“Why not start in three of the corners so we’re not all crammed up so close to each other?” Flynn asked. “With your temper, I sure wouldn’t want to accidentally stick you with a needle.”

“If you do that, then when you get to the middle, you’ll have wrinkles and bumps. You start on one side, then if there’s excess, it works itself out on the other side,” April explained. “Don’t look at me like that, Nessa. I know how to do the job. I just don’t like it, and neither did my mother.”

“How do you know what Rachel liked?” Flynn asked. “You were only four days old when she died. You can’t possibly remember anything about her.”

“No, I don’t. What I do know is that Mama was too wild to ever learn to do something profitable like quilting. But I never heard anything about what she did right, so I guess you’re right. I don’t know a lot about her, other than that I’m tall and blonde like she was, and I’m a total disappointment just like she was, too,” April answered.

Nessa wondered if the fact that Rachel had slept in the bedroom back before April had was the reason April didn’t want to go in there. Did she truly believe that the house had powers and a mind of its own to cause her pain and misery? And if she did, then why would she ever come back to Blossom?

“Must be that O’Riley curse we were talking about earlier,” Nessa said. “I didn’t get praise when I did something right, but I sure got yelled at when I did something wrong.”

“The curse presents in different ways. I wonder if Nanny Lucy’s ups and downs were part of the thing. Maybe that’s what got it all started to begin with.” Flynn sat down, picked up a spool of white thread from the edge of the quilt, and threaded a needle. “It’s nine thirty. I’m not putting a single stitch in after the clock hits twelve.”

“Me either.” April had already gotten her needle ready and had begun to stitch her area.

“After we eat lunch, I’m diving into the quilting cabinets in the garage.” Nessa hummed an old country tune as she stitched.

“Is that a hymn?” Flynn asked.

“Nope,” April answered for her cousin. “That’s Miranda Lambert’s song ‘The House That Built Me.’ In its own way, maybe this isn’t the house that built us. Maybe it’s what broke us all in some way because we are the kids that were produced from the kids that grew up here.”