“Not unless you say you’ll marry me.”
“Andrew, please. I’m in no mood for games.”
“This is no game. I mean it.”
Sylvia scowled at him and strained to reach the book, but her fingertips only brushed the leather cover. “Stop teasing me and get the Bible down. Please,” she remembered to add.
But Andrew merely folded his arms. “You can stretch all you want, but we both know you’re not tall enough.”
“I’m plenty tall,” she retorted, straining for the top shelf once more, hating to admit Andrew was right. “Well, Matthew is taller than you. I’ll get him to help me, if you’re going to be difficult.”
She began to march out of the library, but Andrew called after her, “Don’t bother. When Matt gets up here, I’ll talk him out of it.”
“And what makes you think he’ll listen to you instead of me?”
Andrew shrugged. “I think most folks around here would like to see us get married.”
“Well, I think most folks would agree you’ve finally lost your marbles.”
Andrew allowed a smile. “Maybe I have. Or maybe I’m just taking a lesson from Hans. When he wanted something, he took charge, didn’t he? Look how he got Anneke to marry him.”
Sylvia cast her gaze to heaven. “Oh, certainly, he’s a fine example to follow.”
“I love you at least as much as he loved Anneke, and we’ve known each other much longer than they did.” He reached for her hands, and grudgingly, she allowed him to take them. “Come on, Sylvia, say yes.”
“I can get the book down myself, you know. All I need to do is fetch a chair.”
“I know. But I hope you won’t.”
“You wouldn’t really want me to accept under these circumstances, would you? Knowing you had to blackmail me into marrying you?”
“At this point, I’ll take what I can get.”
“Andrew . . .” She studied him, dismayed to see that he was in earnest. “What if I promise that I won’t marry anyone but you?”
He was silent for a long moment, but then he asked, “Is that the best you can do?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Then I guess I’ll have to settle for that.” Abruptly he released her hands, then reached up for the Bible. Without meeting her gaze, he handed it to her and strode quickly from the room.
Sylvia watched him go. He ought to know better; he did know better. Why would he ask her again, when he had agreed not to, when he knew she would refuse? Had he been dishonest with her when he had made that promise, and had he been hoping all along that she would change her mind, or had he simply found his promise impossible to keep?
What would she do if he decided he could no longer continue as they had been? If the alternative was to lose him, something she did not think she could bear . . .
“I would manage,” she said, determined. She had managed alone for decades, and now, with Elm Creek Quilts and her friends, she would not be alone even if Andrew drove away in his motor home and never returned. She would not marry him out of fear or guilt. If he was willing to take her on those terms, then he was no man she wanted as a husband, or even as a friend.
Resolute, she seated herself at the large oak desk on the east side of the room and examined the cover of the book Andrew had handed her. Yes, it was certainly her mother’s Bible, and it looked almost exactly the way she remembered it, little changed despite the passage of time. She turned to the first page, to the records of births and deaths and marriages written in several different hands. The last entries were her mother’s.
Sylvia’s heart welled up with sadness as she gently ran a finger over the lines her mother had written so many years before. The last entry recorded the birth of Sylvia’s brother, Richard; no one had thought to record her mother’s own death a few months later. If she had lived seventeen more years, she would have written of her son’s passing, and that of her husband, her son-in-law, and her only grandchild, born too early to survive.
Sylvia sighed and closed her eyes. Too many of her memories were of people she loved dying too soon. Perhaps that was why she cultivated so many friendships among the young; she was hedging her bets that she’d be the one mourned rather than the mourner for a change.
It was a morbid thought, but she couldn’t help a wry chuckle. She opened her eyes and turned the page, promising herself she would return to study her mother’s side of the family more carefully another time. Neglecting the Lockwoods’ history in favor of the Bergstroms’ had been an inevitable consequence of growing up at Elm Creek Manor, but Sylvia could and would remedy that situation.
Today, however, she had another mission. She turned several pages of blank lines where her mother had expected her descendants to continue the family record, until she came to the last space. The facing page would have been blank, except for a few words written in her mother’s careful script at the bottom. Between the two pages was a folded sheet of paper.
Sylvia slipped on her reading and quilting glasses, which hung by a fine chain around her neck, and scanned the page. The first words were her parents’ names and birthdates; beneath them and connected to the line above by a vertical line were Sylvia’s own name and birthdate and her sister’s.
A family tree, Sylvia realized, except her mother had never completed it.
She carefully unfolded the piece of paper inserted between the book’s pages. Again her mother’s handwriting caught her eye, but this time the script seemed less precise, as if the words had been hastily written:
My Freddy (the eldest), his younger brothers Richard, Louis, (both killed in Great War) and William, sister Clara (died age thirteen in influenza epidemic).
Their parents: David Bergstrom, Elizabeth Reece (Reese?) Bergstrom
David’s siblings: Stephen, Albert, Lydia, George, Lucinda (definitely youngest), David the eldest or 2nd? Was Stephen or Albert his twin?
Their parents: Hans Bergstrom and Anneke (maiden name?) Bergstrom
Anneke’s family?
Hans Bergstrom’s siblings: Gerda Bergstrom (married name?) Others? Freddy unsure—ask Lucinda.
“Didn’t you ask?” exclaimed Sylvia in dismay, turning over the page in case the list continued on the other side. It was blank, leaving Sylvia with a brief list of names that failed to provide her with the information she had sought, and also posed new questions. How was it that the names of David’s five brothers and sisters were known, but not their birth order? Did the parenthetical remark after Gerda’s name indicate she had eventually married—and had she married Jonathan? And what was this about David—Sylvia’s grandfather—having a twin?
No wonder her mother had not completed the Bergstrom family tree, when so little was known of its branches. Sylvia leafed through the rest of the Bible, hoping in vain to find another page of notes or some other clue, but she found nothing more. Sighing, she closed the Bible and was about to return it to the shelf, but she couldn’t resist one more look at her mother’s handwriting.
My Freddy (the eldest), her mother had written, and later, Freddy unsure.
Tears filled her eyes, but Sylvia smiled. She did not remember ever hearing anyone call her father Freddy instead of the more dignified Frederick. It warmed her heart to think of her mother using the endearment, and for a moment she could imagine her parents a young couple in love, celebrating the intertwining of their two family histories in the births of their children. How her mother must have delighted in each detail of her Freddy’s heritage, hungering, as young people in love have always done, to know the child her beloved had been, and wishing that they had met as children, so that their love, which she hoped would extend many years into the future, could also be extended into the past, and thus enjoy an even greater duration.
For a lifetime with the man you loved was never long enough—and a mere few years without him, interminable.
Sylvia slowly closed the Bible upon her mother’s notes again and returned the book to its shelf.
7
>
After the Farewell Breakfast the following Saturday, Gwen Sullivan brought her friend from Penn State’s archaeology department to Elm Creek Manor to investigate the half-buried log that Sylvia and her friends hoped had been a part of the Bergstrom cabin. Dr. Frank DiCarlo and the two graduate students who had accompanied him examined the site and, to Sylvia’s relief, did not criticize them for uncovering it. Instead, the students photographed the log from several angles while DiCarlo quizzed Sylvia about the cabin. She told him the little she knew, pleased to see his interest pique when she mentioned Gerda’s memoir.
The students had brought enough tools for themselves and several helpers, so Matt and Sarah offered their services as work began to unearth the rest of the log. Before long Gwen joined in, and when Andrew took a break from working on the motor home’s engine and wandered over to check on their progress, he, too, took up a short-handled brush and began sweeping away at the base of the log. Sylvia doubted her back and knees were up to all that crawling around on the ground, so she contented herself with supervising and keeping the archaeology team supplied with water and lemonade, and seeing to it that they took breaks for meals.
As the hours passed under the hot sun, DiCarlo and his assistants gradually uncovered the rest of the first log and another that met at the corner Andrew had discovered the first day. Then, as the light was beginning to fade, one of the graduate students announced that she had found another log directly beneath the first one.
DiCarlo decided it would be best to end for the day on a high note, so after they secured the site, Sylvia invited everyone inside for supper. Gwen alone begged off. “I’m going home to bed,” she said with a groan. “I’m too tired even to lift a fork to my mouth.”
“I’ve never seen you that tired,” teased Sylvia, but Gwen bid them all good night and walked—slowly and stiffly—back to her car. The others followed Sylvia inside, then upstairs to the rooms she had prepared for them to shower and change. By the time they returned downstairs and joined her in the banquet hall, she and the cook had set a table with a delicious fried chicken dinner with all the trimmings, pitchers of lemonade and iced tea, and a steaming pot of coffee made from fancy beans Sarah had purchased at a café downtown. It seemed too hot for coffee to Sylvia, but Sarah had insisted that graduate students drank pots and pots of the stuff at all hours of the day, in any weather, so Sylvia permitted it.
As they ate, relaxing and enjoying the satisfaction of a day’s work well done, DiCarlo entertained them with stories of other archaeological digs they had undertaken. His projects had taken him to so many exotic locales, investigating sites of such historical importance that Sylvia was taken aback, embarrassed that such important research had been set aside for Mr. L.’s humble shack. She tried to apologize, but DiCarlo assured her he was glad to assist. “This is good training for my students,” he said, then grinned and added, “Besides, I owe Gwen a favor.”
“Well, I feel I owe you a favor,” said Sylvia, nodding to his students to indicate she included them, too. “And to think you’re doing all this work for what might be nothing more than a pile of old firewood.”
The others laughed, and DiCarlo added, “But that’s the mystery that makes this job so exciting. You never know what you’re going to turn up. Maybe treasure—”
“Maybe trash,” interrupted Sylvia.
The two students exchanged a quick look. “Don’t get him started,” the one seated beside Matt begged, too late, as DiCarlo launched into an earnest description of what could be learned about a culture by studying its long-buried garbage dumps. Some of the details Sylvia would have preferred to hear another time, preferably when she was not eating, but she was fascinated nonetheless.
“If we could find where your ancestors disposed of their trash,” DiCarlo concluded, “you’d learn more about them than you ever dreamed possible.”
Sylvia winced. “I don’t know if I want to know them that well.”
The others laughed, and Sylvia joined in, pleased to have such enthusiastic new friends to help her uncover the Bergstroms’ past—and equally glad that the next morning they would return to unearthing the cabin, not a landfill.
Unfortunately, by noon Sylvia began to suspect that the archaeology team had exhausted all their good luck the previous day. No amount of searching revealed any adjacent logs that might have formed the third and fourth walls of the cabin, nor did there appear to be anything beneath the logs they had already uncovered. DiCarlo thought he found evidence of a fire, but could not say for certain if it was the cabin itself, some object it contained, or merely logs in a fireplace that had burned. One of the graduate students found a tin spoon and what appeared to be a shard from a teacup, which Sylvia cradled in her hands, wondering who had last used them. Aside from those small treasures, the day ended with nothing new to show for their efforts.
“I almost wish we could find the Bergstroms’ garbage heap after all,” said Sylvia to Sarah as they helped stow DiCarlo’s tools in the back of his truck. “But I couldn’t imagine where to look for it.”
Sarah shrugged and brushed dirt from her hands. “If Matt had been with them, they would have made a compost pile near the garden.”
“The garden,” gasped Sylvia. “Sarah, you’re a genius.” Quickly she returned to the dig, where DiCarlo and his students were securing the remains of the cabin. “Professor, it seems I have another archaeological find to show you.”
Mindful of the fading light, she led the excavation team back across Elm Creek, past the manor, and into a thick grove of trees to the north. If Sarah had not prompted her memory, Sylvia would have forgotten entirely to show the professor Hans’s gazebo.
The story of the gazebo in the north gardens was one of the first she had shared with Sarah about the history of Elm Creek Manor, as they were taking their first tentative steps toward friendship. The octagonal gazebo with the gingerbread molding had been in near ruins then, but the Log Cabin blocks fashioned from wood veneers fitted into its seats were still visible. One of those seats had a block with a black center square, and if pushed in just the right way, the wooden slats folded into a hidden recess beneath the bench like a rolltop desk, revealing a hiding place beneath the gazebo. According to family lore, fugitive slaves would conceal themselves in the hiding place until nightfall, when one of the Bergstroms would escort them into the safety of the manor.
Sylvia repeated the tale to her companions as they walked, but when the gazebo came into view, DiCarlo’s expression shifted from intrigue to polite interest. She showed him the Log Cabin blocks and enlisted Matthew’s help in pushing back the top to the secret bench, hoping to whet his eagerness again, but before long DiCarlo shook his head.
“I don’t know anything about quilt blocks,” said DiCarlo. “But I can tell you this gazebo couldn’t have been built in your great-grandfather’s day. It’s far more recent.”
“How recent?” asked Sylvia.
Carefully, as if reluctant to disappoint her, he indicated several features that helped him date the structure, including everything from the good condition of the wood to the type of concrete in the foundation to the bolts holding the benches together. “In my estimation, the gazebo doesn’t predate the twentieth century.”
“It’s been refurbished,” said Sylvia, unwilling to believe him. “Matthew, tell the professor how you repaired it so he can focus on the original structure.”
Matthew complied, but as he listed his alterations, Sylvia realized that DiCarlo had detected the recent work and had accounted for it in his evaluation.
“I don’t understand,” said Sarah. “If the story about the gazebo isn’t true, then—” She broke off at a warning look from Matthew.
“No, go on. You might as well finish the thought.” Sylvia sank heavily onto the nearest bench. “If that story isn’t true, how can we believe anything my great-aunt Lucinda told me?”
“She described the trunk accurately and gave you the key,” said Andrew.
“
There is that. Pity. Now I can’t simply dismiss her as a pathological liar,” said Sylvia dryly. “Then at least I would know everything she told me was false. Now she forces me to sift through her stories, hoping the lies slip through my fingers and the truth remains in my hands.”
“I can’t believe she would be so malicious as to deliberately deceive you,” said Sarah. “Maybe she thought the story about the gazebo was true.”
“I suppose.” Sylvia sighed and rose. “But that means someone lied to her.”
“Or they told her the truth, but she misunderstood,” said Andrew.
Despite her disappointment, Sylvia had to laugh. She reached up and patted Andrew’s cheek, then smiled at her friends. “You all do try to keep my spirits up, don’t you? I appreciate your loyalty to my ancestors, but you don’t need to defend them so ardently.” She caught Andrew’s eye. “I’ve accepted that the Bergstroms were mere mortals after all.”
And one of them had built the gazebo with a hiding place indicated by a Log Cabin block with a black center square—but who, and more puzzling still, since it could not have been done to conceal fugitive slaves, why?
After supper—a more subdued affair than the previous night’s meal—DiCarlo and his students vacated their rooms and loaded their belongings into DiCarlo’s truck. Before they left, DiCarlo told Sylvia how to properly preserve the site. “You might want to continue the excavation on your own,” he suggested. “You might find something we missed.”
“Such as a garbage heap?” said Sylvia. “Thank you, Professor, but if you and your students couldn’t find anything, I doubt we amateurs will have any better success.”
“I know you’re disappointed we didn’t find more, but don’t forget, you did find a cabin exactly where that journal of yours said it would be.”
As DiCarlo and his companions drove away, her pride in their discovery rekindled. The professor was right. It did not matter how much of the cabin they had found, only that they now knew with confidence that they had found it, and not some mere woodpile or fallen tree. It was enough to know she had found Gerda’s first home in America, the first home on Bergstrom land.
Elm Creek Quilts [04] The Runaway Quilt Page 14