Hattie Carnes reached for it, then stopped and looked to Mildred for permission. Only when Mildred nodded, did she pick up the pin to examine it. "Well, I'll be jiggered," she said. "It sure does look the same."
"It is the same," Vesta told her barely lifting an eyebrow. "It belonged to my mother."
"No," Mildred told her, accepting the pin back from Hattie. "It belonged to mine."
Vesta had already turned to Mildred, to ask, I'm sure, how she had come by Lucy's pin. Now she stared at her, her mouth working, but nothing came out. Then my grandmother glanced at me, hoping, I suppose, that I would clear this up somehow. After all, Mildred had been under a lot of strain since Otto's death. But I could only smile.
"Annie Rose didn't die…." Mildred struggled to speak.
"She had me instead."
She reached out to Vesta, who looked as if she might vault over the table to wrap long arms about her. My grandmother didn't ask any questions, and Mildred didn't give any answers because just then both women were crying, but I could tell that after the initial shock of Mildred's announcement, Vesta was completely at home with the news. Later, after everyone's emotions dwindled, Vesta held Mildred at arm's length and declared that although Mildred definitely had the Westbrook nose, her stubborn streak must've come from her father's side.
Hattie, although thoroughly mystified, seemed to relish every second of the drama before her and insisted on selling the quilt back to us for the price she had paid years before.
"But it would be worth much more than that now," Vesta argued. "Please let me make it worth your while."
"I've had over ten years of pleasure from that quilt," Hattie said. "And if that wasn't enough, what went on in my kitchen today more than made up for it!"
And the two cousins, Mildred and Vesta, sitting together in the backseat as we drove home that evening, talked nonstop, trying to piece their lives together, pausing only for barbecue sandwiches so big they fell apart in our hands, when we stopped in Lexington, North Carolina, for supper. Naturally I listened.
As far as I could tell, Mildred told my grandmother essentially the same story she had told me, and the two of them agreed that the quilt might possibly have something to do with what happened to Otto—and to Sylvie Smith, and what almost happened to me. But I still felt that Mildred was holding something back. I guess she was waiting to see what secrets the old quilt would unfold.
Hattie had tucked it tenderly into a large muslin pillowcase and it sat on the front seat beside me for the ride home. Since it was late when we arrived back in Angel Heights and we wanted to examine the quilt in the daylight when we were all rested—except for a quick peek, which none of us could resist, we put our project on hold until morning. Mildred, without so much as a feeble protest, agreed to stay that night with Vesta, and the two planned to drive over for breakfast in the morning.
"You can treat us to some of that cranberry bread," my grandmother said.
"What cranberry bread?" I asked.
"Somebody's surely been baking," Mildred said. "The whole house smells of it. In fact this old place has a calmness about it, a comfort. Don't you sense it, Vesta? I declare, I feel like I've come home."
"You have," my grand mother told her as they went outside together.
I watched the two of them walk down the back steps and into Vesta's car; then I went inside and locked the door, taking the quilt up to my room with me for the night. Augusta had to be somewhere close by—cranberry bread doesn't appear by itself—yet I would be glad when daylight came and we would finally have a chance to learn what the Mystic Six had to say for themselves. I hoped we wouldn't be disappointed.
Chapter Twenty-Four
It really is pretty," Vesta said the next morning after cranberry bread (compliments of Augusta) and scrambled eggs and bacon (compliments of me). "You know, I don't think I've ever looked at it before."
We had spread the quilt on the double bed in what had been my great-grandmother's room, and although it smelled of mothballs and was somewhat dingy in places, the colors were still bright. It seemed to be sort of a patchwork replica of the old Minerva Academy campus with Holley Hall in its center. Tiny evergreens dotted a calico lawn that was intersected by a tan linen path meandering much as it does today. A gray stone wall surrounded the grounds, and a bright blue river zigzagged past.
Vesta put her finger on a slender tree in the corner of the campus. "This must be that huge red oak that shades the street. Some of these hardwoods weren't tiny even when I was growing up, but I know they've replaced a lot of them."
We counted three smaller buildings scattered about the campus that were no longer there. Vesta remembered the larger one as the old dining hall that was torn down after being badly damaged in a tornado.
"It cut a path through the edge of town, then veered and hit that part of the campus," she told us. "Fortunately no one was hurt, but it did a lot of damage. The academy closed its doors as a school a few years after that."
"Did you go there?" I asked. Vesta shook her head. "No, Mama didn't want to send me to Minerva. I went to the public schools here, then went off to college, but I remember that storm. I must've been about eight at the time. It destroyed a wooden classroom building, too—ugly, two-story thing that was built to replace the one that burned, but it happened on a Sunday morning, thank goodness, when everybody was in church."
"I can see why Hattie Carnes called this quilt the Burning Building," Mildred said. "It seems to be the dominant theme."
I had to admit it kind of gave me the creeps. Red and orange flames, so vivid they looked as if they would singe you if you touched them, curled raggedly from the upstairs windows, dark puffs of smoke billowed from the roof.
"It is a strange theme," I said. "With the variety of quilt patterns to choose from, why on earth would they want to devote theirtime to making this?"
"It tells a story," Vesta reminded me. "A tragic story, true, but it involved a place and an event that had a great impact on their lives. Fitzhugh Holley, the young professor, died in that fire. They said he went back inside to save one of the girls."
"So I guess he was a hero of sorts." Mildred touched the worn applique´, then abruptly drew back her hand.
"They named the main building after him," Vesta told her.
"And I understand there was a huge demand for his children's books, although he didn't live to see them in print. "Yes, I'd say he was a hero."
"What did your mother say about him?" I asked. My grandmother shrugged. "She didn't talk about him. It was too close to her, I guess."
"Who was the girl he saved from the fire?" I asked her. Vesta smoothed a wrinkled corner, looking at it all the while. "Good heavens, I have no idea! And after all this time, I don't suppose anyone else would, either."
"Maybe Mamie Estes would," I said. "I'll call her." But Mildred put a delaying hand on my arm. "Never mind, I know who it was. It was Irene Bradshaw's mother. Irene told me once."
"Aunt Pauline?" Vesta leaned on the foot of the heavy Victorian bed. "She never mentioned it to me."
"Maybe she didn't like to talk about it," Mildred said, "but Irene seemed quite proud of it. Said her mother had gone to take the professor his tea—seemed he always enjoyed a cup in the late afternoons—and she found the office filled with smoke and Professor Holley asleep in his chair. She managed to wake him, help him to the stairs…the office could only be reached by an inside stairway, I understand, but by that time Pauline became overcome herself. Fitzhugh Holley was said to have carried her down the stairs and outside."
"So why did he go back?" Vesta wanted to know.
"Irene seemed to think he believed there was another student still inside," Mildred said.
"But there wasn't." I looked at the dreadful building and could almost smell the scorch of burning wood. "What a waste!"
Vesta lifted the quilt and held it to the light. "Did you notice the angel a little to the right above the building? She's almost hidden by a cloud, but she se
ems to be smiling on the whole scene."
"She? He, you mean. That must represent the professor." I examined the tiny angel. It did seem to have definite feminine characteristics.
I looked closer at the quilt. Beneath a grove of patchwork trees a distance from the flaming building, five figures stood watching. They were primitive figures, such as the kind a child might design, but they were most decidedly female, and each wore a different color scrap of fabric for a dress.
Even the bright morning sun couldn't warm the cold that came over me. Somehow I knew the crude doll-like characters represented the five woman who made the quilt, and each wore a tiny piece of material from her own dress.
"What a morbid lot they were! They've even included a teapot in here." I showed the others a square in the corner of the quilt.
"And what about the little tree with yellow flowers?" Vesta pointed out. "I've never seen one like it. Do you suppose it has any significance?"
"It looks something like a golden chain tree," Mildred said.
"A neighbor had one when we were growing up; we used to call it a bean tree because it has long clusters of beanlike seedpods. The flowers look something like yellow wisteria."
"Like these," I said, patting a sunshiny square. "Aren't they beautiful?"
"Beautiful but deadly," Mildred said. "The seeds are extremely poisonous. Mama wouldn't let us play close to that tree." She sank into the little maple rocking chair by the window and closed her eyes. "I'm getting a bad feeling about this."
Mildred looked like a life-size apple doll sitting there in her crisp blue checked housedress with the lace-trimmed collar and stockings the color of strong tea rolled (I knew) just above the knees and held in place with worn elastic. I went over and knelt beside her. I had a bad feeling, too, and the more we delved into the story behind the quilt, the darker things seemed. Suspicions whirled in my mind like worrisome gnats clouding my vision. These innocent-seeming young women—my own great-grandmother among them—had done something horrible, and I didn't want to focus on it.
"This is upsetting you," I said, taking her hand. "We can put the quilt away for a while."
Did we really want to uncover the reason for this ghastly quilt? Now I knew how Peggy O'Connor, Mamie Estes, and all the others had felt. I wanted to send it as far away as possible and never see it again.
But then we might never know.
Mildred looked at my grandmother, who nodded to her with a barely noticeable squint that I knew meant she was worried. "Minda's right. This can wait," Vesta said.
"No, it can't." Mildred took my arm and let me help her to her feet. "Can't you see what happened here?"
I glanced at my grandmother and could tell by her expression that even if she did see, she'd rather not discuss it.
Mildred stood looking down at the quilt. "I think I know who my father was," she said. "I've wondered all along, but I'm almost certain of it now. My father was Fitzhugh Holley, and those girls set that fire on purpose. They meant for him to die."
"Oh-h, Mildred…" The words slid from Vesta's mouth with such a final sound it seemed she'd never speak again.
She did, of course. "What makes you think they would do a thing like that?" she asked. "That doesn't make any sense at all." Her words weren't too convincing, I thought, since she backed away from the quilt as she spoke.
"They did it for revenge and probably for self-preservation. Look." Mildred placed a finger on the angel. "This isn't the noble professor looking down, it's supposed to be my mother, Annie Rose."
My grandmother shook her head. "But how—?"
"They thought she drowned in the river, you see. They knew about the pregnancy and who was responsible for it. They thought she took her own life."
"How can you be sure?" I asked. "Mamie's the only one left, and she stops short of admitting it."
"And you said yourself he saved Pauline Watts," Vesta said. "Carried her out of that burning building. Didn't Irene tell you that?"
"Irene told me," Mildred said, "and I'm sure her mother told her that was what happened. That was their story."
"But that's a hideous thing to do—even if he was responsible for—what you said!" Vesta laced her fingers together as if she meant to pray this away.
"There's more." Mildred ran her hand over the quilt, traced the telltale designs with her fingers. "There was a letter."
"What kind of letter? Who wrote it?" I moved to her side to see what she was doing. Was the letter inside the quilt?
"The letter was from Flora Dennis. She and Lucy corresponded, you know, and just before Lucy died, a letter came from Flora." Mildred turned to Vesta. "Your mother didn't feel up to reading it, so she asked me to read it to her.
"There were things in that letter that would lead one to believe Annie Rose wasn't the professor's only victim, and that Flora herself might have been one, as well."
"What things?" Vesta asked. "What happened to the letter?"
"Your mother asked me to get rid of it, tear it up and throw it away."
"Oh, no!" Vesta and I groaned together. "But I didn't, of course," Mildred said, standing a bit straighter. "I think I must've wondered then if there was a connection between something that happened here and my own mother, and so I kept it."
"What did Flora say that was so awful?" I asked. "Can you remember?"
"You don't forget things like that," Mildred said, looking at both of us in turn. "She said she hoped that horrible man would burn eternally in hell, said she wasn't one bit sorry for what they did, and Lucy shouldn't be, either."
Vesta picked up a corner of the quilt and looked at it closely, as if she could read something further there. "Did you ask my mother what it was that they did?"
"Yes, but Lucy evaded the question, said Flora was getting senile, talking nonsense with all that rambling, but I could see the letter bothered her. She must have known she didn't have much longer to live, and I think she might have been having some regrets about what they did. Of course at the time, I had no idea what that was."
"And we can't be sure about it now, either," Vesta said.
"What would keep the professor from escaping once he knew the building was on fire? How could they be sure he would die so obligingly?" My grandmother folded her arms.
"The girls have told us how—right here in this quilt." Mildred directed our attention to the teapot, the tree with yellow flowers. "Irene said her mother took the professor his afternoon tea. It must have been a daily custom. The seeds of the laburnum, or golden chain tree, are toxic. Ingested they cause weakness, drowsiness. I believe they made a brew of them and added it to his tea."
"So he wouldn't wake up when they set the fire." Vesta absently fingered the edge of the quilt. "The man must have been a monster! But why couldn't they go to their parents? Surely somebody—
"Wait a minute. What's this?" She held up a small bulge, covered with a scrap of green. "It feels like something's under here…. Minda, get the scissors!"
I pressed the cloth between my fingers. "It's just a wad of padding. I hate to ruin an heirloom, even if it is depressing."
"But look what's covering it," Mildred pointed out. I looked. "A leaf. Okay, so—"
"A holly leaf," Mildred said, hurrying to the closet. "There should be scissors on the second shelf."
A few minutes later we discovered how the five girls made certain Fitzhugh Holley didn't wake from his drugged sleep and escape. They had locked him in his office, then later sewed the key into the quilt.
"Do you think this has anything to do with what happened to Otto?" I asked Mildred.
"It certainly doesn't put Fitzhugh Holley in a very good light, but then it wouldn't do much for the other families, either—the ones involved in setting the fire. And there's no way to prove it either way." Mildred frowned. "The quilt tells a story. I feel it's true, and so, I think, do you, but who would believe it—or even care—after all these years?"
"Gert would, and probably Hugh," Vesta said. "Even the suggest
ion of lewd behavior would knock their sainted granddaddy off his pedestal, but I honestly can't see them killing for it. Illegitimate babies don't seem to be a big deal these days—no offense, Mildred."
"And none taken." I was surprised to see Mildred smile. She held out the key, which had been wrapped in cotton batting. "What do we do with this?"
"Throw it away," I said, and my grandmother nodded in agreement.
"My motherled me to believe that Annie Rose helped make this quilt," Vesta said, "but it's only initialed by the others." She held a corner of the quilt under the bedside lamp to show the star-flower emblem and the neatly stitched initials of the other five members of the Mystic Six.
"I believe she started out making it with the other girls before things began going wrong," Mildred said. "Except for the fire, the rest of the quilt is almost festive, with its winding paths and trees. And look at the main building—there's even a cat curled on the steps. I think it began as a tribute to a place they loved; then when things took a nasty turn, I imagine they put it away."
"Until Annie Rose drowned—or they thought she drowned," Vesta said. "And they took things into their own hands."
"I wonder whose idea it was to hide the key in the quilt," I said. When I'd thought of the quilt as holding the key to a secret, I really hadn't meant it literally.
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