Elm Creek Quilts [08] The Christmas Quilt (20 page)

“Stop bickering,” ordered Sylvia. “I’m trying to think.” Claudia was right to say Agnes was not being reasonable, but Sylvia had never seen the younger girl dig in her heels before, and she had to admit it was a change she approved of. She also sensed that something else lay beneath the surface of Agnes’s insistence. Somehow the fate of the absent bird, their men overseas, and Agnes’s own exile from her family home had become intertwined in the young woman’s mind, and although Sylvia didn’t quite understand it, she longed for a solution that would bring peace to Agnes’s troubled heart and restore contentment to the family.

A light gust of wind stirred the trees, sending a light dusting of snow upon Agnes’s fir. The tiny crystals glittered like diamonds in the midday sun.

Suddenly it came to her. “Let’s decorate the tree out here.”

The others stared at her, Claudia bewildered, Agnes hopeful. “Out here?” echoed Claudia.

“Yes, why not? It’s within sight of the house. We can enjoy it from the ballroom windows.”

Claudia was aghast. “Hang ornaments that have been in the family for generations on a tree outside in the dead of winter?”

“We don’t have to,” exclaimed Agnes. “We’ve already strung popcorn and cranberries and nuts. We can trim the trees with those—”

“And apples, for a bit of color,” added Sylvia.

“And candles for the light—”

“Oh, yes, by all means,” interrupted Claudia. “What’s Christmas without a forest fire?”

“Very well, forget the candles.” Agnes beamed at Sylvia. “Will you help me?”

Sylvia smiled. “Of course.”

Once Claudia saw they had made up their minds, she resigned herself to Agnes’s peculiar choice and would not be left out of the decorating. They went back to the house for the apples, popcorn garlands, and strings of cranberries and nuts, which they wrapped around the Frazier fir by tossing one end of the strings into the highest branches they could reach and unwinding as they walked around the tree. With bits of twine, they tied apples by their stems to the ends of branches, which dipped slightly beneath the weight. Inspired, Sylvia sent Agnes back to the house for cookie cutters, which they used to carve stars and circles from packed snow, frosted shapes they arranged on the boughs like ornaments. Claudia turned out to be quite good at it. Soon she was enjoying herself as much as the others, and she led them in Christmas carols, including a few of her own invention.

“Don’t sit under the Christmas tree, with anyone else but me,” Claudia sang, and the others burst into laughter. She pretended to be insulted. “Don’t laugh. I’m composing a holiday classic.”

“I’m sure Glenn Miller can’t wait to record it,” said Sylvia.

Afterward, they stood back to admire their work. Agnes glowed with happiness, and Claudia admitted that their tree was pretty in its own way. “It’s certainly unique,” Sylvia agreed, and the women linked arms as they trudged through the snow back to the manor, pulling the toboggan behind them.

The next morning, Sylvia’s father felt well enough to accompany the women to church. The mood of the congregation was more subdued than celebratory, more longing than joyful. Sylvia knew that nearly every person gathered there yearned for a brother, father, husband, or son overseas, or was grieving for someone lost to the war. Even the pastor had a brother serving in France, and in his sermon he referred to the men they all missed and their longing for peace.

“We must not give in to despair,” the pastor said. “We must have faith that the Lord who loves us will not abandon us. Though far too many of us have sewn gold stars on the service banners displayed in our front windows, though so many of us mourn, we must not believe that God has ceased loving us. He has not forgotten us. In our moments of weakness, we may fear that we walk alone, but we must never forget that God has sent us the light of his love and mercy. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness shall not overcome it.

“The miracle of Christmas is that in sending to us His only Son, whose birth we celebrate this morning, God kindled a light in the darkness that shrouded the earth, a light that continues to shine brightly and will never be extinguished. Today, my dear brothers and sisters, we are confronted by darkness—the darkness of war, of tyranny, of oppression, of loneliness, of evil manifest in the world. Today, with the entire world at war, this darkness seems very deep indeed, but we must not forget that Jesus Christ brought the light of peace, and hope, and reconciliation into the world, and no darkness shall ever quench it. Each of us must bring light into the world, so that the darkness will not prevail.”

Transfixed by his compassionate words, heart aching for her husband, Sylvia found herself fighting back tears of grief and anguish. If James and Richard did not return to her, she did not know how she could endure it. She knew that she could not. She was desperate for the light the pastor had spoken of to shine through the darkness of her life, but she was so afraid, and so lonely. The darkness surrounding her was so opaque she feared no illumination could penetrate it. In silence, she cried out for God’s mercy, for the comfort only He could provide.

A hand clasped hers—Claudia’s—and she reached out her other hand to Agnes, and then Sylvia understood. They were all lonely and afraid. They had to be light for one another.

The three Bergstrom sisters held fast to one another for the rest of the service. They held hands still as they rose to sing the final hymn. As the last notes of the song faded away, Sylvia felt peace settling into her heart, and she whispered a prayer of thanks for her two sisters. They would sustain one another, whatever came, whatever darkness threatened them.

Back at home, the family breakfasted on the famous Bergstrom apple strudel and coffee, and then gathered in the ballroom to exchange gifts. Sylvia’s eyes filled with tears when she unwrapped Agnes’s gift-a beautifully knitted cap, receiving blanket, and booties done in a seed stitch in the softest, finest of blue-and-pink stripes.

“Where did you ever find the yarn for this?” asked Sylvia, fingering the precious garments.

“I found a worn layette in the attic,” confessed Agnes. “Moths had eaten through the blanket, but I washed it thoroughly and most of the yarn was still useable. I wish I could say it was new.”

“Nonsense,” declared Sylvia. “It’s as good as new. Better. It has family history.”

Agnes was so pleased she blushed.

Later, after the presents were opened and admired, the women read aloud from their men’s letters, saved for this occasion so that they would feel as if the family had reunited on Christmas Day. It had taken all of Sylvia’s willpower not to tear open James’s letter as soon as it had arrived a week before, but now she was grateful she had agreed to Claudia’s proposal. The men had been promised a hot Christmas dinner instead of the usual rations, James had written. Turkey with dressing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, green beans, and apple pie for dessert. It wouldn’t compare to anything Gerda Bergstrom might have prepared, but to the men hungry for a taste of home, it would seem like a feast for a king.

Harold reported a mild case of dysentery; Richard was learning how to drive a tank. Andrew had sent one letter to them all, thanking them for the pictures of the girls on the back steps of the manor. “I don’t have a sweetheart to write home to,” he confessed, “so I especially welcome your letters.” He promised to look after Richard and thanked Sylvia’s father for the memories of the best Christmas he had ever spent, which, he said, would be a comfort to him this season spent in the heat of the South Pacific, far from the snowy forests and fields of home.

Sylvia’s father cleared his throat several times as the last letter was read, and when Agnes finished reading, he went alone to the window and gazed outside to the gray sky that spoke of snow to come. Sylvia wished there had been more letters. Cousin Elizabeth had not written for the third or possibly fourth Christmas in a row; Sylvia had lost track. But she knew that what her father longed for most he could not have: for his son to walk in the door that moment, his wife to be standing at his side holding his hand, his brother to be making jokes and teasing the children, his great-aunt Lucinda and his mother to be holding court in their chairs by the hearth.

“Sylvia,” he said suddenly, beckoning to her. “Come take a look at this.”

She went to him and looked out the window. Just beyond the elms on the other side of the creek, she saw Agnes’s Christmas tree, simply but beautifully adorned. As she watched, she detected movement, and suddenly a doe and fawn emerged from the woods and carefully picked their way through the crust that had formed on top of the snow. They approached the Christmas tree, and the doe stretched out her head to nibble a popcorn garland. Her fawn cautiously bit into an apple.

Sylvia’s smile broadened as a flurry of motion heralded the arrival of a flock of chickadees. Soon other birds joined in the feast, and squirrels as well, busily harvesting the popcorn, fruits, and nuts from the Christmas tree.

Claudia and Agnes came to see what engrossed them. “Our tree,” Claudia lamented when she understood what was happening, but Agnes laughed out loud.

“I knew that nest wasn’t abandoned,” she cried. “I knew that tree was still a home to someone.”

“If it wasn’t before, it is now,” remarked Sylvia, and her father chuckled.

“We should make this a new tradition,” said Agnes as they watched the feast. “Every year we should bring in one tree for ourselves and decorate that one for the animals.”

Amused, Sylvia asked, “What if next Christmas Richard wants to cut down that tree and bring it indoors?”

“I’ll talk him out of it,” said Agnes, without a moment’s hesitation.

“Next year we will all be together again,” said Claudia, with such resolve that for a moment they all shared her certainty that it would be so. “Next Christmas, the war will be over and the boys will be home.”

And Claudia and Harold might be the newlyweds
, Sylvia thought. It would be their turn to bring in the tree. Their nephew or niece would be enjoying his or her first Christmas, and God willing, in the years to come many cousins would join her, filling the house with love and laughter again.

Let this be our Christmas miracle, Sylvia prayed, watching from the window as the wildlife of Elm Creek Manor enjoyed an unexpected Christmas feast while snow began to fall.

T
HE BLESSINGS OF
Christmas lingered in Sylvia’s heart into the New Year, sustaining her through the difficult last months of the war.

But the Christmas future with her husband and child that she had prayed for did not come to pass. Of the four men they were longing to see that day, only Andrew and Harold returned.

A few months after Christmas, James died attempting to save Richard’s life, determined to the end to protect him as he had promised.

The shock of the news sent Sylvia into premature labor. Her daughter, born too soon, fought for life for three days, but eventually slipped away.

Devastated, maddened by grief, Sylvia remembered little of the aftermath. As if looking through a fog of sorrow, she saw herself lying in a hospital bed, holding her baby’s small, still body and weeping. She recalled begging the doctors to release her so she might attend the funeral of her father, who had collapsed from stroke, unable to bear the shock of so much loss.

Eventually Sylvia was released from the hospital and sent home. For weeks afterward, she felt as if the world were shrouded in a thick woolen batting. Sounds were less distinct. Colors were duller. Everything seemed to move more slowly.

Gradually the numbness that pervaded her began to recede, replaced by the most unbearable pain. Her beloved James was gone, and she still did not know how he had died. Her daughter was gone. She would never hold her again. Her darling little brother was gone. Her father was gone. The litany repeated itself relentlessly in her mind until she believed she would go mad.

A few hesitant visitors from the Waterford Quilting Guild came by to express their sympathies and see what, if anything, they might do to help, but Sylvia refused to see them. Eventually they stopped coming.

The war ended. Harold returned to Elm Creek Manor thinner, more anxious—a pale shadow of the man who had left. Perhaps seeking a distraction or a return to normalcy, Claudia threw herself into planning her wedding. As her matron of honor, Sylvia was expected to help, but though she tried, she could not summon up any interest and had difficulty remembering the details of the tasks Claudia assigned to her.

One day a few weeks before the wedding, Andrew paid an unexpected visit on his way from Philadelphia to a new job in Detroit. Sylvia was glad to see him. He walked with a new limp and sat stiffly in his chair as if still in the service, and although he was pleasant to everyone else, he had barely a cold word for Harold, who seemed to go out of his way to avoid Andrew. Sylvia found this odd, since she had always heard that veterans shared a bond almost like that of brothers. Perhaps seeing each other dredged up memories of the war that were still too painful to bear.

That evening after dinner, Andrew found Sylvia alone in the library. He took her hand and pulled her over to the sofa, shaking from the effort to suppress his anger and grief. He had seen everything from a bluff overlooking the beach where they had been killed. He had been a witness to it all and powerless to help. He offered to tell her how her brother and husband died, but warned her she would find no comfort in the truth.

Without thinking of the consequences, Sylvia told him to tell her what he had seen. Haltingly, every word paining him, he described how Richard had come under friendly fire, how James had raced to his rescue, how he would have succeeded with the help of one more man. How Harold had hidden himself rather than risk his own life. How Andrew had run straight down the bluff to the beach where his friends lay dying, knowing that he would never make it in time.

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

Sylvia held him as he wept, but she had no words to comfort him.

Andrew left Elm Creek Manor the next morning. Sylvia brooded in silent rage as the days passed and the plans for the wedding continued. Finally, she could keep silent no longer. Her sister had to know the truth about the man she intended to marry.

But to Sylvia’s shock and outrage, Claudia denied the truth, blaming Sylvia’s accusations on jealousy that Harold had come back and James had not. Torn apart by this unexpected betrayal, Sylvia left Elm Creek Manor that day, unable to bear the sight of the man who had allowed her husband and brother to die, unable to live with a sister who preferred a disloyal lie to the truth. Into two suitcases she packed all she could carry—photographs, letters from Richard and James, the sewing basket she had received for Christmas the year before her mother died. Everything else she left behind—beloved childhood treasures, favorite books, unfinished projects, the Christmas Quilt. Everything except memories and grief.

She intended never to return.

Fifty years later, when she received word of Claudia’s death, she tried to find someone else to inherit the manor—a distant relation she had never met, anyone. She even hired a private detective, but his search promptly turned up nothing—so promptly that she sometimes suspected he had not searched as thoroughly as his fees merited. But with no one to pass on the burden to, she returned to Elm Creek Manor as the sole heir to the Bergstrom estate.

And here she would live out her days, no longer consumed by regrets, thanks to the intercession of Sarah and Matt Mc Clure. She would always long for what might have been, but she would also accept with gratitude the blessings that had come to her late in life.

If only Claudia were there to share them with her.

She heard the back door open and Sarah and Matt came in, laughing. “We found a tree,” Matt called.

Sylvia rose to join them.

In the back entry, a six-foot blue spruce lay on the floor. “What do you think?” Sarah asked, as she and Matt removed their coats and boots.

“It doesn’t look like much, lying down,” Sylvia remarked. She glanced at her watch. Bringing in the tree had taken them a respectable hour and a half. That spoke well for the couple—better, in fact, than she had expected. They had clearly not wasted time in argument, nor in indecisiveness, with neither willing to hold to a position for fear of offending the other. Nor had they returned too quickly, indicating that only one of them had chosen the tree and the other had been unwilling to suggest an alternative, or had spoken up only to be ignored. If a husband and wife could not work together in a simple task like choosing a Christmas tree, it did not bode well for the more important decisions they would face in their life together.

Sylvia thought Sarah and Matt would do just fine.

“Shall we set it up in the west sitting room?” asked Sarah.

“All in good time,” said Sylvia. “First I need to pay a call on someone I’ve too long neglected, and I would appreciate a lift.”

Sylvia sat on the passenger side of Sarah and Matt’s red pickup truck, the pinecone wreath she and her mother had made on her lap. They passed the old red barn Hans Bergstrom had built into the hillside, rounded a curve, and drove downhill along the edge of the orchard. The gravel road narrowed as they entered the woods, bouncing and jolting over the potholes, until they emerged a quarter of a mile later and turned left onto the paved county highway that led to the town of Waterford proper.

“Do you mind telling me where we’re going?” asked Sarah. “Or is it a surprise?”

Sylvia gestured toward the road ahead. “Just keep heading into town.”

Sarah shrugged and did as she was told.

As they drove north, the rural landscape gave way to planned neighborhoods that had sprung up on the farmland during Sylvia’s absence, and a couple of strip malls that looked like every other strip mall one might find in the more urban regions of Pennsylvania. As they approached the heart of town, the buildings showed more age, and more character, though most of the shops Sylvia had frequented as a young woman had been replaced by quirky boutiques, restaurants, and bars catering to the students and faculty of Waterford College.

“Turn here,” Sylvia said as they approached Church Street.

A block from the town square, Sylvia asked Sarah to park in the church’s lot. As Sylvia gazed through the windshield at the small churchyard enclosed within a low iron fence, Sarah asked, “Do you want me to come with you?”

Sylvia roused herself and unbuckled her seatbelt. “No, dear,” she said. “I need a word in private.”

Carrying the wreath, she made her way carefully across the parking lot and passed through the gate into the cemetery. Like the parking lot, the walking paths had been cleared of the previous night’s snowfall, but a light dusting of snow had blown across the paths since then, and in the footprints left behind Sylvia read the longings of the other mourners who had come to pay respects that day. Few had been buried in that churchyard since the 1950s after the larger cemetery was established east of town, but the Bergstroms owned a family plot, and many generations had been laid to rest in the shadow of the old church steeple.

The lilac bush her father had planted remained, dormant now in the depths of winter but thriving, larger than she remembered. In the spring, the winds would shower her parents’ graves with fragrant blossoms. Sylvia gazed down upon the headstone engraved with both of their names, the dates they had died fifteen years apart. They had made the most of the time granted to them, and Sylvia wished she had followed their example. She understood too late how wise they had been.

She said a silent prayer and looked about for the headstone she had seen only once, a few days after her return to Waterford. It was smaller than her parents’, low to the ground and engraved only with Claudia’s married name, date of birth, and the day she had died. It was simple and modest, chosen by two women from the church, who apologized when they showed it to Sylvia. Claudia had set aside a little money for her burial, they said, but it did not stretch far. If they had known she had surviving family, they would have waited, but as it was they followed Claudia’s instructions the best they could. If Sylvia liked, she could replace the headstone with something more suitable.

“No,” Sylvia had told them. “This is what she requested, and it will do. Thank you for seeing to it for me.”

As she had on that first visit two years before, Sylvia studied the headstone and wondered why Claudia had selected this plot for herself and had buried Harold in the newer, larger cemetery. Why had she not wanted to be interred beside her husband, as their parents had done? Why was Harold’s headstone as stark as Claudia’s, with no fond epitaph to show the world that he had once been loved?

Sylvia suspected she knew. If Claudia had come to believe the truth about Harold’s role in Richard’s and James’s deaths, Sylvia could not imagine how she had endured living so many years as his wife. Elm Creek Manor was not so large that they could have avoided each other indefinitely. Sylvia knew so little of Claudia’s life after her abrupt departure. Agnes had remained at Elm Creek Manor for several years until she left to marry a history professor from Waterford College, but she had told Sylvia very little of those days, probably wishing to spare her pain. Sylvia had so few clues to tell her of the woman her sister had become—a few unfinished quilts, the overgrown gardens, the dilapidated state of the manor—but none of her own words, not one single photograph. Forever Claudia would remain fixed in Sylvia’s memory precisely as she was the day their final argument compelled Sylvia from their home.

If only Sylvia had remembered how they had been each other’s light in the darkness on the last Christmas of the war. If only she had remembered that, and come home.

“I’m sorry,” Sylvia said aloud. “I’m sorry I was too proud to come home. I’m sorry I never had the chance to apologize to you. All these years I’ve blamed you for driving me away, but that’s not why I left, not really. It’s not because you married Harold. It’s not even because I couldn’t bear the sight of him, although it did take me a long time to stop hating him.”

Sylvia inhaled deeply, her nostrils stinging from the cold, her breath emerging as a stream of ghostly mist. “I ran away because I was afraid. I didn’t think I could endure the daily reminders of the happiness I once had and had lost. Now I know I should have stayed. Together you and I and Agnes could have helped one another bear our burdens. Instead I ran away, but I took my grief with me, and I’ve regretted it ever since.”

She bent down to lay the wreath on Claudia’s grave, arranging the red velvet ribbon with care. Then she straightened. “I wish—” She hesitated. “I wish I knew that wherever you are, you’ve forgiven me.”

She murmured a quiet prayer, then turned and made her way back to the waiting truck. Sarah offered her a sympathetic smile as she took her seat, but thankfully did not trouble her with questions.

Back at the manor, Sylvia and Sarah found the Christmas tree still lying on the floor just inside the back entrance. Matt was in the west sitting room, putting the last screws into a metal tree stand he must have purchased earlier that day because Sylvia had never seen it before. He had moved furniture aside to clear a corner of the room for the tree, setting the sewing machine against the wall and stacking the pieces of the Christmas Quilt neatly on the sofa. Boxes of ornaments lay scattered on the floor between the coffee table and the two armchairs by the window.

Matt looked up and smiled as they entered. “Just in time,” he said. “Sarah, could you give me a hand with the tree?”

Sylvia scooted out of the way while the young people hefted the tree and carried it from the hallway into the sitting room. She offered directions as they wrestled it into the tree stand, pushing it this way and that until it stood straight and tall. Then they set it back into the corner, rotating the stand so that its best side faced out.

It was a beautiful tree, full and tall and fragrant.

Sylvia nodded her approval as Sarah and Matt stepped back for a better look. “You chose well,” she praised them. “I believe you must have found the finest tree in the forest.”

“There was another one we liked better, closer to the manor between the creek and the barn,” said Sarah. “We decided not to cut it down because there was a bird’s nest in it.”