Minka woke with a start. Her thoughts wound through her memory gathering and piecing a distant recollection back together. Spiked with a heavy dose of adrenaline, she slipped from her bed clad in a calculated plan, wrapped in silent ceremony. Stealth footsteps took her to the cedar chest at the foot of her bed. Nimble fingers withdrew the quilt buried at the bottom. She clutched the forgotten gift to her chest.

Barefoot on the balcony, water thundered and crashed against rocks and boulders from Murder River, raging forty feet below. Minka drew the quilt tight against her quivering frame for an instant, then draped it over the wrought iron rail. With the stars and moon her only witnesses she released a silent prayer from her lips. Would the quilt be seen and recognized for what it signified? She touched the fresh bruise on her face and swallowed back the pain.

The waters below echoed their cold, harsh solution. The sting of tears wet her empty, emotionless shell. How far back did she have to travel to find happiness, peace, freedom? Five years, three months, and 6 days. Minka had walked down the church isle with love and a promise on her lips to stay together until death parted them. A new reality emerged on her wedding night. The first permanent scar branded on her upper arm had shattered her heart into sharp shards pierced with a double edge of fear. Duty and faith. Her fingers gripped the rail. The thrashing water below hypnotized her for a moment, and stuffed her desperate cry for help into a deeper, darker, frozen hole, and shoved it into an unknown spot in her soul. Maybe this time she should plummet to her death and end her suffering.

She fought and blinked back fresh tears. A strangled moan slipped through her lips. The toll would extinguish more than her own life. How soon would Ray guess her secret. It almost slipped out tonight when he brushed his rough cheek against hers and took a kiss. Inside, a struggle ensued, outside, Minka mimicked his affection until his hands dug into her tender flesh and he held her too long in his possessive arms. She stiffened, like a corpse drained of blood, affirmation her secret would be safe one more night.

Her cold fingers stroked the bright yellow Lone Star quilt, a wedding gift from her lifetime neighbor. Ray thought the pattern hideous and demanded it never see the light of day again. Would Minka’s neighbor see the quilt as a desperate signal for help? Maybe too many years had passed, or her neighbor’s memory now failed her in her old age.

For the second time tonight Minka’s memory thumbed through its chapters and settled on a page when she was a little girl and her neighbor told her a fantastic story. “This lone star quilt saved my great grandmother’s life. The womenfolk on the prairie pledged a secret pact with one another. A secret they never even told their husbands. They each made a bright yellow lone star quilt. If an Indian or white man broke into their cabin and took advantage of them, they threw the quilt on their clothesline outside, to signal a desperate cry for help. My great grandmother would have bled to death if her neighbor hadn’t come running and tended to her wounds, when she saw her lone star quilt flapping in the wind.”

Though Minka kept her promise and told no one. Over the years she’d forgotten about the tale her talkative neighbor had spat. Now, she hoped the story was true.

Wood creaked behind her. Minka turned and stared into Ray’s murderous etched features, like he’d read her hidden thoughts and the quilt’s meaning.

She stepped back. Her body pressed against the rail. His steel strength fingers bent around her neck. A gasp carried by a frantic plea withered on her lips and faded into silence.

His hold tightened. Her head snapped back. The stars above began to spin out of orbit. Minka clutched at the quilt forcing an extra ounce of strength from the fibers. Something sharp and solid pierced her fingertip. In one quick motion she plucked the weapon from the quilt and jabbed the long quilting pin into his face.

His guttural roar stabbed the night air with a violent frost-bitten howl that drowned the wild thrashing of Murder River. One hand followed the source of pain, the other dropped to the quilt.

Minka yanked the quilt from the rail.

Ray stumbled. His thick body pitched forward. The rusty base screws broke into an eerie screech of freedom from the rail. Ray plunged to a murderous death. His fierce scream of horror echoed after him.

Weak and shaken, Minka gathered the life saving quilt around her. Now, she could apply a sturdy glue and replace the broken pieces of her life and form a brighter picture for her future. This time, she would be more punctilious, to the smallest particulars, about the rules she laid down for herself. She would walk into tomorrow framed in determination, and woven with a new love, a new hope, a new focal point . . . for herself and the baby she carried.