Part 6 (1/2)

The beggar wears all colors fearing none.

-CHARLES LAMB Clear as day, or should I say, clear as night, I saw my recurring dream. Me as a toddler, in my mother's arms, with Aunt Fiona by the river, dancing beneath the light of a full moon. Something, and I didn't know what, was about to turn my life in another direction.

As if tonight hadn't already been lively enough.

When my mother s.h.i.+vered for no reason, she used to say that someone had just walked over her grave, and for the first time, I understood what she meant.

Eve went to the body drawer, tugged on the silver handle, and broke it right off. ”Drawer's jammed.”

I scoffed. ”No kidding.”

She pulled on the front panel and I tried to help, but the drawer wouldn't budge.

I straightened, stepped away, and searched the room. ”We need something to pry it open.”

When nothing seemed appropriate, I knelt to see what was sticking out the side. ”It's fabric, two kinds sewn together that I can see. Looks like it's jammed in the track on this side. Our only hope is to pull the drawer toward the opposite side to knock the drawer off its tracks, which I'd like to do without tearing the fabric.”

”Easier said than done,” my father griped, Aunt Fiona beside him.

Either they'd fought it out or stopped trying. Their poker faces revealed nothing. Nevertheless, they poised themselves beside Eve and grabbed the drawer to pull to the right.

”On three,” I said. ”I've got the fabric, and as soon as you give me room on this side, I'm going to try and slide it from the track and into the drawer.”

”We understand,” my father said.

I nodded. ”One, two . . . three!”

I freed a bit of the fabric and shoved it in the drawer before the left side bounced back.

I yelped when the drawer caught my hand and took a chunk of skin with it.

Fiona checked my wound. ”Mad. Are you okay?”

”Nothing an antibiotic cream won't fix. Warn me next time.”

”That was my fault,” my father said.

Fiona wrapped her scarf around my hand. ”It was both of us.”

Dad looked dumbfounded. He didn't know how to share blame, or anything else, with Fiona.

”Ready to try again?” I asked. ”I think one more tug will clear the track so we can pull the drawer out.”

Eve lay on her stomach on the faded old linoleum on my side, beneath my crouch, and when Dad and Fiona pulled, she helped by pus.h.i.+ng.

I reached over her to slide the rest of the thick fabric from the track and shove it into the drawer. ”Done!”

Everybody let go and Fiona and Dad fell to the floor, they'd been pulling on the drawer with so much effort.

As we watched, the drawer rolled open like a fine piece of machinery. ”A quilt,” I said. ”That's what I suspected from the look of the fabric in the tracks.”

Eve frowned. ”I can't imagine why a guy would try to steal a quilt.”

”I'm guessing he had what he came for in the sack,” I said. ”Notice that he left the quilt behind. What could you put in a sack that had been wrapped in a quilt?”

Aunt Fiona shrugged. ”A million things.”

The quilt was made of flannel, cotton sateen, gingham, duck, linen, some squares printed in chintz and calico, some in plain but faded primary colors. One of the squares had a b.u.t.ton in a b.u.t.tonhole. One, a pocket. Another, a piece of a collar. Some of the solid squares had been embroidered. Others were needleworked with nursery rhymes.

”I suspect that this was made from women's clothes, because of the colors and designs. The clothes belonged to a woman who didn't have wealth but joy of spirit. I can tell because the colors are so vibrant.” The quilt gave up some of its secrets and I hadn't unfolded it yet. ”Someone with time on her hands made it with love.”

”I'm impressed by what you're getting just from looking at it,” Aunt Fiona said.

”You must remember when people used to make quilts from old clothes,” I said. ”Waste not, want not? The clothes these squares came from must be about forty-five to fifty years old, but the quilt is closer to thirty years old.”

”How can you tell?” Eve asked.

”Oh, the thread. It's polyester, or the squares would be falling away from each other.”

”It's been here for about twenty-eight years,” Dante said, ”give or take a year.”

Aunt Fiona and I exchanged glances.

”It's made of vintage clothes,” I stressed, eyeing Aunt Fiona, because I was afraid to touch it and get a psychometric vibe/reading/vision-or whatever you wanted to call my gift of seeing the past in some of the vintage clothes I touched. Whatever its name, it was a psychic surprise from the universe, still too new for me to fully understand. Or take chances with.

Eve and Fiona knew about my gift, but my dad didn't. And I did not want to zone out in front of him.

”Sweetie,” Aunt Fiona said, ”why don't I take it out for you so you can look at the whole thing?” But when she started to move it, I heard a click.

”What?” my father said, stopping her. ”Did we really hurt your hand so badly, Madeira, that you can't take it out yourself? If so, we should take you to a doctor.”

”She's stressed,” Fiona said. ”You wouldn't understand.”

”She's my daughter. Not yours.”

”Oh, for goodness sakes,” I snapped. ”Stop arguing. Don't worry about it, Aunt Fiona. I can see it from here.”

I looked more closely at the quilt edge against the drawer bottom-what I could see of it inside the drawer-to figure out what, from a quilt, could have clicked against the enamel. b.u.t.tons, maybe?

But that's not what I saw.

n.o.body else was looking at it from the same angle as I was, because they were all on the opposite side of the drawer, so I shut it.

Now I had to see if the quilt would talk to me. ”Dad, Fiona's had a hard night. Why don't you follow her home?”

My father had been caught unaware by the suggestion and said nothing.