"Good afternoon, Nell Fitzgerald. That's a huge box you're getting, " the deliveryman said.

"It's from my grandmother," I told him as if he had been dying to know. "It's my wedding quilt."

Before the deliveryman had even left, I ripped open the box. At first all I saw was one large piece of fabric with an embroidered label: "Machine sewn with love by Grandma. Hand quilted by the Friday Night Quilt Club."

I pulled it out and flipped it over to the front. It was the most beautiful quilt I had ever seen: a lover's knot pattern, little strips of fabric sewn together to form interlocking diamonds. The background strips were in fabrics of soft whites and ivory, the others in subtle shades of tan and beige. It was as if the quilt were already a hundred years old-its quiet, seemingly faded colors whispering a tale of a long and happy love.

I cleared my fading comforter off the bed and spread the quilt over it. I carefully straightened and smoothed it, running my fingers over the patches and the tiny handmade stitches. My grandmother often would say that when several people work on a quilt, you could see the differences in their stitches. If you looked hard enough, she told me, you could count how many people contributed to a quilt. But as I stared, I could only see perfect stitches, one just like the next. It seemed impossible to me that five different women, the members of my grandmother's Friday Night Quilt Club, each could have worked on it.

My bed, a futon really, was only a double, so the quilt draped onto the floor, but it was beautiful enough to make even my crappy furniture look dressed up. I lay on it and closed my eyes, feeling the soft fabric with my fingers. I knew that the only thing that would make this more perfect would be the moment when my fiance, Ryan, and I made love under this quilt for the first time.

But that was eight hours ago. Before Ryan stopped by, before he looked guilty and scared and unsure. Before he told me what he had been waiting to say for, apparently, weeks. Before the life I'd planned turned to dust.