Besides the night out, Duke and Gage had also asked if she was taking a vacation in the fall, because they wanted to knock a couple more items off the bucket list. So she’d actually taken the red pen and marked a whole week off in October for their next adventure. They didn’t hint at what they’d planned, but she had big hopes.
She grabbed the handles on the big pink gift bag and climbed from her vehicle. Jack answered the door when she rang the bell, and she smiled when the first thing she heard was the sound of Rose Marie squalling.
“Hi, Emma! Come on in. Grace is expecting you. Pardon the noise.”
“Don’t apologize, Jack. That’s the sound of a healthy, hungry baby. I love it.”
Jack directed her into the living room, where Grace was seated in an upholstered chair, arranging Rose Marie so she could nurse. Emma giggled when the caterwauling ceased in midwail as Rose Marie’s meal began. Grace smiled in relief and beckoned Emma to come sit down.
Emma patted Rose Marie’s head gently before placing the gift within Grace’s reach and then sat nearby. Grace draped a receiving blanket over three-week-old Rose Marie and her shoulder and peeked inside the gift bag. She gasped and pulled the baby quilt from the bag and said, “Did you make this?”
Emma snickered and said, “Grace, I couldn’t quilt to save my life. I found it at that new baby and children’s store in Divine.”
Grace laughed. “Aren’t you worried Jane is going to be pissed off if she finds out you bought a blanket instead of making one? Or you could have had ‘the quilters guild’ make you one.”
The last time she’d encountered one of the members of that group in the grocery store, Tabitha had asked Emma if she’d decided against hiring that “bigamist Warner woman” as an RN at her clinic. Emma had bitten her tongue and politely told her that Maya Warner had graciously agreed to join her staff even though she no longer needed to.
Emma snickered. “I think Jane’s just about given up on me joining her little group. I can sew on a button. That doesn’t mean I want to quilt. Bunch of frumpy gossips.”
Grace burst into giggles, and Emma joined her. Her friendship with Jane had been strained lately. Because she was spending her weekends and even some of her weekday evenings in Duke and Gage’s company, she didn’t get to see as much of Jane as she used to.
Emma had finally nixed joining the quilters group altogether. That was time on her evenings off she couldn’t get back, and spending it with gossips wasn’t her cup of tea. Besides that, she loved Maya and wasn’t about to support an organization that was so unfriendly to other people in the community. She could only imagine how Jane would react when she got word that Emma was dating two men.
Emma did a double take when she noticed a tiny pair of sandals on the table beside Grace. “Are those what I think they are?”
Grace chuckled and held them out to Emma to inspect. Small enough to fit in the palm of her hand were a pair of teeny-tiny Birkenstock sandals. Grace said, “My friend Nell Flanders from Colorado sent those for the baby. She’s concerned about Rose Marie’s environmental footprint and said that they were biodegradable.”
“Wait. Is Nell the one who wanted you to ask me for…”
Grace bit her lip. “Rose Marie’s placenta? Yes. She promised me that if I buried it at the base of one of the oak trees in the backyard it would grow taller. She said that might offset Rose Marie’s methane gas output.”
Emma blinked a couple of times. “Her farts?”
“She asked us during a video chat. You should have seen the guy’s faces. It’s hard to look someone that sincere in the eye and lie, but they did it. If you ever meet Nell, just remember that I told her you helped bury it…at midnight on a full moon, okay?”
“You did not tell her that!”
Grace nodded with all sincerity. “Be glad I didn’t promise her that we would do a dance around the tree afterward. The guys adamantly but lovingly refused that request. Can you imagine those guys dancing around a tree?” Grace burst out laughing and Emma joined her, finally wiping tears of mirth from her cheeks.
They spent time talking about the baby and getting caught up on how things were progressing with Duke and Gage. Grace marveled that the three of them had gone skydiving together.
“Emma, I swear I never saw that one coming. You, with Duke and Gage. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before.”
Emma smiled and replied, “We do have a lot of similar interests. I need to ask for your help with something. Your hands are full, I know, but if you could at least point me in the right direction…”