Threads of Hope: Quilts of Love Series by Christa Allan Page A

she’d brushed her teeth without leaving anything behind.
    She heard her mother’s, “I’ll get it,” as if battling her father to open the door was ever an issue. Sheila O’Malley peered out like she might be expecting a deep cover agent for an exchange.
    “Oh, it’s you. Well, come on in. But you’re early. Dinner isn’t ready yet. Just make yourself at home.”
    Right. It’s what she’d been trying to do her entire life.

9
    Nina wondered if all grown children, when they looked at their parents through adult eyes, tried to find what first attracted them to one another. She’d seen all the old photos paraded around the house that captured smiles meant for the camera. But it was what happened before and after the picture that intrigued Nina. If she could travel back in time to show the young Patrick O’Malley, the one with the dimples and broad smile, whose eyes signaled mischief and zest, a photo of what he would become in forty years, might something in his life have changed? Maybe so much so that the Patrick O’Malley, who now waved his remote like a king’s scepter from the throne of his recliner, the one whose downturned eyes matched his downturned mouth, whose hair was gray and disheveled, might have been someone else? Or perhaps Nina might not have been at all?
    “When did you get here?” He made motions as if he was going to disengage himself from the comfort of his chair.
    Oh, almost thirty years ago
. “Don’t get up,” she said and walked over to kiss him on his forehead. He smelled just like the closed-up insides of an unhappy house. “How are you?”
    “Good. Good.” He spoke to the cast of
Gilligan’s Island
on the television screen. “You?”
    Awful. My career is off-the-tracks, my social life consists of taking my dog to the veterinarian, only to meet the one jerk I’ve tried to forget for the past ten years
. “I’m great. Everything’s great.”
    “Glad to hear that, honey.” His eyes flickered in her direction for a moment. “Your mom need some help in the kitchen?”
    Sheila didn’t need help in the kitchen, the house, the country, the universe. Had he forgotten Nina trailing behind him during those years when he spent more time vertical? She’d hand him tools when he fixed the leaky something or other under the car, tape when he bundled the outside pipes against the cold. He didn’t need help either, but he at least let her think he did. And Nina loved him for that.
    “Doubt it, but I’ll check.” She wasn’t sure he knew she left.
    Nina walked through the hall to the kitchen where she would be of no help whatsoever. For someone whose idea of an emotional moment was sneezing, Sheila created lovely meals. Given the choice, Nina would have preferred peanut butter and jelly sandwiches if that meant her mother could invest more time in her.
    Sheila hated hovering, so Nina leaned against the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room. Aretha would be in designer heaven if given the chance to makeover the industrial look of the kitchen with its stainless steel appliances, gray tiled floors, and white cabinets. But her mother puttering around a French country kitchen wearing a cornflower blue apron edged in lace was as likely as Madonna showing up an award ceremony wearing a cotton housedress and slippers. “Smells great in here. Anything I can do?”
    Her mother sprinkled sliced almonds on top of a salad. “No. Not now. Everything’s almost finished.” She sighed. “I’vebeen in here all morning making lasagna while your dad’s been in there,” she nodded her head toward the den, “wearing out the batteries in the remote.”
    “I would have been glad to be here sooner to help you,” Nina said and hated that she felt like a child uninvited to a party.
    “All you had to do was offer.” Sheila lifted that one eyebrow that signaled “so there,” as she added olive oil and vinegar to the salad.
    Nina shoved her indignation away before it jumped right out of