A Quilter's Holiday: An Elm Creek Quilts Novel Page 9

  “Hear, hear,” said Gwen, shifting in her chair and unfurling the quilt so that the soft folds draped over the armrest. The floral Augusta blocks had been carefully pieced, each triangle tapering to a perfect point, but the quilt’s soft colors and traditional setting were so unlike Gwen’s more avant-garde creations that Sylvia had to smile at the incongruous sight. It occurred to her that in finishing her friend’s quilt in time for Christmas, Gwen, too, was helping someone in need in that season of giving. Not all needs were material, and some worthy causes were as close as one’s own circle of friends.

  Sylvia had benefited from the generous gifts of her friends’ time and talents more often than she could count. If not for Grace and Summer, she never would have learned so much about her heritage, and thanks to their tireless efforts on her behalf, she stood to learn more.

  How Summer had found time away from her graduate school studies to investigate historical records for her, Sylvia had no idea, although Summer had always been an admirably capable young woman. Only a week before, she had called the manor with startling news: She had discovered census records from 1930 for a Nelson family living in the Arboles Valley.

  “The names seem to fit, but other details don’t,” Summer had said, with an odd note in her voice that could have been puzzlement or caution or both, as if something about the evidence made her suspect it might disappoint Sylvia. “There’s no mention of Triumph Ranch, for one thing, but the census form doesn’t really have a place for the names of individual farms. Did you have any relatives named Jorgensen?”

  “Not that I recall,” Sylvia had said, “unless they’re distant relations by marriage. Why do you ask?”

  “You’ll understand when you see the forms.”

  Summer had promised to put them in the mail that afternoon, and sure enough, they had arrived a few days later. Sylvia’s excitement gave way to uncertainty as she opened the envelope and studied the first page, a printout from a microfilm taken of the original government documents. Two-thirds of the way down the page she discovered Henry Nelson, a twenty-seven-year-old white male, born in Pennsylvania as his parents before him had been. Living with him was his wife, Elizabeth, age twenty-six and also from Pennsylvania, and their two-year-old daughter, Eleanor, born in California. The names, birthdates, and birthplaces were a perfect match for Sylvia’s cousin and her family, but not only was the name Triumph Ranch absent, Henry was not even listed as head of the household. That title went to Oscar Jorgensen, a California-born farmer married to Mary Katherine Jorgensen, the mother of his two daughters. Other members of the household included Oscar Jorgensen’s mother and a number of men identified as hired hands. Henry was listed as the last of these, his relation to the head of household noted as lodger and his occupation as foreman. Like the other adult women on the page, Elizabeth had no occupation listed, as if the census taker had considered their roles as wives and homemakers so obvious that he need not record it.

  This Elizabeth had to be Sylvia’s long-lost cousin, her daughter Eleanor the namesake of Sylvia’s mother, but how could Henry be lodger and foreman rather than landowner and rancher? At first Sylvia had wondered if Henry had lost the ranch in the onset of the Great Depression and had stayed on as the new owner’s employee, but a second form Summer had included quickly disproved her theory. A printout of the census from 1920, five years before Elizabeth and Henry moved to California, indisputably proved that the land had belonged to the Jorgensen family even then.

  Gradually, almost against her will, Sylvia had come to accept the inescapable truth: She had not found Triumph Ranch because there had never been such a place. Henry had spent his life savings on it and had carried the documents of sale around in his coat pocket as a talisman for months leading up to his wedding, but despite Elizabeth’s cheerful accounts to the contrary, the newlyweds had not settled down to a happy and prosperous life as the owners of a thriving cattle ranch. Sylvia could only imagine what misfortune had befallen the couple, but it surely explained Elizabeth’s silence.

  After pondering the census forms and the mystery of Elizabeth’s long-held secret, Sylvia had called Summer to thank her and to ask her to find her cousin’s family in the 1940 census. Perhaps over the decades their fortunes had improved. To her disappointment, Summer had told her that census forms fell under a seventy-two-year privacy law, so the 1940 census records would not be released to the public until 2012. “That doesn’t mean we’ve hit a dead end,” Summer had added. “We may find other sources with much of the same information. Voter registration lists, public directories, county court records—but that would probably require a trip to the Arboles Valley and some digging through primary sources.”

  “I’ll have Andrew add a trip to the Arboles Valley to our summer travel itinerary,” Sylvia had told Summer. She couldn’t abandon the search after acquiring such tantalizing new information, even though it seemed the most difficult part of her quest still lay before her.

  Then, not two days later, Grace had sent her an email, a forwarded response from her colleague at UCLA with an attached document and the promising subject line, “Eureka!” “If this is indeed the quilt in question, I owe my friend an expensive dinner,” Grace had added before the quoted text, a paragraph offering the book’s title and apologizing for the imperfect quality of the scanned-in photo. Holding her breath and trying to keep her expectations grounded, Sylvia had opened the document, hoped for the best, and prepared herself to settle for somewhat less than that.

  She had adjusted her glasses and leaned closer to the screen, scrutinizing the image. The grainy, black-and-white photo of what appeared to be a small hotel room had not been improved by its transformation from printed page to pixels, but it was clear enough to make out a Double Wedding Ring quilt with a different floral appliqué gracing the center of each ring. Overcome, Sylvia had hardly dared to believe she gazed upon a picture of Elizabeth’s wedding quilt, lovingly stitched by three generations of Bergstrom women. Even Sylvia and her sister had added a few, shaky, imperfect stitches rather than be left out of the creation of such a precious gift. But although Sylvia had wanted to believe the quilt in the photo was Elizabeth’s, the image was too unclear, her last glimpse of the real quilt too long ago, for Sylvia to conclude unquestionably that the quilts were one and the same.

  A caption below the photo noted, “In the late eighteen hundreds, the Grand Union Hotel in the Arboles Valley served travelers on the stagecoach route that connected Los Angeles to Santa Barbara. The guestrooms, cramped by modern standards, boasted luxuries such as a single bed, a window, pegs for hanging clothes, a bureau with wash basin and pitcher, and, after 1902, indoor plumbing in the form of a common bathroom. Photo circa 1930.”

  Sylvia had sat back in her father’s leather chair, her gaze traveling around the library but seeing none of the shelves, the well-read volumes, the sepia-toned family photographs, the artifacts of four generations in a family of collectors. The photo placed the quilt in the Arboles Valley after Elizabeth had moved there. But why on earth would her cousin’s wedding quilt be spread upon a narrow bed in a hotel instead of one in her own home?

  The newlyweds had struggled through hard times, Sylvia reminded herself. Elizabeth had likely been forced to sell the quilt, and perhaps the Chimneys and Cornerstones quilt as well, just as Sylvia’s sister had sold their mother’s cherished heirlooms. Sylvia knew it must have broken her cousin’s heart to part with her wedding quilt, and she hoped that Elizabeth had demanded and received an outrageous sum for it.

  Suddenly she had snapped on her glasses and opened her web browser to her favorite search engine. A historic hotel, important and relevant enough to be included in a book of scholarly research on the region, might still exist, and if it did, perhaps, perhaps …

  There were Grand Union hotels in New York City, Saratoga Springs, Fort Benton, Montana, and Ljubljana, Slovenia, on the first page of 34,000 hits, but none of the first twenty were in Southern California. Undaunted, Sylvia had refined her s
earch to “Historic Hotels Arboles Valley” and was rewarded with a far more manageable list of less than 4,000 hits—the first of which was for the Arboles Valley Stagecoach Museum.

  Eagerly Sylvia had read the history of the museum, learning of its founding on July 4, 1876, and its storied history as an oasis for weary stagecoach travelers until a railroad line constructed through an adjacent valley diverted its clientele. The museum was the hotel, Sylvia had discovered, relocated during the construction of the 101 Freeway, restored to its late– nineteenth century appearance, and awarded a spot on the National Register of Historic Places.

  Sylvia had admired a bright, full-color photo of the museum with its broad, wraparound porch, tall windows, and a second floor balcony with a railing of turned spindles. A grainy photograph from 1898 showed the inn at the end of a cobblestone drive lined by tall, leafy oaks with an orange grove in the background, and Sylvia had imagined how restful and charming the sight must have seemed to men and women peering through the windows of the jostling coach, weary from the long, dusty, uncomfortable ride. Clicking on a link to additional photos, her gaze had skimmed past images of the restored dining room and close-ups of remaining pieces of the original owner’s china service—and fixed on the same picture of a guest room that Grace’s colleague had scanned in from the book.

  The contact page had provided a phone number, so Sylvia had called and spoken to a docent. The docent knew of the guest room photo, noting that the framed original was displayed in the hallway outside the room, which had been refurbished to match the photo as closely as possible.

  “Is that same Double Wedding Ring quilt on the bed?” Sylvia had asked, but the docent had explained that the museum staff could not find the original, so a local quilter had created a similar version based upon the photo. The museum’s collections boasted other antique quilts of local historic interest, including a few that had belonged to some of the first families to settle in the Arboles Valley, but not Elizabeth’s Double Wedding Ring.

  Although the photo proved that the wedding quilt had once warmed guests of the Grand Union Hotel, it was not there now, and as the museum staff’s exhaustive search had not uncovered it, Sylvia had little hope that her own efforts would prove more successful.

  Sarah’s voice abruptly drew Sylvia back to the present day. “Did anyone else hear that?”

  “Hear what, dear?”

  “It sounded like a car horn, a few long blasts.”

  “I’m afraid I’ve been lost in my own thoughts,” Sylvia admitted as she set the last Star of the Magi block in place on the dance floor. “I didn’t hear anything.”

  Leaving the cutting table, Anna set her blue and gold fabric pieces on the table next to a free sewing machine and went to one of the windows overlooking the back of the manor. “The only cars in the parking lot are ours, and they’re buried in snow. I don’t see any headlights approaching, either.”

  “It must have been my imagination,” said Sarah.

  “Maybe audio illusions are a pregnancy symptom,” offered Gwen.

  “When I was pregnant with Sarah, I would wake up at night thinking I had heard a baby crying in the other room.” Carol shuddered. “It was positively eerie, like living in a haunted house.”

  “Now I understand why I never had any younger siblings,” said Sarah.

  “That’s not the only reason,” said Carol dryly, but Sarah let the comment pass unchallenged rather than demand her mother explain herself and offer what would probably be an unflattering account of her early months. Silently Sylvia commended her young friend, who in the past would have bristled at the slightest hint of criticism from her mother.

  Sylvia studied the blocks she had arranged on the floor, frowning thoughtfully. The rich greens, reds, and golds she had taken from her fabric stash harmonized well while still offering a rich palette of varying hues and contrasts. The layout looked almost as she had imagined it, but the balance wasn’t quite right. She needed something more to enhance the single block set on point in the center of the quilt. Perhaps a row of squares at each of the star tips would emphasize it and set it apart from the other Star of the Magi blocks as a focal point. The careful arrangement of the light and dark halves of the Chimneys and Cornerstones blocks surrounding them created a subtle layered effect that gave the quilt an added dimension Sylvia found quite appealing. She hoped the customers of the Holiday Boutique would agree.

  Gretchen and Carol wandered over to admire her work-in-progress, and soon Agnes joined them. Gretchen almost apologetically suggested that Sylvia switch a few of the blocks to distribute the darkest of her green fabrics more evenly so that they wouldn’t seem to clump together and weigh down her quilt. Carol shot Gretchen a look of startled amazement and declared that the quilt was perfect as it was, but upon reflection Sylvia understood exactly what Gretchen meant and rearranged the blocks.

  “This is why it’s essential to seek out another perspective,” remarked Sylvia, inspecting the new layout. “Thank you, Gretchen.”

  “It’s the least I could do. You’ve helped me more than I could ever repay,” said Gretchen, absently patting the colorful quilt blocks draped over her arm and taking a seat at the sewing machine next to Sarah.

  Sylvia was too surprised to reply. All she had done was hire Gretchen for the faculty of Elm Creek Quilt Camp, a position Gretchen had rightly earned, and the arrangement was mutually beneficial. Perhaps it was just a simple figure of speech and not something Gretchen truly believed, but it puzzled Sylvia that Gretchen would think that any part of their professional or personal relationships was a debt that needed to be repaid.

  Sylvia began pinning the blocks into pairs, replacing them carefully rather than undoing all of her hard work by mixing up the blocks. She had just finished pinning the last pair in the second row when the cordless phone rang from the top of the fireplace mantel where Gretchen had left it after Bonnie’s call. Agnes was the closest, so she quickly set her Christmas stockings aside and answered. “Summer, dear,” she cried happily. “So lovely to hear from you.”

  Gwen immediately perked up and began digging herself out from beneath the folds of fabric and batting. “Hand it over,” she said to Agnes as she rose, stabbing her needle into the quilt and setting the hoop on her chair.

  “Let me wish her a Happy Thanksgiving first,” Agnes admonished her mildly. “Happy Thanksgiving, Summer. Is it snowing where you are? Are you making time to sew on this quilter’s holiday?”

  “This could take awhile,” Gwen muttered, glancing from Agnes to her chair as if regretting that she had set her quilt aside even for a moment. Or perhaps she regretted not insisting upon a mother’s prerogative to speak to her daughter first, no matter how dear the friend who happened to answer the phone. Fortunately, Agnes kept her conversation brief and soon handed the phone to Gwen, who settled down on the dais on the opposite side of the room for a private chat with her daughter. Sylvia caught the occasional encouraging phrase and wistful wish that they were spending the long holiday weekend together, and no one there could have failed to overhear Gwen’s occasional bursts of laughter. Gwen and Summer were closer than any mother and daughter Sylvia had ever known, and she knew that Sarah wished she and her own mother got along so well. As for Carol, she kept glancing up from her work to study Gwen with puzzled curiosity, as if Gwen must possess some secret knowledge that Carol could learn in time.

  After a time, Gwen crossed the room and handed Sylvia the phone. “Summer would like to speak with you.”

  “I’d be rather disappointed if she didn’t.” Sylvia gladly took the phone and strolled over to the fireplace to warm herself while they chatted. “Hello, Summer, dear. How is your quilter’s holiday going? Have you begun any new Christmas projects?”

  “Not a one, I’m afraid,” said Summer. “It’s not much of a holiday for me. I have so many papers due before the end of the term that I can’t afford a day off, and that’s even without the research I’ve been doing on my own for fun.”

>   “Surely you’ll find some free time to spend with Jeremy.”

  “Yeah, I should probably call him and wish him a happy Thanksgiving. He left a message on my cell yesterday but my roommates and I had a houseful of starving graduate students to feed and I never found a minute to return it.”

  Sylvia couldn’t even tacitly encourage Jeremy to talk on his cell phone while he was driving in such dreadful weather. “I suppose at this point you might as well wait a few hours and tell him in person. I hope the storm isn’t as bad on the turnpike as it is here.”

  Summer fell silent for a moment. “What do you mean?”

  “I didn’t mean to worry you,” said Sylvia, detecting concern in Summer’s measured question. “Jeremy left here quite early in the morning after dropping off Anna and he may have been well into Ohio before the worst of the storm struck us.”

  “Jeremy’s on his way to Chicago? Today?”

  “Why, yes. Since you were too busy to get away, he decided to come to you.” Suddenly Sylvia understood. She threw Gwen a helpless look, and then Anna, but they were busy with their sewing and didn’t notice her distress, nor would they have been able to rescue her if they had. “I’m so sorry. I’ve clearly ruined Jeremy’s surprise.”

  At that, Anna’s sewing machine clattered to a stop and she twisted around in her chair to shoot Sylvia a look of utter incredulity. Sylvia shook her head and shrugged, and Anna returned an almost identical gesture. Clearly Anna hadn’t known Jeremy intended to surprise Summer, either.

  “Believe me,” said Summer. “I’m surprised.”

  Sylvia wondered why Summer didn’t sound pleased in the slightest. “I’m sure you’ll be glad to see him,” she said, no longer sure at all.

  “Of course I will, but I really don’t have time for company. I’m swamped with work.”

  Sylvia didn’t point out that Summer had taken off the previous day to entertain a houseful of graduate students, which suggested that her schedule was apparently somewhat flexible. “Knowing Jeremy, he’s brought along a backpack full of books and his laptop. You can work together and still en-joy each other’s company. I doubt he expects you to entertain him.”