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

by Chiaverini, Jennifer

  “And also, yes, your acting really was that bad.”

  “It couldn’t have been,” said Sylvia. “You were genuinely alarmed for a few minutes. I saw it in your eyes when visions of cleaning up after your father and losing your sewing room flashed before your eyes.”

  “I might have had a nervous moment or two.”

  “Your father hoped to drag this out for at least another day,” said Sylvia. “He thought that given a taste of how his life and yours would be affected if we were no longer together, you’d give our marriage your heartiest endorsement.”

  Amy managed a small smile. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “We had to try something. Reasoning with you wasn’t working. Arguing made matters worse.” Sylvia laced her fingers together and rested them on the table. “Frankly, Amy, I’m at a loss. You’ve said you’re concerned because I had a stroke. My doctor and I agree that I’ve fully recovered and that I’m in excellent health, but even if you’re right and we’re wrong, I have sufficient resources that you needn’t fear your father will exhaust himself caring for me.”

  “It’s not just that. I’m thinking of the emotional toll if he loses you. You didn’t see what he went through, tending my mother in her last years, mourning her when she died.”

  “Your father already loves me, so if I do pass on before he does, he will mourn me whether I’m his friend or his wife. I could lose him. You could lose Daniel. That can’t stop us from loving.” Sylvia shook her head, knowing nothing she said would persuade Amy to see reason. “We’ve told you all this before, dear, and not once have you disagreed. You accept our premises but not our conclusions, so I can’t help thinking there’s something else behind your disapproval.”

  Amy studied her for a long moment in silence. “There is.”

  “I thought so.” Sylvia reached for her hand. “Amy, dear, you’re not betraying your mother’s memory by accepting my marriage to your father.”

  Amy said nothing, but her eyes filled with unshed tears.

  “I could never replace your mother,” said Sylvia. “I would never try. Your father found love a second time. That doesn’t mean he’s forgotten your mother or that his love for her wasn’t strong and true.”

  “He knew you first,” Amy choked out, snatching her hand away. “But you were married to another man. Was that the only reason he married my mother? Was she his second choice, and all these long years he was putting on an act, pining away for you?”

  Aghast, Sylvia sat back in her chair. “Amy—”

  “If that’s true, then everything I ever learned about love since I was a child has been a lie.”

  “Oh, Amy, you couldn’t be more wrong.” Sylvia hardly knew where to begin. “What has your father told you about his time in the service?”

  “Very little,” said Amy with a bitter laugh. “You know what men of his generation are like. They don’t complain; they don’t brag. They just do what needs to be done—whether that’s winning a war or keeping a marriage vow even when your heart longs to be with someone else.”

  Sylvia silently promised herself to prevail upon Andrew to clear away Amy’s misunderstandings. She deserved to know what a fine man he was, even if that forced him to boast. “There’s so much to say and it’s your father’s place to say it,” she said. “For now, you need to know that your mother was indeed your father’s first choice. She always was his true love.”

  “We’ll never know for sure.”

  “On the contrary, we do know,” said Sylvia. “My husband was killed during the war. When your father came home after his service ended, he came to see me at Elm Creek Manor. If he had wanted to declare his love for me, he had the perfect opportunity.”

  “He wouldn’t have considered that an appropriate time,” said Amy, with such certainty that Sylvia decided that perhaps she knew her father well after all. “You had just lost your husband. He wouldn’t have made a move on a grieving widow.”

  “Perhaps not,” said Sylvia, amused in spite of everything at the thought of the gentlemanly Andrew “making a move” on anyone. “But he surely would have stayed nearby, so that when the time was right, he would be in the right place. Instead he took a job hundreds of miles away where he met your mother and fell in love.” Sylvia forced herself to confess her own guilty secret. “There are days, I admit, when I wish he had been in love with me back then, and that he had stayed in Waterford, courted me, and asked me to marry him while we were still young. If he had, I would have been spared years of loneliness. I almost certainly would have remained at Elm Creek Manor. I could have reconciled with my sister, kept the family business thriving, and saved myself a lot of trouble restoring the manor fifty years later. I might have had children. But if all of those things had happened, you and Bob, your children and your nieces never would have existed. Elm Creek Quilts never would have been founded. And your father would not have loved your mother, in which case I know he would not be the fine man he is today.”

  A tear ran down Amy’s face, and she ducked her head to hide it. “I don’t like change,” she said. “I prefer to hold on, to keep things as they are.”

  “You’re fighting a losing battle in that case, dear,” said Sylvia. She glanced around the room at the antique furniture, the years-old children’s crafts decorating end tables and shelves, and suddenly she felt as if she were truly seeing Amy for the first time. It wasn’t Sylvia that Amy disliked, but the unknown future. “Life is all about change, but you don’t have to face the future with fear.”

  “I love Christmas but hate the New Year,” said Amy, forcing a laugh as if she expected Sylvia to think she was a fool. “I don’t like sweeping away the old year and welcoming in the new. Those moments of the past twelve months that I cherished so much are gone and they’ll never come again. To me, that’s a loss.”

  Sylvia suddenly understood why Andrew’s love for her had turned Amy’s world upside down. Amy thought the past was fixed, immutable, safe. Andrew’s engagement to Sylvia had not only called into question her father’s love for her mother, but also threatened her very way of understanding the world.

  “Is something seriously wrong with me?” Amy’s voice broke. “On New Year’s Eve, everyone else parties and celebrates and counts down the minutes until midnight as if they can’t wait to see the year end, and all the while I’m holding on to it with both fists. I’d push the ball in Times Square back up to the top of the flagpole if they’d let me.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with you that a little perspective wouldn’t cure,” said Sylvia. “You aren’t the only one who feels a little bit of sadness to see the old year go. After all, what’s the most popular song on New Year’s Eve but ‘Auld Lang Syne’? Even Robert Burns felt melancholy reflecting upon days gone by, upon friends no longer near. We can’t hold on to the past, it’s true, but we can keep the best part of the days of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ in our hearts and in our memories, and we can look forward to the future with hope and resolve.”

  “I suppose that’s all we can do,” said Amy softly.

  Sylvia smiled. “It’s not as bad as all that. I’ve learned to think of the New Year as a gift. It’s a blank page and you can write upon it as you wish. Sometimes we make a pledge to improve ourselves in the year ahead. My mother taught me that it’s also wise to make the world a better place for someone else, even if it’s only in small ways.” She remembered Mrs. Compson’s wise counsel. Sylvia had not taken heed in time to reconcile with her sister, but she would not make that mistake again. “A resolution is also the settlement of a dispute. Perhaps you and I and your father can make a resolution today. We’re a few days shy of the New Year, but this resolution is too important to delay.”

  “It’s not too early,” said Amy. “I’m thankful that it’s not too late. Besides, with three kids, I always feel like the New Year starts in September with the first day of school.”

  “Then let’s not wait until New Year’s Eve to resolve our differences.” Sylvia rose and took her da
ughter-in-law by the hand. “Come with me. I have something to show you.”

  Sylvia led Amy upstairs to the guest room, where she removed the New Year’s Reflections quilt from her tote bag and spread it upon the bed. “I wanted this to be a New Year’s Day gift,” she said, “but a day or two sooner doesn’t matter. It’s not quite finished, so mind the pins in the binding.”

  As Amy looked on, Sylvia shared the story of the New Year’s Reflections quilt, from the discovery of the long-forgotten fabric stash of the Bergstrom women and the loneliness that inspired her to cut the first pieces to the unexpected path she had followed in keeping the resolution she had made that night. She described the blocks she had chosen and how each one preserved a memory of a New Year of long ago. A True Lover’s Knot for Sylvia’s belated acceptance of Elizabeth’s marriage to Henry, and an Orange Peel for the sweetness of life she hoped they found in California. A Hatchet to mark the lead figure Claudia had found in the bowl of water by the fireside, foretelling her unhappiness in love and the severing of ties between sisters. A Wandering Foot block, a fond remembrance of her dear brother and her mother’s gift for finding hope and courage in the face of uncertainty and fear. Simple patterns like those she had sewn together to make quilts for the Orphan’s Home, and complex patterns to trace the tangled relationships of family united by love and chance and divided by tragedy. The Resolution Square for promises made, and Memory Chain for lessons learned. Every New Year’s Eve of nostalgic farewells and each New Year’s Day full of anticipation and new beginnings had been recorded in the patchwork mosaic of memories.

  Sylvia would need years to tell Amy every story, every lesson she had sewn into the quilt, but for the first time since she and Andrew had announced their engagement, she believed Amy would grant her that time.

  SYLVIA WAS NOT the only one who shared New Year’s memories from days gone by. At Sylvia’s prompting, Amy recalled New Year’s Eve parties in her childhood home, snowball fights and ice skating on the pond on New Year’s morning, gathering around the table for a traditional meal of ham and sweet potatoes, and curling up beside her father on the sofa to watch the Rose Bowl on television. Packing up the holiday decorations on the last day of Winter Break and hauling the Christmas tree out to the curb. Settling into the New Year until it was no longer the future but the familiar present.

  They lingered so long that eventually Andrew and Daniel came looking for them. The apprehension on the men’s faces when Andrew tentatively pushed open the door made both women burst out laughing. Sylvia’s heart soared when Amy threw her arms around her father and murmured something in his ear. The words were meant for him alone and Sylvia would not pry, but the look of sheer happiness that lit up Andrew’s face at that moment told her all would be well.

  Over the next two days, Sylvia finished the New Year’s Reflections quilt, often sitting in front of the fire while Amy hand-pieced a simple block nearby. As they sewed, they shared memories of New Years past, of years welcomed with excitement or with trepidation, of years that were too lovely to forget and others too sorrowful to dwell upon. Sylvia almost felt as if she were back at Elm Creek Manor, gathered together with the Bergstrom women she missed so dearly. Sylvia knew only time would allow the true bond of family to grow between her and her onetime reluctant stepdaughter, but she would resolve to be patient, to give Amy the time she needed. It was the season for hope, for joy, and for new beginnings, and Sylvia prayed she, Amy, and Andrew would be mindful of how quickly years could pass, and how unwise it was to waste a single moment in enmity.

  Sylvia put the last stitch into the binding on the morning of New Year’s Day, and when she presented it to Amy, it was with a heartfelt prayer that they would make the most of the fresh start the New Year offered. She knew there was no better time to reflect upon the past—mistakes and triumphs, happiness and sorrow—and look for lessons that would guide her into the future. She trusted Amy and Andrew would do the same.

  Sylvia did not pretend to know what the year ahead would bring. The road before them passed through sunshine and shadow, and she could not see far beyond the first bend. But with loved ones by her side and loving memories of those who had gone before in her heart, she would move into the future with courage and hope that the best was yet to be, if she did her part to make it so.