The Christmas Boutique

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  “It’s not as early as you think, sleepyhead,” she said lightly.

  He was not fooled. “What’s troubling you?”

  “Oh, it’s nothing. Just the Ghost of Christmas Past nagging me again.”

  “Sylvia, honey.” He moved her hand to his lips and kissed it. “If you brood over the past—”

  “Yes, yes, I know. If you brood over the past, you can’t enjoy the present or dream about the future.” She bent closer and kissed his cheek. “Your sister’s old saying rings true, at the holidays perhaps more than any other time of the year. Don’t worry about me. A good breakfast is all I need to put things right.”

  He smiled, a bit uncertainly, but as they rose and made ready for the day, he let the matter rest.

  Perhaps to convince Andrew that she was taking his sister’s advice to heart, when she dressed, Sylvia paired a cheerful red cardigan with her ivory blouse and comfortable black slacks. “My, don’t you look dapper,” she said, admiring the figure he cut in his freshly ironed charcoal slacks and red-black-and-white-plaid flannel shirt, neatly tucked in. His steel-gray hair was parted on the side, his eyes such a rich, clear blue that they seemed to shine for her even when he wore his glasses, which at the moment were tucked into his shirt pocket. Despite his limp, a remnant of his wartime service, he carried himself with almost military precision, but though his bearing gave him a stern and measured air, he was the kindest and gentlest of men.

  He smiled, pleased by the compliment, and reached for her hand. Together they left their suite and walked down the hall to the grand oak staircase that descended to the foyer. At the second-floor landing, Sylvia paused for a moment to savor the brief, reverential hush that enveloped Elm Creek Manor on particular mornings when the guest rooms were vacant. It was peaceful, and yet Sylvia always sensed an undercurrent of expectation and delight, as if something wonderful might happen at any moment. In a few months, the gray stone manor would bustle and hum with the sounds of dozens of lively quilters enjoying a week of quilting, friendship, and fun. Even sooner than that, the couple would host Christmas for nearly two dozen family and friends.

  “We need to begin decorating for the holidays,” Sylvia remarked, taking in the scene from above. “Some garland and lights and ribbon-tied evergreen boughs will give our guests a warm, festive welcome.”

  “They’ll be expecting something amazing, you know,” Andrew teased, squeezing her hand. “We set the bar pretty high last year with our surprise wedding.”

  “I don’t see how we could top that. Our friends and family will just have to settle for merry and bright.”

  “At least we have plenty of snow on the ground. Even if some of it melts, we’re sure to have a white Christmas. Kayla and Angela will be thrilled.”

  Andrew’s granddaughters lived in Southern California, so they never had the chance to play in the snow during the winter holidays unless Andrew’s son and his wife drove them up into the mountains, or flew them across the country to visit Andrew’s daughter, Amy, and her family in Connecticut. But this year, at Amy’s suggestion, Andrew’s children and their families were coming to Elm Creek Manor so they could spend Christmas together as a proper family. Sylvia and Andrew had plenty of room for all, and it made sense for the West Coast and East Coast families to meet somewhere in between.

  Andrew’s family, as numerous as they were, made up only half of the guest list. Sarah McClure’s mother was coming in from Erie, her father-in-law from Uniontown in southwestern Pennsylvania. Most of the Elm Creek Quilters had promised to drop by either on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, whenever they could break away from their own family celebrations. Rounding out the party, of course, were Sylvia, Andrew, and the manor’s four other permanent residents.

  Perhaps eventually they would number five, Sylvia mused, thinking of Anna Del Maso, the wonderfully gifted chef who had joined the staff a few months before. Sylvia inhaled deeply, certain she detected the tantalizing fragrances of ginger, molasses, and nutmeg wafting on the air from the kitchen. Although Anna was a frequent overnight guest, she had kept her apartment in downtown Waterford even after accepting the position on the staff of Elm Creek Quilts. She was not obliged to cook for the household in the off-season, but she often did, waving off their rather feeble protests with assurances that she needed to test a new recipe and they were actually doing her a favor.

  When Andrew sniffed the air, sighed with contentment, and threw her a grin, Sylvia knew he smelled breakfast cooking too. Suddenly ravenous, they descended the staircase, Sylvia grasping a banister worn smooth by the hands of generations of Bergstroms who had inhabited the manor before her and the many friends and guests who had resided within its gray stone walls in the decades since.

  Side by side Sylvia and Andrew crossed the black marble floor and turned down the older, west wing of the manor, built by her great-grandfather in 1858. The new, grander wing, including the three-story foyer, banquet hall, and ballroom on the first floor, the vast library on the second, and the nursery on the third, had been added by her grandfather decades later after Bergstrom Thoroughbreds had become more successful than its immigrant founders could have imagined. As Sylvia and Andrew made their way to the kitchen, she wondered what her great-grandparents would have thought of the changes their descendants had brought to the farm they had founded in the fertile Elm Creek Valley in central Pennsylvania so many decades before.

  And to think Sylvia had once abandoned her beloved home, determined never to return.

  More than fifty years before, after Andrew’s stunning revelations, she had fled Elm Creek Manor without explanation, without bidding anyone farewell, although as she strode away clutching a suitcase in each hand, she thought she glimpsed Claudia and Agnes watching her from an upstairs window. She was halfway to Harrisburg before she realized she had made no plans beyond boarding that bus.

  She sought refuge with James’s parents on their six-hundred-acre horse farm on the Chesapeake Bay about twenty-five miles southeast of Baltimore. The Compsons had aged years since Sylvia had seen them at James’s funeral, but they welcomed her with open arms and open hearts, understanding her devastation and never troubling her with the obvious questions of why she had come so unexpectedly and how long she intended to stay.

  As the months passed, Sylvia found solace in the familiar rhythm of life on a farm, in the Compsons’ benevolent company, in the routine of the days and the satisfaction of the harvest, for they raised crops for the family’s use as well as horses. Summer blazed and ripened, the rich colors of autumn faded, and soft snowfalls dusted the fields and riding trails that had become almost as familiar to her as those of home. Almost imperceptibly, the rawness of her grief dulled, but sometimes she would find herself swept up in a wave of sorrow so sudden and powerful that it took her breath away.

  On Christmas morning, Sylvia woke wondering how she would endure the day. Memories of Christmas Eve gatherings around the luminous, fragrant evergreen in the ballroom of Elm Creek Manor, of the happy clamor of a houseful of friends and relatives, and of the Bergstroms’ famously delicious Christmas Day feasts haunted her as she helped her mother-in-law prepare for the Compson family celebration. And yet, to her grateful surprise, the warm embraces of James’s loved ones, the children’s laughter, the melodies of cherished carols, and the other sights and sounds and fragrances of the holiday gently bound together her shattered heart. The Compsons had not forgotten their sorrow, but on that holy day they found happiness in one another and in hope for the future. Sylvia sensed James’s presence in the midst of his family, and for the first time since his passing, she understood that although he was gone, their love endured.

  The warm glow of hope and love lingered until three days after Christmas, when Mrs. Compson told Sylvia that she and her husband had received a letter from Claudia. She had asked if Sylvia was with them, and if not, if they knew how to reach her. “Sylvia, dear,” she added kindly, “Charles and I are very happy to have you here with us, but eventually you�
��re going to have to move on with your life.”

  Taken aback, Sylvia merely looked at her. What was she doing if not living? Her aching heart told her all too clearly that she was alive.

  “I believe your place is at Elm Creek Manor, but if you don’t feel you can go home . . .” Mrs. Compson sighed. “Well, if not that, you must choose something. You can’t continue to go through the motions of living. You have to truly live. James loved you. Don’t choose a life of perpetual grieving for his sake. That’s no way to honor his memory.”

  As the winter passed, Sylvia mulled over her mother-in-law’s words until she could no longer deny their truth. James would have wanted her to live a full, rich life. Richard would have been thoroughly disappointed with her if she forgot how to laugh, to enjoy life, and to embrace adventure.

  The last snowfall had not yet melted when she decided that as her first bold step into the future, she would earn her college degree. Over the past few months she had taught several of Mrs. Compson’s friends to quilt, and she had discovered she had a knack for teaching. By midsummer she decided to attend Margaret Morrison Carnegie College and study to become an art teacher.

  The years passed. Sylvia graduated summa cum laude and began teaching in the Allegheny Valley School District. She shared her knowledge of quilting and her passion for the traditional art form with anyone who wanted to learn. As she accumulated numerous awards at national juried quilt shows and her renown as a master quilter grew, she was invited to lecture and teach at quilt guilds, folk art museums, and university domestic-arts programs across the country, including her alma mater. She visited James’s parents whenever she could, although that became more difficult as the responsibilities of her work steadily increased. Mrs. Compson honored her promise not to disclose her whereabouts to Claudia, but from time to time her sister still wrote to them, as did Agnes, and Andrew too. The Compsons would share news from Elm Creek Manor with Sylvia, perhaps hoping to pique her curiosity so much that she would finally return home.

  Sylvia never succumbed to temptation. Over time, the flow of details about Elm Creek Manor slowed to a trickle, and with Mr. and Mrs. Compson’s passing, it stopped altogether.

  In the autumn of 1995, fifty years after Sylvia fled Elm Creek Manor in anger and despair, a lawyer from Waterford rang her at her home in Sewickley. His careful, apologetic announcement that Claudia had died staggered her. To Sylvia, her sister remained a young woman, trapped in memory’s amber exactly as she had been in 1945. Sylvia could not imagine Claudia with wrinkles and silver hair like her own, or the intermittent aches and stiff joints that had crept up on her over the decades. It was even more impossible to believe that her estranged sister was gone.

  Harold had preceded Claudia in death and they had no children, so the manor, the grounds, and all the old family heirlooms were Sylvia’s alone. She was not sure she wanted them. She had made a life for herself in Sewickley, and she could not bear the thought of rattling around the manor alone, not at her age, not when none of her friends remained nearby.

  Regardless, it was her duty to dispose of the estate properly. She hired a private detective to find a more suitable heir, for surely one of her many cousins yet lived. When the detective failed to locate a single distant relation, Sylvia wondered if he had searched as thoroughly as his fees merited—a suspicion that years later would prove to be well founded. But at the time Sylvia believed herself to be the last Bergstrom, and she returned to Elm Creek Manor as the sole heir of her ancestral home.

  The lawyer had warned her that Claudia had not maintained the estate well even before her decline, but in late September when Sylvia finally made the trip through the rolling hills of central Pennsylvania to the Elm Creek Valley, she was unprepared for what she found. She could scarcely breathe as her taxicab turned off the main highway onto the narrow, gravel road to the residence, through dense forest and over the old stone bridge across Elm Creek. When the taxi emerged from the woods, Sylvia discovered that the sweeping front lawn had become patchy in some places and overgrown in others. Beyond it, however, the gray stone walls of the manor stood tall and whole at the top of the rise—but Sylvia’s momentary relief faded when the cab pulled to a stop in the circular driveway and she beheld peeling paint, broken windowpanes, and crumbling mortar.

  The worn exterior, disheartening though it was, could not fully prepare her for the disaster awaiting her inside. Claudia had sold off many family heirlooms to make ends meet after she and Harold had driven Bergstrom Thoroughbreds into bankruptcy, but as Sylvia made her first tentative survey of her inheritance, the empty spaces where valuable antique furniture and fine art had once enjoyed pride of place dismayed her at every turn. As if to make up for ridding the manor of its treasures, Claudia had stuffed rooms full of worthless clutter—junk mail, yellowing newspapers, tattered mesh vegetable sacks from the supermarket, mason jars full of rusty nails and stripped screws. Sylvia could not fathom why her sister had hoarded so much useless rubbish. Perhaps this was one last spiteful jab at her estranged sister, whom Claudia must have known would be responsible for cleaning up the mess she left behind.

  Resigned, Sylvia got started.

  She began with the kitchen, but after several backbreaking hours of hauling and scrubbing, the once cozy, efficient room seemed no cleaner than before. When twilight descended, she spread quilts on the sofa in the west sitting room and sank into sleep, exhausted and ineffably sad. In the morning she woke, stiff and disoriented, and when she remembered where she was and why, she felt immobilized by the sheer weight of the enormous task awaiting her. But she could not lie there stewing in resentment. The manor was hers now, as well as the remaining acreage that Claudia had not sold off. She had to meet with the lawyer and pay her sister’s debts. Every room of the manor had to be cleared, the rubbish sorted from items worth keeping. There were details and entanglements to sort out, papers to sign, accounts to reconcile.

  For weeks Sylvia toiled alone, but for all her effort she made little headway. Frustrated and weary, she closed up the manor and returned to Sewickley to spend the holidays in the company of friends, gratified by how overjoyed they were to see her. Everyone offered condolences for her loss, and some volunteered to help her tie up the loose ends of Claudia’s estate, but Sylvia demurred, reluctant to reveal just how much work was involved. Although she wanted to blame her sister for the manor’s disrepair, she had come to realize that she too was at fault. She had abandoned home, family, and business, knowing that Claudia and Harold were not fit stewards of the Bergstrom legacy. She was as much to blame for what had befallen Elm Creek Manor as her sister was, perhaps more.

  Two days after Christmas, Sylvia returned to Elm Creek Manor with a renewed sense of purpose. The legal matters of Claudia’s estate were nearly resolved, and after months of deliberating the fate of Elm Creek Manor, she had at last decided what to do.

  After reserving a few precious family heirlooms for herself to cherish always, she would finish clearing the manor of Claudia’s detritus, bringing in a forklift if necessary. She would hire a contractor to make repairs and get the grounds in decent shape. Then, when the manor was no longer an embarrassment to the Bergstrom name, she would sell it and return to her home and friends in Sewickley.

  She had expected to feel relieved once she made up her mind, but if anything, she felt worse than before. She knew she had chosen the most sensible path forward, and yet it pained her to think of selling the estate to a stranger when it had belonged to the Bergstrom family since the day Hans, Anneke, and Gerda Bergstrom had set the cornerstone in place.

  Chin up, she ordered herself. She had done without Elm Creek Manor for decades. She could do without it again. But she would not entrust the Bergstrom legacy to just anyone. It was her duty to wait until she found the ideal steward, someone who would restore the manor to its former glory, filling the halls with love and laughter once more. She could afford to be patient. She had been absent from Elm Creek Manor so long that she didn’t care to
hasten her final parting.

  Yet a great deal of work remained to be done before she could hope to get a fair price for the estate, and she could not do it all herself.

  In June 1996, Sylvia hired a young woman named Sarah McClure to help her clean out the manor and prepare it for sale. One prospective buyer had spoken of turning the manor into an apartment complex for students of Waterford College, and Sylvia had been tempted to accept his offer. In all the months the estate had been on the market, no one else had suggested a more appealing plan, and as a retired teacher, it pleased Sylvia to imagine students enjoying such a beautiful, comfortable home.

  To Sylvia’s everlasting gratitude, Sarah became suspicious of the developer’s plans and secretly investigated his company. When Sarah learned that the developer intended to raze Elm Creek Manor and build condos on the property, Sylvia immediately broke off negotiations. At a loss for what to do next, she asked Sarah to help her find a way to bring the manor back to life. Sarah’s ingenious and unlikely suggestion was to turn Elm Creek Manor into a retreat for quilters, a place for them to stay, to learn, to find inspiration, and to enjoy the companionship of other quilters.

  How fortunate it was that Sylvia had accepted Sarah’s proposal, or her beloved home would now be rubble in a demolition landfill, and the local quilters she and Sarah had invited to become founding members of the faculty would not have become her dearest friends. What a blessing it was that Elm Creek Quilts had prospered, or Sylvia might have been forced to sell the manor anyway, and she would have been a hundred miles distant when Andrew pulled up in his motor home for the surprise visit of a lifetime. She had been astonished to discover that he had not forgotten her, and they had quickly resumed their old friendship. Soon their feelings grew deeper, and before long, they fell in love and married.