Elm Creek Quilts [06] The Master Quilter (17 page)

She knew next to nothing about wine, but Agnes never criticized anyone except for bad manners, so she could hardly go wrong. She chose a red she had enjoyed at Gwen’s last Winter Solstice feast and got in line behind a young man hefting two cases of beer onto the checkout counter. When he dug in his back pocket for his wallet, Bonnie glimpsed his face in profile—and nearly dropped the wine. His hair was shorter than he had worn it in years, but he was unmistakably Diane’s eldest son, Michael.

The clerk asked for Michael’s ID, and Bonnie held her breath—waiting for Michael to run, for the clerk to call his supervisor, the police—but Michael said, “Sure,” and handed him something that looked like a Pennsylvania driver’s license. It couldn’t have been; at least, it wasn’t Michael’s. But the clerk looked from the photo on the card to Michael’s face and back, then returned the license and rang up the beer. Bonnie watched, dumbfounded, as Michael paid him and pocketed his wallet. He turned to go and stopped short at the sight of her, his expression giving way to shock and dismay. He left quickly, without a word.

He was nowhere in sight by the time Bonnie exited the store. She had no idea what she would have said to him anyway, had he lingered to shower her in excuses. She must tell Diane, of course. Shouldn’t she? She could imagine how that conversation would unfold: “Diane, I saw your underage son buying beer last night. Since I’m managing my own domestic situation so perfectly I thought I should tell you how to raise your son. Oh, by the way, Grandma’s Attic is in even more trouble than my marriage, so I’m afraid you’re fired.”

She didn’t tell Agnes about the encounter—Agnes had baby-sat Diane as a child and they had remained close, so she was almost a surrogate grandmother to her boys and could hardly be objective—but she did tell Gwen when she stopped by the shop a few days later. Gwen seemed more concerned with her daughter’s perfectly legal decision to move in with her boyfriend than by Michael’s breaking the law, but that was not surprising. Gwen did offer one offhand suggestion and, after mulling it over, Bonnie decided it was actually quite good: She could talk to Michael herself. She was no prude, and she knew college students started drinking as soon as they hit campus regardless of age, but that fake ID could get him in serious trouble. Diane and Tim were so proud of how their rebellious son had turned his life around. Bonnie could not sit back and wait for him to disappoint them, or worse.

But first Bonnie had to pay back Grandma’s Attic. The following Thursday evening she took a cab out to Elm Creek Manor and found Sylvia in the formal parlor, tidying up for their business meeting. After procrastinating with small talk, Bonnie awkwardly asked her for an advance on her first quilt camp paycheck. “I wouldn’t make this request lightly—”

“I know you wouldn’t,” interrupted Sylvia. “If you say you need the money now, you must have good reason.”

“I think I owe you an explanation.”

“Well, you don’t. Now, let’s go upstairs so I can write you a check before everyone else gets here and wants their first paycheck early, too.”

Bonnie managed a smile as she followed Sylvia from the room, but as they climbed the stairs, she said, “I left Craig.”

Sylvia nodded. “I thought it was something like that. Have you contacted a lawyer?”

“I meet with him tomorrow.” Bonnie gave Sylvia a sidelong glance. “You’re not surprised?”

“Frankly, no. I’ve been expecting something like this for the past five years.”

Bonnie stopped short on the landing. “Really.”

“Of course, dear. Once the trust between a husband and wife is broken, it’s very difficult to repair, even with the best of intentions.”

Sylvia continued down the hall toward the library, but Bonnie caught her arm. “You’re not going to tell me I should try harder?”

Sylvia looked shocked. “I wouldn’t presume to. You stuck it out for more than thirty years, by my reckoning. You would know far better than I whether you’ve done all you could.”

“But what about all your talk about forgiveness, about reconciling before it’s too late?”

“Oh. That.” Sylvia sighed and shook her head. “In an ideal world, your forgiveness would have inspired Craig to mend his ways and be an exemplary husband. You gave him five years to prove himself, which is about four and a half more than I would have managed in your place. If you’re still miserable, if you still can’t trust him, you’re far too young to live that way for the rest of your life.”

“I didn’t leave because of that woman from the internet,” said Bonnie, and while Sylvia wrote out a check, Bonnie filled her in on the events of the past few months. Sylvia’s expression grew more grave as the story tumbled out, and at the end, she gave Bonnie one long, wordless hug. They returned downstairs together, ten minutes late for the meeting.

The next day was unseasonably mild, with sunny skies and warm breezes that promised of the coming spring. Students basked in the sun on the main quad across the street from Grandma’s Attic, while others clad in shorts and T-shirts packed their cars for spring break. Business picked up a little that week, as residents of outlying small towns took advantage of the students’ absence to venture into Waterford. Bonnie tried to take some hope from this and the fine weather as she locked the door to the quilt shop and walked to her lawyer’s office.

She had collected some of the papers he had requested, but the most important documents were unattainable in the condo. Not for long, however, if her new lawyer could be believed. Darren had told her it was unfortunate that she had abandoned the property, but he could argue that Craig gave her no other choice. The echo of Craig’s words made her uneasy, but she decided to believe Darren when he said he would have her back in her home soon. She didn’t ask where he expected Craig to go.

Scanning front doors for the address, she glanced through the window of a coffee shop and spotted Michael pouring sugar and cream into a to-go cup. She hesitated, then checked her watch and went inside.

Michael eyed her warily as she approached. “Hello, Michael.”

“Hi, Mrs. Markham,” he mumbled.

She smiled pleasantly. “Do you have any plans for spring break?”

“Stayin’ here.”

When he did not elaborate, she decided to get to the point. “Michael, I’ve been concerned ever since I saw you at the liquor store.”

“It wasn’t all for me,” he broke in. “I wasn’t going to drive after.”

“I’m relieved to hear it, but that doesn’t change the fact that you used a fake ID.”

“I’ll be twenty-one in six months.”

“Do you think the police would care? Do you have any idea what would happen to you if you got caught?” He shrugged, and since Bonnie didn’t know either, she let the ominous threat hang in the air. “I could tell you all the reasons why you shouldn’t drink, but I’m sure you’ve heard them before. What you might not have considered is that breaking the law so you can drink makes a bad situation worse.” His scowl deepened, so she finished in a rush. “I want you to give me that ID.”

“What?”

“It’s for your own good.” She could have cringed; she shouldn’t have put it that way. “I haven’t told your parents what I know, and I won’t, as long as I know you can’t do it anymore.”

“What if I just promise?”

“If you promise, and if you intend to keep your promise, you won’t need the ID.” She held out her palm. “Please, Michael. Either give it to me now or to your parents later.”

He looked as if he might protest, but then he whipped out his wallet and shoved the card into her hand. He stalked off as she tucked it into her purse, but at the door, he turned and gave her a look of such unmitigated rage that her breath caught in her throat. Then he was gone.

She composed herself and continued on to her lawyer’s office, to prepare for another confrontation she did not want but could not avoid.

Two days later, Bonnie and the other Elm Creek Quilters welcomed the first group of campers for the season. It was a scene so customary that it should have comforted her, but instead its sameness in the context of sudden and unwelcome change unsettled her. First there was the excuse she invented for being at Agnes’s house when Diane stopped by to pick her up—although she would have been uncomfortable around Diane regardless. Then, when she finally confided to Summer that she would have to let Diane go, Summer actually tried to resign in order to save her friend’s job. Bonnie was deeply touched that Summer would offer to make such a sacrifice without even pausing to consider the consequences, and if Summer were not so crucial to the survival of Grandma’s Attic, Bonnie might have taken her at her word.

Still, as the Candlelight welcoming ceremony concluded, Bonnie began to fall under the spell of the campers’ joy. Even Judy’s unexpected absence seemed reassuring as the sort of ordinary emergency the Elm Creek Quilters had learned to expect and absorb. By the end of the first day of classes, Bonnie almost managed to forget her grief over the loss of her marriage, the indignity of having to rely on Agnes for a place to live, her fear that one day soon she might have to lock the door of her beloved quilt shop forever. The familiar rhythms of quilt camp reminded her that she had a life beyond Craig, beyond Grandma’s Attic.

True to her predictions, business did pick up slightly as spring break began, so that as she walked to the quilt shop Wednesday morning, she considered that they might just be able to save the store without losing Diane.

But then she reached the front door, and before unlocking it, she knew that she had already lost.

She was too shocked to cry. She stepped carefully over the rubble of her dream, turning around, taking it all in. She could not believe it, but it had to be real. It hurt too much to be a nightmare.

Craig. He had always hated the shop. He had smirked when he said she was close to losing it. She never suspected he would be vicious enough to push her over the edge. Until that moment, she had not understood the depth of his contempt for her.

The cash register was empty, as she had suspected it would be. Then, a shiver of alarm ran through her. In her haste to meet her lawyer, she had stashed the previous day’s deposit in a filing cabinet rather than taking it to the bank. She ran to the office, tripping over fabric and spools of thread, but that room, too, had been ransacked, the filing cabinet overturned. The money bag was gone.

With a sob, Bonnie sank down onto a chair. She stared at the disarray, seeing Craig hurling fabric bolts across the room, knocking over shelves, tearing sample quilts from the walls and grinding them beneath his feet, until she remembered she ought to call the police. She fumbled for the phone and made her report numbly. When the squad car pulled up in front of the store, lights flashing, she was picking her way through the mess in a daze, trying to determine exactly what had been stolen.

One officer questioned her and took notes while the other looked around, studying the front and back doors and the windows carefully. They asked what was missing. When Bonnie told them, the second officer’s eyebrows rose. “That’s all?” she asked.

“As far as I know,” said Bonnie, indicating the mess with a wide, despairing sweep of her arm. “It’s difficult to say.”

They urged her to look around, carefully. Bonnie complied, gradually understanding the reason for their surprise. Common thieves would not have wasted so much time destroying the shop, and they would not have left so many expensive items behind. Whoever had done this had wanted to hurt her. Bonnie wanted to dismiss the thought—it would be easier to believe thieves had struck rather than the man with whom she had shared most of her life—but it became an irrefutable conclusion when she discovered the thief had also taken the carton of blocks for Sylvia’s bridal quilt.

Bonnie could no longer stand. She managed to reach a stool and brace herself against the cutting table, but not before the officers noticed. When she told them what else was gone and explained the significance of the project, they exchanged a knowing look she doubted she was meant to see.

The first officer finally asked the question she had been dreading: Did she have any idea who the culprit was? She could not bring herself to speak, so she shook her head. The officer frowned and tapped his pad with a pen. “Do you have any enemies?” he asked. “Anyone who would like to see you driven out of business? Any competitors who play hardball?”

“No,” Bonnie said, since the Fabric Warehouse was succeeding in that without destroying her shop. Then she thought of Krolich and gasped.

“What is it?” the second officer asked.

“There is someone … I don’t want to accuse anyone lightly, but the new owner of the building doesn’t want me to stay. He wouldn’t need to resort to this, though. The rent he wants to charge is enough to drive me away.”

“We should probably talk to him anyway,” said the first officer. “Can you tell us how to reach him?”

Bonnie nodded and made her way to the front counter, where the contents of her card file had been scattered on the floor beneath the register. She picked through the pile but she could not find Krolich’s business card, and then suddenly she froze, realizing what else was missing.

Michael’s fake ID. She had put it in the card file for safekeeping, not quite willing to discard it in case she had to go to his parents after all. A momentary relief flooded her when she realized Craig was not to blame, but the feeling vanished when she thought of what this would mean for Michael, and for Diane.