Father Emmanuel
In the middle of the morning the following Monday, Jeb stepped into the doorway of Father Emmanuel’s office at the church. Emmanuel looked up at him. “How’d we do?”
Jeb held out the manila envelope that contained the consignment sales proceeds. “We had a good week.”
“Glad to hear it.” As Emmanuel took the envelope, he noticed Jeb had one of Juliette’s signature bluebonnet blankets draped over his arm.
He gestured to the quilt. “What’re you doing with that?”
“It was returned to the store. It got torn and whoever bought it wants it repaired. I’m going to take it to Juliette and see if she can fix it.”
A situation like this had never happened before. He waved the man closer. “Let me take a look.”
Jeb laid the quilt on the desk and pulled back a corner to reveal one of the bluebonnet squares. The fabric looked like it had been shredded by a pack of rabid wolves. He looked back up at Jeb. “Any idea what happened here?”
“The salesclerk said it got caught in a bedspring.”
Could a bedspring really cause this much damage? He supposed it was possible. He remembered being pinched by a rusty old bedspring once when he was young. It hurt like hell and left a purple bruise on the back of his thigh that didn’t go away for weeks. He looked up at Jeb. “What did you say we’d charge for the repair?” If fixing this blanket would take up time Juliette could otherwise be spending to make a new quilt, it had better be worth it.
“Fifty dollars,” Jeb said.
Emmanuel mentally calculated. “Sounds fair.” Especially since this blanket didn’t appear to be Juliette’s best work. The stitching along the trim looked uneven, the curved, quilted pattern off a bit.
As he leaned in to take a closer look at the odd stitching, Jeb said, “The fish aren’t biting again today.”
Emmanuel looked back up. “How many fish we got in the freezer?” he asked. “Enough for Friday’s fish fry?” The last thing he needed was for the loaves-and-fishes event to be a bust. The mood around the compound had been somber and subdued since news of the death of Juliette’s baby had spread. These people needed a pick-me-up.
“We’re getting there,” Jeb said. “Elijah and Joshua have been out at the lake every day since they got their new fishing licenses, but there’s been a couple days when they came back empty-handed. I saw them on my way over here. They said the fish were nowhere to be found this morning.”
Emmanuel felt his ire rise. Those two men were his least productive in the woodshop and forge. That’s why he’d assigned them to fishing in the first place. Now it turned out they weren’t much good at catching fish, either. He was barely breaking even on those two, if that. They’d better get on the stick and learn to carry their own weight or he might have to start making some alternative plans for the two of them.
“Thanks, Jebediah,” Emmanuel said, folding the corner of the fabric back over as he dismissed the man. He pushed the blanket toward him across his desk. “Don’t forget to take this quilt with you.”