An Elm Creek Quilts Sampler (29 page)

Claudia lost little time planning her wedding. She asked me to help, and I agreed, but my mind wandered and I had trouble remembering to take care of all the little details. She exploded at me more than once, but it didn’t bother me as much as it used to. Instead she turned to Agnes, who for some reason had decided to remain at Elm Creek Manor rather than return to her own family. Perhaps she felt Richard’s presence here. I know I did.

Then one evening we had a visitor. Andrew stopped over for the night on his way from Philadelphia to a new job in Detroit. I was glad to see him. He walked with a limp now and sat stiffly in his chair as if still in the service. He was pleasant enough to everyone, but he had barely a cold word for Harold, who seemed to go out of his way to avoid our visitor. I found this strange, since I had always heard that veterans shared a bond almost like that of brothers. But I decided that perhaps seeing each other reminded them of the war, which everyone in Elm Creek Manor would rather forget.

After dinner Andrew found me alone where I was working in the library. He took my hand and pulled me over to the sofa, his face nervous and angry.

“If you want to know, Sylvia,” he said, his voice strained, “I can tell you how it happened. I was there. I can tell you if you want to know, but I don’t think it will comfort you.”

“Nothing can comfort me.” I knew that as certainly as I had ever known anything. “But I need to know how they died.”

This is what he told me.

He, James, Richard, and Harold were in an armored division on an island in the South Pacific. Richard and another soldier in one tank and James and Harold in a second were completing a routine patrol of the beach. On a high bluff some distance away, Andrew and some others were preparing to relieve them.

Andrew heard the planes before spotting them in the night sky. He and his companions breathed sighs of relief upon realizing they were our boys.

“They’re coming in awfully low,” one of the other fellows said.

“You don’t suppose they’re going to try to land, do you?”

Andrew felt a cold prickling on the back of his neck. “If I didn’t know better I’d think they were about to—” And then the beach exploded in flames.

Andrew flung himself onto the sandy ground. “Get down,” someone screamed.

Another grabbed a radio. “Call it off. Call it off. It’s us!”

Andrew scrambled to his feet, choking and wiping the grit from his eyes. One of the tanks was engulfed in flames.

He ran straight down the steep bluff to the beach, knowing he would never make it in time.

He saw the hatch to the second tank lift. James climbed out and jumped for the ground. He ran to the flaming tank, shouting over his shoulder. Harold’s head poked through the opening just as James reached the other tank. He climbed to the top and tried to open the hatch. Andrew was closer now, and through the flames he could see the tendons in James’s neck straining as he struggled to open the hatch.

James shouted something to Harold and stopped wrestling with the hatch long enough to gesture frantically for him to help. Harold stared at him, licking his lips nervously, seemingly frozen in place.

The breeze picked up, fanning the flames and carrying some of James’s words to Andrew’s ears. “Come on, Harold, help me!”

“Hang on,” Andrew yelled as he raced by Harold’s tank. “I’m coming! I’m—”

He heard the second plane droning overhead and saw Harold duck back into the tank. Then the explosion knocked the ground out from beneath his feet. Heat seared his eyes and wet soil rained down all around him.

Andrew was sobbing. “I’m so sorry, Sylvia,” he wept, his voice breaking. “He saved me when we were just kids, but I couldn’t save him. I’m so sorry.”

I rocked him back and forth and tried to comfort him as best I could, but I had no words for him. All I knew was that James had died trying to protect my little brother as he had promised me, and Harold had let them both die rather than risk his own neck.

The next day Andrew left, and I never saw him again. I waved good-bye to him as his cab drove off, and turning back inside, I vowed not to tell Claudia and Agnes what I had learned. But still I felt uncertain. Should Claudia, at least, be told? Wouldn’t she want to know this about her husband-to-be? Then I thought about her words on the veranda that terrible day. “Thank God!” she had said. “Thank God! Thank God!” Angry tears sprang into my eyes at the memory. No, Claudia would prefer her blissful ignorance. And Agnes was too fragile for the truth.

I found them in Claudia’s sewing room, giggling like schoolgirls. Agnes stood on a stool in the middle of the room as Claudia fitted her for a dress.

Their conversation broke off when I entered. “Do you—do you like it, Sylvia?” Agnes asked, holding out her skirts and smiling nervously. “It’s my matron of honor dress for Claudia’s wedding.”

Claudia nudged her and flushed.

I started. “But I thought—but you already asked me to—”

Claudia tossed her head. “I changed my mind. After all, you’ve hardly been very helpful with my wedding plans. You’re always too busy. You don’t care about my wedding at all. Agnes does.”

Agnes jumped down from the chair. “Stop it. Please. I won’t listen to any fighting.” She fled from the room.

Claudia threw down her tape measure and glared at me. “Now look what you’ve done. You just can’t leave her alone, can you?”

“What on earth do you mean?” I gasped. “You’re the one who asked me to be your matron of honor and then dropped me behind my back. Claudia, I’m your sister.”

“She’s our sister, too, now,” Claudia snapped. “Can’t you be unselfish for once in your life? My God, Sylvia, she lost her husband.”

My anger swelled. “Have you forgotten? I lost my husband, too. And my brother, and my daughter, and Father. And you know who’s to blame?” And then the truth I had vowed not to reveal burst from my lips. “That cowardly fiancé of yours! He let James and Richard die!”

“How can you blame him for that? It isn’t Harold’s fault he couldn’t get the hatch open.”

“What? He never even tried. Whatever he told you—Claudia, he never left his tank. Andrew was there. He told me everything.”

“You’re just jealous because my man came home and yours didn’t. You’ve always been jealous of me, always—”

“He does not belong in this family!” I screamed. “You will not marry him. I am the head of the Bergstrom family now, and I forbid it!”

“You forbid.” Claudia’s voice was cold, her face pale with rage. “You can forbid nothing. Harold risked his life to protect Richard. How dare you—how dare you speak of him this way. He is as fit as any man to join the Bergstrom family.”

“The Bergstrom family is dead,” I choked out. “Dead!”

“If you can say that, then perhaps you’re the one who doesn’t belong here.”

“Perhaps you’re right.” I turned my back on her then. I couldn’t bear it anymore. I stormed to my room and threw my things into my suitcases. No one tried to stop me.

I left Elm Creek Manor that day and never returned until this spring. I never again spoke to my sister, or to Agnes, or to Harold.

The sitting room was silent for a long time. Sarah could hear birds chirping outside, and farther away, the sound of Matt’s lawn mower.

“Where did you go?” she finally asked.

Mrs. Compson shrugged and wiped at her eyes with an embroidered handkerchief. “I stayed with James’s family in Maryland for a while. They were happy to have me. Then I returned to college. I studied art education at Carnegie Mellon, where they taught things I had already learned from my mother and great-aunt, though my mother and great-aunt didn’t use words like ‘color theory’ and ‘composition.’ After I received my degree, I taught art in the Pittsburgh area until my retirement. Since then I’ve had my quilting to keep me busy. I think I’ve done all right, but it wasn’t the life I had hoped for.”

“What happened to the others—to Claudia and Agnes?”

“Claudia and Harold married, but they had no children. Several years later Agnes married a professor from the college and moved out of Elm Creek Manor. Claudia and Harold took over Bergstrom Thoroughbreds, and you’ve seen the results of their keen business sense already. But I have no one to blame but myself for the business’s failure. If I had remained here to manage things …” She sighed and placed her hand on Sarah’s. “Well? Did my long-winded reminiscing solve any riddles?” Her voice was slightly mocking, but not unkind. “Will that help you think of a way to bring Elm Creek Manor back?”

“I’m not sure. I’m going to try.”

“Well, you do that. I’m counting on your help.” She patted Sarah’s hand and sighed.

Twenty-Five

T
he next day Sarah interrupted her cleaning to ask Mrs. Compson if she would like to join the Tangled Web Quilters for their meeting that evening. Mrs. Compson thought about it for a moment, then shook her head. Although Sarah persisted, the older woman would neither change her mind nor explain her refusal.

So Sarah drove to Mrs. Emberly’s home alone.

The red-brick colonial house was only a few streets away from Diane’s, in an older part of the Waterford College faculty neighborhood. Sarah was the first to arrive, and Mrs. Emberly took her into the kitchen.

“Help yourself,” Mrs. Emberly said, indicating the counter covered with snacks.

Sarah pushed a bowl of pretzels aside to make room for her plate of cupcakes. “Thanks. Maybe later, when the others get here.”

Mrs. Emberly glanced back toward the front door. “So, you came alone?”

Sarah nodded.

“I thought Sylvia might come with you this time, since she was so friendly with everyone at the quilt festival.”

“You heard about that?”

“Bonnie told Diane, and Diane told me.” Mrs. Emberly sighed. “I suppose she would’ve come if not for me.”

“It’s not that. I don’t think she knows you’re a member.”

“Really?” Mrs. Emberly brightened for a moment, then looked puzzled. “You didn’t tell her?”

“No.” Sarah gave her a wry smile. “Just like you never told me you’re Mrs. Compson’s sister-in-law.”

Mrs. Emberly’s cheeks went pink. “I assumed that you would’ve heard it from one of the others long ago, or from Sylvia herself. I suppose she never mentioned me, then?”

“She did, but she called you Agnes, and I didn’t know you were Agnes. The Tangled Web Quilters always call you Mrs. Emberly.”

“Diane started that. I used to baby-sit her when she was a little girl. She’s always known me as Mrs. Emberly, and I suppose the habit was too strong. The others picked it up from her.”

“I wish I would’ve known.”

“I didn’t mean to deceive you, but I was afraid you’d feel caught in the middle if you knew.” Mrs. Emberly took a seat at the kitchen table. “Though I suppose there isn’t anything for you to be in the middle of.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sylvia and I have no relationship now. Oh, Claudia and I kept tabs on her as best we could through the years, but we had only secondhand information from mutual friends. That’s not enough to hold a family together.”

Sarah took the seat beside her. “I think Mrs. Compson would be glad to see you again.”

“Really?”

“She’s very lonely. She feels like she’s the last Bergstrom.”

“Perhaps she is.” Mrs. Emberly twisted her hands together in her lap. “Claudia was a true sister to me, even after I remarried, but Sylvia—”

“Would you be willing to see her again?”

Mrs. Emberly hesitated. “Yes—that is, if you think she’d welcome me.”

“I know she would.”

“I’m not so certain. Sylvia holds on to a grudge with both hands.”

Sarah couldn’t argue with that. “What if we—”

Just then Summer burst into the room. “Hey, I’m the second one here. That must be like a new record for me or something.”

Mrs. Emberly laughed and pushed her chair away from the table. “Then come on over here and celebrate with one of Sarah’s cupcakes.” She avoided Sarah’s eyes.

The moment was over, and as the rest of the group arrived Sarah knew she wouldn’t get another chance that evening to talk to Mrs. Emberly alone.

As the others quilted, Sarah made templates for her latest block, Hands All Around. Her conversation with Mrs. Emberly and Mrs. Compson’s stories played over and over in her mind. Somewhere in their stories there had to be a solution.

Diane’s voice broke in on her thoughts. “Isn’t that a Hands All Around, Sarah? You’re smart to hand stitch all those curved seams and set-in pieces.”

Sarah hid a smile. “Actually, I’ve been machine piecing for several days now.”

“Please tell me you’re joking.”

“Welcome to the twentieth century, Sarah,” Gwen said.

The others laughed, but Diane glared at them. “You guys are a bad influence.” That just made them laugh harder, and even Diane had to smile.

Sarah looked around the circle of friends. This was what Mrs. Compson needed. This was what Elm Creek Manor used to have and had lost.

Maybe Gwen was right, and Mrs. Compson and Mrs. Emberly should be forced into seeing each other again. They were both lonely, especially Mrs. Compson; they both needed to forgive each other. And if Mrs. Compson felt that she had family in Waterford, she might be willing to stay at Elm Creek Manor.