A Quilter's Holiday: An Elm Creek Quilts Novel

by Chiaverini, Jennifer

  “It’s nothing that serious.” He ran a hand over his jaw, stubble scratching his callused palm. “You know I had a long talk with my dad yesterday.”

  “Yes, you called to wish him a happy Thanksgiving.”

  “That’s not all we talked about.” Matt took her hands. “His old back injury has been acting up, but with the housing market down, he can’t afford to turn down any work.”

  “Can’t he find workers to hire?”

  “Yes, that’s not the problem. He needs someone on-site to supervise them, someone he can trust.” Matt took a deep breath. “He needs me.”

  “Well, he can’t have you,” said Sarah without thinking. “Right?”

  Matt hesitated. “With the orchard and gardens dormant for the winter and the campers away, this is a slow season for me at the manor.”

  “You’ve already told him you’d do it.” Sarah pulled her hands free from Matt’s, pressed a hand to her brow and another to her lower back. “Without even talking to me.”

  “I thought you’d understand.”

  “Matt, I need you here. The babies—”

  “Won’t be here for another few months, and I’ll be back by then.” He brushed her cheek with his fingertips. “You know I wouldn’t miss that.”

  “What about our childbirth classes?” What about the back rubs, the foot massages, the encouragement, the decorating the nursery, the childproofing the manor, the choosing of names, the holding her while she slept at night and kissing away her worries? “What if something goes wrong and I need you?”

  “Nothing’s going to go wrong,” he told her firmly, wrapping her in a hug. Despite her anger, she was too sick at heart to push him away even though he was the cause. “But if something does, call me and I’ll jump in the truck and be here in three hours. It’s not like we won’t see each other. I’ll come back from time to time, whenever my dad feels well enough to handle things on his own.”

  And if Hank didn’t feel well enough, or if he claimed not to? Matt might stay away all winter. A few occasional visits would not be enough. Slow season or not, Matt was needed at Elm Creek Manor. Sarah needed him even if the orchards and gardens didn’t.

  “Sarah, listen.” Matt put his hands on her shoulders and tried to look into her eyes. When she dropped her gaze, he put a hand under her chin and gently lifted it until their eyes met again. “I wouldn’t ask if this wasn’t important. My dad’s close to retirement but lately his savings have taken a huge hit. If he doesn’t keep the business running steadily, he might not be able to restart it later. He’s put his whole life into that company, and I can’t stand by and do nothing when he needs me.”

  She nodded, tears filling her eyes. She understood. Matt was a good and loyal son, and he had to do what he thought was right. But what would she do without him, and where would it lead? What if Hank and Matt together decided that Elm Creek Quilts needed him less than Hank did?

  She thought of what Matt said about the fabric he had placed into the cornucopia and his words earlier that morning in bed, and she knew that he had weighed his decision carefully. If she asked him not to go, he would probably stay, but he would blame her if his father’s business failed, and she would, too.

  “Don’t stay away too long,” she told him, blinking away her tears and forcing a smile. “You’re not getting out of diaper duty that easily.”

  Matt smiled, and the strain in his expression turned to relief. He held her close—as close as he could with her ample midsection between them—but she felt as if he were already far away, far beyond her reach.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Diane

  UPON RETURNING TO the ballroom, Diane peered out the windows warily. It was not her imagination; the snow was falling far more thickly than before.

  “How much snow did you say we might get?” she asked Gwen, who had removed her quilt from the lap hoop and spread it upon the floor, the better to adjust the layers as she moved the slender rings to a new, unquilted portion.

  “Ten to twelve inches,” replied Gwen cheerfully, as well she might. She probably didn’t care if they were snowed in at Elm Creek Manor, unable to return home. On an ordinary day Diane wouldn’t mind either, but Michael and Todd had come home for the long holiday weekend and were probably at that moment watching football on television with their dad and looking forward to the home-cooked supper she had promised them. She had almost canceled on the Patchwork Potluck rather than miss so much of their visit, but she had kicked off the start of the quilting season with the Elm Creek Quilters for years and she hated to break tradition.

  Matt’s truck had four-wheel drive, she reminded herself as she unfolded a kelly green fat quarter on the cutting table. If the storm worsened, perhaps he would drive her and Agnes home. She could return to dig her car out from beneath the snowdrifts another day.

  “So much snow, and it’s still November,” she mused aloud. “What do you think it means?”

  “Climate change,” said Gwen promptly. “It seems counterintuitive, but global warming can bring on harsher winters.”

  “Perhaps it means that we’ll get all our nasty weather out of the way now and enjoy an early spring,” suggested Agnes, who could always find the bright side of things even when blizzard clouds obscured the sun.

  “It’s just something we have to get through,” said Sarah, her voice strangely distant. She hadn’t sewn a single seam since the quilters returned to the ballroom, but had sat at the sewing machine staring out the windows at the falling snow, one hand resting on her abdomen. “It probably seems worse than it is.”

  “Easy for you to say,” retorted Diane. “You live here. You won’t have to drive in this.”

  “Yes, but Matt will, all winter long, and anything could happen to him.”

  At that, Diane raised her eyebrows at her friend, but Sarah didn’t notice, for she had roused herself and had begun feeding pinned quilt blocks beneath the needle of her sewing machine. “Oookay. Understood,” Diane murmured under her breath. Apparently asking Matt for a ride home if the storm worsened was not an option.

  Glancing from her work to the window so frequently that she risked a serious scissors accident, Diane cut a piece of freezer paper from the large roll left over from the summer camp season and traced templates from the magazine. An heirloom project such as her sons’ Advent calendars called for hand appliqué, and despite her rapidly approaching deadline, she couldn’t resort to machine appliqué. In her haste her hand stiches might turn out larger than usual, but from a few paces away no one would notice the difference. Her sons certainly wouldn’t subject them to such scrutiny.

  A worry tickled at the back of her mind, but she dismissed it and gathered up her fabric and freezer paper templates.

  “Are you done with the cutting table?” Anna asked, rearranging the order of the folded bundles of blue and gold fabrics in her arms, studying the contrast between one and another.

  “It’s all yours,” said Diane, clearing the rest of her supplies out of the way and heading for the ironing board. “What are you making, anyway? You never said.”

  “You never asked.” Laying out her fabrics on the cutting mat, Anna shifted ever so slightly, her back to Diane, almost as if she were hiding her work.

  “Everyone else volunteered the information.” Curious, Diane left her things on the ironing board and returned to the cutting table for a better look. This time she was sure Anna was fighting the urge to fling a yard of fabric over her work so Diane couldn’t see it. She glimpsed gold stars on a deep blue background, nothing that Anna should want to hide from friends, nothing that would inspire anything worse than constructive criticism. “It doesn’t resemble food,” Diane said helpfully, knowing that this was quite an accomplishment for Anna—unless this time she was actually trying to create images of food, a still life in fabric. “Come on, let’s have a look. No tossed salad jokes this time, I promise.”

  As Diane attempted to peer over her shoulder, Anna spun around and held out her arm
s, touching the edges of the cutting table. “Diane, a little space, please. I want this to be a surprise.”

  “I promise I won’t breathe a word to your Aunt Mabel or Cousin Bob or whoever this is for.”

  Anna smiled, but held up her hands as Diane stepped forward. “That’s close enough. I can’t have you spoiling the surprise.”

  “Spoiling it for whom?”

  “Allow me to refer you back to her aforementioned concern about spoiling the surprise,” Gwen called out, tightening the bolt on her lap hoop and gathering the folds of fabric and batting.

  “She can at least tell us who it’s for, can’t she?” protested Diane, and then turned back to Anna, whose smile had turned apologetic, and a little wary. “What’s the harm? This can’t be a gift for any of the Elm Creek Quilters or you wouldn’t be working on it in front of us.”

  “That’s not necessarily so,” remarked Sylvia. “Remember the year Bonnie gave us those lovely homespun plaid table runners for Christmas? She worked on them right here in this ballroom throughout our quilter’s holiday, and none of us suspected she was making them for us.”

  “She hid them in plain sight,” Agnes chimed in, but then she sighed. “I hope Bonnie’s having a wonderful time in Hawaii, but I do miss her so.”

  “I’m sure she’s not missing this weather,” said Carol, nodding to the window just as a sudden gust of wind scoured the pane with icy crystals.

  Diane forgot Anna’s inexplicable secrecy as her concerns about the storm returned. She resigned herself to leaving early, but at least she had fulfilled the quilter’s holiday tradition even if she would not accomplish as much sewing as she had hoped. The traditions she kept at home were equally important as those she observed with her friends, and she would miss out on several if she were snowed in at Elm Creek Manor over the Thanksgiving weekend. And if she didn’t keep the family traditions going, who would? Not her husband, she thought with reluctant certainty, and not the boys.

  It wasn’t that Tim, Michael, and Todd didn’t enjoy marking important occasions as a family. They did, at least most of the time, as long as she handled all the preparations and reminded them where to show up and when. Sometimes, during those difficult years when Michael had struggled in school, glowering sullenly in the shadow of his popular younger brother who excelled academically and athletically and every other way it was possible for a teenager to excel, Diane had thought that their traditions were all that held the family together. The family dinners Diane had insisted upon every night, even if it meant dining at nine o’clock to accommodate a school event, prevented the boys from withdrawing too much into the world of their peers and leaving Diane and Tim utterly unaware of how they spent their time and with whom. Weekly Mass taught the boys the importance of faith and instilled in them a moral code that would last a lifetime, even if its immediate results were not apparent. Or so Diane had told herself, sometimes while clenching her teeth when Michael vandalized the middle school, or when he was arrested for skateboarding in a marked zone downtown. Throughout the years when she had held her breath, hoping that Michael would surpass his guidance counselor’s predictions and graduate from high school, and through the long months when she questioned Todd’s choice of friends, arrogant boys whose sense of entitlement rendered them void of humility, she had found strength in ritual and faith.

  Through it all, their traditions, both religious and secular, had held the family together, and every prayer and lesson seemed justified when she reflected upon the fine young men her sons had become. Michael flourished at Waterford College, on his own even though he was never more than a few miles away from his childhood home. He shared a rented house downtown with a few friends and came home almost every Sunday to do laundry and have dinner with his parents, moments of reconnection Diane cherished. Todd had started at Princeton only a few weeks before, and although he didn’t stay in touch as often as Diane wished, when he did call or email, he sounded happy, excited, and involved, reveling in the first real challenge to his academic gifts. Though separated by distance that would perhaps increase after the boys graduated, they would not fragment as a family. Their love would unite them, and the practice of their traditions would draw them together in spirit, despite the miles that might separate them.

  And yet—

  Diane sighed, frowning. Without her as the impetus for maintaining their traditions, she doubted they would endure. Their traditional pumpkin patch trip and scary movie night the Saturday before Halloween had gone the way of the tooth fairy in middle school when Todd’s basketball practices took precedence. It had been ages since she and Tim had taken the boys to the Pancake Café before visiting Santa at the Elm Creek Valley Mall on the first day of Winter Break. Diane accepted these changes as the sad but inevitable consequence of her sons’ journey toward adulthood, and her nostalgia was tempered by the introduction of new, more age-appropriate activities. But Diane believed some traditions should not fall away as children grew. Some should have become so essential to their identity as a family that Michael, Todd, and Tim should look forward to them and nurture them as much as Diane did.

  And yet sometimes it seemed as if they didn’t care.

  Only two days before, Diane had gone out for coffee with some friends after their Pilates class and, upon realizing that she had completely lost track of time, had raced home to get dinner in the oven. Any other night and she would have pulled a made-ahead casserole out of the freezer, but on that night only one meal would do. Ever since she was a newlywed, Diane had made lasagna for supper the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving. On that day in that first year of their marriage, she had asked Tim what he wanted for supper, and he had said anything but turkey. Diane had interpreted that to mean that he wanted the least Thanksgiving-ish meal she could devise, and she couldn’t think of anything that reminded her less of Thanksgiving than lasagna. As she shopped for noodles and ground beef, it occurred to her that salad was even less Thanksgiving-ish in that it was the opposite of a feast, so she added salad to the menu. Asparagus was a spring vegetable and thus likely not served by Pilgrims in an autumn of the days of yore, so into her grocery cart went a bag of frozen asparagus.

  Tim delighted in her explanation of the meal, and so it became a tradition: a supper with no logical connection whatsoever to Thanksgiving to cleanse their palates for the harvest feast to come the next day. Sometimes she varied the recipe— adding spinach or mushrooms to the sauce, substituting whole-wheat noodles for semolina—but it was always lasagna on Thanksgiving Eve. She enjoyed the whimsy of the tradition, and she thought the boys did, too.

  But that year she had lingered too long with her friends at the Daily Grind, chatting about their holiday plans and how the predicted storm might interfere with their travel. It was after five o’clock when a glance at her watch sent her racing to her car. She had prepared the lasagna earlier that day and had left it in the fridge, and if she had left instructions on the counter for Tim, it could have been on the table piping hot by six. If she had remembered to charge her cell phone, she could at least have called to have someone preheat the oven, but with her cell phone spent and useless in her purse, all she could do was hurry home and hope no one minded that supper would be a little late.

  But when she arrived home, she found Tim at the stove, spatula in hand, Todd setting the table, and Michael rooting around in the refrigerator. “Did you put the lasagna in?” she asked, still in her coat and boots, gym bag and purse slung over her shoulder. The smells wafting through the kitchen suggested ground beef and frying fat, without the least note of tomato or oregano.

  “Oh, hi, honey,” Tim greeted her, glancing over his shoulder before quickly returning his attention to the stove. “You didn’t answer your cell.”

  Diane set her bag on the floor and purse on the counter, taking in the scene warily. “The battery died.”

  Michael shut the refrigerator door with his shoulder, his arms loaded down with ketchup, mustard, a jar of pickles, and a plastic bag of buns
. “See, Mom, there’s this really cool thing called a cell phone charger. You plug one end into the wall outlet and the other end into your phone, and after a while, your battery is recharged and you can use it again.”

  “Yes, thank you dear. I’ll remember that.” Hamburgers. Tim was definitely flipping hamburgers. “What are you guys thinking? You’re going to spoil your supper.”

  “This is supper,” said Todd, grinning, his hair flopping in his eyes. He had never worn it so long but he kept laughing off Diane’s offers to schedule an appointment with the barber while he was home from school.

  Diane opened the refrigerator. Sure enough, the glass dish of lasagna was exactly where she had left it. “Why didn’t you heat up the lasagna?”

  Tim glanced at her, wary. He knew her well enough to realize they had done something wrong. “We didn’t know whether you were saving that for something special.”

  “I was.” Diane shut the refrigerator. “Tonight’s dinner. We always have lasagna on Thanksgiving Eve.”

  “You weren’t home, honey, and we couldn’t reach you.” Tim lifted hamburger patties from the pan to a platter on the counter. “You’re going to spend hours cooking for us tomorrow, so we thought we’d cook supper tonight.”

  They were trying to help, Diane reminded herself, and they were clearly pleased with themselves. She knew she should thank them, but she couldn’t help pointing out, “You could have heated up the lasagna. That would’ve been just as helpful with much less effort.”

  “We felt like hamburgers,” said Michael. “And Todd thought maybe that pan was something you’d made for your lunch with the quilters.”

  “It couldn’t have been. Our recipes have to be made from Thanksgiving leftovers.” Honestly. How many years had the Elm Creek Quilters celebrated their quilter’s holiday with the potluck, and her family still didn’t grasp the simple rules?

  “We can have the lasagna Friday,” said Todd. “It’ll still taste good and that’ll give you more time to quilt with your friends.”