The Moonglow Sisters - Lori Wilde Page 0,76

cult and told stories and passed around the bottle of salted caramel whiskey and for a few hours it felt like old times.

Gia lightened her hair for the summer and Madison rocked a watermelon-themed mani-pedi, but it was Shelley who emerged from the spa looking truly transformed. Gone was the long, frizzy hair and in its place, she sported fashionable, layered, shoulder-length beach waves. The stylist had also streaked chunky golden highlights through her hair. Her fingernails and toenails were trimmed, buffed, and polished, and she had a facial that brought out her natural glow.

“Wow,” Madison said. “You look so much like Mom it’s freaky.”

“I do, huh?” Shelley checked herself out in the mirror and fluffed her hair, getting used to it.

“I don’t remember Mom at all,” Gia said. “I try, but I simply can’t. If it weren’t for the photographs . . .”

“She was a beautiful woman.” A wistful tone crept into Madison’s voice. “But she really didn’t spend all that much time with us. She was obsessed with skiing.”

“I wonder what happened between her and Grammy,” Gia said. “We might never find out.”

“Maybe, after all this, Grammy’ll be more inclined to talk about it,” Madison mused.

“If she ever speaks again.” Gia shook her head.

“I wish I could recall more about Mom.” Shelley tossed her hair this way and that in front of the mirror.

“Well, I for one think she would be very proud of her daughters,” Gia said. “Maddie’s a TV personality. I make kites. Shelley escaped a cult. We Moonglow sisters are anything but dull.”

“I’m proud of us.” Madison paid for their services and gifted her sisters with a group hug right there in the spa and Gia left thinking, Flying pigs! Miracles do happen.

The next day, even with organized, whip-cracking Madison at the helm, dissolved into beautiful chaos as the Quilting Divas descended upon the Moonglow Inn en masse.

Enthusiastic women armed with fabric, needles, thread, rotary cutters, self-healing cutting mats, acrylic quilting rulers, basting safety pins, wonder clips, scissors, and portable sewing machines overflowed the house, the porches, the lawns.

Quilters were everywhere.

Pyewacket found sanctuary on top of the refrigerator, staring down at the collective with narrowed Siamese eyes and leonine disdain.

Directed by Madison, the quilters formed an assembly line to make as many quilts as they could possibly make in three days. No hand sewing for these projects, there simply wasn’t time. The Divas called them stash-buster quilts, meaning they selected simple, efficient designs that used up fabrics from the quilters’ personal stashes of material.

One group of quilters formed the cutting station, a second group did the backing, a third group handled the batting, and a final group did the ditch stitching. Gia volunteered to do all the ironing. She set up an ironing board in the kitchen, steaming block after block of quilt tops.

With all those people, the house came to life. Laughing, talking, music, the air buzzed with voices.

“Light! I need more light!” called out Erma Kelton from behind her thick-lensed glasses, squinting at the fabric pieces in the bright sun beaming in through the kitchen windows. The kitchen table had been transformed into the cutting station laid out with self-healing mats, rotary cutters, and rulers.

Gia had already raised the blinds, turned on every light in the kitchen, and cleaned the windows to let in more illumination, but Erma had cataracts and refused to admit she needed surgery.

“On it,” Mike said, breezing through the kitchen.

He winked at Gia on his way past. He returned a few minutes later with a five-foot adjustable tripod graced with a two-headed, rotating LED light bar that lit the place up like a construction site.

“Now that’s more like it.” Erma nodded her head, satisfied.

“Good gravy, Erma,” mumbled another elderly lady at the cutting table. “I feel like I’m being interrogated. Turn off the floodlights. I’ll talk, I’ll talk.”

“Does that mean if I keep ’em on you’ll stay quiet, Viv?” Erma shot back.

“Stuck my foot in my mouth with that one, didn’t I?” Viv chuckled. “Keep it on, turn it off. I’ll talk either way.”

Mike readjusted the lights so that all the shine was on Erma. “How’s that, ladies?”

Everyone at the table gave a thumbs-up.

“Help!” called wizened Mrs. Turner, who was ninety if she was a day, from the backing station in the dining room. “I need somewhere to plug in my power scissors.”

Gia looked to Mike.

“Be right back.” He trotted from the kitchen, returned momentarily with a multiplug adapter, and soon had Mrs. Turner and her scissors in business.

Gia