“Me either.” Flynn frowned. “Looking back, I don’t think she said much about herself to anyone.”

April moved from one side of the frame to another. “The only thing she ever told me was the story about the tornado.”

“I’m familiar with that one, but my dad told me, not Nanny Lucy. Sometimes when he was between women, he would share things that happened when he was a kid. That wasn’t often, and he had to be in a bit of a melancholy mood, but I liked it when he talked to me about this place,” Flynn answered.

Together they worked until the quilt was folded neatly. Nessa carried it into the house like what it was—a priceless piece of their history.

“That’s exactly what it is,” she muttered.

“What was that?” Flynn asked.

“This thing is worth more than whatever is in that hope chest,” she said.

“Yes!” Flynn and April said in unison again.

When they were inside the house, April stood back and stared at the quilt on the wall. “And Nanny Lucy got even more strict and twice as mean after we were all sixteen. I wonder if that’s because that was when my mother got pregnant, but that picture she had put on the quilt back says that she did have good memories of us up until then. I think it might make her happy if we hung the quilt we just finished on the wall behind the sofa. We could put the one that’s up there in the hope chest, and we could still abide by the rule that the first one married gets the chest and this quilt.”

Nessa nodded, but had misgivings. “But that wasn’t in the will. That wouldn’t be what she wanted, so we shouldn’t do it.”

Flynn kept walking straight to the kitchen. “Maybe she would be proud that we wanted to hang all those memories up to enjoy. Besides, according to her diary, she never got what she wanted in life anyway, so why start now?”

Nessa plopped down on the other end of the sofa. “That sounds a little harsh.”

“Not to me,” April said. “And truthfully, I think she’d be honored if we hung it up. It wouldn’t be disrespecting her wishes but showing her that we’ve accepted our past and are moving on to the future. We could even make a pact right now that it would always hang there instead of going to the one who gets married first.”

A wide smile covered Nessa’s face. “Maybe she wouldn’t mind if we did it with a good heart, and not out of vengeance. I’ll sew loops in the top of it so we can hang it up, and then I’ll get that one”—she pointed to the quilt on the wall—“washed and ready to put in the hope chest for the one of us that marries first.”