The New Year's Quilt (Elm Creek Quilts Novels) Page 14

  Andrew scowled, for he had good reason to dislike Harold. He had been outraged to learn that Claudia had married him. “Sometimes it’s right to object to a marriage.”

  “Your son and daughter think this is one of those times.”

  “They’re wrong.”

  “I know that, dear. You’re preaching to the choir.”

  Andrew fell silent, lost in thought, and Sylvia returned her attention to the New Year’s Reflections quilt. Even if Andrew couldn’t detect a trend, Sylvia could, and she couldn’t ignore it. It seemed that nearly all married couples of her acquaintance had encountered some disapproval of their marriage, and sometimes Sylvia herself had been the source. She would never change her mind regarding Harold Midden’s unsuitability, but in hindsight, she wished she had been more generous to Agnes and Richard and to Elizabeth and Henry. She could not help wondering if her resolute lack of acceptance then had come around to haunt her now.

  She might have believed it, except for one thing. Out of all the couples she had known throughout her life, one had been blessed with a marriage welcomed with unabated joy on both sides of the family.

  The fortunate couple had been Sylvia herself and her first husband, James.

  They had met at the State Fair when Sylvia was sixteen and James eighteen. Although James’s father was her father’s business rival, the men shared a mutual respect and approved when James began courting Sylvia. When they married and James came to Elm Creek Manor to live, as Sylvia had planned since childhood, Mr. Compson celebrated their happiness even though it meant that his son had joined the family business of his chief competitor. The Compson family never failed to treat Sylvia as a beloved daughter and sister, and the Bergstroms extended the same love and acceptance to James.

  The first years of their marriage were as blissful as any young couple could have hoped for, the only unfulfilled promise the absence of children. But they had plenty of time, they told each other, years and years in which the blessing of a baby might be granted to them.

  Then the war came. Richard and Andrew, whom in those days Sylvia thought of only as her brother’s friend, left school and enlisted. In hopes of looking after them, James promptly enlisted, as did Harold, Claudia’s longtime suitor, perhaps bowing to pressure from his fiancée. Within weeks of the men’s deployment to the South Pacific, Sylvia learned that she was pregnant.

  Sylvia, Claudia, and Agnes waited out the lonely, anxious months together at Elm Creek Manor. Sylvia and her father, who had all but retired from Bergstrom Thoroughbreds after teaching James all he knew, held together the family business as best they could. Winter came, and although it was difficult with their loved ones facing unimaginable dangers so far away, those left behind managed to find joy and hope in the Christmas season and faced the New Year with resolve. Nineteen forty-five would be the year the war ended and the boys came home, they told one another as they toasted the New Year, but their voices were wistful. Nineteen forty-five was the year Sylvia’s child would be born and Claudia would marry. Their only resolutions were to keep up their courage, to pray for peace, to make any sacrifice they could to speed the end of the brutal war.

  But 1945 saw the destruction of all their hopes. A few months after Christmas, James died attempting to save Richard’s life after a horrific attack on a beach in the South Pacific. The shock of the news sent Sylvia into premature labor. Her daughter succumbed after struggling for life for three days. Unable to bear the shock of so much loss, her father collapsed from a stroke.

  Sylvia remembered little of those dark days. Devastated by grief, she remembered lying in a hospital bed, holding her baby’s small, still body and weeping. She recalled begging the doctors to release her so she might attend her father’s funeral. She remembered calling out for James and when he did not come, screaming at Agnes until her sister-in-law wept.

  Eventually Sylvia was released from the hospital. At first, the numbness of shock protected her, but all too soon it receded, to be replaced by the most unbearable pain. Her beloved James was gone, and she still did not know how he had died. Her daughter was gone. She would never hold her again. Her darling little brother was gone. Her father was gone. The litany repeated itself relentlessly in her mind until she believed she would go mad.

  The war ended. Andrew went home to family in Philadelphia, while Harold returned to Elm Creek Manor thinner, more anxious, and aged beyond the months he had spent in the service. As if to cast off the grief and sorrow shrouding the home, Claudia threw herself into their wedding plans. As her maid of honor, Sylvia was expected to help, but although she wanted to please her sister, she often forgot the tasks Claudia assigned to her. Sylvia’s heart was not in the celebration. She had lost her heart when she lost James and her daughter.

  A few weeks before the wedding, Andrew paid an unexpected visit on his way from Philadelphia to a new job in Detroit. Sylvia was glad to see him. Like Harold, Andrew had changed. He walked with a limp and sat stiffly in his chair as if maintaining army regulations. He was kind and compassionate to the grieving women, but he coldly shunned Harold, who seemed all too willing to avoid Andrew in turn. Though Sylvia would have thought the men unified by wartime experiences, perhaps, she decided, seeing each other dredged up unbearable memories.

  It fell to Andrew to tell Sylvia how her brother and husband had died, although he warned her she would find no comfort in the truth. Haltingly, every word paining him, he described the terrible scene he had witnessed from a bluff overlooking the beach, how Richard had come under friendly fire, how James had raced to his rescue, how he would have succeeded with the help of one more man, how Harold had hidden himself rather than risk his own life.

  Andrew begged for her forgiveness. He had run straight down the bluff to the beach where his friends lay dying, knowing that he would never make it in time. Sylvia held him as he wept, the heart she thought she had lost hardening to cold stone within her. She told Andrew she forgave him for his sake, but there was nothing to forgive. The blame was not his. Andrew had tried to save her brother and husband. He had risked his own life despite knowing that he would likely fail. Harold had not even tried.

  Andrew left Elm Creek Manor the next morning, and Sylvia brooded over the burden of Harold’s secret. As the days passed and the plans for the wedding progressed, Sylvia eventually realized that she could not possibly allow her sister to marry Harold unaware of his role in James’s and Richard’s deaths. But to Sylvia’s astonishment, Claudia accused Sylvia of lying out of jealous spite and insisted that the wedding would go on. Sylvia left Elm Creek Manor that day, unable to bear the sight of the man who had allowed her husband and brother to die, unable to live with a sister who embraced a lie.

  Into two suitcases she packed all she could carry—photographs, letters from Richard and James, the sewing basket she had received for Christmas the year before her mother died. Everything else she left behind—beloved childhood treasures, favorite books, unfinished quilts. Everything except memories and grief.

  She left the manor not knowing where she would go. She walked miles to the bus station in Waterford, where she purchased a ticket to Harrisburg. She spent the night at Aunt Millie and Uncle George’s hotel, conscious of their surprise at her unexpected appearance and their concern for her fragile state. She burned with rage and grief, but she told them nothing of Andrew’s devastating account of Harold’s betrayal of the Bergstrom family, the family he did not deserve to join.

  Mercifully, her aunt and uncle were satisfied with her explanation that she needed time away from the manor, and they did not inquire too insistently about her itinerary. Instead they shared recent letters from Elizabeth, cheerful accounts of Henry and the children and Triumph Ranch. The bright sunshine and warm breezes of southern California seemed impossible in a world without Richard and James and her daughter and father.

  As she drifted off to sleep that night, Sylvia considered taking a train west as Elizabeth had done so many years before. Her cousin would take her in.
Sylvia could work herself into exhaustion on the ranch and drop off to a dreamless sleep every night. Love for her young niece and nephews could fill the void in her heart. But when she woke in the morning, Sylvia knew she could not find refuge with any Bergstrom, even one as far away as Elizabeth. A Bergstrom would send word to Claudia and urge her to return home, and that Sylvia could not bear.

  The next day she thanked her aunt and uncle for their kindness and bought a train ticket to Baltimore.

  She had phoned ahead, so her motherin-law was waiting for her on the platform, dressed in black, clutching her handbag anxiously. Sylvia disembarked and almost fell into her arms. “There, there, dear,” Mrs. Compson murmured, patting her on the back. “It’s all right. Don’t worry about anything. We’ll take you home.”

  James’s father was waiting in the car, but he leaped out to help her with her luggage. Her throat constricted at the sight of him, so like her James, tall and dark-haired, with blue eyes and a smile that warmed her to her very core. Mr. Compson did not smile now and his face was haggard with grief. She had not seen her in-laws since the funeral. They seemed to have aged decades in a few months.

  Mrs. Compson sat beside Sylvia in the back seat of the Packard as Mr. Compson drove them to their horse farm on the Chesapeake Bay about twenty-five miles southeast of the city. “We’ve fixed up Mary’s room for you,” she said. “We hope you’ll be comfortable there.”

  Sylvia’s sister-in-law had graduated from the University of Maryland a few months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. While her brothers were at war, she had married a congressman and moved to Washington. At James’s funeral she had grieved silently, clutching her husband’s arm and staring into the distance.

  “I’m sure I will be.” Sylvia’s voice sounded hollow, unfamiliar. On her last visit to the Compson farm, she and James had stayed in his old room. She was grateful Mrs. Compson had known not to put her there.

  Not once did the Compsons ask her why she had come or how long she planned to stay. When the white fences and green pastures of the farm came into view, Sylvia felt a gentle whisper of peace upon her soul, a promise that one day she would be able to remember James’s smile or his touch upon her skin without feeling as if her life had ended with his.

  COMPSON’S RESOLUTION, six hundred acres of neatly fenced pasture, rolling forested hills, and cultivated farmland, had been in the Compson family since the eighteenth century. The name of the farm came from the settlement of a border dispute with the farmer who owned the acres to the northwest of the Compson property. The Compsons still lived in the two-hundred-year-old brown stone farmhouse with a Gambrel roof that their first ancestor in Maryland had built. Unlike the Bergstroms, who had added an entire wing to the original homestead farmhouse as the family prospered, the Compsons had brought modern conveniences to the interior but kept the footprint of the house essentially unchanged.

  Sylvia was accustomed to life on a horse farm, and she soon fell into the rhythm of the Compson household. She rose early to help Mrs. Compson prepare breakfast for the family and the hired hands; she washed clothes and cleaned house; she fed chickens and pigs and tended the kitchen garden. Her motherin-law appreciated Sylvia’s help, for in Mary’s absence, the housework had fallen on her shoulders alone. “I’m happier still for your company,” she said, pressing a soft, plump hand to Sylvia’s cheek. Her kindness brought tears to Sylvia’s eyes. How could Mrs. Compson, wracked with grief for the loss of James and her grandchild, bustle about with such brisk, cheerful authority? Perhaps knowing that two of her sons had returned safely home from the war in Europe and that Mary was expecting a child gave her purpose.

  Without James, without Elm Creek Manor, Sylvia felt adrift, her only tether to this world the love and kindness of James’s parents.

  She was most content out of doors, helping Mr. Compson with the horses. Although he and the stable hands would have managed fine without her, whenever Sylvia appeared at the corral, her father-in-law invariably found a horse that needed to be exercised. Riding alone on the trails that criss-crossed Compson’s Resolution, resting by the old farm wharf to watch ships on the Chesapeake, Sylvia let go of her grief and soaked in the beauty of a swift horse and blue water and fertile land. But at night she would dream of James and wake up sobbing. Another day without him had begun.

  Autumn brought golden hues and crisp sunrises to the farm. Every morning Sylvia wept less; each day she felt less likely to break at the slightest touch. One afternoon, as she and Mrs. Compson peeled apples for a pie, Sylvia reflected upon the apple orchard at Elm Creek Manor and wondered how Claudia and Harold had managed the harvest.

  She did not realize she had spoken aloud until Mrs. Compson gently said, “You could return home and find out.”

  “I can’t.” Sylvia shook her head. “I can’t ever go back. You don’t understand.”

  “I might,” Mrs. Compson said, “if you told me why you left.”

  Sylvia hesitated. Would it be cruel to burden James’s mother with the truth of her son’s unnecessary death? Mrs. Compson had embraced her with kindness and unconditional acceptance. Sylvia could not bear to bring her any more pain.

  Mrs. Compson set down her paring knife and took Sylvia’s hand in her own. Her grip was firm and steady. “Nothing you could possibly tell me about James could be worse than losing him,” she said. “If I survived that, I can withstand hearing whatever is so terrible it drove you from the home you love.”

  Sylvia closed her eyes as she retold Andrew’s story, but that did not shut out the images seared into her memory as if she, too, had witnessed the terrible scene. Then she explained how she had confronted Claudia, and how her sister had chosen Harold over her family, and why Sylvia could never return as long as they lived in the home where she had known so much happiness with the men Harold had been unwilling to save.

  When every word had drained from her, Mrs. Compson groped for the kitchen stool and sank down upon it, weeping twin rivulets of tears without making a sound. Suddenly she took a deep, shuddering breath. “You have only Andrew’s account of what happened that day.”

  “I’ve known Andrew since childhood,” Sylvia responded. “He loved Richard like a brother. He would have no reason to lie, and I trust him implicitly.”

  Mrs. Compson studied her hands in her lap for a long moment in silence. “You don’t know that Harold could have saved them,” she said. “You don’t know for certain that James would have been able to rescue Richard if Harold had only helped him. Harold might have gone to their aid only to be caught by the second explosion, as my son was.”

  “Andrew told me what James shouted to Harold before he was killed.” Sylvia’s voice trembled. “James thought he could save Richard with Harold’s help. Andrew thought so, too. But you’re right, we’ll never know for certain because Harold didn’t even try.”

  “He might have known it would have been in vain,” said Mrs. Compson. “He might have seen that second plane coming and known that coming out from cover would be suicide. We can’t possibly know what was in his heart.”

  “How can you excuse what he did?” said Sylvia. “And what he didn’t do? Your son is dead because of Harold’s cowardice.”

  Mrs. Compson’s shoulders slumped, weary to her soul. “It might not have been cowardice. And my son might have died anyway.”

  Sylvia could not believe what she was hearing. “How can you not be angry? How can you not hate him?”

  “Because it would do me no good.” Mrs. Compson looked up at her, a new fierceness in her eyes. “It would not change what happened. Hatred and anger will not bring my son back. They would only destroy me, the way they’re clearly destroying you.”

  Sylvia shook her head, unable to reply. Mrs. Compson was a good woman, too good, perhaps, to understand how wrong she was. Harold deserved Sylvia’s hatred, and anger was the only thing that kept her on her feet.

  THOUGH SYLVIA had told her motherin-law she would never return to Elm Creek Manor, Mrs. Compson must
have thought she heard a quiet note of longing for home in her voice. A few days after Sylvia told her Andrew’s story, Mrs. Compson began slipping reminders of Elm Creek Manor into their conversations, whereas she had always avoided the topic before. As they canned tomatoes, she inquired about the Bergstroms’ favorite varieties and preparation methods. When Mr. Compson sold a prized yearling, she wondered aloud if the Bergstroms would have demanded a higher price. Sylvia usually offered simple answers, but Bergstrom Thoroughbreds and Elm Creek Manor had been a part of her life for too long for her to feign indifference to them now. She found herself wishing for news of the family business and the estate she once believed would be her home forever, but curiosity could not compel her to write to Claudia. She knew she could not speak to her sister without hurling accusations of betrayal. The very thought of Harold sleeping beneath the roof of Elm Creek Manor while James, Richard, her father, and her daughter slept forever so filled her with revulsion that she was not even tempted to pick up a pen.

  All through that beautiful autumn, Sylvia worked alongside the Compson family. Gradually she found contentment in the routine, in the company, in the rhythm of the days and the satisfaction of the harvest. Then one day, Mrs. Compson declared that she and Sylvia deserved a holiday, and she invited Sylvia to accompany her to a luncheon at a friend’s home in Baltimore. “You’ll have a lovely time,” Mrs. Compson persisted when Sylvia was reluctant to leave the peaceful sanctuary of Compson’s Resolution. “My friends are delightful company, and our hostess has some family heirlooms I know you’ll find very interesting.”

  In spite of herself, Sylvia was intrigued, so she agreed to the outing. A Wednesday morning in early November found her beside Mrs. Compson in the black Packard driving northwest into the city. Her friend, Mrs. Cass, had invited several ladies to gather at her grand house in what Sylvia surmised was one of Baltimore’s most fashionable neighborhoods. The women welcomed Mrs. Compson and Sylvia warmly and offered Sylvia their condolences in murmurs, as if her grief were a carefully concealed secret. Sylvia was the youngest present by decades, and the only widow among the wives of doctors, lawyers, and businessmen.