Wedding Ring
Needing time to contemplate her troubled marriage, Tessa MacRae agrees to spend the summer helping her mother and grandmother clean out the family home in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley.But the three women have never been close. Helen, the family matriarch, is domineering and sharp-tongued. Nancy, Tessa’s mother, appears to be little more than a social climber. And Tessa herself is in turmoil following a family tragedy that has affected them all.Now, with the gift of time, Tessa’s eyes are opened, and she begins to see her mother and grandmother for the flawed but courageous women they are. As she restores a vintage wedding-ring quilt pieced by her grandmother and quilted by her mother, the secrets that have shadowed their lives unfold at last.And each woman discovers that sometimes you have to clean house to find the things you thought were lost forever.
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âAnything needs saying needs saying right now.â
âWhy donât you say a few things about yourself, then, Gram?â Tessa said.
âYouâre sure you want to hear this?â Helen said. âIt might take a while.â
âWeâve got plenty of cookies, Mom,â Nancy said. âPlenty of coffee.â
âSince when did you start eating dessert?â
âI donât smoke. I hardly drink. I need a vice if Iâm going to survive a summer with you.â
Tessa cradled her coffee mug and looked over the top at her grandmother. An hour ago she hadnât been sure she could face the next moment in her life. Now, in the coffee-scented kitchen, her grandmother on one side, her mother on the other, the world looked a little different.
Emilie Richards âadds to the territory staked out by such authors as Barbara Delinsky and Kristin Hannah with her hardcover debut, an engrossing novel about rebuilding relationships after a betrayalâ¦Richardsâs writing is unpretentious and effectiveâ¦and her characters burst with vitality and authenticity.â
âPublishers Weekly on Prospect Street
EMILIE RICHARDS
WEDDINGRING
For the women of Herpel Community
in Stone County, Arkansas, who first taught me the joys of quilting.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 1
After she surrendered to the inevitable and gave up trying to make her grandmother open the front door, Tessa MacRae resigned herself to spending the rest of the sweltering morning in what passed for shade on the front porch. The time wasnât completely wasted. From the vantage point of a creaking old swing, she could observe almost everything she needed to know about her grandmotherâs world.
First, in an area renowned for its natural splendor, this little corner of the Shenandoah Valley was not holding up its end.
The evaluation was interrupted by the screech of a window being wrenched open just above her.
âYou still down there, missy? I didnât ask you to come, you know, and I sure didnât ask for these!â
At thirty-seven, Tessa, a high-school English teacher, hadnât been a âmissyâ for a number of years, but this was not the moment to object. A rattling followed Helen Henryâs words, and suddenly the air was filled not with much-needed rain, but with balls of paper sliding off the tin roof to the ground below. Tessa tried to count them as they fell. A dozen, at least. Then, after a pithy pause, half a dozen more.
The window above the porch slammed shut again.
Tessa waited, but the paper hailstorm had ended. She got to her feet, picked up and smoothed a wad that had landed on the front steps. Two women and a man, with broad smiles and glowing silver hair, stared back at her from a golf course fairway.
ââGreen Springs Retirement Community,ââ she read out loud. ââBecause today is the first day of the rest of your life.ââ Crumpling the page in her fist, she wondered how many similar brochures her mother, Nancy Whitlock, had sent Helen during the past weeks. When nothing else fell from above, she returned to the swing, drew her knees up to her chin and got on with her assessment.
On her drive to the small town of Toms Brook, Tessa had been charmed, as always, by the magnificent blue-green sweep of mountains, the Queen Anneâs lace and wild chicory blooming by the roadside, the placid, heat-hypnotized cattle and horses dotting Virginiaâs hillsides and meadows. But that was a panorama, a rural still life, and unfortunately, her grandmotherâs farm, which was baking under an unrelenting sun, was something else altogether.
The drought that had affected the entire area had been particularly bad here. Corn was not going to be knee-high by the Fourth of July, which was only three days away. Several acres of field corn across the road from her grandmotherâs house looked like bonsai gardens gone awry, twisted and shriveling under the sun. Only the dandelions seemed to be holding their own. Unless the area got rain, and plenty of it, the corn wouldnât even be knee-high by Labor Day.
Then there was the heat. Virginia was no oneâs idea of a summertime oasis, but Tessa, a native, couldnât remember a hotter July. While waiting for her grandmother to reconsider her options, Tessa had probably sweated away an entire quart of bottled springwater. No air stirred. No bees hummed. The mud daubers that had built a castle under the eaves had pulled up their drawbridge and escaped into the keep. Even the blue jays had declared a truce with the crows and were probably napping side by side under the leafy branches of Helenâs twin maples.
The window screeched again. âAnd take these, while youâre at it!â Helen shouted. âYou think I need your fancy presents?â
The nightgown, then the robe, that Tessa had bought her grandmother on her last birthday floated to the rambling rose that sprawled uncontrolled along the trellis and porch railing. They bloomed there in soft shades of violet and pink, as close to real blossoms as the rose had produced in years.
