Page 40 of Marked By Shadows
“I love watching you sew. It’s relaxing.”
“Okay,” I agreed. Alex made his way back to our little area and began laying out the blocks.
“What if I change the order of the blocks?” He wanted to know as he laid out a bunch of squares on the large workspace.
“Keep the green in the same spots, since it creates a cohesive sashing, but change up the rest any way you want.” He could actually change it all and make it ‘scrappy,’ though I had a feeling he was getting to the edge of his capacity of new learning for the day.
“More lingo,” he grumbled. Alex went to work, laying out the squares, then bringing them to me to sew together. “You’re like a super speed sewer.”
“I also have years of practice,” I reminded him. I cut and sewed, he ironed, and we rolled through four packs of squares like a well-oiled machine. Twice something bumped my leg and thought Alex was crouching in close, only when I looked up, he was perched on a chair about three feet away. I frowned and looked down. Maybe I’d dropped something. Nothing looked out of place in the dark underside of the sewing table. I probably needed more sleep.
The third time it happened I could have sworn it felt like what Jet often did when I was at home. In fact, I was so focused and chain piecing the blocks as Alex handed them to me, I almost thought that itwasJet, and that we were home. Only the sound of chatter from across the room made me look up and realize we were at the B&B. Jet wasn’t there, but Alex had told me he’d seen a ghost cat.
I turned my gaze to him.
“What?” he asked, holding out squares, which I took, but didn’t put on the machine.
“Is the cat near me?” I whispered to him. “The ghost cat?”
He looked at my feet, then back up to my face. Expression confirming a drop of a rock into my gut. “Yes. But she’s normal right now. Just a cat. Do you feel the skin tingles?”
“No. I thought it was Jet for a minute…” And that made me catch my breath. No ants on my skin feeling, but I had felt something bump my leg. Had it happened before and I’d never caught it, or was this new from my encounter with whatever things had been out in the forest last night? I gripped the edge of the table, forcing myself to suck in air as I counted deep even breaths.
Alex rubbed my back in slow circles. “It’s just the cat. I promise. She’s acting like a normal cat right now. Mostly sitting at your feet.”
“A ghost cat,” I muttered.
“Yes. Would you rather it be a person?”
No. Absolutely not.
“Will we have time to finish this today?” Alex asked, holding out more squares. He was completely unbothered by the fact that a ghost sat at my feet. If he wasn’t freaked out, I could calm down too, right? Focus on what we had at hand. We had already completed a half dozen blocks. “I’ve seen you finish putting together quilt tops in a day.”
I had. Simple designs. Which is what we’d chosen. I took the blocks and continued to sew, working hard not to move my feet more than necessary to actually push the pedal down. Alex took to cutting the blocks, then handing them back. He did the ironing. I focused on sewing, racing through the blocks as fast as I could, and breathing deep while I chanted, “It’s just a cat,” quietly to myself.
We laid out the completed squares, Alex shifting one here or there every once in a while, until the batch was done. A good size blanket formed from the rows. The layout created a secondary design of diagonal lines from the turned center blocks. Alex played with it until he was happy the diagonals did what he wanted. Smiling in triumph as he placed the last square he’d been moving around for several minutes. He handed me the first two squares, adding one as I got through each one. I paused when the first row was finished to hand it to him.
“Iron that. Then give me the second row. We do each row, then sew the rows together.”
He thought about that for a minute, but handed me the squares from the next row, then took the first to the iron. I glanced at the clock. Two and a half hours since we’d begun. It was a record even for me. Maybe ghosts motivated me too? The final row of sewing took almost no time. A quick nesting of seams, pinning, which Alex did with the two rows while I stitched the previous two. Finally it was finished, one big unit, which Alex ironed again.
He held it up. “We made this. And it didn’t take that long.”
“The magic of precut squares. The cutting takes up most of the time while quilting. There are machines that some of the bigger quilt shops have to cut squares or strips on demand, but not all of them have it.”
“I’m sold. Squares or whatever, are the bomb.” Alex grinned dancing around with our new creation. “What’s next.”
“You should eat lunch,” I told him.
He waved a hand at me. “Are you hungry? I ate like four eggs and half a pound of bacon for breakfast. And did you see the strawberries? I must have had a pint of those.”
I wasn’t hungry, but I carefully got up and stepped away from the machine, worried about wherever the ghost cat might be.
I waved at Freya to get her attention. She was engaged in a conversation with Chad about the Cricut cutting machine, and crafting EVA foam for an Infinity Glove. She looked up. “Do you have any spare 108?” I asked her.
“Yes. Far left cabinet, left side. It’s sorted by color,” she said pointing to the distant wall of cabinets.
I headed in that direction, found the cabinet and opened it to find almost a full section, floor to top of the cubby, labeled 108. They weren’t hanks of fabric like I had, but a section of full bolts, many solid colors, and a handful of prints. Alex appeared beside me with the quilt top, staring into the depths of Freya’s organization.