I want you to supply them, but if it doesn’t work out, I can find someone else.”
“I appreciate your interest,” Gia said. “But family comes first. Thank you for the offer. It gave me a thrill.”
“Let me check back with you in a month.” Pippa sounded undaunted. “Maybe things will look clearer to you then.”
“Okay,” Gia agreed. No harm in that, but she knew she wouldn’t change her mind and the second she hung up, it felt as if a fresh breeze had rolled in off the ocean and chased off the heavy fog.
Pyewacket jumped into Gia’s lap as if she heartily approved of her decision. She flicked her tail and purred happily.
Back on track.
She was back on track and she couldn’t wait to tell Mike that she had indeed pleased herself. Just as she hopped up to go see him, her cell phone rang again.
It was Shelley.
Instant dread filled her heart, and her mind jumped to the darkest place. She hit accept, brought the phone to her ear, and in a trembly voice said, “What is it?”
“Grammy.” Shelley was sobbing, a soft little sound accompanied by hiccups.
A flood of fear coursed through Gia’s body and she sat rigid on the edge of the sofa, knees clenched together, bracing herself for the awful words she just knew were coming. Grammy had left them.
“Gia,” Shelley gasped. “Grammy.”
“Is she—”
“Just woke up.”
Chapter Sixteen
Shelley
POUNCE: A chalk bag patted over a stencil to transfer a pattern to fabric.
ON JUNE 3, three days after Grammy came out of her coma, the Moonglow sisters planned an old-fashioned quilting bee.
The purpose was twofold: one, celebrate Grammy’s fighting spirit; and, two, produce as many quilts as possible over a long weekend. Quilts that they would sell in the pop-up store to pay off the mortgage on the Moonglow Inn.
Madison had obtained permission from the city to set up a pop-up store on the beach in front of the inn during the Fourth of July holiday weekend. They had four weeks left to generate inventory, and it didn’t seem like enough time to do anything.
Mike and the volunteer crew from the Moonglow Chamber of Commerce had finished renovations in the kitchen and moved on to painting the inn’s six guest bedrooms and en suite baths. Drop cloths were everywhere. Five-gallon buckets of gray-beige paint named Rumbling Thunder lined the upstairs hallway; the rooms they’d freshly painted scented the air with the odd, damp aroma of dill pickles.
On Madison’s decree, they’d stepped back from the themed rooms—per Victorian tradition—painted in different colors, to one solid unifying hue throughout the house. Shelley and Gia let her have her way. Madison was the design expert, plus, who wanted to argue when Grammy was out of her coma?
At the hospital, while Grammy had regained consciousness, she had not yet spoken. She was off the ventilator and while she could nod or blink when asked questions, she could not hold a conversation.
Not yet.
Dr. Hollingway said time would tell if Grammy would ever be able to speak again. The tumor had encroached upon the Broca area of her brain that controlled speech. In the meantime, the doctor encouraged them to keep talking to her.
Grammy was still in ICU, but they had hopes of moving her into the telemetry stepdown unit within the week. Fingers crossed.
Since she’d awakened, the nurses had become stricter about visitors. “No more around-the-clock vigils,” the head nurse decreed. “Mrs. Chapman needs her rest and she can’t get enough sleep if people are popping in and out all hours of the day and night.”
That was encouraging news. It meant the staff had shifted from a deathwatch to a hopeful recovery mode.
Grammy did best when it was Darynda sitting at her side, holding her hand. Her blood pressure lowered, and her breathing lengthened, and her pulse slowed. A quiet peace seemed to come over her the minute Darynda’s footsteps sounded in the hallway.
Shelley tried not to take it personally that whenever she came into the room Grammy got restless. Her grandmother’s eyes would go wide, and she’d struggle to sit up. Tried to speak, her mouth dropping open but no words coming out. Once when Shelley showed up, the pattern on Grammy’s heart monitor quickened and set off a panicky electronic beeping that brought a nurse rushing into the room to shoo Shelley away.
Darynda had kindly said, “It’s just because she’s so excited to see that you’ve come home.”
But Shelley feared otherwise.
Five years ago, Grammy had been pretty upset with her for ruining Madison’s