The woman in the denim jacket introduced herself as Colleen Marsh, the senior buyer for a national craft retailer, and she held one of the dried flower wreaths in both hands the way one holds a baby bird, turning it to see the stitching on the back. It was a ring of lavender and strawflower and wheat, tied with a bit of blue ribbon. “Mrs. Lindsey,” she said gently, “our company purchased forty four of your wreath designs last week for three million, four hundred thousand dollars. This is design number twelve. Why is it four dollars?”
Brittany sprang up from behind the folding table. My daughter in law is thirty six, a slender woman with a ponytail and a smile as quick as a camera flash, and she had a cash apron tied around her waist full of ones. “Oh, there must be some mix up,” she said brightly. “These are just crafts from the garage. Delia has too much stuff. We are helping.” “Helping,” said Travis from the lawn chair. My husband is seventy six, a long, slow, weathered farmer, and he rose to his feet and looked at the table. “Brittany. Where are the blankets?”
The blankets were gone. I had known it for two days, ever since I went to the cedar chest in the spare room and found it light. I took from my pocket the slip of paper from the neighbor who had told me. “Lot seventy two,” I read. “Eleven Pendleton blankets. Wool. Some from the 1950s. Five thousand, two hundred dollars. Sold to a dealer from Spokane.” I looked at Brittany. “Those were the wedding blankets of my mother. And the ones my mother in law wove the pattern for. They were not on the table. They were in a cedar chest in a locked room.”
A dried flower wreath hung on a yard sale table and gave one wreath maker the Saturday afternoon to bring her daughter in law back to the craft.
The smile of Brittany did not go. That was what frightened me. It stayed on her face for a long, strange moment, like a coat on a hook, and then it simply fell. “Delia, I had a business,” she said. “An online shop. Dried flowers. I took out a loan to buy a printer, and the printer broke, and then the loan, and then the loan on the loan.” She started to laugh, and the laugh turned into something else. “I did not mean to take the blankets. They were there. I thought, she has so many.”
I sat down on the edge of the porch. Colleen Marsh set the wreath down on the table. She had the good grace to step back several paces and study a rack of coat hangers, which she pretended to find fascinating. “Brittany,” I said, “I could not say it better than you did. You have a business. A good one, I think. You make beautiful things.” I picked up a wreath from the table. “This one is the best in the pile. You tied the ribbon. I saw the knot. It is not mine.”
She stared. “That one is mine?” “Yes. I know my knots.” I turned it over. “You have been making these with me for four years. You did not know you were learning.” Brittany covered her mouth. Travis, who does not often cry, took off his hat and held it against his chest. “Delia,” he said gruffly, “tell her what you told me last night.” I nodded. “Brittany,” I said, “the company wants to hire someone to design a new line. They asked me if I knew anyone with a good eye. I said I did.”
She could not speak. I went on. “There are conditions. The blankets come back, every one, even if you have to drive to Spokane with a check. The money you took, you will repay out of your pay in the first year. Not as a punishment. As a floor.” I took her hand. “And the shop, the loans, all of it. You will sit down with Travis and me and put it on the table. All of it, the printer, the loan on the loan. We will go through it together.”
She wept openly then, on the lawn, among the folding tables, her ponytail coming loose. I held her. Travis stood nearby with his hat on his chest, not knowing what to do with his hands, and finally picked up one of the wreaths from the table and hung it on a post with great care, as if it were a medal. The neighbors had drifted away. The afternoon wind came down the valley and stirred the straw flowers, and the whole yard smelled of lavender and dust.
They found the dealer in Spokane the next Tuesday. He was a decent man, and when he understood, he sold the blankets back at the price he had paid, without a word of complaint, and threw in a cup of coffee. Travis drove. Brittany sat in the back seat with the blankets in her arms the whole way home, folded, like a sleeping child. She paid the debt in sixteen months. She sat down with us in the evenings, with the ledger, and I watched her face change as she began to see the shape of it, and to believe she could climb out.
She works for the company now, in the design office in Seattle, three days a week, and her first line of wreaths will be in the stores by next spring. They are lavender and strawflower, wheat and blue ribbon, with a tiny tag on the back. It reads, Designed by Brittany Lindsey, Walla Walla, learned from Delia. Travis cut the tag out of the box and put it in his wallet. He shows it to everyone. At supper he reads it again, out loud, slowly, like a man reading scripture, and every time he gets to the last word he has to stop and clear his throat.
