The Goodbye Quilt by Susan Wiggs Page B

because he takes a breath and adds, “Honey, you’re in panic mode over Molly leaving. This is no time to be discussing such a huge undertaking.”
    I pull the jacket tighter around me. Panic mode. Am I panicking?
    “I need a child who needs me,” I blurt out.
    “Lindy. Slow down. What you need is a life of your own.”
    The words fall like stones on my heart. He’s right. He’s right. “I’ll work on that,” I say, feeling a bleak sweep of exhaustion.
    “Have fun on your trip,” Dan says, a yawn in his voice. “I love you both.”
    “Love you, too.” After we hang up, I sit for a while and look at the stars. It’s so quiet I can hear a train whistle blow, miles away.

D AY F IVE
    Odometer Reading 123,277
    From the manner in which a woman draws her thread at every stitch of her needlework, any other woman can surmise her thoughts.
    —Honoré de Balzac

Chapter Seven
    “I’m running out of thread,” I tell Molly.
    “We can stop somewhere in the next town,” she says, unconcerned. She is more interested in finding a radio station. We have a rule. Driver gets to pick the music. We’re already bored with our playlists and she’s hungry for something new.
    “This is mercerized thread spun from Sea Isle cotton,” I explain. “It doesn’t grow on trees, you know.”
    “I know how cotton is grown, Mom.”
    In quilting, the type and quality of thread you use matters greatly. Just think of all the stitches that go into a quilt. You need the kind of threadthat pulls through smoothly, that is strong despite repeated tugging, that will never fray or pill.
    To people who don’t practice the craft of hand-sewing, thread is thread. Therefore, this is far less of a concern than the dearth of radio stations. The FM band yields too much static, and the AM stations are crammed with crop reports or the phony sentiment of country tunes.
    “In pioneer days, mothers and daughters worked on their quilts together,” I tell her.
    “Good thing we’re not pioneers.” A soybean rust update comes on the radio, and she groans in exasperation.
    I tried to get her interested in quilting a time or two, to no avail. She was impatient with the detail and repetition. Our few “lessons” ended with her pricking herself with a needle and sighing loudly with boredom. She usually wound up shooting baskets in the driveway with her dad.
    She fiddles with the dial a bit more, and hits pay-dirt. The announcer’s voice says, “Settle back and enjoy this local favorite, from Beulah Davis and the Strivers.”
    “Hey, isn’t that the group we heard last night?” asks Molly. “Cool.”
    The melody and words are soothing and emotional, and I pause in the quilting to look out the window. It’s a sea of grass, rolling out on both sides, and I imagine Molly and me as pioneers, setting off on a journey into the great, wide unknown.
    I wonder what it was like for those women and their daughters, when their lives took them in different directions. They weren’t able to pick up the phone or log onto the internet and get in touch. Separation meant the possibility of never seeing each other again. I should count my blessings.
    The quilt section in my lap is made of cornflower-blue fabric sprigged with tiny daisies. It was a dress I made for Molly to wear to her very first piano recital, back when she was just eight years old. Her first public performance. What a nerve-wracking day that was. I recall her practicing Bach’s “Minuet in G Major” over and over again until it drove Dan out into the yard with the weed-whacker. And I, of course, couldn’t help tuning in on every note. I adjusted my breathing to the rhythm of her playing and when she hesitated—the long, agonizing pause in the fifth bar as she spread her tiny hand over the keys of a big chord—it made me hold my breath until she found the right notes.When she hit the wrong note I would wince and then remind myself not to do that at the recital.
    The dress was meticulously put