The Christmas Boutique

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  “Perhaps not,” mused Agnes, but she brightened as she looked around the circle of friends. “Well, I’m sure the rest of you have quilts in suitable condition.”

  “I have one or two I’d be proud to show off,” said Gwen, nodding. “I love this idea. Let’s do it. It would be like a quilt show, and if Diane includes that in the publicity, that could help draw customers to the Christmas Boutique.”

  “And therein lies the danger,” said Diane ominously.

  All eyes went to her. “Danger?” echoed Anna, wary.

  Diane swept an arm, indicating the entire ballroom. “Have you forgotten we’re hosting the Christmas Boutique? If we display handcrafted quilts, people will assume they’re for sale.”

  “I don’t think that’s a cause for alarm,” said Sylvia, peering at Diane over the rims of her glasses. “I believe the distinction between items displayed on the boutique tables and artwork on the manor walls will be apparent.”

  Gwen eyed Diane with utter bemusement. “You aren’t afraid someone will try to buy the wreaths and the Christmas trees, are you?”

  “The items for sale will surely have price tags,” said Gretchen, the voice of reason and reassurance. “That should clear up any confusion.”

  “Perhaps we should put a tag on that aluminum nightmare in the banquet hall,” Sylvia mused, just loud enough to be heard. Sarah suspected her friend was fighting to hold back a smile, and she did not take the bait.

  “I’m telling you, tags or no tags, some people are going to try to buy our quilts,” said Diane mutinously. Then she sighed. “But you’re right. Holiday quilts hung all around the ballroom would make it even more beautiful and festive, and if people hear there’s a quilt show at Elm Creek Manor, they may be more inclined to come and spend their money at the Christmas Boutique. It’s a risk worth taking for such a good cause.”

  “If someone offers to buy one of the quilts hung for decoration, we can just explain that they aren’t for sale.” Anna shrugged. “Not a problem. Easy fix.”

  “Let’s have a vote,” said Sarah. “Everyone in favor of decorating with holiday quilts, raise your hand. Everyone against—” She stopped there, for everyone, even Diane, held a hand in the air. “Okay, then. It’s unanimous. Between now and Thursday morning, let’s search our quilt inventories and deck the halls of Elm Creek Manor with our favorite holiday quilts.”

  Everyone chimed in their agreement, and with that matter settled, they resumed their work.

  Sarah’s gaze traveled around the ballroom, from one cluster of friends to another, her heart overflowing with affection, amusement, and pride. How well they all worked together, even when they disagreed.

  It occurred to her—suddenly, startlingly—that she was thoroughly enjoying herself for the first time since Matt had dropped his bombshell and had driven off to Uniontown.

  Amid all the hassle and uncertainty, she was having a wonderful time.

  She actually loved this. Yes, it was stressful and a bit chaotic, but she thrived on strategizing and hard work. She loved how she and her friends pulled together to solve problems and make good things happen. She relished the challenge of overcoming unexpected calamities—as long as they were relatively minor and harmed no one—and she had certainly seen her fair share in her years with Elm Creek Quilts. How could she give that up? How could she leave it behind for something inevitably duller and less fulfilling?

  She couldn’t. She loved this happy chaos too much to give it up.

  And that, she realized, with an overwhelming rush of hope and relief, suggested that she was just the person to take on the daunting responsibility of raising twins. Elm Creek Quilts had prepared her well. She only hoped Matt would understand why she couldn’t imagine raising their children anywhere else.

  5

  Agnes

  On Tuesday morning, Agnes woke to sunlight streaming through her bedroom window and knew it was going to be a lovely day, despite the thick snow blanketing the front yard and dormant backyard garden, despite the bracing cold that made her grateful for her flannel nightgown and warm quilts. “Busy is better than bored,” she always told her daughters and grandchildren, and she lived every day as if to prove it.

  Dismissing the temptation to linger in bed, she threw off the quilts, shivered in the sudden chill, and hurried to wash and dress. After her usual breakfast of oatmeal and coffee, she headed to her quilt studio, which in its former incarnation had been her eldest daughter’s bedroom. She had made it halfway up the stairs when the phone rang. She hurried back downstairs to the kitchen to answer. It was Diane, calling to ask for the names and phone numbers of Agnes’s friends in the Waterford Historical Society, the Elm Creek Valley Garden Club, and a few other organizations whose members might discover a keen new interest in attending the Christmas Boutique, now that it would be held at Elm Creek Manor.

  “Good thinking, dear,” said Agnes. She set down the phone, retrieved her address book from the stack directories on the counter nearby, and got back on the line so she could read off the names and numbers. “Tell them you’re a friend of mine and they’ll help spread the word to their membership.”

  “I’ll do that, thanks.”

  “You certainly seem to be making good progress on the publicity front.”

  “That’s not all. I’ve also learned who was present at the facilities committee meeting at Good Shepherd Church. We have eight suspects, but I think we can narrow down that list by applying a bit of logic.”

  Logic seemed to have nothing to do with Diane’s wholly unnecessary investigation. “Diane, dear, please don’t call them suspects. According to Nancy and Melanie, the pastor says no crime was committed.”

  “He has to be forgiving. He’s a minister. It’s a job requirement. As I was saying, Nancy Reinhart and Melanie Tibbs were there, but we can rule them out because they’re genuinely concerned about the boutique or they wouldn’t be working so hard to salvage it. Frank DiSantos was as the meeting too, but he’s a volunteer firefighter. If he wanted to ruin the boutique, he would have known how to burn down the hall and make it look like an accident.”

  “Please take a breath and listen to what you’re saying. You’re being silly.”

  “It’s not silly to rule out Frank, unless you know something about him that I don’t.”

  “Of course not, but that’s not what I meant, and—”

  “Then we come to Mary Beth Callahan.”

  “No, no, no,” said Agnes, so forcefully she startled herself. “I will not have you torment that poor woman. I know you two have a rather fraught history, but lately you’ve been mending fences, and I won’t stand by while you tear them down again.”

  “I wouldn’t do that,” protested Diane. “Honestly. You act like I have a personal vendetta against her or something.”

  “Do I?” said Agnes archly. “Don’t you?”

  “Not anymore. Like you said, we’re mending fences. Anyway, I’ve ruled out Mary Beth. She’s been proceeding with caution ever since her son and his gang destroyed Grandma’s Attic, and she would never be so careless as to mix up the heating and the lights. She wouldn’t have done it intentionally, either. She always contributes a quilt or two to the boutique, and she’s not one to squander a chance to brag about how her quilts were so popular they incited a bidding war.”

  Agnes sighed. “Why don’t you rule out everyone? Your inquiries aren’t helpful, dear. They won’t fix the floor any faster, won’t draw crowds to the Christmas Boutique, and won’t raise a single dime for the food pantry. Your time would be better spent preparing for the event. For instance, have you dropped off some holiday quilts to help decorate the ballroom?”

  Diane hesitated. “Not yet. It’s on my list.”

  “Then it seems you have more important things to do than play amateur sleuth. Get to it, dear. Bye now,” she said cheerily, and hung up the phone.

  Such misplaced energies, Agnes thought as she resumed her interrupted errand to her sewing room. Opening the close
t doors, she glanced at the shelves of fabrics organized by color and then at the bin where she stored works-in-progress, but she quickly turned her attention to her collection of quilts not currently on display elsewhere in her home. Each was carefully rolled around a sturdy, acid-free cardboard tube to prevent straining the fibers and creating crease lines at folds, the pieced and appliquéd sides facing in. She had learned to identify her quilts from the back, not only by the fabric but by the distinctive quilting patterns worked into the three layers, feathered plumes and crosshatches and stitches outlining the geometry of the pieces on the top. Each one was as familiar and precious to her as an old friend.

  But one quilt in particular beckoned her that morning.

  Its backing fabric print was so subtle, a fine wheat-colored vine on a background of an almost imperceptibly darker hue, that it easily could have been mistaken for a faded muslin. But Agnes knew it by heart. Rising on tiptoe and stretching a bit, she was able to retrieve the quilt without too much strain. It was heavier than she remembered, but perhaps that said more about the strength of her arms than her memory. Anticipation brought a smile to her lips as she spread the quilt upon the bed and stepped back to admire it.

  Oh, how lovely it remained, even after all these years.

  The design was exquisite, but it was not bragging to think so because she had acquired the pattern from another quilter. The handiwork was all her own, and although her novice stitches were far from perfect, they did not detract from the quilt’s faded beauty. It had been no small task to gather those dignified, deep-pine-green, scarlet, and gold fabrics in the postwar years when cheery pastels had been all the rage, but eventually she had found enough bolt ends in bargain bins to complete the top. How amusing it was that a color palette dismissed as old-fashioned when she had sewed the first green curve to the creamy ivory background was now, a half-century later, back in style, just as quilting itself had soared to new heights of popularity.

  She hadn’t been out-of-date at all, but years ahead of her time.

  Cupping her chin with a hand, Agnes studied the quilt thoughtfully, contemplating where she should display it in the ballroom of Elm Creek Manor, which wall would set it off to best advantage without exposing the delicate antique fabrics to direct sunlight. The quilt was about five feet square, with sixteen appliquéd Christmas Cactus blocks arranged in a four-by-four setting, all framed by a graceful, curving border of gold accented by a narrow bias trim of a deeper hue. Making the bias strip and sewing it in place without a single crease or awkward flattened edge had been a painstaking, difficult process. On a few occasions tears of frustration had sprung to her eyes, but she had persisted, determined to finish what she had begun. Fortunately, she had been blessed by the guidance of a wise, patient teacher, and after she had put the last stitches into the binding, her teacher had put an arm around her shoulders, praised her for her hard work, and traced her progress by pointing out the differences between the tentative, hesitant stitches of her first block to the nearly invisible stitches on the last smooth curve of the bias accent. “If you keep this up, I can only imagine the masterpieces you’ll be creating when you’re my age,” her teacher had remarked, and Agnes had nearly burst with pride and gratitude.

  What a lovely, generous woman she had been, and how different her gentle, encouraging manner from that of Agnes’s first quilting teacher—her stubborn, reluctant sister-in-law, Sylvia.

  More than fifty years before, after Agnes and Richard had married in haste and he had brought her home to the Bergstrom ancestral estate before shipping out, Agnes had settled into a strange new life: a bride without an adoring husband by her side, disowned by her own family, an unwelcome interloper caught between two bickering sisters, yet all three women fearing for their loved ones away at war. Agnes soon won over all of the Bergstroms except Sylvia, who was jealous that Agnes had captured her beloved baby brother’s heart.

  Though the challenge was daunting, Agnes resolved to befriend her disapproving sister-in-law with time and patience, for Richard’s sake. Knowing how proud Sylvia was of her quilting, Agnes asked for lessons, thinking that a shared interest might bring them together and that quilting would distract her from her loneliness and worry while her husband was at war. Skeptical but flattered, Sylvia agreed.

  Agnes’s first assignment was to choose a simple quilt pattern or several blocks in varying styles and increasing difficulty for a sampler. She searched through the Bergstrom women’s vast pattern collection for a variety of simple blocks, but before she made her final selections, Claudia told her that a more challenging pattern would help her master a quilter’s essential skills more quickly. Trusting Claudia’s experience, Agnes decided to make a Double Wedding Ring quilt, charmed by the beauty of its interlocking rings as well as by a superstitious hope that the name would guarantee her and Richard many years of wedded bliss.

  Sylvia urged her to reconsider. A sampler had been a tried-and-true project for beginning quilters since time immemorial, and with a unique setting and borders it could be just as charming in its own way as a more complex pattern. But Agnes had her heart set on a Double Wedding Ring quilt and would not budge, especially after Claudia privately praised her for standing up to Sylvia.

  All too soon Agnes regretted that she had not taken Sylvia’s advice. The bias edges and curved seams of the Double Wedding Ring proved too difficult for her inexpert stitches, and her first half-ring buckled in the middle and gapped at the seams. Every lesson was an exercise in frustration for her and exasperation for her teacher.

  She might have improved with practice, but the war intervened.

  Richard and James were killed, victims of friendly fire in the South Pacific. In her shock and despair, Sylvia lost James’s unborn child, and kindly Mr. Bergstrom was killed by a stroke. Numb and grieving, Agnes took on the task of nursing Sylvia back to health. The work kept Agnes’s hands busy and thoughts occupied, a blessing in those dark days. Gradually Sylvia recovered her strength, but she was never the same. Compassion for Sylvia’s losses helped Agnes bear her own grief more bravely.

  The war ended. Harold came home, and Claudia threw herself into preparing for their wedding. A few weeks before the ceremony, Andrew passed through the Elm Creek Valley on his way from Philadelphia to a new job in Detroit. Agnes was pleased to see her old friend, although the sight of him brought tears to her eyes as she recalled their carefree student days in Philadelphia with Richard. Andrew limped slightly from the wound he had suffered trying to rescue Richard and James, and although he treated the ladies of the household with the same warm courtesy as always, he shunned Harold. This puzzled Agnes, but she did not pry. Something in the steely gaze Andrew fixed upon his former brother-in-arms warned her that she did not want to know what had happened overseas to cause their estrangement.

  One evening after supper, Andrew spoke privately with Sylvia in the library. Agnes was passing in the hall when the French doors banged open and Sylvia stormed out, furious, tears streaking her face. Andrew had followed her as far as the doorway, his own face wet from tears as he looked after her, helpless.

  He left early the next morning without telling her or Claudia whatever he had confided to Sylvia. Then, a few days before the wedding, the two sisters had a terrible argument behind closed doors, their voices muffled but their mutual anger unmistakable. That same evening, Sylvia packed two suitcases and fled the manor without telling anyone where she was going or when she might return. Claudia assured Agnes that she would come home when her temper cooled, but Agnes was bleakly certain that she would never see Sylvia again.

  Claudia and Harold married, and in the early days, they seemed happy—giddily, recklessly so. They threw lavish parties nearly every week, making up for all the deprivations of the war years by laughing and dancing and feasting themselves and their guests into fleeting oblivion. Agnes looked on in dismay as Harold and Claudia sold off prize horses for a fraction of their value, spending the profits as quickly as they were earned. As Bergstr
om Thoroughbreds foundered and the money ran out, Claudia and Harold’s marriage disintegrated. The empty halls of Elm Creek Manor echoed with their mutual antipathy. Agnes had never felt more alone. She longed for her parents and siblings, for her friends back in Philadelphia, and most of all, for her beloved Richard. She even missed Sylvia. She fought to preserve what she could of the Bergstrom family legacy until Sylvia finally came home.

  Despite her efforts, Claudia and Harold steadily drained their resources throughout their second miserable year of marriage. All too soon the last Bergstrom Thoroughbred was sold off, the last remaining stable hand sent away. Agnes begged the couple to set the profits aside for the future, but they ignored her. Desperate, she sold off antique furniture from the unoccupied rooms. When Claudia refused to help her choose which items to part with, Agnes tried not to imagine that she might be selling off Sylvia’s favorite chair or a wardrobe cherished by the mother-in-law she had never met.

  Occasionally when Agnes called at the antiques shop in Waterford where she sold the Bergstroms’ heirlooms, she found the proprietor engrossed in conversation with Joseph Emberly, a history professor at Waterford College who advised him on the historical context of the pieces he acquired. “I’m a dramaturge for antiques,” he told Agnes when Peter introduced them, his smile so cheerfully self-deprecating that she found herself smiling back. Joseph looked to be about six inches taller and ten years older than she, with curly light brown hair with hints of auburn, a short, neatly trimmed beard, and dark blue eyes.

  In the weeks that followed, in conversations that began at the antiques shop and often ended at the coffeehouse down the block, Agnes learned that Joseph had enlisted in the army in early 1942 after earning his doctorate from Columbia. His education and fluency in German and Italian prompted the government to assign him to military intelligence. He had served in Washington, then London, and finally Berlin, where he had finished his tour of duty six months after VE Day. His college sweetheart had married another man while he was abroad, so upon his return to the States he had accepted a professorship at Waterford College, determined to resume his dormant academic career hundreds of miles away from the campus where he might accidentally cross paths with the woman who had broken his heart.