Elm Creek Quilts [08] The Christmas Quilt (21 page)

Sylvia gave her a long look. “Indeed?”

“The nest looked abandoned to me,” said Matt, “but we decided not to disturb it just in case.”

“I understand completely,” said Sylvia, inspecting the tree. “I see you had to trim off a bit here,” she said, indicating the top of the tree, where the severed trunk was hidden among the boughs. “Was it crooked, or did you think the tree would be too tall?”

“We didn’t cut off the top,” said Matt. “See how the wood has weathered? The top of this tree was cut off long ago. We just took off the next six feet down.”

Sylvia stared at him, then at Sarah. “What you mean is that when you had that arborist out here last spring, he pruned this tree.”

Matt shook his head. “No, that’s not what I meant. When I say long ago, I mean decades. Maybe between forty and sixty years, but I’m just guessing.”

“Fifty-five,” murmured Sylvia. It was an unlikely coincidence. Out of all the trees in the forest, Sarah and Matt had just happened to pick the same blue spruce that she and James had chosen? She was too skeptical a soul to believe that.

But how could they have known?

She shook off a quickening of excitement. Coincidence, she told herself firmly. Nothing more.

They strung tiny white lights upon the tree, the candles of Sylvia’s childhood gone the way of other hazards they had once accepted with blissful ignorance. As Sarah’s CD player serenaded them with carols, they adorned the tree with the beloved, familiar ornaments from Sylvia’s youth—the ceramic figurines from Germany, the sparkling crystal teardrops from New York City, carved wooden angels with woolen hair from Italy. Beneath the tree, Sarah arranged the nativity scene Sylvia’s grandfather had carved, while Matt placed Richard’s soldier nutcracker and Grandmother’s green sleigh music box on the table. Sylvia found the paper angels she and Claudia had made in Sunday school, yellowed and curled with age, but so dear to her that she would not dream of leaving them out. She placed them in prominent places high upon the tree, Claudia’s on one branch and her own on the opposite side of the tree exactly even with her sister’s—not one branch higher, not one lower.

“What should we put on the top of the tree?” asked Sarah, digging through the boxes. “I haven’t found an obvious tree topper, like a star or an angel or something.”

“For many years, we left the highest bough bare,” said Sylvia.

“Why? Is that symbolic of something?”

Loss
, Sylvia almost said. “No. For many years we used a red-and-gold glass star, but it went missing one year and we never replaced it.”

“I think I know why,” said Matt, nodding toward the paper angels with a grin. “You and your sister fought over whose angel should be above the other’s. Neither of you would give in, so you didn’t use anything.”

“You know us too well,” said Sylvia lightly, although until that moment, it had never occurred to her to wonder why no one had ever suggested using their angels in that fashion. Perhaps the bare top of the tree was meant to prick the prankster’s conscience, an annual reminder that the loss of the star had not been forgotten. More likely, their father had not wanted to suggest anything that might stir up an argument between the sisters.

Just then, Sylvia heard a knock on the back door and a slight pause before it swung open. “Hello,” a voice called out. “Is anyone home? Don’t bother denying it because we saw the truck in the lot.”

Sylvia smiled, recognizing the voice. “We’re in here, Agnes.”

A moment later, Agnes appeared in the doorway, petite and white-haired, her blue eyes beaming behind pink-tinted glasses. Behind her stood her eldest daughter, Stacey, a head taller than her mother but with the same eyes and raven black hair of her youth, bearing only the first traces of gray. They had both removed their coats, and Stacey carried a white bakery box.

“Merry Christmas,” Agnes greeted them. She embraced Sylvia first, then Sarah and Matt. “What a beautiful tree.”

“Sarah and Matt chose it,” Sylvia said.

“Naturally. They are the newlyweds.” Agnes’s merriment turned to surprise as she spotted the Christmas Quilt on the sofa behind Sylvia. “My goodness. You’ve brought out the Christmas Quilt. You’re putting it together at last.”

“Yes, well—Sarah is,” said Sylvia.

Agnes hurried over and picked up a section of the quilt where Sarah had joined Feathered Stars and holly plumes together. “It’s just as lovely as I remembered. You’re mother’s ap pliqué was my inspiration, you know. I never forgot her beautiful handiwork. When Joe asked me to marry him, I was determined to learn to appliqué so I could make us a beautiful heirloom wedding quilt.”

“I never knew that,” said Sylvia.

“You should see it,” said Stacey, smiling at her mother. “It’s exquisite. All those beautiful rosebuds.”

“I wouldn’t say exquisite,” said Agnes, but they could all tell she was pleased. “Not with so many mistakes. I was just a beginner, in over my head.”

“We all have to start somewhere,” said Sarah.

“I couldn’t agree more.” Agnes gave the holly plumes a fond caress and returned them gently to the sofa. “I’m so pleased to see someone working on this quilt after so many years.”

“I’m surprised Claudia didn’t throw it out after I left,” said Sylvia. “She already associated it with so many unpleasant memories even before I took it up, and I’m sure my departure didn’t help. I suppose she was all too willing to pack it away where she would never have to lay eyes on it again.”

Agnes peered at her curiously, her pink lenses giving her a rosy, girlish air. “Why, no, that’s not the case at all. Claudia worked on it every Christmas that I lived here. She brought it out on St. Nicholas Day and put it away with the rest of the Christmas things on the Feast of the Three Kings. For the few years that I lived here, Claudia fully intended to finish that quilt. Even when times grew difficult between her and Harold, she had her heart set on it.”

“But—” Sylvia glanced at the sofa and swiftly counted five Variable Star blocks. “I know she finished those Variable Stars long before I left home.”

“I didn’t say she made more Variable Stars,” said Agnes. “You really didn’t notice? How many Log Cabin blocks did you make, Sylvia? Fifteen or twenty?”

“That sounds about right,” said Sylvia.

“There are far more than that here,” said Sarah. “I counted at least fifty.”

“That can’t be.” Sylvia counted for herself, examining the quality of the needlework as she did. Each of fifty-two blocks was as finely sewn and precise as any block Sylvia had ever made. She could not distinguish between her work and her sister’s. “But why would she make more of the pattern I selected rather than her own?”

“Maybe she understood why you chose as you did,” said Sarah. “Apparently she trusted your judgment more than you thought. Maybe this was her way of telling you so.”

Perhaps it was true. Could it be that all those Christmases Sylvia had spent alone, longing for home, Claudia had been missing her, too?

For Sylvia it was all too overwhelming. She sat down on her favorite chair by the window and stared at the quilt, still in pieces, but coming together thanks to Sarah’s loving attention.

“I was afraid, since the Christmas decorations had been stored away so long,” she said softly, “that Claudia stopped celebrating Christmas after I left.”

“You forgot about the aluminum tree,” said Sarah. “Remember? Maybe she couldn’t have a traditional Bergstrom holiday on her own, but she did celebrate Christmas.”

“And of course there was also the—Oh, my goodness. You’re not the only forgetful one.” Agnes beckoned her daughter forward. “Stacey, would you give Sylvia her present, please?”

Stacey placed the white cardboard bakery box on Sylvia’s lap. “You should open it now,” she said, smiling. “Don’t wait for Christmas morning.”

Sylvia lifted the lid, and on any other day she would have been astonished to find an exact replica of the famous Bergstrom strudel, but not that day.

“Where on earth did you buy this?” she exclaimed. “I thought the German bakery on College Avenue closed years ago.”

“She didn’t buy it,” said Stacey proudly. “She made it. And what a production it was!”

“Claudia taught you,” said Sylvia in wonder. “She did keep the old traditions.”

“Not this one, I’m afraid,” said Agnes. “We made strudel the Christmas after you left, but it was such a bleak and empty season without you, without Richard and James, that we couldn’t even bear to eat it. We made two and gave them both away. As far as I know, that was the last time anyone made strudel in the Bergstrom kitchen.”

“And you remembered the recipe yourself after all those years.” When Agnes shook her head, Sylvia said, “Then Claudia wrote it down for you.”

“No, in fact, many years after I married, I came by and asked Claudia for it, but she said it had never been written down, and that she had forgotten it. Then, years later, she sent me a Christmas card with the recipe enclosed. She remembered how I had asked for it, and so she got it from a distant relation out west. A second cousin, I believe.”

Sylvia could scarcely breathe. “Do you remember her name? When was it she wrote to Claudia?”

Agnes shook her head. “I’m afraid I don’t recall.”

Sylvia’s heart sank. It was, she knew, too much to hope for.

“But I have the letter at home.”

In the twenty minutes it took Stacey to return to her mother’s home for the letter, Sylvia’s thoughts raced with possibilities. The only relative she knew of who had gone to live “out west” was Elizabeth, and although Sylvia had always called her cousin, as the daughter of Sylvia’s great-uncle George, it would have been more accurate to call her a second cousin.

“Oh, what could be keeping Stacey?” exclaimed Sylvia, pacing in the sitting room.

“It’s ten minutes there and ten minutes back,” said Agnes soothingly. “She’ll be here soon.”

“But what if she can’t find it?”

Agnes assured her this was unlikely. “Just bring the whole box,” she had instructed her daughter, referring to a small cedar chest in which she kept some of Richard’s belongings. She had described its location, inside a larger steamer trunk in the back of Agnes’s bedroom closet. It ought to be easy to find.

After what seemed to Sylvia an interminable wait, Stacey returned, the small wooden box in her hands. “I would have been back sooner,” she said breathlessly as she gave the box to her mother and pulled off her coat and gloves, “but I had trouble staying on the road in your woods.”

“We must do something about that road,” said Sylvia. “Well, Agnes? Is it there?”

“It was there this morning when I used the recipe,” she said, with a hint of amusement. “Would you please sit down? You’re rattling the Christmas ornaments with all of that pacing.”

Sylvia dropped into her favorite chair and clasped her hands anxiously while Agnes took a seat in the nearest armchair. Sylvia held her breath as Agnes lifted the lid and removed a folded sheet of yellowed, unlined paper. With a fond smile, she passed it to Sylvia.

Sylvia slipped on her glasses, unfolded the page, and read:

Sylvia turned over the letter and found a recipe printed in Elizabeth’s neat hand on the back, just as she had promised.

She read the date again. Elizabeth was still in Southern California in 1964, and—Sylvia checked the letter to be sure—she had a family. Elizabeth would be ninety-three if she were still alive, but even if she were not, perhaps her descendants were, regardless of what that private detective had concluded.

“Do you have a return address?” she asked, her voice choked with emotion.

“I’m sorry.” Agnes shook her head, sympathetic. “Claudia sent me only that page. I don’t know what became of the envelope.”

“I understand.” Still, it was something to go on, and perhaps that Christmas letter Elizabeth had promised Claudia was somewhere in the manor. Sylvia had not gone through all of Claudia’s papers; there were so many. She had every reason to hope an address could be found among them.