The Christmas Wedding Quilt: Let It Snow / You Better Watch Out / Nine Ladies Dancing

There was a note here, too, although this one was typed. She scanned it quickly, then read it slowly out loud, so she could absorb it.

“Dear Jo,

I know this will come as a surprise to you. I’ve been sick for some time and have known for weeks now that I probably won’t live to see Olivia and Eric’s wedding. If they had been given a choice, they would have moved up the date, but of course, they couldn’t, not with Eric serving in Afghanistan. I had hoped to live long enough to make a bridal quilt, but I know now that this first block is the most I will be able to finish.

I’ve thought about what to do next, and I’ve come up with a plan. I don’t have the strength to discuss it with all of you, so I am going on faith. You see, I am praying that you, Ella and Rachel will finish the quilt for me.

Do you remember the fun all of you had when you learned to quilt at Hollymeade? All those lazy summer quilting lessons with your wonderful grandmother? You, of course, were a natural, a serious quilt-maker from the beginning, just like I was at your age. I still remember the way you measured everything twice and restitched every seam that wasn’t perfect.

I know you haven’t quilted in years. But I don’t think you will have forgotten how.

Do you know what a round robin is? Here’s another quilt lesson you will need. A round robin quilt begins with one block in the center. Then the center is passed to another quilter, along with some of the fabrics that were used in the center, and the second quilter stitches a border, combining the shared fabric with some of her own. The quilt and more fabric are then passed on to another quilter until the final border is completed.

I hope you will add a border to this block, then pass it to Ella and finally to Rachel. Perhaps the three of you will reunite with Olivia to quilt the finished top before the wedding, so she will have it to display at the ceremony. Wouldn’t that be perfect?

You’ll see that some of the fabric I’ve enclosed isn’t new. In fact these are pieces of dresses Olivia wore as a little girl. I’m hoping that you or your cousins will work them in to make the quilt that much more meaningful.

I know this is a project you probably wouldn’t choose. But please do this for me. I know this quilt will be in good hands, Jo. You always try to do the right thing without complaint, sometimes to your detriment. But this project may have surprising results. I hope it will bring you closer to your cousins. I know Olivia will need her family once I’m gone.

I have always loved you, Rachel and Ella like you were my daughters, too. I know you loved me, as well. Never worry about that.

With love,

Aunt Glo”

Jo clutched the letter to her chest as tears threatened to spill down her cheeks, then reality began to intrude. She, who hadn’t quilted for a decade and a half, who at her most creative had only managed to sew pillow tops, was supposed to add a border to this gorgeous quilt block. Her aunt had won prizes for her needlework. The rendition of Hollymeade was in every way perfect. The stitches were invisible. The colors were glorious. The design was detailed, yet cheerfully rustic.

She couldn’t do it.

Yet hadn’t her aunt chosen well? Gloria had known Jo couldn’t possibly say no, and that furthermore Jo would feel responsible and make sure that Ella and Rachel did their parts, too. Not that they wouldn’t, of course, or at least that was Jo’s guess, because she hardly knew her cousins anymore. She couldn’t even remember the last time the four of them had been together.

Her next thought was that she could pay someone to do the border for her, someone experienced and expensive. Who would ever know?

Except Jo herself.

Carefully she folded the block and took out the small pile of fabrics that had been folded in tissue, too. There, on top, was a square of fabric she remembered, a bright red-and-white check with tiny Scottie dogs sprinkled among the white blocks.

One summer the four cousins had all worn dresses made from this fabric. Their grandmother, Margaret, had sewed the sundresses for each of the gap-toothed, skinny little girls, and they had insisted on wearing them whenever they went anywhere together that summer. She knew this was a piece of that original fabric, saved over the years by her sentimental aunt.

For just a moment she held the fabric to her cheek. “You really know how to stick it to me, don’t you, Aunt Glo?”

With a sigh Jo refolded the checked fabric carefully and thumbed through the rest of the pile. There were Christmas prints in red and green, some of the fabrics that had been used in the center block, some new ones, a stack of oddly shaped patches that had probably been part of Olivia’s childhood wardrobe.

The truth was right here, written in brightly colored fabric. She couldn’t say no. She couldn’t hire a surrogate. She couldn’t disappoint the woman whose funeral she had been too busy to attend.

She didn’t have time for this, but even now, with fatigue washing over her, she wondered why not. She had just spent a month in Hong Kong, living in hotel rooms, eating late-night room service and sandwiches at the conference table. She had pulled out all the stops for her employer, and the negotiations had still ended badly. On the trip from the airport she had read only a few of a long list of emails her boss had sent during her flight, blaming her for a failure that had nothing to do with her. In the end she had missed her aunt’s funeral for no good reason.

At what point in her life had she decided that work was more important than family? When she’d started using her job as a shield to ward off her overbearing, flighty mother? When she had vowed that as an adult she would have the financial security that had disappeared after her father’s death?

When the man she loved broke their engagement and with it her heart?

Of course the quilt and memories of her childhood were a reminder of that man, one Brody Ryan. She wondered if he still lived in Kanowa Lake. His name had never come up in conversations with her aunt, but then Aunt Glo had never known how serious Jo and Brody’s relationship had been. Was he married now with a houseful of kids? He was definitely a houseful-of-kids kind of guy.

How strange that her aunt’s death would open doors to her past she had sealed long ago.

A border. How hard could it be? She would go to the internet and the local quilt shop, do research, make a plan. Maybe she didn’t have time to do this, but could she afford not to? This was the Christmas season. Didn’t she deserve a little time off?

The moment had come for a long winter’s nap, but when she woke up, she would email Ella in Seattle and Rachel in far-off Australia. Considering time zones, email would be the best way to communicate. Surely she had their addresses somewhere. She would tell them what she had received and make sure they were on board.

She hoped they remembered who she was.

She rose, but after a few steps she turned around, took out the quilt block again and carried it with her. She fell asleep with the block draped over the foot of her bed so that Hollymeade would be the first thing she saw in the morning.

CHAPTER ONE

From Rachel@mailoze.com.au:

Still the overachiever, Jo? New York seems like a long way to go to find old baby clothes or whatever of Eric’s to work into the quilt with Olivia’s dresses. I remember taking a long walk around the lake with you one summer because you had to find the perfect wildflowers to make a bouquet for Grammy Mags. By the time we got back they were all wilted and I wasn’t speaking to you anymore. Good thing baby clothes don’t wilt.

“YOU’RE NOT FROM here, are you?” The teenager manning the cash register at the gas station twenty-five miles from Kanowa Lake looked up, and his cheeks flushed. “I just mean, you know, I haven’t seen you around.”

Jo glanced at her watch. Could it really be getting dark? It was only three-thirty, yet a curtain was drawing closed over what had passed for sunshine just half an hour earlier.

When the boy cleared his throat she looked up again. “My family owns a summer house over on Kanowa Lake, but I haven’t been back in years.”

“Bad night to visit. You ought to stay here.”

She cocked her head in question.

“The weather, I mean.” He cleared his throat again. “Bad storm coming.”

For the past twenty miles the skies had been spitting snow, but Jo wasn’t worried. She had paid the extra bucks for a rental car with four-wheel drive, and now she had topped off the gas tank. She was prepared.

“Doesn’t look that bad,” she said.

“It’ll be a dumper. You better get where you’re going fast and settle in.”

When she smiled he flushed again. Jo had that effect on men, although she never played it up. Right now she was wearing jeans and fringed suede boots—the closest thing to winter boots she owned. Under her suede jacket a rust-colored cashmere sweater flattered her chestnut hair and amber eyes, but the only makeup she wore was a little lip gloss.

“I’ll be fine.”

He didn’t look convinced. He was maybe sixteen, broad-shouldered and skinny. He probably couldn’t eat fast enough to keep up with his latest growth spurt.

“You might want to stock up on a few groceries, just in case,” he said. “Snow hits, you won’t be going anywhere for a while.”

Five minutes later she left with a small bag of everything edible that the station’s sparsely populated shelves had offered. A box of cereal, the last quart of milk in the cooler, two cans of corned beef hash and three chocolate bars. The chocolate bars were three for two dollars, and her teenage admirer had suggested she take advantage of the sale.

The snow was falling harder now, and she grabbed a few guilty moments in the parking lot, arms flung out like a little girl’s to embrace it. Since moving to California at thirteen, she’d only seen snow at ski resorts, where it always seemed professionally staged. This was the snow she remembered from her childhood in the small Pennsylvania town where her physician father had run an emergency clinic until his own emergency, a brain aneurism, had ended his life.