Dolly blanched. There had to be about a thousand triangles in the quilt—scraps left over from the ladies’ sewing projects of the last three decades, Dolly assumed—arranged in an eye-popping pattern of lights and darks that formed diagonal lines around solid muslin squares. And she was expected to sew around each triangle?

But the women, evidently of the opinion that Dolly was now prepared for a career in quilting, had already gone back to their own stitching. Dolly inwardly sighed, and decided she might just as well try.

“Dolly’s husband’s just as cute as can be, by the way,” Corinne said. “I met him at church. He reminds me of the Mickelson boys, you know? Blond-headed, handsome, like they were?”

“Mercy me,” Mrs. Fryt said, stitching. “Do we need another thing in this town to remind us of the Mickelson boys?”

“Who’re the Mickelson boys?” Dolly asked, wrestling with her needle. She had pushed it down through the three layers of the quilt, but she couldn’t get it to angle back up again properly. Not even once, let alone five times.

“They were neighbors of mine,” said Mrs. Fryt, jerking her head toward the window behind her.

Dolly looked out at the house she loved—the front and back porches, the bay windows upstairs and down. The missing shingles. “I saw that house and wondered who lived there,” she said. “It looks almost deserted. But—I think it’s the grandest house!”

“Oh, you bet!” Mrs. Fryt said. “The only house in town with its own hill to stand upon.”

“They were nice Lutherans,” said Thelma flatly. She had put down her needle and was touching the pearls at her neck. Dolly wondered what it would be like to go through life being so elegant.

“Oh, Thelma!” Corinne said, laughing. “You with your rose-colored glasses.”

“Well, they did go to our church for many years,” Thelma said, picking up her needle again. “And they did do a lot for this town.”

“It’s been four years since any of that family has so much as set foot in this town,” Mrs. Fryt said. “Or that house. Ed Wojtas was keeping it heated in the winter and mowing the lawn and whatnot. They kept the electricity and the water on, and every day he’d go in there, regular as clockwork, and flush the toilet upstairs and run a little water through the pipes so they wouldn’t freeze. But now, of course, he passed away in April, and I haven’t seen a light on in there since. They’ve got one of the Peterson boys mowing the lawn now. I see him early every Monday morning, out there clickety-clicking along, always in such a hurry. Heaven only knows what shape the inside of that house is in by now. I keep watching to see if someone will come back for it.”