A Single Thread (Cobbled Court) by Marie Bostwick Page A

donating their time to make the blocks, I want to give something too.”
    Charlie was quiet for a moment, thinking. “Evelyn, are you sure? You said your books aren’t looking good. This will be a lot of work. Seems a shame not to see a little profit for your efforts.”
    I laughed. “I appreciate your optimism, Charlie, but I don’t know if anyone will even show up yet. Besides, a couple of dollars tacked onto each kit isn’t going to stave off bankruptcy. If I could see twenty women in my shop all working together on a quilt that might be even a tiny part of helping someone else, that’s profit enough for me. And think of it this way: if Cobbled Court doesn’t last out the year, at least I’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that while it was open, I was able to do a little good.”
    “You’re a good woman, Evelyn. Do you know that?”
    I was about to make a joke, tell him to save the blarney for his customers, when my front doorbell rang to signal the arrival of a customer.
    “Hey, Charlie. I’ve got to run. See you at the Bean tomorrow?”
    “Bright and early,” he confirmed. “You’ll recognize me. I’ll be the one that’s on time.”
    “Very funny.” I smiled as I hung up the phone and greeted my customer. In fact, I smiled for the rest of the afternoon, excited about my plans for the event and grateful to have found a friend as good as Charlie in such a short time.
    Before the day was over, I had even more reason to be grateful for that friendship. Near closing time, the shop bell rang again, this time to announce the arrival of a reporter from the New Bern Herald who wanted to do a story about me, the shop, and the Quilt Pink event.
    “You do?” I asked. “Really?”
    “Yeah. Somebody called the news desk and told him about your event. My editor thought it was a good human-interest story for the weekend section, so here I am.”
    The reporter reached into his black shoulder bag, pulled out a camera that he hung around his neck by a strap, then took out a lined notepad and laid it on the checkout counter. He looked around the shop, squinting, and scratched his chin.
    “Let’s try a couple of shots in here first. Over there, by those bolts of fabric with that big green quilt behind. Then we can go outside and get a couple of you standing in front of the shop while we’ve still got enough light. We can do the interview after.” He fiddled with the camera lens and then looked up expectantly.
    “Ready?”
    He took about a dozen photographs, but the shot that appeared on the front page of the Living section showed me standing in front of the red front door, under the black and gold Cobbled Court Quilts sign. Seeing the picture the following Sunday, I was reminded that it had been a long time since I’d darkened the door of a gym, but that picture did the trick.
    When I went to church that day (sitting in the last pew as I always did so I could slip out quickly during the recessional hymn and jog across the Green in time to open the shop at noon), I was waylaid by four women who wanted to tell me their, or their sister’s, or friend’s breast-cancer story and ask how they could sign up for the Quilt Pink event.
    I was touched by their willingness to open up to me and ignored the time. Opening up the shop fifteen minutes late, I saw a green light blinking on my answering machine. There were twelve messages from women wanting more information about Quilt Pink. And the calls just kept coming in. Not only that, my walk-in traffic doubled. And with every call and every new customer, there came a story—a memory, or loss, or victory they were compelled to share with someone else. The most passionate ones were the survivors, those who had beaten the disease and were determined to do everything they could to make sure other women didn’t have to go through what they had.
    They were the reason I was sitting in Dr. Thayer’s waiting room, the ones who, once they’d told their stories, immediately