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be finished, bound and hung.
    “This will be more interesting than the weaver,” Noah said as he lifted one end of a love seat and Gayle took the other. Together they moved it under the windows looking out over the patio.
    Gayle nudged her end of the seat into alignment with her knee, then stepped back to make sure it was centered. “Why?”
    “Weaving is monotonous.”
    “Meditative.”
    “Whatever. But I can draw with thread. Entire landscapes.”
    “If you draw landscapes with thread on the Touching Stars quilt, Helen Henry will take your head off. I’m sure the top will be marked, and the quilters will follow the lines.”
    Noah grinned. “You know how good I am at that.”
    Gayle’s middle son was trying to pretend that nothing in his life had changed, but she saw the shadows in his eyes. Having Eric living in the inn was going to be a big change for Noah. Although it wasn’t obvious to most people, of the three boys, Noah was the one who resented his father the most. Noah had appointed himself Gayle’s protector, and although she never criticized Eric in her son’s presence, Noah still blamed Eric for leaving. Noah was the child who understood most fully the work that Gayle did to keep her family afloat.
    At the same time, Gayle thought Noah was the son who had agonized the most after Eric’s brush with death. Had Eric died in Afghanistan, Noah would never have had the opportunity to work through his feelings for his father, something that would have haunted him the rest of his days. Deep inside, she thought Noah understood this, too.
    “What else do we need to do?” Noah asked.
    She wanted to brush a smudge of dust from his cheek, but she knew better than to baby him. At sixteen, Noah was no longer a boy, not quite a man. In the past year childhood chubbiness had turned to muscle, and the cheerful round face had hardened into lines and planes that hinted at adulthood. He was still funny and affectionate with everyone he loved, but there was a faraway look in Noah’s eyes these days.
    “I think we should set the easy chair in that corner—” she pointed “—and take the coffee table into the parlor. It can go in front of the couch by the door. That should give the quilters enough room to set up the frame.”
    “Want me to do it now?”
    She wanted to keep him with her longer. “First help me put your figurines inside the china cabinet, would you? It’s going to be crowded in here, and I don’t want anything to get knocked over and broken.”
    “Mom, some of this stuff could afford to be broken. You’ve kept every single carving, clay figure and sculpture I did since I was five. I’m not ever going to be famous enough that this stuff will be worth anything.”
    “It’s not about my retirement fund. I love every one of them.”
    He shook his head. “Not everything I do is great. You can see that, right? You have that much objectivity?”
    Now she laughed and gave in to the temptation to ruffle his dark hair, a thick, shiny mop that edged over his ears. “I am not objective about any of my boys. You’re all stars in your own way.”
    “You need to get a grip.”
    Gayle opened the china cupboard and began to remove items adorning the top so she could put them inside. A rough clay figure of a little boy in a baseball cap at bat. A carving of a collie. Another of a hunter lifting a rifle. Noah’s talent had been obvious right from the beginning.
    She kept her tone neutral. “How are you doing with all this, Noah? You’ve been on a real roller coaster with this stuff about your dad.”
    “I wish none of it had happened.”
    If she had brought up this subject so directly with Jared, he wouldn’t have been so forthcoming. Jared was a man’s man. He believed in actions, not words. Dillon was still learning to express his feelings and didn’t always understand himself or others. But Noah had been good at talking about the things that bothered him from the time he’d developed a