Free A Lie for a Lie by Emilie Richards Page B

like those fabrics together, Sue,” my mother was saying from behind the island in the center of what was once a living room. A woman with springy gray curls had bolts of blue and green fabrics piled in front of her waiting to be cut, but she was clearly concerned about one of her choices.
    “However, for your inside border I think you might consider this one.” Junie reached behind her and grabbed a bolt shuddering with wildly colored polka dots.
    “Ooooh, yes!” Sue grabbed the new fabric, as if somebody might dive in and take off with it.
    “I think you’re set,” Junie said. “It’s going to be magnificent. Miss Emma?”
    Emma Beale, one of Junie’s two helpers, stopped straightening bolts surrounding the fireplace and toddled over to cut the fabric. Miss Emma is approximately a hundred years old, and she’s been quilting for ninety-nine of them. She moves as rapidly as a shallow creek during a deep freeze, but she can answer any question and nobody’s ever in a hurry to leave Feeling Quilty anyway. There’s a coffee urn, cookies from a bakery that just opened in another house down the street, and comfortable chairs on the porch to sit and chat about projects and classes in progress.
    Junie greeted three other women by name before she made it to Teddy and me. She gave Teddy a big, grandmotherly hug and agreed that my orderly daughter could straighten the notions and make sure everything was in its proper place. This had become Teddy’s Saturday job, and she took it seriously.
    Once Teddy had skipped off to the notions room, Junie slipped her arm around my shoulders and steered me toward the kitchen and freedom. We didn’t speak until we were sitting in deck chairs on a stretch of grass that will one day be a lovely patio. When the time comes, Junie won’t have to pay very much to have the grass removed. The blue-grass is now browngrass and looks as if it wants to be put out of its misery. The Japanese magnolias and forsythia we’d planted to screen out the parking lot are only just holding their own. I know for a fact Junie plugs up the bathtub when she takes her daily shower and hauls the water to her trees and shrubs at night when nobody is watching. There’s a strict watering schedule in effect, and Junie’s determined her trees are not going to die.
    “I almost didn’t recognize you, precious. It seems like weeks since I’ve seen you.”
    I’m told this is something mothers often say, but Junie wasn’t trying to shame me. This was simply fact.
    I inched my chair to one side to take advantage of what shade the magnolias produced. “Every day I tell myself this nightmare will be behind me soon.”
    “Do you ask yourself how you got so involved and whether you should set limits?”
    Junie sounded genuinely curious. As a girl I was never reprimanded, only questioned like this. There were times a good whack on the fanny would have been kinder.
    “Teddy’s little friend came this close to dying of meningitis . . .” I held my thumb and index finger just far enough apart for a hair to pass between them. “And at least partly because the pediatric wing at the hospital is so out-of-date, and there’s no pediatric ICU here. What if that had been one of my girls?”
    “I know it’s an issue dear to your heart. And you feel better equipped to handle all these details than to ask others to help you.”
    There was a question there, as well. I was raised on sub-text, so I know. “Everybody’s working hard. But as silly as it is, I like being good at something and doing it well.”
    Junie was silent long enough to let me know I’d caught her by surprise. “What aren’t you good at?” she asked in a tone also appropriate for “You say you’re leaving the girls in Ed’s care and joining the Hare Krishnas?”
    Believe it or not it’s a big responsibility to have somebody in your life who thinks you’re nearly perfect. Luckily Ed has no delusions, but he loves me anyway.
    “Junie”—my