He Priced Me At A Penny So I Married Another Chapter 18
The next time Derek appeared was several months after I left Philadelphia.
That afternoon, Carol was helping out at the community center, and I had gone to pick her up. Derek was standing by a bench outside the activity room with a roll of cotton cloth in his arms.
He had lost a lot of weight, and his hair was a little disheveled. The second he saw me, he straightened up.
“Lydia, just give me a few minutes. I’ll leave as soon as I’m done.”
He spread open the cloth. Inside was a quilt corner, re-embroidered from an old photograph.
My name was there, along with the crooked letters my mother had sewn, all imitated as closely as possible.
“I found someone who restores old quilts. I took out stitches and practiced for a long time. Just look at it first and see if maybe—”
I stepped back a little and hugged the scarf I’d brought for Carol tighter.
He immediately folded the cloth back up.
“I know this can’t replace what your mother sewed. I just thought… at the very least, it should be mended.”
Inside the activity room, someone had started singing an old song. The speaker crackled with static.
I looked at the newly embroidered name and remembered the corner of the quilt splitting open in the park.
That pain was still there, but it no longer dragged me back into that afternoon.
“It’s already mended. I did it myself.”
Derek’s fingers stilled on the cotton cloth, then slowly tightened.