The Christmas Boutique

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  She managed a smile, although that heart ached a little. She had grown very fond of the quilt and had hoped it would adorn their own bed throughout the festive season. “I would never keep something that didn’t belong to me if the rightful owner could be found. Besides,” she added lightly, waving a hand, “there are probably laws about keeping stolen property.”

  “There are,” he said, leaning forward to kiss her, “but you can’t fool me. You didn’t think of that until this moment.”

  He knew her too well.

  On Saturday, she and Joseph drove through a light flurry of snow two hours south and east to Harrisburg, the quilt carefully rolled and wrapped in muslin on the backseat. A few minutes before two o’clock, they pulled onto a tree-lined, snow-dusted street and soon arrived at a charming redbrick colonial house with black shutters and an evergreen wreath on the front door.

  They knocked, and the door swung open so promptly that the woman who answered must have been watching for them through the window. Agnes recognized her immediately as a grayer, stouter version of the woman from the newspaper photo.

  She greeted them brightly and welcomed them inside, her eyes darting between their faces and the bundle in Joseph’s arms. She invited them to sit down and offered them coffee and cake, but her eagerness was so contagious that Agnes laughed and said, “Thank you, we’ll gladly accept, but first, why don’t we reunite you with your quilt?”

  Together they removed the muslin cover and unrolled the quilt. Tears filled Edna’s eyes as she gazed upon it, her face bright with joy and wonder. “It’s my quilt,” she said, running her hand over the nearest Christmas Cactus block. “I never thought I’d see it again.” She flipped over a corner of the quilt and ran her fingertips along the pinpricked space where her embroidery should have been. “Do you suppose someone picked out my stitches to cover up the theft?”

  “That would be my guess,” said Joseph. “Maybe the thief hoped to pass the quilt off as her own, but after the photos appeared in the newspaper, she panicked.”

  “That would also explain why she hid the quilt in the chest,” said Agnes.

  Nodding, Edna unfolded the corner and resumed studying the top. Sunlight streaming through the windows glinted on her glasses so Agnes could not read her eyes when she said, “You seem to have a good idea who the thief was.”

  Agnes and Joseph exchanged a look. “We think we do,” said Agnes. “We know who the previous owner of the chest was, and it seems only logical that she was the one who hid your quilt within it. She passed on several years ago, and her son sold the chest at auction. He never knew about the quilt until I contacted him.”

  Edna looked up and held Agnes’s gaze. “Who would do such a thing?” she asked, voice quavering. “Who would steal another woman’s quilt and hide it away for decades? If a guilty conscience plagued her, she could have found some way to return it to me anonymously.”

  “I don’t know,” said Agnes, but she had a few theories. According to her son, Mrs. Frieberg had been a difficult woman, and she had never become an accomplished quilter. Perhaps she had seen Edna’s quilt at the state fair, featured in the center of the quilt exhibit with its ribbons, and had been seized by envious greed. Somehow she had stolen it, perhaps minutes before Edna arrived to reclaim it, strolling into the tent and removing it from the wall and carrying it off with such nonchalance that no one thought to question her. Later, at home, perhaps she had been overcome by shame for what she had done. Perhaps she had realized that no one who saw the quilt in her home would believe that she had made it. Terrified that she would be caught and punished if she tried to return the quilt, she had instead hidden it away, taking it out only rarely, and only when she was alone to admire it, to wish that she were as gifted as the quilter she had wronged; then putting it away again when the shame and remorse became too much to bear.

  But Agnes would never know for sure.

  “We think we know who was responsible for the theft,” she said. “We don’t know the circumstances, not really.”

  “We could give you her name,” said Joseph, “if you want to know.”

  Edna thought for a long moment in silence. “No,” she finally replied. “What good would that do? You said she passed on, so I’ll never get my questions answered. I have my quilt back, perfectly unharmed. Let her rest in peace.”

  Agnes sighed and nodded, relieved.

  They admired the quilt awhile longer, but eventually they draped it over a sofa out of direct sunlight, and Edna led them to the dining room for the coffee and cake she had promised. They were chatting pleasantly about quilting and the upcoming holidays when Edna suddenly gave a start. “My goodness,” she exclaimed. “I was so overcome with recovering my quilt that I forgot it belongs to someone else now. You must allow me to buy it from you.”

  Joseph shook his head, and Agnes said, “There’s no need. It doesn’t belong to us.”

  “The antiques shop owner, then.”

  “He wouldn’t accept a penny from you,” said Joseph. “You are the rightful owner. You don’t owe anyone anything.”

  “And yet I do owe you two a debt of gratitude.” Edna turned to Agnes, smiling faintly. “You mentioned that you’ve had some misadventures learning to quilt.”

  “I chose a far too challenging pattern for my first attempt,” Agnes admitted. “Since then, I’ve started over from the beginning, with simple pieced blocks, and I think I’m making rather good progress.”

  “She’s almost finished a quilt for the baby,” said Joseph proudly. “A Nine-Patch, she calls it.”

  “Congratulations,” said Edna. “For your little blessing, I mean, but the quilt too. You’re going to be very busy after the baby arrives. Since you have more free time now than you will for the next eighteen years or so, would you like me to teach you how to make a Christmas Cactus quilt?”

  “Would you?” exclaimed Agnes. “Do you think I could learn? The pattern looks so intricate, so difficult.”

  “Appliqué is very different from piecing, and you might find that you take to it much more quickly. And yes, I believe you can learn. I see how much you admire my quilt, and how it pains you to part from it. Wouldn’t it be lovely to have one of your very own?”

  Agnes agreed that it would be, and she accepted Edna’s offer with a grateful heart.

  Over the next few months, Edna taught Agnes the fundamentals of appliqué before moving on to the more advanced techniques required for the Christmas Cactus pattern. They met once a month at Edna’s home for a daylong lesson, which they supplemented with frequent letters and phone calls. Week by week Agnes’s skills improved, and by the time her daughter was born in June, she had finished all sixteen blocks and had almost completed assembling the quilt top. The demands of early motherhood required her to take some time off, but by autumn she and Edna had layered and basted the finished top, batting, and backing fabric. Whenever she could find a spare moment, Agnes quilted the layers, held snugly in a wooden hoop on her lap, with painstaking stitches, embarrassingly large and awkward until with practice she mastered the smooth, rocking motion she had first seen Sylvia and Claudia perform at Elm Creek Manor.

  How far she had come since those sad and lonely days. She wished she knew that her erstwhile sisters-in-law had found happiness again as she had.

  Agnes did not complete her quilt in time for Christmas, but she put the last stitches into the binding a few days before Thanksgiving the following year. When she proudly unveiled it for her teacher, Edna embraced her and praised her, pointing out one section of the quilt and then another to show her progress. “If you keep this up,” she remarked, smiling, “I can only imagine the masterpieces you’ll be creating when you’re my age.”

  Agnes had fallen in love with appliqué, thanks to her wise, patient teacher, and she made more complex and intricate quilts in the years that had followed, but the Christmas Cactus quilt would always be precious to her, not only because she had discovered a new artistic path by mastering appliqué, b
ut also because Edna’s generosity of spirit inspired her to live her own life free of judgment and bitterness.

  How fitting it would be for her Christmas Cactus quilt to adorn one of the walls of Elm Creek Manor, extending the holiday spirit of generosity and kindness to all who visited the Christmas Boutique!

  Humming a Christmas carol, Agnes rolled up the quilt, slipped it back into its protective cover, and carried it downstairs to the living room, where she placed it on the sofa to await her next trip to Elm Creek Manor. She was walking through her home gathering up a few other holiday quilts she had already set out for the season when the phone rang. Leaving the quilts on the sofa with the Christmas Cactus, she hurried to the kitchen to answer.

  It was Gretchen, calling from Elm Creek Manor. “Anna and I have arranged the dining tables in the banquet hall, but we still need some pretty centerpieces,” she said. “Do you want to help me make them?”

  “I’d love to,” Agnes replied. “Just let me grab my coat, my purse, and my glue gun, and I’ll be ready to go.”

  “Do you need a ride? Anna and Jeremy could pick you up in the Elm Creek Quilts minivan. They’re out now collecting donations of food and supplies for the boutique buffet. I’m sure you could reach Anna on her cell.”

  “No need to trouble them when they’re so busy. I’ll call Gwen. Yesterday she mentioned that she’s planning to come to the manor this morning to work on the layout of the market stalls with Sylvia, and I’m sure she wouldn’t mind giving me a lift.”

  “See you soon, then.”

  “See you soon,” Agnes echoed, and then hung up and dialed Gwen’s number. She had quilts to deliver and centerpieces to make, and not a moment to waste.

  6

  Gwen

  On Tuesday afternoon, Gwen and Sylvia finished revising their plan for the arrangement of the Christmas Boutique booths, while Andrew and Joe put away the last of the sewing machines, irons, rotary cutting mats, and other quilt-camp tools and equipment. The tall white partitions and tables remained in the middle of the ballroom, ready to be moved into position to form spacious aisles and market stalls. On Wednesday afternoon, as soon as Gwen finished proctoring her last final exam of the day, she drove to Elm Creek Manor to get started.

  It was a bright, sunny day, clear but bracingly cold, with capricious gusts of wind that blew clumps of snow from the treetops onto the road and the hood of her car as she drove through the forest from the highway to the rear parking lot of Elm Creek Manor. Gwen had been monitoring the weather forecasts closely ever since Nancy and Melanie had asked the Elm Creek Quilters to take on the Christmas Boutique, and thus far, all indications were that they could expect seasonally cold temperatures blessedly free of blizzards. A few inches of snow were expected to fall on the Elm Creek Valley late Saturday night, but as long as the snowplows cleared the roadways by Sunday morning, the weather should not interfere with their plans for a successful fund-raiser.

  Or, of greater significance to Gwen personally, with her daughter’s flight home.

  About 575 miles to the west, Summer was finishing up her first semester of graduate school at the University of Chicago. As far as Gwen could tell from her frequent phone calls and occasional emails, she was thriving there. Her classes were challenging but fascinating, her professors exacting but fair. She had made new friends, and was especially close with the three graduate students with whom she shared an apartment in Hyde Park near Kenwood and Fifty-Sixth. In fact, Summer was so engrossed in her studies and so happy in her new surroundings that she had not come home for Thanksgiving. Gwen had been horribly disappointed when Summer hesitantly broke the bad news over the phone, but having survived a grueling graduate program herself, Gwen knew how difficult it was to get away from campus, how precious those four-day weekends were when one had sleep to catch up on, reading to plow through, and papers to write.

  “You should do what you need to do,” Gwen had bravely replied, forcing cheerfulness into her voice. “I’ll see you in December.” Summer, clearly relieved, had thanked her for understanding, but as soon as they hung up, Gwen burst into tears.

  She and Summer had never been apart so long. Summer had earned her undergraduate degree at Waterford College, so even though she had lived in a campus dorm during her freshman year and had shared an apartment with friends after that, she had come home for dinner at least once a week and they saw each other frequently at Elm Creek Manor. All that had ended when Summer departed for Chicago. Since then, Gwen’s Sunday evenings had seemed empty and lonely, no matter how determinedly she had packed them full of work, quilting, and dinners out with friends. But the autumn quarter was nearly over, Summer would soon be on her way home, and Gwen would enjoy three blissfully happy weeks with her daughter before she had to return to school in early January. Gwen meant to make the most of every hour.

  When she pulled into the rear parking lot, she spotted the Elm Creek Quilts minivan and Andrew’s motor home in their usual places in the far corner, while Diane’s gleaming white BMW and Jeremy’s modest brown compact were parked closer to the back door. When Gwen climbed the stairs and entered the manor, she nearly bumped into Diane in the foyer.

  “Now that we’ve narrowed down the list of suspects,” Diane declared, forgoing the usual salutations as she deftly tied a black-white-and-red-tartan scarf around her neck, “we can investigate their motives. Who would benefit from ruining the Christmas Boutique?”

  Gwen muffled a sigh. “The group running that competing Christmas Boutique up in Summit Pass, obviously.”

  Diane gasped, eyes wide. “I didn’t know there was a competing boutique.”

  “That’s because there isn’t one. I made it up. You’re being ridiculous, you know, more so than usual. Whoever turned off the power did it by mistake. They surely feel terrible about it and don’t need any more grief from you. Just let it go.”

  Diane planted a hand on her hip. “You’re willing to let the culprit get away with it?”

  “No one’s getting away with anything. Nancy and Melanie know who was responsible, and if they don’t want to disclose the person’s name to spare them embarrassment, we should accept that.” Shaking her head, Gwen stamped her boots on the mat and unbuttoned her coat. “I don’t know why you’re wasting your time on this silly investigation when we have so much to do to get ready for the boutique.”

  “I’ve been doing my job,” Diane protested. “I’ve sent out hundreds of emails and I’ve personally spoken with the leaders of community organizations throughout the Elm Creek Valley. And there’s my publicity coup number one: a feature article on the front page of the Arts and Leisure section of tomorrow’s Waterford Register, followed by a prominent listing in the weekend calendar.”

  “Really? That’s fantastic!”

  “I know, isn’t it? Publicity coup number two: an interview with WPSU.” Diane quickly buttoned her red wool coat and pulled on her black leather gloves. “Airing live in exactly two hours, right before All Things Considered. They’ll rebroadcast it Saturday and Sunday morning right after Weekend Edition, and they’ll mention the boutique during the Folk Show calendar on Saturday at noon.” She picked up a sleek red travel mug from the floor and shouldered her purse. “Want to come along with me to State College? Hippies like you love public radio. We could solve the mystery on the way.”

  Gwen rolled her eyes. “I’d love to, but as much fun as it sounds to be stuck in a car with you while you contemplate the sinister motives of our neighbors, I have too much to do here.”

  “Thought so. The rest of the setup squad has been hard at work in the ballroom all morning. Coffee’s hot, so grab some before it’s gone.” With that, Diane gave her a cheery wave and hurried off.

  Gwen hung up her coat and hat and went to the kitchen, drawn by the enticing aroma of a rich Italian roast. She found Anna at the center island, paring apples and sharing a laugh with Jeremy, who sat nearby at the long wooden table, a steaming mug at his right hand and books and papers spread all around.
Anna jumped when Gwen walked in, nearly dropping her knife. “Hey, Gwen,” she said, inclining her head toward the coffeepot. “I just brewed a fresh pot, but I can’t promise that Diane left you any.”

  “She so rarely does,” said Gwen, with an exaggerated sigh. To Jeremy, she added, “How’s the dissertation going?”

  “Slowly but steadily.” He eyed his research materials and notes with a mixture of affection and distaste. “I still love the subject and I’m proud of my work, but at this point, I just want to have it done.”

  “I hear you.” Gwen’s struggles with her own dissertation were indelibly seared into her memory. She still had nightmares in which she was frantically typing the index mere minutes before her deadline, but somehow the words vanished from the page every time she hit the carriage return.

  She wished him good luck, poured herself a cup of coffee, and carried it carefully to the ballroom, where she found all the partitions in the proper places, and nearly all the tables too. Gretchen and Joe were setting the last dozen or so in place, while Sylvia and Andrew were hanging quilts high upon the walls. Sarah moved from one group to the other, one hand pressed to her lower back, directing the operations and pitching in with the less physically demanding tasks as needed.

  Gwen took a swift gulp of coffee, set her mug aside, and hurried to help Gretchen and Joe arrange the last few tables. When they finished, she and Sarah took dust cloths in hand and wiped them clean. Whenever Gwen moved from one table to the next, she paused to admire the lovely holiday quilts already adorning the ballroom walls. She recognized Agnes’s Christmas Cactus, which she displayed in her home every holiday season, but not the traditional Log Cabin or the charming Christmas Star, although the appliqué borders suggested that they too were Agnes’s creations. Gwen still needed to bring in quilts from her own collection. Between finishing up her teaching obligations for the semester and working on her academic research, she had not found time to pull them out of storage. Most of her seasonal quilts focused on the solstice rather than Christmas, but years before, when Summer was still in middle school, they had collaborated on a lively green, red, and white quilt that was as holly and jolly as any Christmas quilt ever made. She figured both quilts would suit Agnes’s decorating theme well.