Several minutes later Billy Lee said, "When we get the doors done, I've got a surprise for you"

At noon everyone took a break, and Billy Lee and I stood our bare doors against the tree to dry. They looked pitiful, but he assured me they'd come to life with the stain we'd put on after lunch. We had sandwiches in the kitchen. Ham and cheese on rye bread with mayonnaise, Fritos, icy sweet tea, and the last of the cheesecake for dessert.

I pressed my fingers to the plate to gather up every last graham-cracker crumb. "If life was truly fair, cheesecake wouldn't have a fat gram or a calorie."

"Why do you worry about such things? You're perfect the way you are"

Well, knock me down with a sneeze, and beat me to death with a feather. Me, perfect? Was Billy Lee making a joke? I was thirty pounds overweight and looking forty in the eye.

"Thank you, but you are legally blind," I joked.

"We've had this conversation before. I can see perfectly. Evidently better than you can, because you're always putting yourself down. You are a wonderful person and a beautiful woman, Trudy"

I'm sure even my scalp was red from the full body blush. I couldn't remember the last time anyone had paid me a compliment. He would never know how much I'd treasure him from that moment forth.

He wiped down the cabinet top and hung the dishcloth on the edge of the drain board. "I promised you a surprise."

"I believe you did." I'd wondered about the surprise all morning and come up with dozens of ideas.

He led the way into the living room, back down the short hallway, and slung open the door into a storage room. He pulled a light cord and lit up the room, and I saw rows and rows of folded quilts arranged neatly on shelves-at least fifty, and the whole room smelled of dryer sheets instead of mothballs. I squealed and grabbed him in a bear hug. When I stepped back, he was grinning, and his ears were red.

"They won't fall apart if you touch them," he said.

"Promise?"

"I promise. Gert pulled one out of here to show me once. Said her mother made it. We were talking about birdhouses, and she remembered the quilts."

I was so tickled, I wanted to take them all to the living room. "It's a gold mine."

"So it's a good surprise. You aren't disappointed."

"I could kiss you"

His eyes lit up. "Then I guess you really are tickled with them"

I settled on one and carried it to the living room, where I laid it out over the sofa. I sat in a rocking chair, afraid to blink. He brought another rocker across the floor and sat beside me. Sitting there beside my friend, gazing at a fan quilt with black hand-embroidered edging, I figured out a big life lesson. I had two choices. I could be bitter, or I could get on with life. Drew could drop dead or marry Charity tomorrow. Crystal could grow up or stick her head in the sand for twenty years. Those were their decisions. Mine had been made. I had a whole closetful of gorgeous quilts, two doors out under the shade tree, and a friend to share it all with. I wasn't going to be bitter.

"You've got your stash of quilts without going to the antiques stores, and they've got a history. What do you think of that?" he finally asked.

"Unworthy," I said.

He frowned. "What?"

"This morning I was wallowing around in a whining pity pool, feeling sorry for myself, and now I realize that I'm blessed, not cursed"

A brilliant smile replaced the frown. "I told you."

"That I'm not cursed?" I asked.

"That you are wise. You recognize that you are blessed. That makes you wise."

"It makes me a fool for wasting a single minute wading around in a pity pool."

"A fool keeps wading. A wise person gets out of it. You got out of it, Trudy," he said.

"Okay, point taken. Now, which one will I put on my bed?"

He shook his head. "That could take hours and hours to decide."

"I need a couple more of those shelf things to set in corners. These are not going to stay hidden away. I'm going to display every one of them in this house when it's finished. Quilts will be the new theme of my house. The past meets the future. And thank you, Billy Lee, for this wonderful surprise. I seem to be saying that more and more"

It was the first time I noticed that his smile was crooked, and it made him look a little bit like Harrison Ford.

"I've always been your friend, Trudy. We just took different paths that led us away from each other for a few years."

"Well, I'm glad we got back onto the right path."

"Me too," he said softly.

Together we folded the quilt back up, put it away, and headed upstairs to take paint off the woodwork on the landing. I was beginning to love my new life and all its surprises. Betsy and Marty didn't have a clue what they were missing.

That afternoon Alford finished sanding the floors in the two bedrooms and the stairs. He left with a promise to come back when we were ready for the floors to be varnished. Workmen were in the attic putting ductwork into the upstairs rooms and down in the basement to vent air to the first floor. I hadn't built up the courage to venture into the attic or the basement.

Molly and Joe, my great-grandparents, had moved into the house right after they married. Her father had passed on, and her mother gave them the place with the stipulation that she could live there until her death. So my great-great-grandmother Elizabeth lived there with Molly and Joe until she died. They raised a family, and all those people with all their possessions over all that time, plus all those junk sales Gert had frequented-it all gave me the willies. Angels would hide in the back corner of Hades to keep from wading through the attic and the basement of this house. And I was no angel.

I was managing without Drew, and some days a whole hour or two passed when I didn't think about my former perfect shell of a life. Poor Trudy's big bubble butt was not pointed skyward anymore. I was existing quite well in my new world, working on a project that would net me a lovely home someday. I had Billy Lee right next door-my friend who could fight with me and still enjoy sitting and looking at a single quilt for half an hour. That night after a hard afternoon of work, I fell asleep with a smile on my face. Life was good when I counted my blessings.

Heavy knocking on the front door awoke me. I sat up so fast, it made me dizzy. A quick look at my new digital clock said it was eight thirty. Billy Lee and I had agreed to take the weekend off. So what was he doing waking me up on the only day of the week I could sleep in?

I grabbed a ratty old robe of Gert's that had lost its buttons years before from the end of the bed, wrapped one side over the other, and plodded downstairs in my bare feet. Billy Lee had been there the day Gert's ancient alarm clock had startled me awake; evidently he didn't realize I'd have no qualms about taking the hammer to his head for the same thing. I unlocked the door and swung it open with a speech already on my mind that would scorch the hair out of Lucifer's ears.

It wasn't Billy Lee at all.

It was my daughter, Crystal.

"What are you doing here so early?" I asked bluntly.

"Good morning to you too," she said sarcastically.

"Come in. I'll put on a pot of coffee"

She followed me into the kitchen, where she pulled out a chair and slumped down into it, propping her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands and looking at me with disgust. "You look horrid."