An Elm Creek Quilts Sampler (101 page)

Robby held perfectly still, which told her all she needed to know.

“Let’s go.” She took his clothing bag in one hand and placed the other arm around his shoulders, and led him back to the car.

The drive to Dayton took more than twenty minutes, and Megan used the time to tell Robby, as she did every day, some of the interesting things that had happened at work. Eventually, perhaps because of the familiarity of the routine, he relaxed and told her about the school parade and his class party. He didn’t mention the cookies, and neither did she. She didn’t have the heart to scold him for destroying Gina’s present; in fact, she thought she might have done the same in his place.

They arrived at Meadowbrook Village Retirement Community to find a high-rise apartment building surrounded by several one-story condos, four units to a building. They were set back into a woods, giving them an air of privacy despite their closeness. Vinnie’s condo was the farthest from the parking lot, as Megan and Robby discovered as they walked from building to building searching for the right number.

Vinnie answered the door dressed in a blue-and-white-checked dress and a red yarn wig. Two bright red circles were painted on her thin cheeks. “Come in, come in,” she said, ushering them inside. She hugged Megan. “Hello, dear. I’ve missed you.”

“I missed you, too,” Megan said, surprised by how much. Suddenly she felt a wave of nostalgia for camp—for the freedom and friendship and peace it had brought her. She wished all the other Elm Creek Quilters lived close enough so that they, too, could have come to the party.

Vinnie turned to Robby. “You must be Robby. I’m Vinnie, but you can call me Nana. I don’t know anyone your age who doesn’t call me Nana.”

“Nice to meet you,” Robby said, shaking her hand. If he was startled to be conversing with an eighty-two-year-old dressed as a Raggedy Ann doll, he hid it well.

“Let’s see. What are you supposed to be? Now, don’t tell me. Let me guess.” Vinnie put her hands on his shoulders and spun him around slowly, inspecting his costume. “Are you one of those rangers, one of those Power Rangers?”

“You’re a few years behind the times,” Megan said. “They’re not in anymore.”

“I’m Batman.”

“Oh, of course!” Vinnie shook her head helplessly. “I’m afraid I don’t keep up with my superheroes as well as I should. If your mother had dressed as Robin I would have known right away.” Her eyes went to Megan. “What exactly are you?”

“I’m almost afraid to let you guess.”

“Are you Betsy Ross? No, you’d be carrying a flag. Are you a suffragette?”

“No, I’d be carrying a picket sign.”

“Or a ballot box.” Vinnie studied her for a moment longer, then sighed. “I’m afraid you’ll have to tell me.”

“Elizabeth Bennett, from
Pride and Prejudice?
” Megan had a feeling she’d be repeating that line many times that night.

“Of course,” Vinnie said, but she still looked puzzled. At that moment, a buzzer sounded somewhere out of sight, just as the doorbell rang. “Oops, my brownies are done. Will you get the door?” Vinnie asked as she hurried off down the hallway. “It’s probably Adam.”

“Sure.” To her annoyance, Megan felt a flutter of nervousness at the prospect of seeing him again. She hung back and let Robby open the door. On the doorstep stood the same brown-haired man from camp and the diner, almost unrecognizable in a fifteenth- or sixteenth-century-style cape, leggings, and plumed hat. In one hand he carried a telescope; with the other, he doffed his plumed hat, and smiled.

He looked endearingly ridiculous, and Megan suppressed a smile. “Adam? Is that you?”

“At your service.” He replaced the hat and came inside. “Hello there,” he greeted Robby. “Hey, don’t I know you? You look familiar.” He frowned. “You resemble—but no, that couldn’t be it.”

Robby was interested. “Who?”

“Well, I was going to say you look like the famous millionaire Bruce Wayne, but anyone can see you’re Batman.” Adam shook his hand. “It’s an honor to meet you. I admire your work.”

Robby grinned and took off his mask.

Aghast, Adam flung up an arm to shield his eyes. “Don’t do that! You’ll give away your secret identity.”

“I’m not really Batman,” Robby explained. “This is just my Halloween costume. I’m Robby Donohue.”

“Of course.” Adam smacked his forehead with his palm. “Halloween. I forgot.”

Robby grinned, recognizing that Adam was pretending but going along with the joke. “Who are you?” he asked.

“Guess.”

Megan saw Robby’s gaze travel from the plumed hat to the leggings to the telescope. “Christopher Columbus?”

“Not a bad guess, but that’s not it.” He raised his eyebrows at Megan. “Care to try?”

She had been about to guess Christopher Columbus, too, but she noticed the deliberate way he held his telescope and said, “This is a long shot, but how about Copernicus?”

“Very good,” he said, impressed. “Wrong, but close. I’m Galileo. Most of my students thought I was supposed to be one of the Three Musketeers.”

Robby’s face screwed up in puzzlement. “Wouldn’t you need a sword or something?”

“Exactly. That’s what I told them. Can you imagine a musketeer whacking people with a telescope? He wouldn’t get very far that way.”

Robby laughed, then tugged at Megan’s hand. “Mom’s turn. Guess who she is. No one else knew.” He looked up at his mother. “Can I give him a hint?”

“No hints,” Adam said. He studied Megan’s costume, looking her up and down until she felt her cheeks growing warm. “Are you Jane Austen?”

Megan’s jaw nearly dropped. “I can’t believe it.”

“Am I right?”

“No, but that’s the closest anyone’s come all day. I’m supposed to be Elizabeth Bennett.” With a self-conscious laugh, she twirled around in her long dress. “I guess I should have chosen something less obscure.”

“No, you look beautiful.”

Robby grinned up at her, nodding so that Megan grew flustered and quickly changed the subject. “Do all the teachers dress up at your school?”

“Not all,” Adam said with a shrug, and Megan guessed that only those with a sense of humor did. She wondered what he was like as a teacher. She suspected he was one of those whom the students liked, even when he graded tough and pushed them to work harder than they ever had before.

Vinnie joined them then, purse in hand. She hugged her grandson and raised her cheek for him to kiss. Then she declared that they had better get over to the clubhouse for the party before all the food was gone, and she shooed them outside.

The clubhouse was in the lobby of the high-rise, and it had been decorated with black and orange streamers, jack-o’-lanterns, and cardboard cutouts of black cats and ghosts. The other residents and their children had already gathered there and had seated themselves at tables covered with orange-and-white-checked tablecloths. Costumed grandchildren darted among the tables, and Robby looked after them longingly as Vinnie led her guests through the refreshment line and to an unoccupied table. Robby hastily ate one cookie, claimed to be full, and ran off to join several young vampires, princesses, and Jedi Masters in a game of tag.

Megan kept one eye on Robby while chatting with Vinnie and Adam. Vinnie found frequent excuses to leave them alone while she hurried off to greet one friend or another. Megan smiled, watching her travel among clusters of friends, just as she had every day at quilt camp.

“Why are you smiling?” Adam asked.

“I enjoy watching Vinnie have a good time.”

“So do I.” They both watched as Vinnie and two other women burst into laughter at some joke. “After my grandfather died a few years ago, I wondered if I’d ever see her like this again.”

“I’m sorry,” Megan said, turning to face him. “I knew Vinnie had lost her husband, but I had no idea how recently.”

“That’s why she moved here. She couldn’t stand being alone in the house they had shared for so long.” Adam’s eyes were on his grandmother. “They married young, right before my grandfather was sent overseas in World War Two. Each was the other’s first love.”

“It’s hard to lose your first love,” Megan said, thinking of Keith. Then she remembered what Vinnie had told her about Adam and said, “Oh, I’m sorry.”

“About what?”

“Vinnie told me about your … situation. About your fiancée.”

“Oh.” Adam let out a wry laugh. “I guess I should have expected that. I imagine everyone at camp knows?”

Megan nodded apologetically. “I didn’t mean to dredge up unhappy memories.”

“It’s okay, really. Besides, Natalie wasn’t my first love.”

“She wasn’t?”

“No. Before her I was in love with a beautiful brown-eyed girl named Michelle. She was the love of my life. Of course, we were only in the fifth grade at the time, so our relationship consisted mostly of holding hands at school roller-skating parties and claiming to hate each other.”

Megan couldn’t help smiling. “How did it end?”

“She left me for a sixth-grader with a moped.”

Megan laughed. Just then Robby ran over to grab another cookie and to ask Adam to be his partner in the three-legged race. Adam good-naturedly agreed, and Robby led him off.

Vinnie returned then and took her seat with a happy sigh. “Sorry I left you alone for so long. I trust my grandson is behaving himself?” Without waiting for an answer, she patted Megan on the hand and said, “Now, catch me up on all the latest news. Have you heard from that ex-husband of yours?”

Except for the Halloween present Gina had sent on his behalf, she hadn’t, so Megan had little progress to report on her quest to involve him in Robby’s life. “I think the Challenge Quilt will be one block short,” she said.

“Nonsense. You’re trying, and that’s all we expect you to do. The rest is up to Keith,” Vinnie said. “Have you heard from any of the others recently?”

Vinnie knew about Donna’s success in getting Lindsay to return to college, but Grace owed her a letter and so she had not yet heard about the true identity of Justine’s older man. Vinnie listened, wide-eyed, as Megan filled her in. Afterward, she lamented, “Such interesting news, and I’m the last to know. Why didn’t Grace tell me?”

“If you were online, she would have,” Megan said, although Vinnie had often declared that she and computers didn’t get along and that she had no intention of setting fingers to keyboard in this lifetime. Now, however, she looked undecided and said she’d think about it.

“Did Julia ever get an email address?” Vinnie asked.

“If she did, I don’t know it. I don’t think she’s much of a letter writer.”

“I’ve written to her five times, and all I get back are these silly form letters and autographed pictures. The same letter, the same photo, each time.”

Megan laughed. “I bet that’s the same letter and photo I received. I only tried once, though.”

“Did you notice the return address? It was some agency in Burbank. I don’t remember the name offhand, but I know it wasn’t the mailing address she gave us.”

Megan hadn’t noticed. “Do you think she isn’t getting our mail? Maybe she just doesn’t want to write back.”

“Nonsense. She enjoyed herself at camp with us, I’m sure of it. And I don’t think she has so many friends that she can afford to ignore the four of us.”

“What makes you think she doesn’t have friends?”

Vinnie shrugged. “Instinct, I suppose. The way she hung around the outside of our circle and never seemed quite comfortable with us, as if she expected us to send her away at any moment. I think our Julia is a bit lost, the poor girl.”

Megan pondered this in silence. Via email, she and Donna had decided that Julia’s silence was intentional, that the Hollywood superstar had forgotten them as soon as her plane left Pennsylvania. Now she felt ashamed of their assumptions. “What should we do?”

“I suppose we’ll have to wait to hear from her,” Vinnie said. “But if she thinks we’re ignoring her, we might be waiting a long time.”

Just then, a young woman wearing a Meadowbrook Village name tag stepped to the front of the room and announced that it was time to award prizes for the best costumes. Robby and Adam returned to the table, discussing strategies for the rest of the games. They had come in third from last in the three-legged race, but were determined to stage a comeback. As prizes were announced in two divisions, one for the residents and one for the children, Megan watched Robby and smiled to herself. His eyes lit up as he and Adam whispered their plans, and he had looked so delighted as he played with the other kids. She wished he could have that joy every day of his life, the pleasure and security of knowing he was liked and wanted. He deserved that much, after what his father had put him through.

Vinnie and Robby won prizes for their costumes—Vinnie for Prettiest, and Robby for Most Heroic. In fact, Megan realized, every resident and child was awarded something, which meant that near the end of the list, some of the categories became rather far-fetched, such as Most Scientific and Biggest Mask. Vinnie’s prize was a gift certificate to the residents’ holiday craft sale, which would be held in December, and Robby, like all the children, won a small plastic jack-o’-lantern filled with candy.

It was near Robby’s bedtime by the time the party began to wind down, but since it was a Friday and Robby didn’t have school the next day, Megan agreed to Robby’s request to stay until the end. Afterward, Vinnie invited them back to her condo for coffee—or hot chocolate, in Robby’s case—and some of the brownies she had baked. At first Megan begged off, citing the drive back to Monroe and the piles of treats Robby had eaten already. “I only had two cookies and a popcorn ball,” Robby protested. “That’s hardly anything. I’m starving.”

“You wouldn’t send a starving child home without one more treat, would you?” Vinnie asked. She and Robby looked up at Megan with expressions of mournful hope, so similar that she had to laugh.

“All right,” she said. “One small brownie, and you’ll drink milk instead of hot chocolate.”

Robby let out a cheer and slipped his hand into hers. As they left the clubhouse, though, his jubilance seemed to fade. Megan hoped it was only because he was growing tired, and not that he had suddenly remembered Jason’s party, which was likely just finishing.