The 12 Quilts of Christmas

by Arlene Sachitano

  Lauren looked at Harriet and laughed.

  “There’s always a but…”

  Beth scowled at her.

  “Let Robin finish.”

  “Before you get too involved,” Robin continued, “I think you need to check out her story. Make sure there really are parents off in South America who could reasonably be expected to return and take over financial responsibility for the horse.”

  Harriet opened her mouth, but Robin held a hand up.

  “While you’re investigating her story, if you and Lauren don’t mind losing whatever amount you’re willing to give her, there’s no harm paying a month’s stable rent, especially with this being Christmas and all.”

  Beth set her mug down.

  “But you don’t think she should get involved so far as to buy the horse?”

  “I don’t. If Jade’s parents really are financially solvent, they should be the ones to step in and buy the horse. And with such a valuable personal asset, she should have her business set up as a corporation so no one could come after it.”

  Harriet twirled her spoon in her cocoa.

  “As long as Becky doesn’t end up being sold for dog food, I’m good.”

  The group was quiet while a barista brought Lauren her gingerbread latte. She took a sip and set the cup down.

  “Harriet and I were just saying how fast Blood Moon seems to have gone from a thriving business that was donating funds to every charity pro-ject in town to barely hanging on by its toenails, teetering on the brink of financial disaster.”

  Harriet wiped her mouth with her napkin.

  “You know, speaking of teetering on the brink, the Outdoor Store doesn’t seem to be doing all that well, either. We were barely able to find what we needed for our Thanksgiving trip, and when we were just there hanging Lauren’s quilt, I noticed they haven’t brought in anything new since then.”

  “I’m surprised,” Beth said. “Vern’s always been an astute businessman. And he’s been successful for something like twenty-five years. Now that you mention it, though, he hasn’t been making donations to the various charities like he used to. He used to be a named sponsor for the community Thanksgiving dinner. This year he served meals, but I don’t believe he donated any food.”

  “You never know,” Mavis commented. “Things change. Maybe he developed a gambling problem.”

  Beth looked incredulous. “Vern Jenkins? I don’t believe it.”

  “What don’t you believe?” Connie asked as she came to the table with a cup of tea and an oatmeal raisin cookie.

  Beth and Mavis quickly brought her up to speed as she sat down opposite Harriet and Lauren.

  “I stopped by Sunshine Bakery to check out the window, and I have to say, Sunny and her crew had baked goods on every level surface and in all stages of completion.” She paused a moment, thinking. “But you know, there was a weird frenetic energy to it all. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it wasn’t the normal, cozy atmosphere it usually has.”

  “Honey, get me one of those raisin cookies, would you please?” Beth asked Harriet.

  Harriet stood up.

  “Anyone else?”

  Mavis raised her hand and started to dig her coin purse out of her bag, but Harriet waved her off. She returned a few minutes later and handed out the cookies, including one each for herself and Lauren.

  Beth nibbled hers.

  “Everything seemed normal at Kitchen Kouture,” she said. “Their shelves are bursting with merchandise, they had plenty of shoppers, and Serena’s taking back orders on her holiday tablecloths.”

  Robin finished her drink and set her empty mug on the table in front of her.

  “I better go. I need to stop by Print and Copy and see their space and then take Glynnis’s crazy quilt pieces home and see what I can do with them. Do you want me to write up a loan agreement for you for the stable rent?”

  Harriet chuckled.

  “No, there’s no need. She’s either going to pay it back or not. If she doesn’t, I’m not going to try to squeeze blood from a turnip.”

  “Still,” Robin cautioned. “If something were to happen to her, it would be good to have something on paper to show her estate.”

  “There’s a happy holiday thought,” Lauren said dryly.

  “Hey, it’s the business I’m in. And you never can be too careful.” She looked from Harriet to Lauren and back again. “I’ll write something up to-night and email it to both of you. Print it out and have her sign it before you hand over the cash.”

  Lauren saluted as Robin stood up.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Robin was barely gone when DeAnn arrived, bringing a blast of cold air with her. She ordered her coffee and joined the group at the big table.

  “I’m ready for this cold snap to end,” she said and sat down.

  “How did it go at the art gallery?” Mavis asked when she was settled.

  “A client came in wanting to buy a print, so I have to go back in thirty minutes.”

  Lauren set the remains of her cookie down on a napkin.

  “Has Valery told you which window you’ll be hanging your quilt in?”

  “He hasn’t said, but I’m expecting it to be to the right of the entrance. He’s been working on a display in the bigger window, and I don’t think he’d be doing that if the quilt was going to go there.”

  Beth shook her head.

  “That’s too bad. Your quilt is going to attract attention wherever it is, but the bigger window would show it off better. If I were him, I would have made it the centerpiece of a display of all his Russian ornaments.”

  “That’s sort of what I was thinking when I used the nesting doll images on my quilt blocks,” DeAnn agreed. “People come from as far as Seattle to buy those Russian ornaments. It seems like he does pretty well with them, but I did overhear him telling someone on the phone that the ornaments didn’t have a very high profit margin.”

  “So, what’s he putting in the big window?” Harriet asked. “I heard he has a collection of icons that are pretty pricey.”

  Lauren scoffed.

  “It’s hard to imagine there’d be much of a market for Russian icons in Foggy Point, Washington.”

  “Like DeAnn was saying, people come from Seattle for the ornaments, so they probably would come for icons, too.”

  “I guess,” Harriet said and picked up her cup again.

  Connie ate the last bite of her cookie and rubbed her hands together, brushing off the crumbs.

  “Is everyone going to the opening event next Friday night?”

  “I’ve seen the poster talking about the tree lighting on Friday, but is there more to it than that?” Harriet asked.

  “The high school choir is going to sing Christmas carols, and Sunny told me we were supposed to each be in the shop where our quilt is hanging. They’re doing up some sort of passport people will take to each shop, and when they answer a question about the quilt, they get a stamp. When they get all the stamps, their passport is put in a drawing for a prize basket.”

  “Sounds fun,” Beth said.

  “I wonder when anyone was going to tell us?” Lauren commented.

  “I think each business was supposed to tell their quilter,” Connie said.

  Harriet crumpled her napkin and put it in her empty mug.

  “Do you need any help?” she asked DeAnn.

  “I’m just looking at the space at this point,” DeAnn said. “But I’d be happy to have the company.”

  CHAPTER 5

  “Oh, DeAnn, thank you for waiting,” Valery Melnyk said in slightly accented English when she, Harriet, and Lauren came into the art gallery. He wore an immaculate white dress shirt open halfway to the waist no matter how cold it was outside. Harriet imagined a closet in his house with nothing but carefully pressed white shirts.

  “These are my friends Harriet Truman and Lauren Sawyer,” DeAnn told him. “They’re here to help me figure out what I’m doing with the quilt I’m finishing for Mary
.”

  “Very good, very good,” he said, joining his hands together behind his back. “Glynnis told me Mary has pneumonia. I hope she will be okay.”

  “I think she has to spend a few days in the hospital, but Glynnis said that was more of a precaution because of her other health issues.”

  Melnyk pulled his phone from a pocket and made a note.

  “I must send her flowers to thank her for the work she’s done.”

  He was a stout man with a round head and dark hair and eyes. Strictly speaking, he looked more Ukrainian than Russian to Harriet, but the two ethnic groups had probably been intermarrying for many generations before the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

  As expected, Valery directed them to the smaller of the two display windows. He looked embarrassed.

  “I’m sure you were hoping to be hanging your quilt in the larger window, but things are a little tight this holiday season, and I need to put as many pieces as I am able in the big space to bring more customers in.”

  “We understand,” DeAnn said and set her tote on the floor in front of her. “It’s not a problem.”

  Harriet reached into the bag and pulled out a handful of blocks, handing several to Lauren and looking at the others herself.

  “As long as you’re displaying the quilt however the business association wants, it should be fine.”

  DeAnn took a carpenter’s tape measure from her purse and handed one end of it to Harriet, stretching it the width of the window opening and making a note on a card she’d also pulled from her bag. Valery brought a small stepladder over and steadied it while DeAnn climbed up and stretched the end of the tape to the top of the display area. Harriet pressed it to the bottom edge of the window.

  “Looks like it’s exactly six feet,” she said.

  DeAnn stepped off the ladder and noted the measurement.

  “Given the size of the window, I may leave off one of the borders Mary had planned.”

  The door chime rang, and a slender woman in an ankle-length wool coat came into the gallery. Valery turned toward her with a smile.

  “Mrs. Whittier, have you made a decision?” He glanced back at DeAnn. “Let me know if you need anything else,” he said and led his customer to the back of the store.

  Harriet watched until he was out of earshot. She held up one of the quilt blocks, barely suppressing a grin.

  “Has anyone else noticed the striking resemblance between the faces on the blocks and Mr. Melnyk?”

  Lauren laughed as she looked at the blocks in her hand.

  “Now that you mention it.”

  “Mary, Mary, Mary, what were you playing at.”

  “Maybe they’re friends,” DeAnn suggested.

  Harriet handed the blocks to her.

  “Let’s hope so. Or at least hope he has a good sense of humor.”

  DeAnn took Lauren’s blocks and stuffed them into her tote bag.

  “In any case, I don’t have time to redo them.”

  Harriet shook her head.

  “Maybe he won’t think it looks like him. People often don’t see themselves the way others do.”

  “Thanks for your help,” DeAnn said. She held up the tote. “I’d better get home and start working on this.”

  “See you at the next Threads meeting, if not before,” Harriet said as she went out the door and headed for her car.

  Harriet and Luke were sitting at the kitchen table when James came in from the garage, a baguette sticking out of a paper bag under his arm. He set the bread on the table and went to the slow cooker on the counter, lifting the lid and inhaling the aroma it emitted.

  “Ahhh,” he finally said. “Smells just right.”

  “I hope so,” Luke said with a grin. “It’s been killing us.”

  “Sorry. We’ve got people coming in for Christmas tea already. I had to stay and help prep for tomorrow. I don’t want my people to burn out this early in the season.”

  Harriet had bowls sitting next to the cooker, and James began ladling out beef barley stew. Luke carried them to the table. Neither spoke until they’d eaten their first bowlful.

  “Help yourself to more,” James told Luke.

  Harriet waited until Luke was back at the table with his seconds.

  “Okay, guys, since this is going to be our first Christmas together as a family, we need to decide how we want to celebrate.”

  Luke put his spoon down.

  “I got to choose what we did for Thanksgiving, so someone else should have a turn. What do you guys usually do?”

  Harriet’s face flushed, and she looked away. Luke’s smile vanished.

  “Did I say something wrong?”

  James reached across the table and took Harriet’s hand.

  “No, you’re fine. We haven’t been together for a Christmas yet, so we don’t have a tradition.”

  Luke relaxed.

  “I keep forgetting. You guys seem like you’ve been together forever.”

  Harriet gave him a rueful smile.

  “It does seem like that sometimes, doesn’t it?”

  James let her hand go and took a piece of bread.

  “Back to the question. What do we want to do?”

  “Luke,” Harriet said, “I know your experience at the foster home wasn’t ideal, but did they do anything for the holidays you’d like to keep going?”

  He laughed out loud, then put his hand over his mouth.

  “I’m sorry. They tried, in their own way. Linda had this ratty artificial tree she’d gotten at Goodwill…and Paul liked that stringy foil stuff.”

  “Tinsel?” James guessed.

  “Yeah, that. Lots and lots of it. It was…” Luke grappled for a word.

  “Hideous?” Harriet suggested.

  “Hideous,” Luke confirmed.

  Harriet fetched a notepad and pencil from the kitchen island.

  “Real tree,” she said as she wrote the words on the pad. “Okay, that’s a start.”

  James broke off another piece of bread from the baguette and popped it into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully.

  “Well, we need one of those ‘first Christmas’ ornaments.”

  Luke and Harriet both turned to stare at him.

  “Come on,” he said. “I know we can’t do ‘baby’s first Christmas’ but we could do ‘Luke’s first Christmas’ and the date, or ‘family’s first Christmas’.”

  “Or maybe ‘Our first Christmas Together,” Harriet suggested. “And the date, of course.” She added First Christmas ornament to the list.

  “I do have a collection of ornaments,” she said. “I got one in each of the countries I spent Christmas in when I was growing up.”

  Luke finished his second bowl of stew.

  “That sounds cool.”

  “Back to the tree,” Harriet said. “Tree lot, U-cut, or wild capture.”

  “What’s wild capture?” Luke asked.

  “You get a permit from the forest service, and they give you a map of where they need trees thinned.” James explained.

  “And then you hike all over and find the perfect imperfect tree,” Harriet finished.

  Luke smiled.

  “You two really are like an old married couple—finishing each other’s sentences and everything.”

  “When my uncle was still alive, I got to come here one year, and we went up into the woods to get a tree,” Harriet said.

  “My family always got wild trees until my sister and I were in college,” James added. “But given the quilting Harriet has to do for the business association as well as the extra events they’re having, maybe we should save the wild hunt for next year.”

  Harriet picked up the pencil again and wrote U-cut.

  “Good enough compromise?” she asked.

  Luke and James both nodded. James leaned back in his chair.

  “My parents will probably expect us to come to their house on Christmas Eve. They like to go to my sister’s and spend time with the grandkids on Christmas day.”

&nb
sp; “My aunt and I usually have breakfast and open presents, and then she does a dinner and invites people over on Christmas day.”

  “Sounds like that’ll work, then.”

  Harriet made a note of the two expected invites.

  “All right, our plan is coming together. Anything else?”

  Harriet tried not to smile as Luke leaned back in his chair in unconscious imitation of James. He picked at his lip then, when he realized what he was doing, put his hand on his thigh.

  “Is there something else, Luke?”

  He struggled for a moment before speaking.

  “Do you think I could get presents for my half-sister and brother. The ones I know, anyway?”

  “Do you know where they are?” Harriet asked.

  “Not really. I think they’re somewhere in the county. My brother went to live with his bio-mom, but I’m not sure if he’s still there. That was four years ago.”

  “Children’s Services should know where they are,” James said. “I can check with your social worker.”

  “Do you want to see them?” Harriet asked carefully.

  Luke sighed.

  “I don’t know. I mean, I’d like to see that they’re okay, but I’m not sure I want to talk to them or anything. We never got anything for Christmas, and if they still don’t get anything, I thought it might be nice to give them something. It’s probably a dumb idea.”

  “Sweetie, it’s a nice idea. And very thoughtful of you. We don’t have to figure it out tonight. Let’s find them and see what their circumstances are, and then go from there.”

  James stood up.

  “Who wants ice cream?”

  “I’ll take the dogs out while you dish,” Luke said.

  James carried the three empty dishes to the sink.

  “I have one more thing to add to the Christmas activities list,” James said when Luke was back inside and they were back at the table, dishes of ice cream in front of them.

  “What’s that?” Harriet asked and reached for the list.

  “We need a picture with Santa. I mean, we need a picture of Luke with Santa, but if we need to have it be a family Santa picture, I guess that’s okay.”