Elm Creek Quilts [12] The Winding Ways Quilt (3 page)

On the opposite side of the table stood her best friend among them, Gwen Sullivan. Like Judy, Gwen was a professor at Waterford College, but since the American Studies faculty kept offices in the liberal arts building on the other side of campus, their paths rarely crossed during the course of an ordinary day. When school was in session, they met every Tuesday for lunch at a small café across the street from the main campus gate. Judy wondered who would occupy the seat across from Gwen at their favorite corner table when the new semester began.

Gwen must have sensed Judy’s gaze upon her, for she glanced up from her work and smiled. “Are you all packed?”

“Far from it.” The family had so much work left to do before the moving van pulled out of their driveway that Judy became lightheaded just thinking about it. “Are you offering to help?”

“Sure. I’ll gladly take charge of packing your fabric stash.”

Judy laughed. “I bet you would, and all of my best batiks would mysteriously end up in your car instead of the moving van.”

“Good morning, everybody,” someone called out behind her. Judy turned, expecting to see their first camper of the day, and instead discovered Anna Del Maso standing at the entrance to the west wing hallway. Behind her stood Summer’s boyfriend, Jeremy, tall, dark-haired, scholarly, and, Judy remembered, Anna’s across-the-hall neighbor in their downtown apartment building.

Judy had completely forgotten Anna was due to start today.

“Jeremy was kind enough to drive me so I didn’t have to carry grocery sacks on the bus,” Anna said, still lingering on the edge of the foyer. “We let ourselves in through the back door. Was that all right? Maybe we should have knocked first, but Jeremy said no one would hear us and I wanted to get the groceries put away.”

“Of course you didn’t need to knock.” Sylvia crossed the foyer and greeted the newcomer with a fond hug. “We’re not so formal here, as you’ll soon discover. Elm Creek Quilters come and go as they please.”

“That’s what I told her,” said Jeremy. “Is Summer around?” When several Elm Creek Quilters pointed to the classroom, he gave Anna an encouraging smile and went in search of his girlfriend.

As Anna thanked Sylvia for the welcome, Gwen seized her by the shoulders and kissed her dramatically on both cheeks. “You are now an official Elm Creek Quilter. Use your powers only for good.”

Startled, Anna burst out laughing. “I will. Thanks. I’m glad to be here.” She glanced around the circle of welcoming faces, and Judy suddenly realized that she alone had held back, standing on the bottom step of the grand oak staircase and clutching the banister as if she would bar entry to the secret realms upstairs. She forced a smile, but it was too late. Anna had already looked away.

“I thought I would set up the lunch buffet.” Anna deferred equally to Sylvia and Sarah, as if she were not exactly sure who was in charge. She had the tall, robust, dark-haired beauty and passionate gaze of an opera singer. Ever since Judy had met her at her job interview earlier that summer, she had half-expected Anna to burst into a Puccini aria at any moment.

“You want to get right to work, don’t you?” said Sarah, beaming with relief.

“I thought I should allow enough time to find all the dishes and correct my mistakes,” Anna continued, with an apologetic laugh that suggested she didn’t expect to make any. “Were you thinking inside or outside? That north patio would be a lovely spot, and the weather’s perfect for an
al fresco
lunch.”

Judy felt a thrill of alarm and indignation. The campers weren’t supposed to set foot on the cornerstone patio until the Candlelight ceremony that evening after the Welcome Banquet. Anna was only ten minutes into her first day, and already she wanted to jettison their beloved traditions.

“We’ll have lunch inside,” Sarah said, taking her arm. “I’ll come to the kitchen with you to show you where everything is.”

As they disappeared down the west wing hallway, Gwen remarked, “Thank the goddess our macaroni and cheese days are over.”

Diane glowered, but remarkably did not retort. She was convinced Gwen’s references to a female deity were only meant to annoy her, but Judy had discussed religion, politics, and every other conceivable subject with Gwen so often that she knew Gwen spoke from true feeling. Still, Gwen did refer to “the goddess” more often when Diane was around, although Judy wasn’t sure Gwen was aware of it.

At five minutes to noon, one of the tall double doors opened and three quilt campers in matching fuchsia T-shirts entered, chattering happily and pulling their luggage along behind them. Bonnie and Summer hurried forward to help them carry their suitcases up the four marble stairs, designed in the days before anyone gave a thought to wheelchair accessibility. Judy took her seat at the registration table and assigned their first guests of the week to their rooms—two of them together, the third in a single next door. As she placed the keys in their hands, the door opened to more campers, and then, for the next two hours, they came at such a steady pace that Judy hardly had a moment to reflect upon her last registration day. Which was all for the better, she thought, rising as Diane offered to take her place so Judy could break for lunch. If she marked every last this and that of her final week as an Elm Creek Quilter, she might not be able to go through with the move.

From the registration table, Judy had overheard campers exiting the banquet hall in absolute raptures about the lunch. Anna had promised a simple, cold buffet, so Judy had naturally expected cold cuts, rolls, and pasta salad. What she saw arranged on the linen-draped table by the windows made her gasp in amazement. There were fixings for sandwiches, to be sure, but also six different tantalizing salads; a beautiful fruit tray with two sauces, yogurt and ginger; and a several-tiered arrangement of whimsically frosted cupcakes for dessert. The meal put Judy’s wedding buffet to shame.

Attending to the buffet in a white chef’s coat, her long, dark brown hair twisted up beneath a tall white toque, Anna spotted Judy rooted in place and bit her lip in worry. Judy roused herself and forced a smile as she gathered up a plate and silverware.

“Is everything all right?” Anna asked. “I could have done some chicken satays or California rolls—”

“It’s perfect just the way it is,” Judy interrupted. “It couldn’t be nicer.”

But I could be,
she thought as Anna breathed a sigh of relief and went to answer a camper’s question about the gluten-free vermicelli. She couldn’t blame Anna, who wasn’t even Judy’s official replacement. Judy was wrong, wrong, wrong to envy Anna for what awaited her, the friendships, the discovery of the beauties of the Elm Creek estate, the sense of belonging and accomplishment. Judy had enjoyed it all, and now it was Anna’s turn.

She filled her plate with a small portion of each salad, unable to choose among them, then made her way across the room to a table of quilters who were waving frantically for her to join them. Although they were first-timers, they recognized Judy from her photo on the Elm Creek Quilts website, and three of them planned to attend her borders and bindings workshop the following day. They peppered her with questions about the class—and about the mysterious initiation ceremony they had heard other campers whispering about in the foyer.

“You’ll just have to wait and see for yourselves,” Judy said. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“I didn’t think there was until you said that,” said one of the women, alarmed.

Judy’s only reply was to raise her eyebrows significantly and take another bite of one of Anna’s flavorful salads—couscous, corn, and black beans with a southwestern kick. She would miss teasing the newbies every summer Sunday. It had become a sport for Elm Creek Quilters and veteran campers alike, but it was all in good fun. If these newbies returned next year, they would find out that second-year campers were the most enthusiastic teasers of all.

The registration rush subsided for a time after Judy returned from lunch, then surged in the late afternoon as long-distance travelers completed their journeys. Matt made several trips to the airport, bus, and train stations in the Elm Creek Quilts minivan, dropping off carloads of weary travelers whose fatigue seemed to fall away as soon as they entered the manor. Far-flung friends cried out in delight and rushed to reunite with campers they had not seen since the summer before, while some who had come alone, knowing no one, hung back, a bit overwhelmed by the bursts of laughter and emotional scenes going on all around them.

“You’ll get to know everyone soon,” Judy promised a tentative brown-haired woman, offering her a room key and an encouraging smile. “I know it can seem that everyone knows everyone but you, especially your first time staying with us.”

“I really hope you’re right,” the woman said timorously. She grasped the handle of her suitcase, rolled it across the foyer, and lugged it upstairs to the second floor. As far as Judy could tell, she didn’t pause to exchange a word or a glance with anyone.

“Name badges,” said Sarah, who had observed the scene. “We should really start using name badges, like at the national quilt shows, with the campers’ names and hometowns on them. When people see where you’re from, they ask questions and you almost always find something in common.”

“I don’t think in this case a name badge would have helped,” said Judy with misgivings. She wished she had thought to accompany the newcomer upstairs and introduce her to some especially friendly campers she remembered from previous years. Or she could have previewed the class rosters and helped the woman meet a soon-to-be classmate.

As the number of room keys on the table in front of Judy dwindled, the other Elm Creek Quilters began closing down their stations and making ready for the evening’s events. The last straggler finally arrived shortly before six, looking rather frazzled and windblown, and muttering about construction on the turnpike. Judy signed her in, gave her the last room key, and hurried off to call her husband, Steve, before the Welcome Banquet. Delicious aromas drifted down the hallway from the kitchen. Judy’s mouth watered when she considered what Anna might do to top her amazing inaugural lunch.

Steve answered on the first ring; he and Emily were on their way out the door to fetch pizza, DVDs, and Emily’s best friend, Courtney, as Steve had agreed to let Emily invite her friend to spend the night.

“That’s a great idea,” said Judy. She wanted Emily to enjoy as much time as possible with her best friend before they had to part ways. Steve knew this, too, although he hadn’t said so. They had been married so long and so well that most of their communication took place in the silences between their words, in their own subliminal shorthand.

After promising Steve she would return home soon to help him supervise the sleepover, Judy slipped away to Summer’s room to freshen up before the Welcome Banquet. By the time she returned downstairs to the banquet hall off the front foyer, nearly all of their guests had seated themselves. The room had been transformed from its more casual lunchtime atmosphere by white tablecloths, centerpieces of flower petals sprinkled amid candles, and Sylvia’s fine heirloom china, nearly translucent, with the Bergstrom rearing stallion in the center. Voices were hushed yet full of anticipation. Judy had only just found herself a place at the nearest table when the delinquents emerged from the servants’ door, neatly attired in black slacks, white shirts, black ties, and white aprons. They looked so professional that one would hardly know they had once destroyed an entire quilt shop just for fun.

With them were Diane’s two sons, legitimate seasonal employees rather than part of the chain gang. The eldest, Michael, directed the others as they carried in the first course, but by this time, so late in the summer, they knew the choreography so well that they needed little guidance. With practiced nonchalance, they set the steaming bowls of mushroom and rosemary soup before the campers and their hosts, and Judy knew even before dipping her spoon into the bowl that this was going to be the best soup she had ever tasted. The organic baby green salad that followed was perfection itself, as were the salmon filets and eggplant ratatouille, which required all her willpower not to devour entire. It was a good thing she was leaving, or she would have to take up marathon running to fend off the pounds.

She did manage to set down her dessert spoon after one bite of the chocolate mousse—not because it wasn’t delicious, but because she honestly couldn’t eat another bite. “You probably get tired of eating like this every day,” said one of her dinner companions enviously, licking the last rich chocolate morsel from her spoon.

Judy would have explained that until recently, their campers had to make do with brownies from a box mix and ice cream, unless one of the Elm Creek Quilters had remembered to stop by the German bakery in downtown Waterford, but a sudden hush in the room distracted her. Evening had fallen; the floor-to-ceiling windows on the western wall opened onto a violet and rose sky in the distance beyond Elm Creek. Sylvia stood near the door, and in a clear voice that carried the length of the banquet hall, she invited everyone to follow her outside.

It was time for every Elm Creek Quilter’s favorite part of quilt camp, when the week still lay before them promising friendship and fun, and their eventual parting could be forgotten for a while.

Sylvia led the campers from the banquet hall through the west wing of the manor and outside to the cornerstone patio. When their voices rose above a murmur, Sylvia smiled and gestured for silence, adding to the aura of mystery. Earlier Matt and Sarah had arranged chairs in one large circle on the patio, and now Sarah beckoned the campers to sit. Murmuring, questioning, the campers took their places, and occasionally a nervous laugh broke the stillness. The quilters’ voices fell silent as Sylvia lit a candle, placed it in a crystal votive holder, and took her place in the center of the circle. As the dancing flame in her hands cast light and shadow on her features, Judy felt a tremor of excitement and nervousness run through those gathered around her.

Slowly Sylvia turned around, gazing into the faces of her guests. “One of our traditions is to conclude the first evening of quilt camp with a ceremony we call Candlelight,” she told them. “It began as a way for our guests to introduce themselves to us and to one another. Since we’re going to be living and working together closely this week, we should feel as if we are among friends. But our ceremony has a secondary purpose. At its best, it helps you to know yourselves better, too. It encourages you to focus on your goals and wishes, and it helps prepare you for the challenges of the future and the unexpected paths upon which you might set forth.”