An Elm Creek Quilts Sampler (28 page)

They drove the rest of the way in silence.

When they reached the manor Matt took her hand and squeezed it. “Everything will work out.”

She tried to smile. “I know.” She kissed him and hurried inside.

She found Mrs. Compson in the sewing room, sitting in a chair with her hands clasped in her lap, staring straight ahead at nothing. She looked up when Sarah entered. “Hello, dear. How did it go?”

“Fine. It went—” And then Sarah broke down, the words tumbling out and falling over each other, angry sobs choking her throat. Murmuring sympathetically, Mrs. Compson took her hand and pulled her over until Sarah’s head rested in her lap. She stroked Sarah’s long hair and listened while Sarah told her what had happened.

Sarah’s tears subsided. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, comforted by Mrs. Compson’s motherly touch. It had been a long time since her own mother had so much as hugged her. “I’m just going to have to face it,” Sarah said. “I’m never going to find a job.”

Mrs. Compson’s hand paused for a moment. “You already have a job, I thought.”

“Sure, but how long is it going to last, what with you ready to pack up and leave as soon as you get the chance?”

“True enough.” Mrs. Compson sighed and resumed stroking Sarah’s hair. “I might as well tell you. I’ve decided not to sell to Mr. Krolich.”

Sarah sat up and wiped her eyes. “Really?”

“Of course. What else could I do? I could hardly sell knowing his intentions. I’m grateful to you and Matthew for discovering the truth before it was too late. Elm Creek Manor will stand for a long time yet.”

“So what happens now?”

Mrs. Compson shrugged. “I wait for a better offer.” She eyed Sarah intently. “Can you make me a better offer?”

Sarah barked out a laugh. “Not unless you’re planning to give me a huge raise. You know Matt and I could never buy this place.”

“Must you be so literal? I don’t mean for you to submit a bid, silly girl. I’m telling you to give me a reason to stay. You’re a smart young woman. Use your imagination. This place—” Her voice faltered, and she looked around as if seeing through the walls and taking in the entire building. “This place was so full of life once. I’m just one old woman, but I don’t want to sell my family home. There’s time enough for Elm Creek Manor to be out of Bergstrom hands after I die.”

“Don’t talk like that.”

“Don’t interrupt your elders when they’re making a point. And here’s mine: I’m giving you the chance to convince me to keep Elm Creek Manor. Show me how to bring Elm Creek Manor back to life and I’ll never sell it. I promise.”

“I don’t think—I’m not sure how.”

“Well, don’t panic, dear. I didn’t expect you to have an answer already. Give it some time. But not too much time.” She smiled and patted Sarah’s shoulder. “Everything will come out all right in the end.”

“Matt said something almost exactly like that when he dropped me off.”

“A wise man indeed,” Mrs. Compson said, her voice solemn. Then she smiled.

Sarah’s mind raced. A better offer. How could they make Elm Creek Manor live again? She shook her head. She should approach this problem as a businesswoman would, collecting and analyzing the evidence before submitting a proposal to the client.

“Mrs. Compson, there’s more I need to know.”

“What’s that, dear?”

“I need to know why you left, and why you didn’t come back for so many years, and why you don’t speak to your sister-in-law when as far as I can tell she might be your only living relative.” Mrs. Compson’s smile faded, but Sarah plowed on ahead. “Before I can help you figure out how to bring Elm Creek Manor back to life, I need to understand how it died in the first place.”

Mrs. Compson took a deep breath. “I suppose. Perhaps if you know the whole story you’ll understand. Or perhaps you’ll just think I’m a foolish old woman who deserves to be unhappy.”

Maybe that’s what Mrs. Compson thought of herself, but Sarah didn’t care what Mrs. Compson had or had not done. She would never agree that Mrs. Compson deserved such remorse.

She waited, and Mrs. Compson explained.

Twenty-Four

I
suppose if James and Richard and Harold had never gone off to war I might have lived at Elm Creek Manor all my days and would have had a very different life. But they did go, and at the time my only consolation was that they would be together. I prayed that they would stay alive long enough to outlast the war.

As for the Elm Creek Manor homefront—well, I had the baby to think about, and Claudia and I both had our hands full trying to comfort Agnes. She seemed perpetually on the verge of tears, and usually did begin to sob uncontrollably if no one rushed to her side with a hug and some consoling words. I admit I became quite impatient with her. I too wanted someone to convince me that everything would be all right in the end, but when no one could, you didn’t see me collapsing into hysteria.

I don’t know. Perhaps I was also angry at myself for wishing that someone would comfort me as we all tried to comfort Agnes. A grown woman shouldn’t need that. A grown woman in charge of an entire household should definitely not need that. When you’re the strong one of the family you must be the strong one all the time, not just when it’s convenient.

Spring turned into summer. Letters from the men were infrequent and often censored so thoroughly that we were hard-pressed to find a single comprehensible sentence. Still, we were relieved and thankful to learn that they were alive, together, and unharmed.

To help pass the time and distract our thoughts, Claudia and I would quilt and talk about more pleasant things. Sometimes my starry-eyed sister would launch into a fanciful description of her upcoming wedding. You would think we were royalty, her plans were so elaborate. As we worked, Agnes would linger around, sulking and pretending she wasn’t interested. One day while I was working on a Tumbling Blocks baby quilt, Claudia whispered to me that Agnes deserved a second chance. To keep the peace, I relented and asked my sister-in-law if she wanted to learn how to quilt.

To my astonishment, she agreed. We set about planning a sampler just as you and I did, Sarah, but she refused to follow the simplest instructions. First she fought me over making a sampler, saying they were too simple. My instinct was to retort that a sampler would be all the more appropriate in her case, but a warning look from Claudia helped me bite my tongue. I lost that fight, so I tried to salvage the project by encouraging her to at least pick a simple block, like the Sawtooth Star or a Nine Patch. But she would have no part of any of my advice. Once she spotted that Double Wedding Ring pattern she made up her mind. She was going to make a Double Wedding Ring quilt and no one was going to stand in her way.

“Agnes,” I said in my most reasonable tone, “look at this pattern more carefully. See all these curved seams, all these odd-shaped pieces with bias edges? Trust me, this isn’t the best choice for your first quilt. You’re just going to end up frustrated.”

But she tossed her head and said that she hadn’t had much of a wedding and no engagement whatsoever and she hadn’t seen her husband in five months, and no one was going to tell her she couldn’t have a quilt named Double Wedding Ring if she wanted it. I gave in very reluctantly, I assure you.

That quilt was doomed to failure from the first. We made our templates differently back then, but not as differently as the Puzzle did. She drew her shapes haphazardly, glaring at me when I warned her that even small errors could result in pieces that wouldn’t match up. It had been enough trouble to convince her to use scraps, even when I reminded her there was a war on, but then she decided to make the entire quilt—yes, including the background pieces—out of red fabric. This quilt would have no contrast at all.

So many problems and she had not even begun sewing yet, which meant, of course, that the worst was yet to come. She handled the pieces so awkwardly that the bias edges stretched hopelessly out of shape, then she would mutter to herself as she jabbed pins into them to try to get them to behave. She jabbed herself more than once, too, and made sure everyone in the house heard it. Her stitches were large and crooked, but eventually I gave up telling her to take them out and do them over.

On one especially hot, muggy day a week later, Agnes, her forehead beaded with perspiration, triumphantly waved a ring in my face. “You didn’t think I could do it, but here it is. So there.”

I chose to ignore her childish behavior. “Very good, Agnes,” I replied, taking it from her and placing it on a table for inspection. I tried to keep my face expressionless. An entire week’s labor had gone into this? The ring buckled in the middle rather than lying flat, pieces didn’t meet properly, stitches were so loosely sewn that the thread could be seen from the front of the block, and all that red blended together so that the pattern was unrecognizable. The forlorn assemblage of fabric begged for a mercifully swift delivery into the final resting place of the scrap bag.

“What do you think?” Agnes demanded when I had been silent for a while.

“Well,” I said carefully, “it’s fine for a beginner, but you need to remember that small trouble spots multiply into big problems when you have a big quilt. Even if you’re only off by an eighth of an inch, if you have eight of those mistakes, that’s an inch worth of inaccuracy.”

She scowled. “So how do I fix it?”

“You’ll have to rip out some of these seams and do them over.”

“Rip them out? It took me forever to put them in!”

“It’s nothing to get angry about, Agnes. I’ve had to rip out plenty of seams. Every quilter does.”

“Well, I guess I’m not a quilter, then.” She snatched up her work and stormed out of the room.

Claudia had overhead everything. “You’d better go after her,” she said, sighing.

I nodded and followed Agnes down the hall toward the front entry. I was relieved to see that Claudia had decided to accompany me.

“Where do you think she’s going?” I asked as we crossed the marble floor. I didn’t have to wonder long, as I spotted her yellow dress through the open door.

Agnes stood frozen in place on the veranda, her back to us. As we joined her, the unfinished quilt fell from her hand and dropped silently to the floor. Her face was no longer angry, but she stared straight ahead as if she had not heard us approach.

“Agnes, what—” Claudia’s voice broke off as she followed Agnes’s line of sight and spotted the car driving slowly up to the manor.

Icy fingers clutched at my heart.

Two men in formal military dress climbed out of the car and walked toward us. One was older, with brown curly hair graying at the temples and a grim expression. The younger man’s face was pale behind a sprinkling of freckles. He swallowed repeatedly and avoided meeting our eyes as they climbed the right-hand set of curved stairs. Each man carried a yellow slip of paper.

I thought they’d never reach the top of those stairs. Claudia slowly reached out and clasped my hand.

Then they were standing at the top of the stairs and removing their hats. “Mrs. Compson?” the older man asked.

I nodded.

The man came up to me and glanced down at the paper in his hand. “Mrs. Compson, ma’am, I regret that it is my duty to inform you that …”

A distant roaring filled my ears, blocking out his words. I watched his lips working silently.

James was dead.

Through the fog I became aware that the younger man was fingering his paper uncertainly. He looked from Claudia to Agnes and back again. “Mrs. Bergstrom?”

Mrs. He said Mrs., not Miss. That means—

Agnes’s eyes welled up with tears. The younger man’s voice trembled as he repeated the older man’s message.

Not Richard, too. This can’t be happening.

Agnes began to wail. She sank to her knees, clutching the paper to her chest.

Claudia buried her face in her hands and murmured the same phrase over and over, her shoulders shaking. Then she looked up, tears glistening on her cheeks. “Thank God,” she sobbed. “Thank God.”

The roaring in my ears seemed to explode white hot. I slapped Claudia across the face, so hard my palm stung. She cried out. I grabbed the older man by his lapels. “How?” I screamed in his face. “How did this happen? He promised! He promised me!” The younger man leaped forward to pull me away. I felt fabric tear in my fists. “You’re wrong! You’re lying!” I kicked at them both.

Searing pain stabbed across my abdomen.
They shot me
, I thought, watching the dark red blood pool around my feet.

Agnes shrieked. Then I sank into cold, silent blackness.

I remember little about the next few weeks. I suppose that’s a good thing. I do remember lying in a hospital bed holding my daughter’s still little body and sobbing. She actually lived for almost three days, can you believe that? What a little fighter. If only—

But it doesn’t matter now. She’s with her daddy. That’s enough.

Soon her grandpa joined them. Father collapsed from a stroke when he heard the news. They buried him before I was released from the hospital. I think I begged the doctors to let me go to the funeral, but they wouldn’t let me. I think that’s what happened. I don’t remember it clearly. Can you imagine, missing my own father’s funeral?

For weeks after returning home I felt as if I were shrouded in a thick woolen batting. Sounds were less distinct. Colors were duller. Everything seemed to move more slowly.

Gradually, though, the numbness began to recede, replaced by the most unbearable pain. My beloved James was gone, and I still didn’t know exactly how. My daughter was gone. I would never hold her again. My darling little brother was gone. My father was gone. The litany repeated itself relentlessly in my mind until I thought I would go mad.

A few hesitant visitors from the quilting guild would come by, but I refused to see them. Eventually they stopped trying.

Then the Japanese surrendered, and Harold came home, thinner, more anxious, his hairline even farther back than when he had left. When he first returned to Elm Creek Manor I thought his receding hairline was the funniest thing I had ever seen. I laughed until my stomach hurt and the others stared at me. You’d think they would have been glad to see me laugh for a change.