Margaret squeezes her husband’s arm. “Who knew he’d be a doctor instead? And a foot doctor at that?”
“He always did like shoes,” James says, and Margaret smiles. It is their old joke. She hopes their jokes are the last thing to go.
II.
You’re going modern on me!” Julie says the next morning as she looks at the pictures Margaret has printed out from the Internet. “Most of the quilters who come in wanting to make a modern quilt are under forty.”
Margaret raises an eyebrow. “And you’re saying I’m not?”
“Sorry, it’s just that everyone I know under forty has at least three visible tattoos, and I don’t see any ink on you.”
“And you never will,” Margaret says, following Julie toward a wall of solids. “Can you imagine, at my age?”
“What, thirty-nine?”
“Exactly.”
Margaret has never used ma
