Elm Creek Quilts [12] The Winding Ways Quilt (32 page)

Inside the banquet hall, mingling with friends and students as she made her way from the buffet to her usual table, Diane gathered scraps of news and bits of gossip she had missed by spending the morning outside. Gwen was nowhere to be found, and after asking around a bit Diane remembered that it was the last week of August, classes had resumed at Waterford College, and Gretchen had cut back her camp schedule to two evening programs and a Friday afternoon seminar on color theory. Sarah’s morning sickness had subsided and she looked much better for it, but she was upset about her mother’s reaction to the news about the twins and brooding over some disagreement from years before, something about a cherished quilt lost in childhood. Judy had called the office that morning to announce that their Internet connection was working at last and that she was planning to buy a webcam so they could have video chats. In Chicago, Summer had found two great apartments and faced the difficult task of choosing between them. Anna had offered to cater a housewarming party at Bonnie’s new apartment, but when asked to suggest a date, Bonnie offered only vague replies. Agnes was querying everyone about cell phones and service plans, because, she said, she was sick of wondering what important phone calls she might be missing while away from home.

“That’s why you have an answering machine,” Diane pointed out. “Yes, but then I have to hurry home to check it,” Agnes said, impatience creeping into her voice. “What if it’s urgent?”

Diane couldn’t imagine what urgent calls Agnes might receive. Elm Creek Quilt Camp was only days away from wrapping up for the season, so there wouldn’t be any work emergencies demanding her immediate attention. News from her daughters and grandchildren, though important, probably couldn’t be classified as urgent. Still, to humor her friend, Diane answered her questions and offered to help her choose an affordable plan if Agnes decided to go through with it.

“Do you need a ride home?” Diane asked Agnes as they cleared away their lunch dishes. Diane usually went home after her last class to have supper with her family and returned to Elm Creek Manor later for the evening program. Agnes often preferred to remain behind to dine with the campers and rode home with Gwen after the evening’s events concluded.

“I think I’ll stay,” Agnes said. “Are you coming back for the talent show?”

Diane hated to miss it, but Todd had few evenings home left, and they had a million things to do before his departure for Princeton. “I have too much to do at home,” she said. “I’m not even sure if I’ll make it to the Farewell Breakfast on Saturday.”

“But it’s the last one of the season,” Agnes protested. “You shouldn’t miss saying good-bye to your students—and to Summer. Saturday’s her last day. We might not see her again for months.”

Diane shook her head. “Judy’s farewell party was hard enough. I don’t know if I can say any more good-byes.”

“Oh, Diane.” Agnes gave her a fond embrace. “For you, every silver lining has a cloud, doesn’t it? None of these good-byes are forever. Come to the Farewell Breakfast. If it makes you feel better, instead of ‘good-bye,’ say ‘until we meet again.’ You’ll see Judy again, and Summer, and of course you’ll see Todd often. All of us will follow different paths for a time, but we’ll reunite somewhere down the road, probably sooner than you realize.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“I’m certain I am.” Agnes held Diane at arm’s length, smiling. “In the meantime, to make the separation easier, don’t dwell on tearful good-byes. Think about the fortuitous meetings and all the joyful times that followed. That is what really matters, not how you said good-bye.”

“As long as you say good-bye somehow,” said Diane, disguising wistfulness with a quip. “You’ve convinced me. I won’t miss the Farewell Breakfast. I wouldn’t want to repeat Gwen’s mistake.”

Agnes glanced worriedly across the banquet hall, where Gwen and Summer sat engrossed in conversation at an empty table. They seemed oblivious to the time, to the room emptying around them. “I know Gwen regrets how she and Judy parted,” Agnes said, “but I hope she knows that one mistake can’t tarnish their friendship. One forgotten good-bye doesn’t make the day they met any less memorable.”

“Well, that would be impossible, wouldn’t it?” retorted Diane, and Agnes laughingly agreed. None of the Elm Creek Quilters would ever forget the day Gwen and Judy met.

It was a Saturday, Diane recalled as she drove home later, alone. It was a cool, sunny day like so many others, crisp with the first hints of autumn, only a few splashes of yellow and red lighting up the forested mountains sheltering the Elm Creek Valley. Agnes had volunteered to coordinate the Waterford Quilting Guild’s annual charity raffle quilt, and Diane had agreed to help her select fabrics. They strolled downtown to the quilt shop on Main Street, enjoying the sunshine and the respite from the summer humidity, window shopping, and discussing Agnes’s plans for the quilt.

The quilt shop was only minutes away, on a busy block right across the street from the Waterford College campus. The red-and-gold G
RANDMA’S
A
TTIC
sign hung above the door next to a large front window with an enticing display of quilts, fabric, books, and notions. A bell on the door tinkled merrily overhead as they entered, and the owner, Bonnie Markham, called out a greeting from the cutting table in the center of the room. Music played softly over hidden speakers—hammered dulcimer, guitar, violin, and flute—and somewhere Diane smelled coffee brewing. She recognized the stout auburn-haired woman setting bolts of wild geometric prints on the table for Bonnie to cut; her name was Ginny or Gwen or something, and she was a professor at the college. Diane sometimes overheard her at guild meetings offering interesting historical anecdotes about some aspect of the quilting arts or making fairly astute observations about the work of their invited speakers, but she invariably spoiled her remarks with some liberal claptrap that set Diane’s teeth on edge. If not for that, Diane might have spoken to her, maybe even asked her for some advice about color selection because she certainly had a distinctive style. The woman’s daughter, a very pretty teenager who often accompanied her mother to guild events, waited for her turn at the cutting table, two bolts of vivid Amish fabric in her arms, one deep black and one bright blue. Her name was a warm-weather month—June or April or May, or something. If it were something weird like October or January, Diane would have remembered. She seemed bright and friendly, confident and fun, the kind of girl Diane sought out for babysitting. It was unfortunate that she would very likely grow up to be a hippie like her mom.

Diane followed Agnes as she wandered through the aisles, comparing different bolts of fabric to a floral swatch she had brought from home. When Agnes found a fabric she liked, she pulled the bolt from the shelf and gave it to Diane to carry. Twice—once in the pastel solids aisle and once in children’s novelty prints—they passed the only other customer in the shop, an extremely pregnant woman of Asian heritage carrying a patchwork crib-size quilt top draped over her left arm. She was so slender everywhere but around the middle that Diane marveled how she managed to stay upright. Every so often she winced and rubbed her tummy, but whether the baby had given her an especially hard kick or if she could not find the perfect backing fabric for her top, Diane could not say. Either reason would have justified that pained expression, especially since the woman seemed to be running out of time if she meant to finish that quilt before her baby arrived.

Soon Diane’s arms were loaded with bolts of bright, cheerful, warm colors with a few darks thrown in for contrast. The mother and daughter had moved on to the cash register, where they paged through magazines and chatted while waiting for Bonnie to finish cutting fabric for the expectant mother. “I couldn’t decide,” the woman confessed after asking Bonnie to cut two yards each from the three different bolts of primary color prints. “It would be so much easier if I knew what my baby will like. Balloons or safari animals? Trucks or dolls? I want her to snuggle up with this quilt for many years to come, so it can’t be anything she’ll tire of quickly.”

“Babies love bright colors,” said Agnes, as she and Diane lined up behind her with their bolts. The expectant mother turned around, eager to hear more. “Any of these fabrics you have here will do nicely.”

“Go with the animals,” Diane advised. “All kids love animals.”

“Do you think so—Ouch,” the woman interrupted herself with a gasp, and after a long moment in which the others watched her with alarm, she took a deep breath and smiled, embarrassed. “I know one thing this kid doesn’t like: the cranberry scones at the Daily Grind. She’s been active all morning.”

“You must have a future soccer star in there if her kicks hurt that much,” said Bonnie, unrolling the second bolt.

The woman shook her head and placed a hand on her lower back, setting her purse and quilt top on the cutting table. “It’s not the kicks; it’s those Braxton-Hicks contractions. They’ve never been this bad, and they’ve been getting worse all day.”

Diane and Agnes exchanged a worried look. “Do you mean worse in intensity or worse in frequency?” Diane asked.

“Both—” She drew in another sharp breath and steadied herself against the cutting table. When she could finally speak, she gazed down at her abdomen and panted. “All right. I get the message. No more cranberry scones.”

“That was five minutes apart,” said Bonnie, answering Diane’s unspoken question. “Four minutes, tops.”

Agnes took the expectant mother gently by the arm. “Why don’t you sit down, dear? May we call someone for you?”

The woman shook her head, her obsidian black hair slipping gracefully over her shoulder. “Really, I’m fine,” she said, just as her water broke. Diane jumped out of the way, too late to save her shoes.

Bonnie snatched up the phone. “I’ll call nine-one-one.”

“That’s not necessary,” the woman said through clenched teeth. “I’m fine.”

“You’re in labor,” said Diane, incredulous, pointing to the pool of evidence slowly spreading on the floor.

“Is everything all right?” said the hippie mom, joining them at the cutting table.

“Everything’s fine,” said Agnes soothingly, leading the panting pregnant quilter to a chair. “This young lady is about to have a baby.”

“Here?” asked the hippie’s daughter, eyes widening. “Now?”

“Looks that way.” Diane dumped Agnes’s fabric bolts on the cutting table and hurried over to help Agnes ease the pregnant woman into the seat. Diane recognized the look of apprehensive disbelief in her eyes and did not envy her, even knowing the joy that would follow the pain. She said a silent prayer for a safe delivery—and the world’s fastest ambulance driver.

“I can’t be in labor.” The woman clutched the armrests so tightly that her knuckles went white. “My baby isn’t due for three more days.”

Diane snorted, but the hippie quilter knelt on the floor beside the woman’s chair. “This is your first baby, isn’t it?” she asked.

The woman nodded.

“You’ve taken a prenatal class or two?”

Another nod.

“Then you know a baby is full term at thirty-seven weeks.” The hippie quilter smoothed the woman’s silky hair away from her face and took her hand. “Your baby’s coming.”

The woman shook her head, tearful. “But I haven’t finished her quilt yet.”

“The ambulance is on the way,” said Bonnie, hanging up the phone. “Judy, is there anyone else you’d like me to call?”

“My husband.” Judy recited the digits between gasps. “That’s his cell phone number. He’s in Harrisburg covering the state senate hearings. Labor takes longer for first babies, right? He’ll make it in time?”

“Traffic should be light at this time of day,” the hippie quilter replied.

Diane exchanged a glance with Agnes and saw that she, too, realized the hippie quilter had not really answered Judy’s question. She strongly suspected that Judy had been in labor—and in denial—for hours already.

“I left a message on your husband’s voicemail,” said Bonnie, hanging up the phone. “I gave him the shop’s number, too, in case you can’t answer your cell.”

“He probably had to turn it off in the capitol building,” Judy said, her voice breaking. “I can’t believe this. The one day I really need him—”

“Is there anyone else?” asked the hippie’s daughter. “Your mom, maybe?”

Judy shook her head. “She’s in Philadelphia. Steve and I moved to Waterford only a few months ago. It’s just the two of us for hundreds of miles. If he misses the birth, I—I’ll—I don’t know—”

“He’ll get the message,” the hippie mom said. “Just relax. Everything’s going to be fine.”

Together they kept Judy as calm and as comfortable as possible until the ambulance pulled up to the front of the shop in a frenzy of flashing lights and pealing sirens. The two paramedics cheerfully and reassuringly took Judy’s vital signs, radioed ahead to the Elm Creek Valley General Hospital, and escorted her outside.

“Wait.” Judy threw a desperate look over her shoulder to the hippie quilter. “Come with me. Please? In case Steve doesn’t get back in time.”

“Me?” The hippie quilter glanced at her daughter. “I don’t—”

“Go ahead, Mom.” April (May? June? Diane couldn’t recall) scooped up Judy’s purse and passed it to her mother. “I’ll walk home. Let me know what happens.”

“Let us all know,” Bonnie urged. “Call me at the shop as soon as you have any news, okay, Gwen? Judy, if your husband returns my message, I’ll send him straight to the hospital.”

Judy and Gwen departed with the paramedics, and for a moment, the others stood watching in stunned silence.

Then Bonnie sighed. “I’ll get the mop. Please watch your step.”

“Too late,” Diane muttered under her breath, frowning at her ruined shoes.

As Bonnie disappeared into a utility room at the back of the shop, Agnes shook her head worriedly. “I do hope she’ll be all right. The poor dear seemed so frightened. I hope her husband arrives before the baby does.”

“My mom will take good care of her,” the auburn-haired teen said.

Suddenly the phone rang, but only muffled clatters and thumps came from the back of the store. Diane shrugged, reached over the counter, and snatched up the phone. “Grandma’s Attic,” she said. It wasn’t Judy’s husband, just a customer inquiring about the brands of sewing machine needles the shop carried. Diane checked the shelves and read off the names, and she was just hanging up when Bonnie returned with a mop and a wheeled bucket of soapy water. “Sorry about that,” said Diane, indicating the phone. “I thought it might have been the father-to-be returning your call.”