The Wedding Quilt (31 page)

Sarah wiped her wet feet on the mat, studying the incongruous curio cabinet and mulling over her conversation with Jeremy. Then she drew closer. The floor had been mopped and polished, but she could still make out the faint scuff marks on the gray-blue marble leading from the wall beside the door to the theater, the only room on the lower level larger than the foyer—

The marks led not from the wall to the theater, she realized with a start, but from the theater to the wall.

The curio cabinet was pushed back as far against the wall as it could go, leaving only a dark, narrow space about a quarter of an inch wide behind it. Pressing her cheek to the wall, Sarah peered into the crevice, and in the shadow she could barely make out the shapes of more small copper plaques like the others she had already seen—and one significantly larger.

Sarah knew the curio cabinet would be too heavy for her to move, but she couldn't resist shoving it with her shoulder just in case. When it didn't budge, she called Leslie out from the theater and hurried upstairs to the east gallery to round up a few more volunteers. With the help of two pairs of furniture slides Patricia kept in her desk drawer, they managed to move the heavy cabinet away from the wall.

Then they discovered what the curio cabinet had concealed—a tarnished bronze plaque chronicling the provenance of Union Hall. The Union Quilters who had conceived and executed the project were listed, and Sarah felt a thrill of excitement as she read the names, which included Dorothea Nelson, Gerda Bergstrom, Anneke Bergstrom, Constance Wright, and several other women whom she recalled from Gerda's memoir. And then, at once, they all saw the name of the architect and foreman of construction—Abel Wright.

Armed with that information, at the council meeting two weeks later it was easy to persuade the city council not to exercise their right of eminent domain and to deny Gregory Krolich's bid to purchase the property. When questioned, he denied any knowledge of how the curio cabinet happened to be right in front of the plaque bearing the crucial information the historical society had sought. Neither Patricia nor Leslie nor any members of the society could recall exactly when or why it had been moved from the theater to the foyer, but they knew the cabinet had been in its current location for years. No one had questioned the move. Everyone had assumed another member of the society had done it for some good, albeit unknown, reason.

A few days later, Patricia produced photos taken at an event held in 1988 to commemorate the 125th anniversary of Union Hall—and one photo clearly showed the recently discovered plaque in the background, with the mahogany curio cabinet nowhere in sight. The Waterford Historical Society had invited business and civic leaders from the town and representatives from the college to an open house, hoping to launch a capital campaign to restore the building and transform it into a museum. Though the event generated a great deal of interest and promises of help, their attempts to raise funds languished in the recession of the early 1990s, when they were forced to put their plans on hold indefinitely. When Sarah learned that representatives from University Realty had attended, she surmised that Krolich surely had been one of them. While attending the event, he could have noticed the plaque, recognized Abel Wright's name from the Creek's Crossing Library artifacts owned by his company, and secretly returned later with his own personal brute squad to move the curio cabinet. He had concealed the truth and bided his time, confident that with each passing year, Union Hall would become less valuable in the eyes of the community, until the time was right for him to seize it.

Unfortunately Sarah never could prove her suspicions, but it was enough for her that justice was served in other ways. A few weeks after the city council decreed that they would not condemn Union Hall, an alert clerk at a local used bookstore called the police when a young man in a Waterford College sweatshirt tried to sell them six books, each more than a century old and bearing the stamp of the Rare Books Room on a flyleaf. Under questioning, the student confessed that “some guy in a suit” had paid him one hundred dollars to steal the books and hold on to them for a few months until he could dispose of them in his own hometown hundreds of miles away. It was fortunate indeed for the historical society that the student had needed beer money before semester break, that he had seen the books as a source of quick cash, and that he could pick Krolich out of a lineup. Charged with felony theft, Krolich agreed to a plea bargain to avoid a seven-year prison term and was instead sentenced to nine months in a medium-security prison, a thousand hours of community service, and restitution. His reputation ruined, his career in a shambles, Krolich left the Elm Creek Valley to appear on a reality television show in one last vain attempt to restore his credibility before he disappeared into obscurity.

Krolich was still in prison when the long-abandoned capital campaign to restore Union Hall began anew. Media coverage of the effort eventually reached Thomas Wright II, Abel's great-grandson and director of the Abel Wright Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving the author's legacy and promoting literary and history education in the public schools. After visiting Union Hall and viewing relics from his great-grandfather's past that he had not known existed, Thomas Wright II gave the historical society's project the full support of Abel Wright Foundation, contributing one million dollars to the restoration fund and promising, once the renovations were complete, to donate Abel Wright's personal papers and possessions to them as well. To spare the Waterford Historical Society the financial burden of maintaining the acclaimed collection, the foundation would also endow a chair in Waterford College's Department of History. In addition to the usual duties of tenured faculty, the Abel Wright Professor of American History would be responsible for maintaining the Abel Wright archive and promoting his legacy through teaching, scholarship, and service.

As the author of the definitive biography of Abel Wright and the expert whose knowledge had helped thwart the attempts to condemn Union Hall, Jeremy was at the top of the short list of candidates for the newly endowed position. A year after losing his bid for tenure in Virginia—and just in time to officiate the ceremonies honoring Union Hall's appointment to the National Register of Historical Places—Jeremy returned to Waterford College as a full professor, to the delight of his former graduate adviser and the rest of the faculty. For weeks after he, Anna, and Gina moved back to Pennsylvania, he went about his new duties with an expression of joyous disbelief, as if he had forgotten what it was to be happy and secure in his work and he did not expect it to last—and yet day after day, it did.

If anyone was happier than Jeremy, it was Anna, restored to her role as head chef of Elm Creek Quilts. And no one was happier—or more relieved—to see Anna back in her beloved kitchen at Elm Creek Manor than Sarah, who had missed her friend terribly and was thankful beyond measure to be spared the annual task of searching for her replacement. She had learned all too well that no one could fill Anna's place except Anna herself—although in recent years, both Sarah and Anna had agreed that Gina and James would be able successors and might even surpass their mothers.

“Mom?”

Sarah tore her gaze away from Union Hall—beautiful, honored, and in danger no more—to find James standing in the entranceway, “Creek's Crossing, Penn” engraved in stone above his head.

“Mom?” he said again. “Are you okay?”

She smiled. “Yes, sweetheart. I was just lost in thought. I'm sorry I kept you waiting.”

“Are you coming in?” He smiled back, but he looked puzzled, and perhaps even concerned. “We're dressed and awaiting inspection.”

“I'm coming,” she said, and followed him inside.

I
nside the shop, the young men looked handsome and sophisticated in their formal suits, but their jokes and playful teasing reminded Sarah of the young boys they had once been. Because their wedding would take place in the afternoon, Caroline and Leo had chosen traditional morning dress for the men's attire, gray cutaway coats that slanted from waist to thigh and fell to the knee in back; striped trousers, also gray; white dress shirts with folded collars; gray waistcoats; and four-in-hand neckties. Matt and Leo's father were similarly attired, and as the tailor and his assistants took measurements and pinned seams, Sarah and Leo's mother alternately admired the men, teased them for admiring themselves in the full-length mirrors, and threatened to make them dress up more often, since they all looked so handsome in their fine clothes.

Most of the garments were in perfect order, but a few needed alterations. Rather than wait at the shop, Leo's brother, the best man, arranged to pick up the remaining jackets and trousers early the next morning. The men changed back into their comfortable jeans and sweatshirts, and soon the entire party was on the way back to Elm Creek Manor.

As soon as the Elm Creek Quilts shuttle cleared the leafy wood and rounded the barn, Sarah glimpsed a very expensive, chauffeur-driven vehicle in the parking lot behind the manor.

“Who could that be?” Leo's mother wondered aloud.

“Fifty bucks says it's my mom's friend Diane,” said James. “Her son is Michael Sonnenberg.”

“
The
Michael Sonnenberg?” asked a skeptical groomsman.

“The Michael Sonnenberg,” confirmed Matt, with a grin for Sarah, for they both remembered the days when the good citizens of Waterford had referred to Diane's eldest son disapprovingly as “
That
Michael Sonnenberg.”

“Is Michael Sonnenberg coming to the wedding?” asked Leo's brother, awestruck.

“Sorry, no,” said Sarah. “He couldn't make it. You can meet his parents, though.”

Leo's brother nodded politely, but he couldn't hide his disappointment.

Sure enough, as the shuttle crossed the bridge over Elm Creek, Sarah watched the chauffeur open the passenger door and Diane and her husband, Tim, emerge. At the same moment, the back door of the manor swung open and out came the Elm Creek Quilters to welcome them. Sarah watched as the newcomers stood at the foot of the stairs basking in the warm greetings, and as soon as Matt parked the shuttle, she hurried to join the throng. Diane seemed impossibly youthful, slim and impeccably dressed in a tailored mauve skirt and jacket, her blond curls perfectly styled. “Welcome home,” Sarah said, hugging her. “You look wonderful. I swear you seem younger every time I see you. Has Michael built a time machine too?”

Diane laughed, pleased. “No, not yet.” She lowered her voice. “I might as well tell you, since I'm sure you've already guessed: I had some more work done.”

“Again?” exclaimed Gwen. “What's left of you that hasn't already been lifted, plumped, filled, or lasered?”

“Looking this good at my age requires vigilant maintenance,” said Diane. “Which you would know if you weren't still working the aged-hippie look.”

Gwen shrugged, planting both hands on her cane. “It suits me.”

“It doesn't suit me,” declared Diane. “Thank goodness Michael is so generous. It's either that or he's nursing a guilty conscience. I'm sure he's well aware that his childhood escapades caused most of my wrinkles and gray hair. It's only fair that he foot the bill for the repairs.”

Everyone laughed, more from the sheer delight of being together again than from Diane's quip, which they knew was only partially truthful. Diane had not had as much work done as she implied, but Michael certainly had been generous with his wealth. As an unhappy, alienated youth in Waterford, he had given his parents much cause for worry, but they had never given up on him. Somehow—Diane credited prayer and an assertive determination to remain involved in his life—he had left juvenile delinquency behind, graduated from high school, and achieved unexpected success as a computer science major at Waterford College. From there he went on to graduate school at MIT, where he confounded his professors by concentrating on gaming platforms, a focus they considered a waste of his talent. After earning his Ph.D., he turned down several lucrative job offers to work on an invention that he swore would revolutionize the gaming world. Though his parents wished he had chosen gainful employment and had saved his pet projects for the weekends, they took out a second mortgage on their beloved home on the Waterford College Arboretum to help him launch his business, which at the time was little more than a single patched-together prototype and a wildly fantastic plan. It turned out to be the best investment they had ever made.

Eventually even a nongamer like Sarah knew all about Michael's invention, the Vertex, a gaming device about the size and shape of a smartphone that was unlike any handheld game that had preceded it. The graphics, according to James, were “epic,” and for the cost of an annual subscription, the user could connect to a huge library of games and applications via the Internet, and one player's device could connect to others wirelessly through a mesh network infrastructure. For a more immersive playing experience within the home, the Vertex could be plugged into a base console that allowed the games to be played on a large, high-definition screen, limited only by the quality of the player's media equipment. Using the base station, friends could play together using one Vertex, or they could bring their own devices and plug them into the same console for even greater flexibility and interaction.

As Michael's company had taken off, his marketing department had encouraged Vertex gatherings by offering gamers bonuses and prizes in both the virtual and actual worlds, which had sparked positive reviews and word-of-mouth and propelled sales beyond the company's manufacturing capabilities—and the short-term shortage only increased demand. The devices also linked each player to an online social network where they could show off their accomplishments, challenge one another to duels or multiplayer tournaments, and socialize. Over time, Vertex bricks-and-mortar stores—a cross between shops, showcases, and cafés—opened in larger markets, offering gamers places to meet, play, and see the latest games and hardware. In more recent years, the company had moved beyond games to other social and business applications, and had begun hosting an annual convention, VertexCon, where they launched new products to great fanfare. Celebrities eager for publicity found excuses to plug their new projects at the convention, and Sarah was no longer surprised to see reports in the news media of Michael's romantic involvement with one gorgeous starlet or another.