Elm Creek Quilts [08] The Christmas Quilt (14 page)

Claudia left the words unspoken as she volunteered to help the aunts put the children to bed. At first Sylvia was too stunned to follow, but then she steeled herself with a deep breath and offered to see to Richard and Andrew. After she had supervised their teeth-brushing, heard their prayers, and tucked them into the twin beds in Richard’s room, she crept upstairs to the nursery. She discovered Claudia rummaging through the dustbin.

“Any luck?” asked Sylvia quietly.

Claudia shook her head.

Together they searched every place a frantic child might have hidden the ruby-and-gold shards of broken glass. Claudia seemed glad to have her sister there—not because she wanted the company, but to assure herself that Sylvia could not dispose of the star, whole or in pieces, while unobserved. It was late when they gave up, and Claudia was even angrier than when they had begun. Sylvia began to wish that she
had
kept the star. She would have confessed to it then and there just to make peace with her sister on Christmas Eve.

“We should go to bed,” she said tiredly. “Everyone else has, and it’s possible whoever took it is waiting until everyone is asleep to leave it on the kitchen table.”

Claudia folded her arms. “So that’s how you’re going to end this charade.”

Sylvia was too exhausted to argue. “Oh, stop it, Claudia.”

She left her sister standing there and went off to bed.

Christmas morning dawned silvery white. Sylvia woke to the sound of hushed voices and quick footsteps passing in the hall outside her door. Smiling, she rose and dressed for church in a green velvet dress Claudia had outgrown. It had been Claudia’s best dress, worn only on special occasions, and Great-Aunt Lucinda had helped Sylvia make it over so that it fit her properly and looked almost like new. She brushed her hair and tied it back with a matching ribbon. Sometimes, if she looked in the mirror at precisely the right angle, she thought she looked almost as pretty as her sister. Standing far away from the mirror helped.

She greeted Aunt Nellie in passing as she hurried downstairs, eager to reach the kitchen, certain that the Christmas star would be on the table. From the foot of the stairs, she spied a cluster of cousins still clad in their pajamas gathered around the door to the ballroom. Every Christmas Eve, Great Aunt Lucinda locked the door before retiring for the night so no one would disturb Santa if he came by, but the children always checked in case she had forgotten. Richard had his eye to the keyhole. “I can’t see anything,” Sylvia heard him say. “The lights are out. Quit shoving! Wait a minute—I think—yes! There’s something under the tree!”

The other children pressed closer. “What?” Andrew cried. “What do you see?”

“Just shadows. It’s too dark to see anything more. Keep your voices down. We’re not supposed to peek.”

“That’s right,” said Sylvia. The children jumped guiltily and stepped away from the door, all save Richard, who barely glanced up from the keyhole. “You should be getting dressed for church. I bet that’s where your parents think you are.”

“Can’t we open the door and look to make sure Santa came?” asked one of the younger cousins. “We won’t step even one little baby toe into the room.”

The other children joined in, begging for just one look, just to be sure. Sylvia held up her hands, laughing, glad that it wasn’t her decision. She would be tempted to let the children tear into their gifts right away, even if it made them late for church. “Do you really all have such guilty consciences?” she teased. “You really aren’t sure whether Santa put you on his ‘Good’ list?”

She scooted them toward the stairs and waited at the bottom until the last reluctant straggler had reached the landing.

Then, with one last entreaty to hurry, she continued toward the kitchen.

She met her father in the hallway. His expression told her what she needed to know, but still she asked, “Was it there?”

Her father shook his head. “They still have time. I said in time for breakfast, and we won’t have breakfast until after church.”

Sylvia nodded, but she could sense that his concern ran deep. Bergstrom children were raised to respect their elders and to do as they were told. Such blatant defiance of her father’s wishes was unthinkable. Like children everywhere, the Bergstroms broke rules and made mistakes—Sylvia was proof enough of that—but they never failed to accept the consequences of their actions, even if, deep down, they wouldn’t admit that they had done anything wrong. The taking of the star and the refusal to return it, even broken, was something new and disturbing in their household.

The adults stayed away from the kitchen as they helped the children dress in their finest for church services, offering the guilty child every opportunity to return the star unobserved. The children were so excited they could hardly stand still long enough to have their hair combed, and more than once, Sylvia had caught an older cousin sneaking off to test the doorknob to the ballroom.

As members of the choir, Sylvia and Claudia were expected to arrive at church a half hour before services to don their robes and warm up their voices. Richard and Andrew rode with Sylvia in the backseat when Father drove her and Claudia to the same church in Waterford their family had attended for generations. By the time the sisters filed out of the music room and climbed the stairs to the loft with the rest of the choir, the pews were nearly full. Sylvia spotted the rest of the family among the throng, but she was disappointed not to find Andrew’s parents and little sister.

She soon forgot their absence in the glory of the day. Her heart filled with joy and gratitude as she sang the traditional carols she loved so dearly. How the Lord must have loved the people of the world to send them His only Son! And how He must love them still, despite their sin, despite their weakness, despite the shadow of the Cross that fell upon the Manger even on this most joyous of days. At that moment Sylvia felt touched by the light of grace, and she knew that if she could remember that feeling after she left that gathering, even in her darkest hours, she would never be alone.

The feeling of joyful gratitude lasted throughout the service and soared when the entire congregation rose after the final blessing and sang “Joy to the World” as the church bells pealed an accompaniment. The service ended, but still the congregants lingered, wishing one another a Merry Christmas. Every embrace, every greeting was a prayer for good health and peace in the coming year. Sylvia spotted Claudia putting away her choir robe with the other sopranos. She scrambled down the risers and flung her arms around her sister.

“Merry Christmas, Claudia,” she said, her voice muffled by her billowing robe.

“What’s the matter with you?” Claudia exclaimed. “You scared me half to death.” Beside her, her friends smirked. They had known Claudia too long to be surprised by the antics of her difficult little sister.

Sylvia ignored them. “I just want you to know that I love you.”

“Well, I love you, too, of course, but I don’t have to tackle you in the choir loft to prove it.”

“Maybe you should just send her a Christmas card next time, Sylvia,” suggested one friend.

Another chimed in, “Or give back the Christmas star.”

Sylvia looked sharply at Claudia. She was not sure what astonished her more: that Claudia had blabbed to her friends about a family matter, or that she still blamed Sylvia for the disappearance of the star. “I don’t have it,” she said, the warmth and fellowship inspired by the Christmas worship slowly ebbing.

“I don’t want to talk about that here.” Claudia yanked Sylvia free of her choir robe, bundled it up, and dumped it into her sister’s arms. “Give this back to Miss Rosemary. The other altos are already gone.”

Biting back a retort, Sylvia did as Claudia commanded, shutting her ears to the older girls’ laughter.

Great-Aunt Lucinda waited until every member of the family had returned home from church before unlocking the ballroom. Children rushed past her through the open door like water through a floodgate, and their shouts and squeals of delight upon discovering presents beneath the tree were deafening. Santa had come. Sylvia watched the children race from one gift to another searching for their names, seeing in their faces the utter happiness and delight that only a visit from Santa could bring. She missed feeling so captivated by wonder, swept up in the magic of Christmas, a magic that had once seemed as real as every other Bergstrom tradition. She smiled wistfully as she watched the younger children, wishing that just for Christmas morning she could be their age again—believing, trusting, not knowing everything she knew now. Still, it was such a joy to witness her brother and cousins enjoying a moment of complete happiness that she felt a surge of love for each of them, and a joy that in its own way was as magical and as full of wonder as what the children felt.

In the midst of all the clamor and excitement, Andrew sat on the floor, an island of stillness. He was so close to the tree that he was almost concealed within the branches, his eyes full of astonishment as he clutched two gifts, each with his name written in elegant script upon it.

“Don’t open them yet,” warned Richard, although Andrew clung to the boxes so tightly Sylvia doubted he could be compelled to set one down so he could open the other. “We have to eat breakfast first.”

“That’s right, children,” called Great-Aunt Lucinda, clapping her hands for their attention. “Breakfast, then gifts. You know the rules.”

A great moan of despair went up from the children, but then they remembered their hunger and raced off to the dining room. They gobbled their breakfast—eggs and sausage and apple strudel—and dashed back to the Christmas tree, unable to stay away from Santa’s bounty for one moment longer than necessary. The older Bergstroms ate more leisurely, knowing that the older children would remind the younger that they were not allowed to open their gifts until everyone had finished breakfast.

“We should take our plates in there instead of taking our time and torturing them like this,” remarked Uncle William, as he did every year. Everyone murmured assent and continued eating at their same, leisurely pace.

“The strudel is delicious, girls,” said Aunt Nellie, who had watched her mother-in-law make strudel once and had vowed never to learn the recipe.

“It is,” agreed Sylvia’s father, smiling warmly at his daughters. “I’m proud to see that you’re carrying on the Bergstrom tradition. Your mother would have been proud of you two.”

Sylvia smiled and was about to thank him for the compliment when Uncle William added, “With a few more years’ practice, folks might not be able to tell the difference between your strudel and those of the more experienced bakers in the family.”

“And even we are no match for Gerda,” remarked Great Aunt Lucinda. “She could make the lightest, flakiest pastry so effortlessly it could make you cry. I think that’s why I always preferred to bake Christmas cookies. I couldn’t help feeling like a failure when I compared my strudel to hers, so I gave up trying. Don’t follow my poor example, girls. Stick with it and you might find that one of you has inherited Gerda’s gift for pastry.”

Sylvia caught her sister’s eye and they shared a long look of commiseration. No Bergstrom girl escaped comparison to Gerda, and they were overdue for their turn. Sylvia cheered up when she thought of how much their second attempt to stretch the dough had improved upon their first. Next year, they would do even better. Judging by the few crumbs left on the plate where their strudel had been, their first attempt had been a success despite its flaws. The pastry was chewy where it should have been light and flaky, but the apple filling was as delicious as any Sylvia had tasted.

She would have taken more pleasure in the famous Bergstrom strudel had the Christmas star awaited them on the kitchen table. Though none of the adults mentioned the star at breakfast and Sylvia suspected most of the children had forgotten that it was still missing, she knew the prankster’s disregard for her father’s offer of amnesty troubled all of them.

Any hope that the prankster might have had a last-minute change of heart vanished as Sylvia helped Lucinda carry dirty dishes from the dining room to the kitchen. Only the jolly Santa Claus cookie jar and six red-and-green tartan placemats sat on the long wooden table.

“What will we put on the top of the tree?” Sylvia asked her great-aunt as they washed and dried the dishes, side by side.

“I don’t know. We’ve used that star as long as I can remember.” Great-Aunt Lucinda shrugged. “Perhaps we’ll just leave it bare and let the emptiness prick the conscience.”

“You don’t think I still have the star, do you?”

“No, Sylvia. I saw your face when you searched the empty crate and I know you were as bewildered as the rest of us.”

“Then who?”

Lucinda was silent for a moment. “I have my suspicions, but I’ll keep my own counsel.”

Sylvia did not pester her, for she was suddenly taken by suspicions of her own. Who had been most eager to lay blame? Who had the most reason to want Sylvia’s first attempt to hide the star fail?

Claudia.

“Aren’t you coming?” called Richard, racing into the kitchen. “Everyone’s waiting.”

“I suppose the dishes won’t get any dirtier if we save them for later.” Smiling, Great-Aunt Lucinda shook soapsuds from her fingers and dried her hands on Sylvia’s dishtowel. Richard whooped in delight and ran off to the ballroom where the other children were waiting eagerly with their gifts. Sylvia wished everyone could tear into their gifts all at once, as some of her friends’ families did, but the Bergstroms took turns opening one gift at a time, proceeding in order from youngest to eldest. Sylvia received a beautiful cardigan Great-Aunt Lucinda had knit from the softest wool, a coordinating skirt from Claudia, W. B. Yeats’s
Collected Poems
from her father, and from her brother, an illustrated story of a stagecoach robbery in the Wild West starring thinly fictionalized versions of the Bergstrom children.

The story Richard had written for Andrew was a slightly different version featuring the two boys. Andrew seemed pleased by his friend’s gift, but he could hardly take his eyes off what Santa had brought him: a steel train set with an engine, two boxcars, a passenger car, and a bright red caboose.