“I don’t know how I’m supposed to follow that,” the woman said in mock displeasure as she took the candle. “I just came because I saw an ad in a magazine.” A smattering of soft laughter went up from the circle, and Donna felt the tension and nervousness leaving her as she joined in.
She listened as one by one the others told their stories. One woman had come to learn how to quilt the pieced tops her late grandmother had left her; another, noticeably pregnant, had come to enjoy one last trip on her own before assuming the responsibilities of motherhood. “Also because my husband’s nesting instinct kicked in,” she said with a naughty grin. “He decided to paint every room of the house, and the fumes make me ill. At least, that’s what I told him.” Everyone laughed as she passed the candle to Vinnie.
“My name’s Lavinia Burkholder, but everyone calls me Vinnie—except for my grandchildren, who call me Nana. I came to celebrate my birthday. I have the distinction of being one of Elm Creek Quilts’ first campers.” She rose and bowed as to a round of applause, then handed the candle to the woman on her left.
Before long the candle came to Grace Daniels. Like most of the others, she held the candle for a long while before speaking. “I’m Grace Daniels, from San Francisco,” she eventually said, confirming what everyone else there had already guessed. “I’m an old friend of Sylvia’s. She’s been after me to visit her camp for years now, and I finally decided to indulge her.” She smiled at Sylvia as the others chuckled. But then her smile faded. “What do I hope to gain this week? Some inspiration, I hope. I feel like I’ve run out of ideas, and … and I hope to discover some here.” With that, she handed the candle to Megan.
“My name is Megan Donohue, and I’m from Monroe, Ohio. I came because my watercolor charm quilt won Contemporary Quilting magazine’s quilt contest, and the first prize was this trip.” She smiled at Donna. “I also came to meet my friend Donna, whom I met on the internet.” And with that, she passed the candle to Donna.
Donna smothered a moan of dismay. Megan’s story had been the shortest one yet, and Donna had planned on at least another minute or two to come up with something to say. “I’m Donna Jorgenson, and as Megan told you, I came to camp to meet my internet friend.” Then she could think of nothing more.
She looked around the circle of faces. Some of them would become her friends that week, she realized, confidantes as dear to her as Megan. She thought of how they had opened their hearts, trusting in the sincerity and support of their listeners. How could she do any less?
“I also came because I’m a coward,” she heard herself say. “My eldest daughter just got engaged to a young man my husband and I don’t know very well. My daughter, though, I do know her, and something tells me her heart isn’t in this marriage. It’s just an instinct, but I don’t think she’s happy—and all I ever wanted was for my daughters to be happy, happy and safe.” She confessed the rest. “I came to camp because it got me out of meeting her fiancé’s parents. I know I’m just delaying the inevitable, but I want to buy my daughter time. It might be only a few weeks, but it might be enough for her to be certain that this is what she really wants.”
“Don’t underestimate your intuition,” someone said. In the semidarkness, Donna was not sure who had spoken. “Our maternal instincts are there for a reason.”
Others nodded and chimed in their agreement. Donna looked around the circle of concerned faces, and although nothing had changed, somehow she felt comforted. As she passed the candle to the next woman, Megan put an arm around her shoulders and whispered mournfully, “And here I thought you came just for me.” She said it so comically that Donna had to laugh, although she was blinking back tears.
Before the next woman could begin her story, Grace leaned over behind Megan and murmured, “You and I should talk.” She gave Donna a knowing look. “I have a daughter, too.”
Donna nodded, speechless. A world-famous quilter wanted to talk with her, Donna Jorgenson from Silver Pines, Minnesota. She had finally met her best friend and closest confidante in person. She had aired her fears to a circle of women who only an hour ago had been strangers, and they had taken her seriously, without judgment or ridicule.
She felt as safe as if she were at home surrounded by friends who had known her all her life.
The candle cast shadow and light around the circle as the next woman told her story.
After supper, with no one to talk to, Julia had gone through her yoga routine with extra care, then lay on the bed idly paging through the issue of Variety she had brought to read on the plane. Bored, she had tossed it aside and rummaged through her bag for the script and a notepad. Ares didn’t want her to waste time memorizing lines that would probably change in the rewrite, but that didn’t mean Julia would accomplish nothing that evening. She took a seat at the small desk in the corner and began reading through the script, noting each quilting technique that Sadie had used and Julia would need to learn. By the time darkness fell, she had finished the first act and had listed several unfamiliar terms on her notepad: basting, piecing, binding. Just then the voices had broken into her concentration and compelled her to go to the window to investigate.
For more than an hour, Julia had sat at her window, spellbound, listening as one by one the women shared the deepest secrets of their hearts with perfect strangers. How liberating that must feel, to unburden oneself without fear of rejection.
What would she have said when it was her turn to hold the candle, if she were spending the warm summer evening among them? She had come to Elm Creek Manor to learn how to quilt so that she could keep a movie role. She had to keep the movie role to breathe life into a stalled career. She had to revitalize her career or fade away into obscurity and become a has-been before she had ever truly made a difference, before she had ever participated in something worthwhile, something worth remembering. Something worth all she had sacrificed for her career—two marriages, her privacy, her pride when critics mocked her attempts to perfect her chosen art.
If only she could be as open and trusting as the women gathered in a circle beneath her window. Of course, none of them feared that one of the others would race to the tabloids with her deepest secrets. None of them worried that her failures would become fodder for late-night talk-show comedians. They could afford to trust each other.
Overcome by the sensation that she was intruding on an intimacy she did not deserve, she let the curtain fall back and withdrew from the window.
Three
Donna awoke bleary-eyed and disoriented in the unfamiliar room. For a moment, as she tried to sort out the furniture and shadows, she thought she was in the bedroom she had shared with her elder sister as a child. The blue-and-white Dresden Plate quilt on the bed focused her memory. It was the first full day of quilt camp, and the clock on the nightstand told her it was not quite five. Usually she needed an alarm to yank her out of sleep by seven. I must still be on Minnesota time, she thought, until the sleepy confusion left her and she realized that she had her time zones mixed up. At home it was not yet four.
Strangely enough, despite the travel and the excitement of the previous day, she felt as wide awake as if she had slept a full eight hours. Anticipation for the day ahead kept her from drifting off to sleep again, so she got up and dressed in her workout clothes. Silently she left her room and tiptoed down the grand staircase and across the foyer to the front door.
Outside the air was cool and misty, with the promise of warmth as soon as the sun rose above the trees. Donna stretched her calf muscles, enjoying the solitude and the chirping of birds in the distance. Then, with a sigh, she descended the circular stone staircase and began walking briskly across the lawn and along the edge of a thick grove of trees, inhaling deeply and pumping her arms.
Sometimes she wondered why she bothered. Years of watching her diet and exercising regularly had not burned any of the excess baggage from her hips and thighs, and yet she stuck with it, stubborn and hopeful to a fault, as she was in everything. Lindsay encouraged
her mother by urging her to think of the internal benefits to her heart and lungs, and not to evaluate her fitness by the number on a scale alone. Donna tried, but it wasn’t easy to be proud of her low cholesterol and excellent blood pressure when her size fourteens no longer fit as well as they once had. “Maybe they shrank in the laundry,” Paul would say when she fretted, and she had to bite her tongue to keep from retorting that his clothes had been in the same load, and they still fit him fine.
She hadn’t planned to stick to her morning workout routine at camp, but seeing Megan motivated her. Megan, nearly as slender as Lindsay, wouldn’t blame pregnancy for her weight gain, unlike herself, who clung to that excuse although her babies were now sixteen and twenty. For some reason Donna had assumed that Megan would be closer to her own size. Maybe Megan had thought the same thing about Donna, and was dismayed to learn that her internet friend was so pudgy and out of shape.
Knock it off, she ordered herself. She was at camp; she was supposed to be relaxing. If she kept up with those miserable thoughts, at breakfast she’d be tempted to wolf down a foot-high stack of pancakes for comfort. If she wanted to make herself miserable, instead of contemplating her ever-widening thighs, she ought to think about Lindsay.
Lindsay. Donna’s heart plummeted with such force that she quickly shifted her thoughts to her schedule for the day. After breakfast, she and Megan would meet for the first of a weeklong series of color theory classes. Lunch followed, and then she would attend an appliqué class while Megan took one on miniature quilts. Donna was disappointed that they hadn’t chosen all the same classes but consoled herself with the thought that they had most of their seminars in common. She was especially looking forward to the watercolor workshop. Megan had already mastered the art of using small pieces cut from large-scale prints and arranging them so they blended together in the style of an Impressionist painting, and Donna hoped to pick up some tips from her. It wasn’t by accident that Megan had won the Contemporary Quilting contest.
Her muscles now warmed from the exercise, Donna paused to stretch by a wood rail fence that, she assumed, indicated the northern border of the property. Last night, Sylvia’s verbal tour of the estate had located the gardens to the north, but somehow Donna had missed them. Maybe the gardens were within the grove of trees she had just circled. She walked along the fence until she came upon a break in the trees. There she found a path of the same smooth, gray stones she had seen by the manor. At this end, the path was untended—probably unused, judging by the weeds and grass growing between the stones. Hoping she wasn’t breaking any camp rules by straying off the more well traveled parts of the property, Donna pushed a branch aside and followed the path into the trees.
Fortunately for her arms and legs, which were acquiring a few scratches from the undergrowth, the path grew wider and clearer as she continued. Before long, she glimpsed a white wooden structure that, as she drew nearer, she realized was a gazebo. Then the trees opened into a clearing, and Donna stopped short—a pace away from tumbling into tiered flower beds carved into the hillside. From the top terrace she was eye-level with the gazebo’s gingerbread molding, and she heard the splash of water somewhere beyond it. As the fragrance of flowers wafted to her, she looked around for the source of the sound—and found instead a series of stones artfully arranged along the edge of the hill as if nature had built a staircase there.
As she followed the stone path, more of the garden came into view: a black marble fountain in the shape of a mare prancing with two foals, and beyond that, four large, round planters filled with roses and ivy. The planters were larger at the base than the top, the lower halves forming smoothed, polished seats. Donna spotted someone sitting on one of those seats.
Grace Daniels.
She sat staring straight ahead at a bed of decorative grasses, not quite facing the gazebo. Donna almost called out to her, but the other woman’s stillness held her back.
The trail to the manor resumed just past the spot where Grace was sitting, but Donna deliberately kept her distance. When she reached the edge of the garden she glanced back, tempted to remind Grace of her invitation to talk about their daughters. She bit her lip and considered, then decided to continue in silence. If Grace had wanted company, she would have called Donna over. Even if somehow Grace hadn’t seen her as she passed in front of the gazebo, the sound of her sneakers clomping on the stone would have been hard to miss.
Grace’s heart sank at the sound of footfalls, and in her peripheral vision she spotted someone on the other side of the gazebo. Please turn around and go away, she thought, but the figure emerged and began descending steps Grace hadn’t seen in the hillside. She stared fixedly ahead, pretending she hadn’t noticed the newcomer. It was one of the other campers, the plump woman with the Upper Midwest accent. Leave me alone, leave me alone, she thought, clutching her hands together in her lap.
She stiffened as the sound of footsteps grew louder, then relaxed as they continued past and fell silent. Grace took a deep breath and leaned back against the cool stone seat. Finally, someone who respected her privacy, who didn’t insist that she talk all the time. That Candlelight business had been bad enough. If she had wanted a support group, she would have signed up for the one at the hospital.
Her fingertips were numb again. The pins-and-needles sensation had intensified since that disastrous meeting in Sylvia’s sitting room. She felt her heart begin to pound, and rising panic stole over her. Quickly she closed her eyes and pictured herself in her favorite place: a restful spot in Santa Cruz, hiking through a redwood forest, emerging from the shade of the trees on the edge of a bluff overlooking the sparkling waters of the Pacific Ocean. She inhaled deeply and imagined the wind, the feel of the sunlight on her skin, the faintly sweet odor of moldering leaves, the smell of decay and new life.
She exhaled, trying to blow out all her anxiety with the breath, just as she had been taught. This time, the exercise worked, and she felt her pulse returning to normal.
She was not having a relapse. She was fine.
It was the fatigue and stress of travel, that was all. She had gone to bed too late and risen too early. She was not getting worse. She had plenty of time.
Julia overslept.
She had forgotten to set the alarm clock and, still jet-lagged, did not wake until someone knocked on her door. “Miss Merchaud?” a woman called. “Breakfast.”
Julia scrambled out of bed and snatched up her robe. “Just a minute.” Hastily she finger-combed her hair as she went to the door. She hoped the woman in the hallway didn’t have a camera. The National Inquirer would pay big for a shot of her with mussed hair and no makeup. Holding her robe closed at the neck, she opened the door a crack, only wide enough to see a brown-haired young woman holding a covered tray, looking back at her inquisitively.
Julia had the younger woman place the tray on the desk and ushered her out again as quickly as possible. She wasn’t hungry, but she nibbled on an English muffin and ate most of the fruit, leaving the omelet untouched. The coffee was suitably strong, though she missed her cinnamon cappuccino. Oh, well. As Ares had said, she was there to work. She could endure a week of roughing it.
She showered quickly but dressed and applied her makeup with care. In the hallway, the muffled sounds of other campers making their way downstairs had faded, and a glance at the clock told her she would have to hurry. She grabbed a pen and the notes she had compiled the previous night but, with an effort, forced herself to leave her sunglasses on the dresser.
Her registration papers included a map of the manor, and she followed the directions downstairs to the ballroom, which had been partitioned into classrooms with folding screens decorated in patchwork. The last of eleven women to arrive, she found Quick Piecing with barely a moment to spare. The instructor—the same young woman who had brought Julia her breakfast—had already begun her introduction as Julia slipped into a seat at the back of the room, grateful that she had a table to herself. She would have been mortified if the
teacher had made another camper change places to accommodate Ares’s demands.
The teacher, Sarah, passed out the first lesson, instructions on quickpiecing quarter-square triangles. “First, you’ll need to pick a light fabric and a medium or dark,” Sarah said. “Cut a six inch by twelve inch rectangle from each fabric using your rotary cutter, and then lay the two fabrics with right sides facing, the light piece on top.”
As Sarah spoke, Julia watched with alarm as the other ten students reached into their bags and brought out folded bundles of fabric, plastic rulers, and odd-shaped tools that resembled pizza cutters. Was she supposed to have brought her own fabric? She glanced around her tabletop—a sewing machine, a gridded plastic mat, no fabric—and her face grew hot. Obviously she should have brought fabric from home; everyone else was prepared. She looked to the front of the classroom in dismay, but Sarah was already walking around the room observing her students as they layered fabric on their mats and happily sliced away at it with the pizza cutters.
“Is everyone ready to go on?” Sarah called out. Julia’s meek “No” was lost in the chorus of affirmatives. “Okay, then, next I want you to take your pencil and, using your ruler, draw a grid of two-inch squares on the back of your light fabric.”
An Elm Creek Quilts Sampler Page 64