Elm Creek Quilts [10] The Quilter's Homecoming (28 page)

Elizabeth felt faint. “New owner?”

“One of my guests fell in love with it and insisted upon buying it. She made such a generous offer I couldn’t reasonably turn her down.”

“Of course you could have,” said Elizabeth. “We had an agreement. You said I could buy it back from you when I had saved enough money.”

“I didn’t promise to wait forever,” said Mrs. Diegel. “If you recall, I told you I couldn’t promise what condition the quilt would be in by the time you could afford it.”

“Yes, but I expected it to be here. Worn or faded, perhaps, but still here. I never dreamed you’d sell my quilt to anyone else.”

“Elizabeth, dear, you know I’m a businesswoman. My guest made an offer you couldn’t possibly match, not without years of saving.”

Elizabeth had intended to do exactly that, if necessary. “I didn’t know our understanding had a time limit.” She took a deep breath to calm the swirl of her emotions. “Would you at least be willing to give me the new owner’s name, so I can look into buying it back from her?”

For the first time, Mrs. Diegel looked as if she regretted what she had done. “Certainly, but I doubt she’ll sell. It may not be easy to reach her. She and her husband came to view lots in Meadowbrook Hills, but I overheard her tell her husband several times that she’s reluctant to live so far from Los Angeles.” Shaking her head, Mrs. Diegel led Elizabeth to the lobby, where she looked up the woman’s name and address in the guest registry and wrote them down in a quick scrawl. Handing the slip of paper to Elizabeth, she added, “I sold her the quilt as one last goodwill gesture to entice her to buy, but she was adamant, and her husband seemed eager to please her. I doubt she’ll return.”

Elizabeth’s heart sank as she imagined the precious quilt that the women of her family had sewn with such care and affection lost in the city far to the south. She never should have agreed to part with it, not for the world.

She was too upset to do more than close her hand around the paper and leave without another word for Mrs. Diegel. If she could have taken the Chimneys and Cornerstones quilt with her, she would have. She stormed into the stable, where Carlos had offered to care for her horse. “Are you all right?” he asked as she brushed past him and began to saddle the horse.

It galled her that he showed concern for her while ignoring his own sister, who was in much greater need. “If you want to help someone, help Rosa,” she said shortly, tightening the girths.

She had caught him off guard, but he quickly recovered. “She made her bed, and now she has to lie in it.”

“With a husband who beats her?”

He hesitated. “John Barclay is not a kind man, but he loves my sister. He would never lay a hand on her.”

“Oh, really?” Elizabeth tugged on the horse’s reins and led him from the stable. “Then I wonder who gave her that black eye and split her lip.”

Carlos stopped her with a touch on her arm. “What do you mean?”

“I saw her myself, on the mesa, right before I came here.” It occurred to her then that the children had not seemed disturbed by their mother’s appearance, which implied that they had grown accustomed to seeing her in that condition. “At first she claimed that she had tripped and hit her head on the wagon. I told her to seek help, but she seemed to think she would search in vain. Now I’m inclined to believe her.”

“You saw her on the mesa? Near the Salto Canyon?”

“Is there any other mesa in the Arboles Valley?” Elizabeth swung herself up into the saddle and touched the horse with her heels. As she left, she called over her shoulder, “My brother would never allow any man to hit me.”

She rode off, but she had not gone far before she began to regret her words. She had not meant to goad Carlos into retaliating against John, which could make matters much worse for Rosa and the children. Rosa had refused Elizabeth’s offers of help and would not thank her for her interference.

But she could not bear to stand aside and do nothing while the people of the Arboles Valley continued to ignore Rosa’s suffering. Still, what could she do, especially if Rosa refused to leave her husband?

Deeply troubled, she continued south to Safari World, eager to complete her task and return home. Henry had grown so distant since they had come to this place. He had not kissed her or held her in his arms at night, and although her aunts had warned her that sometimes a husband’s ardor faded, she had not expected that of Henry, and never so suddenly or so soon. She ached for him to love her as he had in the first days of their marriage, but if she could not have that, at least, perhaps, they could return to the friendship they had shared in the years before they married. She had been able to tell him anything then, and he had listened and offered his opinion—even when it starkly contradicted her own. If she could unburden herself to him now, perhaps he would help her figure out what to do. He had helped Mae, a woman he disapproved of and did not trust. Surely he would do even more for Rosa.

When she arrived at Safari World, she tied up the horse at the hitching post near the parking lot, more than three-quarters full. Over the roars of Charlie and his pride, she explained her errand to the woman at the ticket booth, who eyed her curiously for a moment before allowing her through the gate without paying admission. Elizabeth waited at the corral for the trainers to finish a performance, and waited some more rather than interrupt them as they cared for the horses afterward. Only then did she approach, striding confidently into the stable yard rather than calling out to the men over the fence as she had done before. If she expected them to see her as a woman of business, she had to play the part.

The men looked up as she approached. “Miss, all visitors have to stay on the other side of the fence,” the taller man called out.

“I’m not a tourist. I’m here on business.” She patted the flank of the horse whose reins the man held. “I’m sure you remember me. We spoke a week ago after the three o’clock performance.”

The shorter man looked her over. “Yeah, I remember you. You don’t forget a blonde with gams like yours. You ought to be in the movies.”

Despite the rather crude appraisal of her figure, Elizabeth fervently hoped he would pass along his opinion to the very next movie producer to come to Safari World. “Then I’m sure you also remember our arrangement. You needed horses, and I agreed to find them for you.”

“That’s right,” said the shorter man. “We said we’d pay you five cents each.”

“Ten cents, and a bargain at that rate,” replied Elizabeth, giving both men a winning smile and taking the list from her skirt pocket. “I’ve found fourteen horses whose owners are willing to part with them for a reasonable price, and although none of them are as fine as this Bergstrom Thoroughbred here, I’m sure you’ll find them suitable.”

The men exchanged a look of surprise as the taller reached for the list. “Fourteen?” he asked his companion. “How could we have missed fourteen? The valley’s not that big.”

Elizabeth shrugged modestly, but the men were busy scanning the list. “What happened to Cormier’s mare?” the shorter man asked. “That there’s a fine horse. Did she come up lame?”

“No, she’s perfectly sound,” said Elizabeth. “All of these horses are, or I wouldn’t have put them on the list.”

The shorter man glanced up at her, perplexed, but the taller shook his head and smacked the paper with the back of his hand. “Look at these prices. They’re outrageous! We could almost buy two-year-old show horses for what they want to charge us.”

“Well, of course.” Elizabeth looked from one man to the other, uncertain. “Isn’t that the idea?”

“You got it all wrong, girlie,” the shorter man said. “We don’t need performers. We need meat.”

“Meat?”

“For the lions,” the taller man said. “So unless you have a list of lame old nags we can get for a song, you’re wasting our time.”

Elizabeth pressed a hand to her throat. “You feed the horses to the lions?”

“Well, what do you think we feed them?” the shorter man retorted. “Apricots? Barley? Let them graze in the pasture?”

With a heavy sigh, the taller man removed his hat and scratched his head wearily. “Did you find the horses we need or not?”

“I’m afraid not.”

He jerked his thumb toward the fence. “Then you need to get out of my corral.”

Elizabeth nodded and hurried through the gate, pausing only long enough to latch it behind her. She had never felt more humiliated—or rather she had, but only once, when she and Henry tried to pick up the deed to Triumph Ranch. Two whole days of searching, wasted. Her chance to earn her own money, ruined. An opportunity to impress people who might introduce her to a movie producer, lost.

Henry had abandoned her, Mrs. Diegel had betrayed her, and her own ignorance had undone her. If she had any sense, she would give up hoping for a better life in this place, as Henry and Rosa had done.

In her only stroke of good luck that day, no one was in the stable when Elizabeth returned to the Jorgensen farm. She tended to the mare and the tack, and gave the mare extra feed to thank her for carrying her on such a long journey. She managed to avoid any of the family or their hired hands as she hurried home to the cabin. She quickly prepared a simple supper, which was on the table just as Henry came through the door. He washed, ate, and then stumbled wearily off to bed with barely a word.

Her thoughts were too troubled for sleep. Slipping quietly into the bedroom, she took the hexagonal quilt from the trunk at the foot of the bed and carried it to the fireside, where she had left her sewing basket. The summer nights were mild enough for only one quilt. Henry seemed to favor the one she called the Arboles Valley Star, although sometimes he kicked it off, restless in his sleep.

By Elizabeth’s best guess, the Arboles Valley Star quilt was at least fifty years newer than the wool-
and-homespun quilt she had named the Road to Triumph Ranch. The twelve wedges making up each large hexagon reminded her of the spokes of a wagon wheel, with the small solid hexagon appliquéd in the center as the hub. As she patched the holes and mended ripped seams, she thought of all the pioneer women who had come to the valley in wagons whose wheels rumbled over the rocky grade, women who had dreamed of the prosperity and happiness they were certain to find on those sun-drenched hills. Now trains sped the overland journey, machines made the work of farming easier, but the promise of prosperity remained as elusive as it had been in those bygone days.

If not for her quilts to work on in the evenings, she might not have endured her longing for Henry’s company. She had never imagined married life would be so lonely. If she had known—She could not bring herself to say that she would not have married Henry if she had known, because she loved him despite everything, but she would have insisted they remain in Pennsylvania, among the women of her family. Often she recalled her father’s pronouncement that there was no money in farming anymore, and that business was the place for a young man with ambition. At the time she had dismissed the notion, believing that her father was only trying to keep them close, and perhaps to justify his own decision to sacrifice his birthright to marry her mother. Now his words rang with truth. All around them, people were enjoying their newfound wealth; she saw it in the expensive automobiles and fashionable clothes of the men and women who toured the Arboles Valley on their way to view lots in Oakwood Glen and Meadowbrook Hills. Fortunes were won every day in business, as her father had said, but the boom times had not reached the farms.

Taking up her scissors, Elizabeth trimmed a small octagon from a scrap of blue-and-brown wool she had found among the fabrics Mrs. Diegel had traded to her. With careful stitches that would have made Aunt Eleanor proud, she appliquéd the shape to the center of one of the larger hexagons where the original patch had worn away to a frame a few threads wide. When she had first begun restoring the quilt, she had assumed the long-ago quiltmaker had used the appliqués to disguise a bulge in the seams where the six wedges met in the center, but while replacing some of the worn pieces, she discovered that the center points of the wedges met perfectly, with the bulk of the seams neatly trimmed away so the quilt top would lie flat. Why would any quilter disguise such an impressive display of her skills? Had she valued the artistry of her design more than the opportunity to show off her mastery of precise piecing? Perhaps she had taken such pride in her painstaking handiwork that it did not matter if anyone else knew it was there. Some of Elizabeth’s aunts were like that. As for Elizabeth, she preferred to showcase her quilts’ best features in hopes of distracting the viewer’s eye away from the flaws that inevitably appeared despite her best efforts, scattered throughout her quilts like dandelions in a field.