A Quilter's Holiday: An Elm Creek Quilts Novel Read online

  Sylvia took off her Mary Janes and bravely demonstrated the few ballet steps her mother had taught her and Claudia, half-afraid that Elizabeth would laugh and send her off to take a nap after all. “Well, you’re not a lost cause,” said Elizabeth after Sylvia finished, “but that’s not the kind of dancing we’re doing tonight. You have a lot to learn and not a lot of time.”

  Elizabeth took her hands and, over the next two hours, introduced Sylvia to grown-up dances called the foxtrot, the quick step, and the waltz. When Sylvia proved to be an apt pupil, Elizabeth praised her and taught her the tango and the Charleston. Dancing hand in hand with her cousin, gliding over the wood floor in her stocking feet, smothering laughter and asking questions in stage whispers, Sylvia happily rehearsed the new steps until suddenly Elizabeth noticed the time and sent Sylvia off with a warning not to let anyone see her on the way. Giggling, Sylvia crept downstairs to her bedroom, where she rumpled her quilt, opened the blinds, and woke her unsuspecting sister, mere moments before their mother arrived to help them dress for the party.

  Face scrubbed, hair brushed, and neatly attired in her best winter dress, Sylvia nearly burst with excitement as she awaited the moment she and Elizabeth would dance together at the ball. First she had to sit through a traditional New Year’s feast of lentil soup, followed by pork and sauerkraut, foods meant to bring good luck. Afterward, the party resumed in the ballroom, where musicians struck up a lively tune that beckoned couples to the dance floor. Sylvia looked around for Elizabeth, but Claudia dragged her off to play ring-around-the-rosie just as she spotted Elizabeth on the arm of her fiancé, Henry Nelson. When the song ended, Sylvia slipped away from her sister and wove through the crowd to Elizabeth, but her cousin was already waltzing with her father.

  Her turn would come, Sylvia told herself, but dance after dance went by and always Elizabeth was with Henry, or her father, or Henry’s father, or one of her uncles. Mostly she was with Henry. Hours passed, and just as Sylvia reluctantly concluded that her cousin had forgotten her, Elizabeth smiled at her and said, “Are you ready to cut a rug?”

  Her happiness restored, Sylvia nodded and took her cousin’s hand. Elizabeth led her to the dance floor, counted out the first few beats, and threw herself into a jaunty Charleston. Sylvia struggled to keep up at first, but she stoked her courage and persevered, kicking higher and broadening her smile as if she believed herself as beautiful and admired as her cousin. Soon the other guests stopped dancing to gather in a circle around the two cousins as they danced side by side. Sylvia mirrored her graceful cousin’s spirited steps as closely as she could, praying her family and the guests wouldn’t notice her mistakes.

  All too soon the song ended. Breathless and laughing, Elizabeth took Sylvia’s hand and led her in a playful, sweeping bow. She blew kisses to the crowd as she guided Sylvia from the dance floor while the musicians struck up a mellow foxtrot and the couples resumed dancing. Henry promptly claimed Elizabeth as his partner, but for once Sylvia didn’t mind. She and Elizabeth had shown everyone what Bergstrom girls could do, just as Elizabeth had promised as they practiced in the nursery.

  They danced together again at Elizabeth’s wedding a few months later, but soon afterward the newlyweds left for Southern California. Heartbroken, Sylvia took little comfort in Elizabeth’s letters, despite her enchanting tales of splashing in the Pacific Ocean, strolling down the streets of Hollywood, and plucking apricots and oranges from her own groves on the rolling, sun-drenched hills of Triumph Ranch in the Arboles Valley. Over the years, perhaps as Elizabeth’s responsibilities as ranch wife and mother grew, her letters became fewer and further between, until they stopped coming. Sylvia never saw her cousin again and never stopped wondering what had become of her.

  The distant thud of the back door closing tugged Sylvia from her reverie, and Agnes’s sigh echoed her own. Sylvia realized then that she was not the only Elm Creek Quilter who had hoped Diane would change her mind before she put on her coat and boots.

  Hand on her abdomen, Sarah rose from her sewing machine and went to the window. “Diane’s car is almost completely buried,” she said. “It looks like an igloo. I think I’ll go outside and try to talk her out of leaving.”

  “Send Matt,” Sylvia advised, worried that Sarah might lose her footing and fall, injuring herself or the twins.

  “That might not be wise.” Sarah’s voice had a brittle edge. “He probably thinks this is a perfect day for a drive and won’t do anything more than help her clear the snow from her roof. He can be completely oblivious to hazards sometimes.”

  Gwen raised her eyebrows inquisitively and looked as if she might speak, but Sarah strode from the ballroom before Gwen had the chance. She returned only a few minutes later looking none the chillier, which implied that she had taken Sylvia’s advice and sent Matt in her place.

  “I don’t know why Diane insisted upon going,” fretted Agnes. “I should have offered to help her with those calendars. I could finish my stockings at home another day.”

  “Diane seemed perfectly happy working on the calendars on her own,” said Carol.

  “I’m not so sure about that.” Agnes turned a slight frown on Gwen. “You could have been more considerate, you know.”

  “Me?” protested Gwen. “What did I do?”

  “You could have encouraged her when she showed us the magazine picture, but instead you called it ‘cute’ and said it would be more suitable for younger children.”

  “I still think that’s true,” said Gwen. “Should I have lied? She hadn’t started yet so I thought I’d give her an opportunity to reconsider and choose something more likely to please them. Anyway, she ignored my advice as she always does, so what does it matter?”

  “I don’t think Diane left because of anything Gwen said,” said Anna. Suddenly she jumped in her seat and took her furiously buzzing cell phone from the back pocket of her jeans as if she had forgotten it was there. She read something on the screen, bit her lower lip, and painstakingly typed a response with both thumbs.

  “Of course you shouldn’t have lied, dear,” Agnes told Gwen contritely, just as a car started up in the parking lot, the sound of the engine almost drowned out by the wind. Apparently Matt had not convinced Diane to stay.

  Sarah sighed heavily and settled back down at the sewing machine, joining rows of blocks at a brisk, determined pace. One by one the Elm Creek Quilters resumed their work, pausing to cast anxious glances at the window, turning as one at the sound of the ballroom door opening.

  Red-cheeked, hair standing up in wild disarray as if he had yanked off a stocking cap moments before, Matt blew on his hands and shook his head as he entered the ballroom. “She wouldn’t listen,” he said, joining Sarah at the sewing table. “She’s on her way home.”

  “We heard the car,” said Sarah without looking up.

  “Did you watch to make sure she made it out of the parking lot?” asked Gwen.

  “I kept an eye on her until she rounded the barn and went out of sight. She was doing fine, taking it nice and slow.”

  “She has a cell phone on her, right?” asked Anna.

  “Yes,” said Sarah, “but it’s fifty-fifty odds whether the battery’s charged.”

  “She has a terrible habit of letting it run out.” Sylvia watched as Matt bent to kiss Sarah’s cheek, but Sarah was so intent on her work that she did not respond until Matt stroked her hair. Even then, the smile she offered seemed a bit forced.

  Sylvia wished she had thought to ask Diane to call the manor when she reached home so that they would know she had arrived safely.

  Sighing to herself, she settled back down to work, finishing the final seam of the last Star of the Magi block she needed to complete her quilt top. She had finished the complementary Chimneys and Cornerstones blocks in October, knowing that she wanted to make the focal point blocks from a star pattern but uncertain which would look best. It wasn’t until later that it had occurred to her that she might have unwittingly chosen the Chimneys
and Cornerstones blocks in memory of a quilt Great-Aunt Lucinda had made for Elizabeth as a wedding gift. Simple in design and pieced from scraps, it nonetheless seemed as precious to Elizabeth as her official bride’s quilt, an elegant Double Wedding Ring embellished with floral appliqués made by all the women of the family. Both had been lovingly packed into Elizabeth’s trunk before she left Elm Creek Manor for the last time.

  Sylvia wondered if those quilts still graced a cozy home somewhere in California or whether, like so many other heirlooms created from fabric and thread, they had been lost to time. A few months before, inspired by the success of other searches into her family’s past, Sylvia had enlisted the help of Summer Sullivan, the official historian and Internet guru of Elm Creek Quilts, and Grace Daniels, a longtime friend, quilter, and museum curator. When Sylvia told them how she longed to discover what had become of her cousin, Summer offered to search her favorite genealogy databases for the Nelson family, while Grace took on the more daunting challenge of attempting to find Elizabeth’s quilts. Elizabeth would never have parted with such precious wedding gifts, and if they had not worn out or suffered another sad fate, she surely would have passed them down to her children. If the quilts were found, their provenance could trace a path back to Triumph Ranch and Elizabeth.

  While Summer worked online, Grace contacted all the quilt museums, appraisers, historians, and private collectors she knew in Southern California. Unfortunately, even though Sylvia had provided sketches of the quilts, the Chimneys and Cornerstones block was so common that the prospect of finding one particular scrap rendition seemed impossible. The Double Wedding Ring pattern had also been popular for more than a century, but the floral appliqués set Elizabeth’s version apart, perhaps distinguishing it enough to fix it in a viewer’s memory. On this slight chance, Sylvia had pinned her hopes.

  Grace had spared her the day-by-day account of the false leads traced and disproved, but then, the day after Halloween, she had phoned with intriguing news. A colleague had shown Sylvia’s sketches to a friend at UCLA who specialized in Southern California history. He was convinced that he had seen the floral Double Wedding Ring quilt in a book about the development of coastal stagecoach routes, but he couldn’t remember the title.

  “How many books on that subject can there be?” Sylvia had asked Grace, who laughed and said that she suspected there weren’t many, which gave them an advantage. One of the UCLA professor’s graduate students was writing a dissertation on the subject, and he was certain he had seen the photo while helping her prepare for her candidacy exam. He promised that he would have the student page through the books in question and locate the photo as soon as possible, but it was a busy semester and they might not get to it right away.

  “I understand,” Sylvia had said, and she asked Grace to offer the professor and his student her heartfelt thanks. “But remind them that I’m a senior citizen and I can’t wait forever.”

  “Sylvia!” Grace had scolded, bursting into laughter. “You’re as fit as a woman half your age.”

  “Hardly,” Sylvia had said dryly. “And don’t tell your friend that. Let him think time is of the essence.”

  Grace had agreed, and as Sylvia had hung up the phone, she had felt a flutter of cautious anticipation, a familiar sensation she remembered from her search for five of her mother’s long-lost heirloom quilts that Sylvia’s sister had sold off decades earlier. In the quest for a missing quilt, fresh leads often appeared when one least expected them, but sometimes the answers, once finally discovered, proved disappointing. Sylvia had prepared herself to expect the same from this new quest. The quilt from the photograph might not be Elizabeth’s at all, and even if it were, the trail might end there, with its appearance in an obscure academic text.

  Sylvia finished the last seam, tied a knot in the thread, and snipped the trailing end. Then she smoothed the Star of the Magi block on her lap and inspected it critically. The eight-pointed star in the center lay perfectly flat, seams carefully pressed in a spiral on the back to eliminate an unsightly lump where the diamonds met. The eight irregular pentagons that pointed outward from the central star enhanced the design’s radiance. The unusual shapes and angles lent themselves to hand piecing, but now that the blocks were complete, Sylvia intended to assemble the top by machine to save time. If Diane were there to see Sylvia embark upon the next stage, she would have given Sylvia an earful for mixing hand and machine piecing in the same quilt top, an inconsistency she abhorred.

  Sylvia would have gladly endured her protests to have Diane there, safe and sound in the manor rather than fighting her way home in a snowstorm that seemed to have intensified since her departure.

  She must have sighed aloud, for Agnes caught her eye and smiled encouragingly. “Whatever flaws you think you’ve found, I assure you, you’re imagining them.”

  “Oh, the block is fine.” Sylvia rose and brushed stray threads from her lap. “I simply don’t relish crawling about on my hands and knees as I arrange the blocks into rows.” That was certainly true, so it wasn’t a lie, although it wasn’t the reason for her troubled sigh either.

  “Is this quilt your annual contribution to the Holiday Boutique?”

  “Why, yes,” said Sylvia, all innocence. “Would you like to place a bid?”

  “And deny your fellow parishioners the chance to own one of your masterpieces? And deny you the pleasure of watching the bidding go higher and higher?” Agnes feigned horror at the very thought. “I couldn’t live with myself.”

  Sylvia smiled and gathered up her pile of completed blocks, her worries about Diane momentarily subsiding. Agnes knew her too well. It was perhaps a sin of pride to take so much delight in knowing that she never failed to provide one of the most sought-after items for her church’s annual sale, but since the proceeds went to a noble cause, she figured she would be forgiven. “It’s not for myself that I want my donations to fetch a good price,” she reminded her sister-in-law, “but for the county food bank. You know the proceeds from the boutique provide almost a third of their annual budget.”

  Gretchen looked up from her work, impressed. “That must be quite a sale.”

  “Or quite a small budget,” said Gwen with a naughty grin.

  “It would be wonderful indeed if the food bank required only a small budget, but the need is greater than that,” said Agnes. “People don’t go hungry only in the big cities but also in rural towns like ours, especially in times like these, when even working families are struggling to make ends meet.”

  “Preachin’ to the choir, darlin’,” said Gwen with a trace of her old Kentucky accent. “I give my undergrads extra credit if they volunteer to sort donations at the food bank.”

  “Can you do that?” asked Carol, concern cutting a furrow between her brows. “Is that fair to the students who don’t have time to volunteer?”

  “I firmly believe that every college student can find a spare hour once a week,” said Gwen. “They may have to cut back on their beer bong time, but they can do it. Anyway, I don’t give them enough extra credit to change a failing grade to passing, but it’s enough to make the difference between a B-plus and an A-minus. I’ve also found that once young people start volunteering and learn how good it feels to contribute to the community, they often continue on their own and draw their friends into it, even without the reward of a better grade dangled in front of them.”

  “Can anyone donate a quilt for the boutique?” asked Gretchen, admiring Sylvia’s quilt with keen interest. “Or is it members only?”

  “I don’t think participation is restricted to church members, and in any case I can’t imagine they’d turn down one of your lovely creations,” said Sylvia. “The Holiday Boutique isn’t limited to quilts either, but all manner of handmade gifts, jewelry, Christmas ornaments, knitted scarves, baked goods—”

  “Baked goods?” Anna broke in from the cutting table. “In that case I could probably whip up something, too.”

  “I’m sure the committee chair w
ill be delighted,” said Sylvia, pleased. “I don’t know why I never thought to ask you for donations before.”

  “A better question is why we never volunteered,” said Gwen, eyes on her needle as she worked it through the layers held fast in her hoop. “Anna and Gretchen have a good excuse since they didn’t join us until recently, but the rest of us have watched you work on quilts for the boutique on every quilter’s holiday year after year, and yet we never thought to ask if we could pitch in.”

  “I’m sure you all support your own favorite charities,” said Sylvia. Gretchen promptly nodded and Gwen shrugged as if that went without saying, but Sarah allowed the sewing machine to stop its cheerful patter and the rest exchanged contrite glances. “Well, if you haven’t in the past I hope you’ll consider it in the future.”

  “Who has time to take on another task during the holidays?” said Carol, but she looked as if she regretted her words even as she spoke them.

  “What better time than the holidays?” asked Sylvia. Using one’s gifts in the service of others and caring for those in need figured so prominently in the Bergstrom family’s Christmas traditions that Sylvia couldn’t imagine the holidays without them. Her mother had set an admirable example, teaching her children that they were called not to give from their surplus, but to give their all. Sylvia had often thought that the Elm Creek Quilters should do more as a group to lend their talents to worthy causes, but she had never found a moment to sit down and plan a project for the entire circle of quilters. Until Sylvia could get herself organized, she must do more to encourage her friends to support worthy causes on their own, leading by example as her mother would have done.

  “As Gwen said, it feels good to contribute to the community.” Sylvia carried her blocks to an open spot on the parquet dance floor and began to arrange them medallion fashion, starting with the center blocks and working outward to the edges. “Especially in this season of giving. We’re all very busy, but we should never become too preoccupied with our own concerns to help those in need.”