the petite blonde with the friendly smile, why couldn’t she remember her name?
“So I told the UPS man I would keep it for you,” the neighbor said of the package she had just presented to Jo. “I hope that’s okay? I know how hard it is to track down a delivery once they take it back to the warehouse, especially in December, when they’re so busy.”
Jo realized it was now her turn to speak. “That was so nice of you.”
“Of course, I didn’t realize you would be gone so long. I hope nothing spoiled. It looks like a gift.”
Jo glanced down at the package newly resting in her arms, set there before she and her suitcase could escape into her home and close the door. She was so exhausted she could hardly make out the spidery writing. She squinted, then her heart threatened to stop midbeat. “Oh...” She swallowed.
“I’m sorry, I hope it’s not bad news.”
“No, no...” Jo clutched the package to her chest. “I’m just back from Hong Kong. I...I...” She shook her head. “I’m exhausted, that’s all.”
“No wonder. I thought I’d call out for pizza in a little bit. Would you like to share? My treat? I bet you don’t have a bit of food in your fridge.”
Jo shook her head, a reflex that was her standard response to invitations. “I need sleep more, I’m afraid. Maybe another time?”
The blonde smiled, but without conviction. In three years she and Jo had never crossed each other’s thresholds.
“Sleep well, then.” She opened the door that was only two feet from Jo’s own. “And I’m Marian, Jo. Marian Parker. In case you change your mind.”
The door closed behind her, but not before Jo glimpsed soft peach walls, a slipcovered sofa, and a Christmas tree with twinkling lights in the corner.
She stood staring at Marian’s door for a moment, then fumbled for the keys she had slipped into her pocket during the limo ride from the airport and unlocked her own.
Pulling her suitcase behind her, she stepped into a room that was a mirror image of Marian’s, but only in layout. Here the walls were a gloomy taupe and the furniture sleek black leather with chrome armrests. The only pop of color vibrated from a pillow on the sofa with geometric designs of chartreuse and shocking pink.
Right after Jo had signed the lease here, her mother had decorated the condo as a surprise. Jo had opened her door after another business trip to find it the way it was now.
The surprise had come during Sophie’s interior decorator phase, which had been sandwiched between her jazz singer phase and landscape photographer phase. Jo’s walls were dotted with out-of-focus black-and-white photographs of Point Loma and Venice Beach, framed in more chrome. Thankfully a year had passed without additions. These days Sophie was busy channeling a spirit guide named Ocelot Lee, who was slowly revealing the secrets of the universe in exchange for large infusions of cash to the medium who arranged his visits.
The decorating scheme made it hard not to think about her mother, but right now Jo wanted to think about Aunt Gloria, who had sent the package.
Gloria Harrison had been a constant presence in Jo’s life, first when Jo’s father was alive and the extended Miller family spent large portions of every summer together in the family summer cottage at Kanowa Lake in western New York. Then later, too, after Harry Miller’s death, when Sophie had moved Jo to California, where she could have her daughter to herself. Aunt Gloria had continued to call frequently, and send birthday and Christmas cards, making it clear in her own sweet way that Jo would always be a Miller, and neither distance nor the death of her father changed that.
Now Aunt Glo was gone, and with her the last real link to the Millers. There was still plenty of family around. Jo had distant relatives as well as three first cousins, women close to her in age. Once upon a time the four had been as intimate as sisters, but time changed so many things.
Of course time had been helped by Jo herself, who as an adult had been too busy to keep in touch. Her cousins were now strangers.
Like her next-door neighbor.
Gloria had died two weeks ago while Jo was in Hong Kong. Sophie had emailed the news, generously offering to find out if Ocelot Lee could pass on a message from the departed Gloria, an unusual offer in more ways than one, since Sophie had never wanted to share her daughter with her father’s family.
Jo wished she could have flown home for the funeral. She had owed Aunt Glo that grueling trip and more. But leaving Hong Kong in the middle of tense negotiations would have been as good as throwing up her hands in defeat. In the end, with so much riding on her presence in China, she had wired a huge arrangement to the funeral home and made a donation to her aunt’s favorite charity. She had sent a card to her cousin Olivia, Gloria’s daughter, and told herself she would call Olivia when she returned.
Except for the sadness, she had expected that to be the end. She had not expected to receive a package from her aunt, a package that had obviously been sent just before her death.
Jo realized that somehow she was now perched on the sofa, picking at the tape along the edges of the box. Sophie’s granite coffee table didn’t yield anything as practical as a drawer for scissors, so Jo rose and took the package into her study. At her desk chair she carefully sliced the tape with a letter opener and tugged it apart.
Inside lay two smaller packages wrapped in tissue paper. She opened the smaller of the two to discover two pieces of jewelry—a brooch in the shape of a fan, studded with red and silver rhinestones and tiny seed pearls, and a thin silver chain with an enameled locket.
A note in the same tentative handwriting read:
These belonged to your grandmother. I wanted you to have them.
Jo blinked back tears. As Aunt Glo was dying she had still been thinking of Jo. Her quickly failing health was clear from the handwriting, which was a shadow of her formerly robust script.
Moments passed before she remembered the second package. She carefully set down the jewelry and unfolded the paper.
For a moment she couldn’t put a name to the object she was holding. Then she realized that the fabric in her hand had been carefully folded and padded so it wouldn’t crease. She unfolded the first layer, slipping out more tissue paper until a large square was lying across her lap.
The fabric was the beginning of a quilt, a beautifully appliquéd folk art rendition of Hollymeade, the Miller family cottage on the shore of Kanowa Lake. It was eighteen, maybe even twenty, inches square on a royal blue background with one silver star shining directly over the house. The house itself, with its wide front porch and its second story turret—where she and her cousins had formed a secret club the year she was ten—was decorated for Christmas. The century-old holly trees that gave the house its name were also embroidered with ornaments of red and gold, and strings of lights that seemed to twinkle. A bright green wreath adorned the front door, and snow covered the ground.
Jo looked closer. There were two snowmen, or more accurately a snowman and a snow-woman, to the left of the house. The snowman wore a shiny top hat and tails. The snow-woman was dressed as a bride, with a long veil and a bouquet clutched in front of her.
She whistled softly because suddenly she understood what she was holding. “Olivia’s bridal quilt.”
Jo
