The Aloha Quilt (17 page)

There, Bonnie saw that Claire had turned on her computer and opened the web browser.
“The party was the treat,” she said, beckoning Bonnie closer. “Now it’s time for a
Halloween trick.”

Blinking from exhaustion, Bonnie scanned the web page. “The Revenge Guy?” she read
aloud.

“There’s also the Revenge Gal, but I don’t think they’re related. Look.” Claire clicked
back to a Google search results page. “There are more than eighty-one million sites
about revenge. We can find the perfect way to get back at Craig and Terri.”

“Only eighty-one million?” Bonnie pulled up a chair and studied the computer. “Are
you sure this is legal?”

“Some of it’s a bit borderline, but we’re just browsing. Look. This company will send
Craig a fake letter from the IRS telling him he’s going to be audited in a week. They’ll
mangle and stamp the envelope so it looks like it was delayed in the mail. Or—here.
You can disguise your phone number so it won’t show up on caller ID, then leave a
message at Terri’s workplace
pretending to be her doctor calling with the results of her AIDS test.”

“Claire, this is so ugly,” Bonnie exclaimed.

Claire laughed. “Maybe, but it’s not even in the same league of ugly as what they’ve
done to you.”

“Ordinarily I’d rather take the high road.” Bonnie reached for the mouse. “However,
in honor of Halloween, I might just indulge in a trick for them as a treat for me.”

“Now, now, Bonnie.” Claire playfully slapped the back of Bonnie’s hand and scooted
the mouse away. “We’re just having fun. We aren’t actually going to do any of these
things.”

“Not tonight,” Bonnie acknowledged. “It’s late and we’re both tired. I’ll bookmark
some of these sites and we can look them over tomorrow.”

“No, Bonnie. You shouldn’t seek revenge tomorrow or the next day or the next. Just
let it go, okay? I’m sorry I brought it up. I only wanted to make you laugh at the
end of a long day.”

“Maybe you meant it as a joke, but you’re right. I deserve payback.”

“You deserve peace of mind,” said Claire. “Revenge won’t bring you that.”

“Maybe not, but it might be worth it.”

“Come on, Bonnie. You don’t really mean that. You don’t want to become like them,
do you? You’re better than that. You’d never take pleasure in hurting people. That’s
not you. Just let it go.”

“How can I let it go when I can’t stop thinking about it?” demanded Bonnie, suddenly
tearful. “And I do think about it! Day and night. Sleeping and waking. I need to
stop
thinking about it. You want to help me? Help me forget this whole terrible nightmare
ever happened! Help me forget that women like Terri even exist.”

“I’m so sorry,” said Claire, stricken. “I should have known better than to joke about
something like this.”

“No, it’s all right. It’s okay to imagine what I might like to do to Craig, but I
know I’d feel terrible if I followed through.” Bonnie took a deep, shaky breath and
tried to smile. “The party was a huge success. We’re successful and happy and I’m
perfectly fine without him. That’s the best revenge of all.”

She wasn’t perfectly fine, not yet.

Chapter Seven
 

Claire must have seen Hinano’s list of must-see Maui events in Bonnie’s notebook,
for the following week, Claire and Eric surprised Bonnie with a night out at the Old
Lahaina Lu‘au. They were greeted with beautiful, fragrant flower
leis
and enjoyed a delicious feast of kalua pua‘a—pork roasted in a beachside underground
oven called an
imu
—as well as fish, poi, chicken, vegetables, fruit, and salads. After the feast, the
guests were spellbound by a wonderful performance of traditional Hawaiian music, dances,
and chants performed against the stunning backdrop of the sunset over the ocean. Once
Bonnie recalled Hinano’s scathing remark about
leis
and hulas, and she wondered if he would find the luau authentic enough to meet his
high standards or if he would dismiss it as just another commercial display for the
tourists. He must have believed it represented the real Hawaii, she decided, or he
wouldn’t have recommended it. Either way, she knew the quilt campers would have as
wonderful a time there as she was having, so she resolved to include an evening at
the Old Lahaina Lu‘au during each week of camp, either early in the week to introduce
the campers to Hawaii, or perhaps at the end, as a farewell banquet.

Another week passed, and as Bonnie and Claire awaited the response to the job announcement
they had posted in the quilt shop, on their website, and in the newsletter of every
quilting guild in Hawaii, Bonnie resumed work on her Pineapple Patch quilt. First
she created a border
lei
to complement the center, then browsed through the aisles of Plumeria Quilts admiring
the rainbow of bolts, selecting a few of the prettiest and setting them aside on the
cutting table to unroll, inspect, and compare. After considering several possible
combinations of focus fabrics and backgrounds, she selected a vibrant emerald green
tone-on-tone print for the appliqué. She had originally intended to choose a solid
fabric in keeping with tradition, but the subtle print offered the slightest hint
of texture when compared to a solid fabric, which she thought might appear too flat.
For the background she chose a creamy ivory fabric, after ruling out white as too
easily dirtied and too bright for the emerald green. Contrast was good and necessary
in a quilt, but the ivory fabric glowed when placed next to the green, whereas the
bright white seemed to glare.

Claire assured her she had chosen the two prettiest fabrics in the store and that
her quilt was destined to be a masterpiece. She also refused to let Bonnie pay for
her purchases, but folded the yardage, wrapped the bundles in tissue paper, and tucked
them into a shopping bag while ignoring the cash Bonnie set on the counter. Bonnie
tried to leave it there, but Claire slipped it back into her purse while one of her
employees distracted her. It was so silly and obvious that Bonnie had to laugh, but
she felt a twinge of guilt as she left the store. Even though she had selected only
enough fabric and thread for a wallhanging, she wouldn’t have chosen an expensive
batik if she had known Claire intended to give it to her. She had been a shopkeeper
long enough to know that every penny counted.

Back at the Hale Kapa Kuiki, she tracked down Midori in the laundry room and tentatively
showed her the two fabrics, expecting a rebuke for not choosing solids. Instead, Midori
nodded her approval, remarked that the ivory brought out subtle hints of gold in the
emerald appliqué fabric, and suggested Bonnie wash the fabric yardage separately just
in case the emerald bled.

“You’re okay with this?” asked Bonnie before loading the emerald green print into
the washer. She had expected a sigh of disappointment at best, a refusal to continue
their lessons at worst.

“What does it matter what I think?” inquired Midori, balancing a laundry basket full
of freshly washed and folded towels on her hip. “You’re the one who’s going to have
to work with it and look at it every day when it’s done.”

“I guess I hoped you’d approve.”

Midori set down the laundry basket and scrutinized the two fabrics more carefully.
“It’s a pretty combination. The tone-on-tone gives it a nice texture, but not too
much. It’s not strictly traditional, but you could have done worse.”

Somehow that honest, restrained approval meant as much as all the lavish praise Claire
had heaped upon her at the store.

Later, after the fabrics were washed and dried, Midori instructed Bonnie to iron the
emerald green appliqué fabric, fold it in eighths with right sides facing, and iron
the creases of the folds. Then she urged Bonnie to either pin or baste all around
the edges of the thick fabric triangle. “That will keep the layers from shifting while
you trace your pattern and cut out the appliqué,” she explained. “It’s a little extra
work now that will save you big headaches later.”

Bonnie decided to baste, thinking that she could always secure loose places with pins
if she snipped through the basting
threads while cutting out her design. Then Midori told her to cut her paper pattern
on its folds so that only the eighth-fold section she had drawn remained. Bonnie hesitated,
reluctant to ruin her pattern.

“You aren’t ruining it,” Midori told her. “You need only the one-eighth section. A
more advanced Hawaiian quilter wouldn’t have cut out the entire paper pattern at this
stage anyway. I had you do it so that you could unfold the paper and see what your
whole design looked like. You seemed to need that reassurance.”

Bonnie couldn’t dispute that, and so she placed her trust in her mentor and trimmed
her Pineapple pattern so that only the one-eighth section she had drawn remained.
Making sure the grain lines and biases were aligned, she placed the one-eighth pattern
on the fabric triangle so that the edges of the paper met the folds of the fabric.

“Some quilters prefer to pin or baste their pattern in place,” Midori said. “Others
trust the steadiness of their hands and don’t bother.”

Midori’s tone suggested she didn’t think much of quilters who skipped that step, so
Bonnie threaded her needle again and basted the pattern in place with large stitches
just within the pattern line. After she tied the knot and snipped the dangling length
of thread, Midori again offered her two options of how to proceed: She could trace
around her pattern so that the outline was marked on the fabric itself, or she could
cut around the pattern without tracing.

If Bonnie had pinned the paper pattern to the fabric, she might have chosen to trace
around the pattern and remove the paper before cutting, but since she had already
gone to the trouble of basting the pattern in place, she decided to take the second
option.

Making careful snips with Midori’s sharpest scissors, she cut the emerald green fabric
one-eighth of an inch outside the edges of the pattern. “The extra eighth inch is
your fabric allowance,” Midori told her, confirming Bonnie’s guess. “You’ll tuck the
raw edge under your appliqué as you sew it to the background fabric.”

Midori left her on her own to finish, admonishing her to take her time. Bonnie would
have done so in any case, knowing that a simple slip of the scissors could ruin all
her efforts up to that point. She felt no need to rush, but allowed the shapes she
had drawn to gradually emerge from the fabric—plump pineapples, short tufted tops,
and long, graceful leaves.

With one last snip, she finished. She cut the basting stitches, brushed away loose
threads, and piled the scraps on the far side of the table, clearing the space in
front of her. Then, handling the bias edges carefully rather than risk stretching
them even slightly and distorting her appliqué, she unfolded it on the table and stood
up to inspect it.

She was pleased to see that her design appealed to her even more in fabric than on
paper, and she prepared the
lei
with greater confidence.

Midori returned while Bonnie was cleaning up the table and asked if she was ready
to move ahead to the next step. “It will take you more time than anything you’ve done
so far, except, perhaps, designing your pattern,” she warned.

“What’s the next step?” asked Bonnie, sweeping snipped threads and fabric scraps off
the table and into a trash bag.

“Preparing the background fabric and basting the appliqué in place,” said Midori.
“When I make my quilts, I like to get my appliqué basted down right away to secure
those bias edges.”

“If you have time to teach, I have time to learn,” Bonnie replied.

Since she had already washed the ivory background fabric, her next step was to iron
it as she had done with the emerald fabric earlier. After Bonnie pressed the folds
into crisp creases, Midori instructed her to unfold the background fabric right side
up on one of the large tables in the covered part of the lanai. “Lay your appliqués
upon the background,” Midori said, showing her how to ease the emerald green pieces
into place without stretching them, matching the pressed creases of the appliqués
to those in the background fabric. When the creases were aligned, the pineapples and
leaves were perfectly centered on the ivory background.

Midori helped her pin the appliqué in place, first the
lei
and then the center, taking care to keep the creases aligned.

“Next we baste.” Then Midori eyed her appraisingly. “Yes, more preparation. Eventually
you will begin to appliqué, if you don’t give up in frustration first.”

“I haven’t complained,” Bonnie reminded her mildly, reaching across the table for
needle and thread. Then she hesitated, watching Midori curiously. “Tell me, Midori.
Are you accustomed to having your apprentices question your every lesson?”

“No,” said Midori, brow furrowing. “Quite the contrary. Why do you ask?”

“Because from the beginning, you’ve been telling me what to do and then emphasizing
why I must do it exactly so or I’ll regret it, almost as if you expect me to dispute
the point. I’m here to learn, not to argue. I’m not second-guessing you.”