At the same moment as Karyn was straightening the ladder up against the side of her house, Biff was just walking across a parking lot off of Market Street, towards a business that had the words "Nana's Quilting Store" painted across the front window.
His eyes grew wide as the little bell hanging over the door jingled to announce his entrance. There were so many soft things here. Biff's jaw stayed hanging open as he passed through aisles full of bolts of fabric, and crafting supplies, and pots of paint and jars of glitter. There was a giant finished quilt that hung down from the ceiling, a mosaic image of a cabin in the woods, covered in winter snow. There was a soft yellow glow in the windows, and a warm gray spiral of smoke coming from the chimney. And looking up at it made Biff wrap his besweatered arms more tightly around himself. As though protecting himself from the cold in the image on the quilt.
Biff wasn't looking where he was going anymore, and felt a firm bump on his back as he took a step.
"Oh!" An older woman's voice cried in surprise as Biff turned to see the lady he'd bumped into. "Is there something you're looking for, dearie?"
"I'm sorry," Biff fumbled, stepping backwards and nearly knocking into a display of fabric swatches. "I got distracted by--" he stopped himself as he looked up again. "That is a beautiful house up there."
The woman smiled. "I helped make that quilt, alongside my mother and my grandmother when I was just about your age. My mother was born in that cottage, up in Vermont, just south of the Canadian border."
An unexpected feeling welled up inside of Biff right then. A vision of spools of thread and needles and sheets of fabric on a hardwood floor. A fireplace safely distant, but near enough for the warmth to radiate onto his face. A quilt, half-finished, lay across floorboards that had been vacated of all furniture so that the important work of quilting could be done.
And, in his mind's eye, Biff looked up to see a small group of women working alongside him. Stitching fabric, arranging panels. Speaking softly to one another. Smiling pleasantly at him.
"I want that," Biff murmured.
"Hmm?"
"I want to make something like that one day." Biff clarified, his eyes still locked on the image of the quilt, his mind still in his daydream. "With my family."
"Do you know how to sew?"
This brought Biff back, and he turned to the woman. "Not yet. But one day. I came in today because I want to learn crochet. I was told to find Maressa?"
The woman's smile was as warm as the light from the windows on the quilt. "Come with me."
