic. He really wants the chance to prove his worth, and I like that. No one thought I could run a quilt shop, a widow with two small children and no experience running a business. But I did okay. Sometimes you have to give people a chance."

"I don't think Maggie likes him. Or Natalie."

"Well, they have their opinions." She turned back to the napkin and a subject she clearly preferred. "I want to put up a whole wall of quilting tools, but I can't decide where."

"I have some ideas," I said. Eleanor smiled and handed me the pen, and together we arranged and rearranged the shop until every detail was worked out.