Within moments, I am giving her a guided tour of Molly’s quilt—the snippet of fabric from the tooth fairy pillow, upon which she placed her first lost tooth. The blue ribbon she won at the seventh-grade science fair, for her pond water display. A Girl Scout badge she earned delivering Christmas cookies to a nursing home. One square is decorated with pink loops of ribbon in honor of the time she raised a thousand dollars in a Race for the Cure.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m being fair with the milestones and memories I’m stitching into this quilt. It’s easy to block out a square to celebrate her little victories and happy times. But what about a square to commemorate her detention notes for skipping school, or the time she pierced her own navel and it got infected, or the night the local police brought her home, reeking of peach-flavored wine cooler? Why not remember those times? They’re part of her history, too.

“You’re making a family heirloom,” the woman remarks.

Ha, I think, vindicated. That’s why I don’t need those reminders in the quilt. “It’s not going to be finished in time.”

The woman smiles, leans back against the picnic table. “In time for what?”

“Move-in day at the dorm.”

“I have a rule. If it’s not falling apart, it’s finished.” She is about my age, I surmise, yet she seems wiser, and I’m not sure why. Her posture is relaxed, and she appears to be in no hurry.

I tell her about the shop back home, how I’ll miss it when it’s gone, how it won’t be the same, buying my fabric somewhere else.

“Maybe someone will take over,” the woman suggests.

“I sure hope so. I’m not optimistic, though. Most of the women I know who’d be capable already have other jobs, or they’re retired, or too busy with their families. It’s a huge risk and a huge commitment.”

“I hear you,” the woman says. The dog has finished its business in the reeds, and she calls out to a little girl who is playing on the swing set. “Amanda, we’d better get going.”

The dark-haired child runs over on chubby legs. “Five more minutes,” she begs in a voice every woman within earshot recognizes.

“One more,” my companion says, and we both know it will stretch out to five.

“Your daughter’s adorable,” I tell her.

“Thanks, but she’s not my daughter.” The woman glances over at Molly, her fleeting look filled with insight. “Amanda’s my granddaughter.”

Oh, man. She’s a grandmother. I don’t want to be a grandmother. I’m not finished being a mother.

Yet when she finally reels in her dog and calls to the dark-haired little girl, and Amanda runs into her arms, there is a magical joy in their bond. It’s sweeter, somehow, than motherhood, probably because it’s simpler.

“Drive safely,” I tell them.

“You do the same,” she says, “and good luck with the quilt.”

Eleven

On the final leg of our journey, the landscape is a patchwork of forest, field, stream and village, stitched together at the seams by country roads and rock or whitewashed fences.