April shook her head. “I don’t think she was capable of love after the way Grandpa broke her heart. But knowing all that takes a load off my shoulders. How do all y’all feel?”

“I’ve been just like him,” Flynn whispered as he pushed back his chair and helped bring the food to the table. “But by damn, I don’t have to continue to be that way. I can and will get my life turned around. I owe it to all women, like Nanny Lucy’s friend, the older April, to make things right. I haven’t been a decent guy, but I intend to do my best to change that. I actually came here for just that reason.”

“Yes, you can, and I’ve got faith you will!” Nessa replied. “From what Nanny Lucy wrote, our grandfather didn’t want to change. Makes me wonder why he even married her to begin with, or if things would have been different if Nanny Lucy hadn’t made that vow about church.”

“Who knows? The past can’t be changed, but the future is another matter.” April smiled.

A surge of love flowed from Nessa when she realized that April’s eyes didn’t look nearly as haunted as they had before. “I was worried that all this would send you over the edge for sure, but it seems to have made you stronger.”

“I think it just might have.” April bowed her head. “I’ll say grace this morning. For the first time in my life, I truly feel like I have something to be grateful for.”

As usual, Flynn took his place between the two women and picked up his needle to start his section of the quilt. He would much rather be helping Jackson make some piece of furniture, or at the very least sanding one, but the truth was that he was getting more curious every day about what was in that hope chest. If Nanny Lucy left a diary lying about with practically her whole life story in it, then what would they find in the hope chest?

“I’m seeing more of a pattern here.” He pointed to a section they were working on that day. “The quilt actually starts back here at the beginning when we were babies. I bet the first squares came from blankets that she made for us when we were born. Then there’s a row or two from when we were toddlers. The first ones we actually recognized are right there”—he moved his finger back a few rows—“where we remembered the first-day-of-school things. Today I’m seeing a scrap from a shirt she made for me when I was about nine. I wanted to go to the beach so I could see the ocean, so she made me a Hawaiian shirt—at least that’s what I called it. You can see the palm trees and part of the parrot in this square.”