One Snowy Night (Sweet Home, Alaska #1) - Patience Griffin Page 0,22

it looked, she grabbed her phone and took a picture.

Ella came through the door just as Hope was picking the clothes up off the floor and sorting them into lights and darks.

“What are you doing?” Ella asked.

“We’re going to make a quilt out of your Aunt Izzie’s clothes,” Hope said.

“We?”

“It would be a fun project for us to do together.” Hope pointed to the wall behind the sofa. “We could get it done and have it up by Christmas.”

“I only know how to make grocery bags for Piney.”

“It’s time you learned how to make a quilt.” There was enough fabric here to make an additional quilt—a lap quilt. With arms loaded, Hope headed to the washing machine in the kitchen. “Grab the darks and follow me in here.”

“Do I have to?” Ella moaned, but did as she was told.

“I can’t wait to show you the picture on my phone of what it’s going to look like.” She glanced at her daughter. “Are you hungry?”

Ella passed her a scoop of detergent. “I ate at Lacy’s.”

“Did you get any studying done?”

“Some.”

Hope shut the lid of the washing machine and hugged her daughter—partly to see if she’d been drinking, yes, but mostly because Hope’s heart was filled with joy. Then she smelled the strawberry wine on Ella’s breath. She started to ask who had been buying it for her, but then Ella unexpectedly hugged her back.

“It’s nice that you have a project,” Ella said.

“We have a project,” Hope corrected. She made a mental note to do some digging to find out who was buying alcohol for the kids in Sweet Home these days. Back when she was a teen, any number of twentysomethings were happy to pick some up in the next borough over for the price of a pack of smokes. Hope put her focus back on their quilting project. “Do you have any graph paper?”

“Sure. It’s on top of my desk.”

Hope went to Ella’s room to retrieve the graph paper. Several of Ella’s drawings were strewn across her desk. Seeing them always reminded Hope of Izzie and her artistic talent, too. While Hope was at it, she commandeered the colored pencils before running back to the kitchen to start sketching the quilt on paper.

She found Ella staring at her phone with a frown on her face. “I don’t get it. This is supposed to be a quilt?”

“You’ll see. After I get it drawn up.” Hope took her place at their small dining table. “Sit with me while I work.”

“I’m tired. I’m going to bed.”

But as Ella walked away, she pulled out her phone. “Hey, Lacy.” And went into her room.

Hope wouldn’t be discouraged by her daughter’s lack of enthusiasm. For the next hour, she sketched Izzie’s Memory Tree quilt and colored it. She was happy with the outcome but was worried that her sewing skills were too rusty to pull off this quilt. Yes, she had sewn with the Sisterhood of the Quilt back in the day and then made clothes for Ella until Ella told her to stop, but she hadn’t made a quilt since the Sisterhood had disbanded after the death of Elsie Stone.

Holding the drawing, Hope went to Ella’s door and knocked. “Come out and see what I drew.”

“I’m too sleepy.”

Only moments before, Ella had been gabbing away on the phone.

“Are you sure?” Hope asked, knowing she sounded a little needy. Yes, she talked to people every day at the Hungry Bear, but things weren’t the same as they were twenty years ago when Hope was growing up. She’d been part of a tight community then. Now, it felt as if there was no real community left.

“Leave the drawing on the table. I’ll look at it in the morning.”

“Sure.” Disappointed, Hope went back to the kitchen, knowing she should give up and go to bed.

This was the main reason she’d stopped quilting . . . no one to share her ideas with. One of her favorite parts about quilting was experiencing it with others, from the initial concept to the final product. In this case, she only had a drawing, a skeleton of what the quilt would become. But she still had that urge to connect, something the Sisterhood of the Quilt had encouraged her to do at a young age.

She pulled back the curtain and looked out at the street. Bill’s truck was sitting in front of his cabin. She ran to her bedroom window and checked there. Sure enough, Bill’s lights were still on. Hope didn’t