An Elm Creek Quilts Sampler (108 page)

Adam waved good-bye and watched them drive off before getting into his own car. The memory of her smile lingered as he drove home. He liked Megan. He liked her quiet gentleness that would unexpectedly break into humor; he liked the way she was with Robby, the way she patiently listened to him and thoughtfully considered what he said. He liked the way her face lit up with love when she hugged her son close, and he found himself wishing she would look at him with such fondness.

When he returned home, there was a message on the answering machine, and for a moment Adam hoped it was Megan calling to talk and feared it was Megan canceling their plans for next Saturday. He never would have expected the voice that played back on the tape, a voice he knew so well but had not heard in so many months.

“Adam, it’s me,” Natalie said. “Are you there? Please pick up.” A lengthy pause. “Come on, I know you’re mad at me, but don’t play games, okay? Not today.” Another pause, and then a sigh. “Okay, I guess you’re not home. I was just calling … well, I was just calling to see how you’re doing. And to wish you a happy Thanksgiving.” Another pause, and then she quickly added, “You don’t have to call me back. I’m not home anyway. I’m in Aspen. It’s great here. You’d love it. Well, anyway, I hope you had a good holiday.” She hung up.

Stunned, Adam stood staring at the answering machine before playing the message again. It was not his imagination; Natalie sounded lonely. Sad, too. He sat down heavily on a kitchen stool and wondered what had prompted her to call, from her skiing vacation, no less. Could she have changed her mind? The thought, which once he would have greeted with relief and joy, now made him uncomfortable. As much as their breakup had wounded him, he knew now that they were not well suited for each other, just as Natalie herself had said when she returned the engagement ring. He hoped she wasn’t thinking about …

He shook off the thoughts. Of course she wasn’t thinking about getting back together. She was just calling to wish him a happy Thanksgiving. Maybe she had started to feel some remorse over the way she had treated him, but he was positive she felt nothing more than that. Not Natalie.

He rewound the tape and went into the second bedroom he used as an office to finish checking the geometry tests. By the time he went to bed, he had almost forgotten Natalie had called.

The next morning, he fixed himself some breakfast and read the paper before getting ready for church. He usually skipped the Sunday business section, but a prominent headline caught his eye: “Lindsor’s Stock Down and Rumors of Buyout.”

Lindsor’s—the department store Natalie worked for. Adam read the article, dismayed to learn how declining sales had hurt the store but had made it a more attractive purchase for a large chain. Spokespeople acknowledged that representatives of the two stores were in contact but would neither confirm nor deny that an offer had been made. Regarding the rumors that some stores would be closed and others consolidated—resulting in hundreds of layoffs—they had no comment.

Adam shook his head in regret, thinking of Natalie. The weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas were usually her favorites, frantically busy with sales and social gatherings. The frenzy burned out some of her colleagues, but the stress and excitement suited her, and she was in her element. This stress was different, though, and it pained him to think of her wondering if the job she had fought so hard for was in jeopardy.

No doubt that explained the odd tone in her voice; surely she would have known of the situation before it made headlines. Should he call her to offer some sympathy, to give her a chance to vent? He considered it before remembering that she was out of town. He couldn’t reach her if he wanted to, and somehow that filled him with relief. They had promised each other they would be friends, but she couldn’t expect more from him than that.

Nine

W
ith a sigh, Vinnie set aside the letter Donna had enclosed in her Christmas card. She wished she could drop everything and fly off to Minnesota to comfort her friend. Not only had Lindsay canceled her plans to visit her family for Thanksgiving, but she hardly talked to her mother anymore, even on the phone. “I feel like she’s pulling away from us,” Donna had written. “I suppose this is natural, considering she’s going to be married in a few months, but it makes me heartsick.”

Vinnie wanted to write back with words of encouragement but could find nothing encouraging in the little she knew of this young man Brandon. Vinnie didn’t consider Lindsay’s withdrawal at all natural; in her experience, weddings brought families together rather than wedging them apart. Even Natalie had warmed to her new in-laws and Adam’s extended family in the months leading up to the expected ceremony, and that engagement had been a disaster from the beginning. Vinnie had never met Lindsay, but the young woman’s behavior seemed odd, even troubling, and her fiancé’s was worse.

Vinnie didn’t want to stir up trouble by alarming Donna with warnings that might be unfounded, but she suspected Donna’s worries had merit. Donna was a kind, generous, and loving woman, not the sort to cling jealously to her daughter rather than allow her to make a new life with the man she loved. Even now, she continued to give Brandon the benefit of the doubt, long after others—Vinnie included—would have become suspicious enough to confront him, or at least to speak to her daughter.

Donna would have to approach Lindsay with much more tact than Vinnie herself could have mustered, but keeping silent any longer wouldn’t do Donna’s nerves any good, and if it turned out there was some reason why Lindsay and Brandon shouldn’t marry, the sooner they found out, the better. She had learned that from Adam and Natalie.

Vinnie knew her Cross-Country Quilter friends wondered why she was so eager to see Adam married, or even dating, so soon after the breakup of his engagement. They thought she innocently believed that once married, everyone lived happily ever after. But they misunderstood her. She had learned from her own parents that happy marriages could end too soon in grief; her own marriage had taught her that even happy unions had ups and downs, and that each day required a renewed commitment to make it work. But from Aunt Lynn and Lena she had learned that love and companionship were essential for any other kind of happiness.

Vinnie had married young, at seventeen. She had known Sam for less than a year, but had known almost from the start that she loved him and that he was the only man she would ever love.

They met at a dance on a Friday evening in early June. Vinnie was dating another young man at the time, but the passing years had faded her memories of a time she felt affection for any man other than Sam, so that sometimes, even when she concentrated, she could hardly picture his face. Sam, too, had a girlfriend, and they were very close to getting pinned. They might have married one day if Sam’s girlfriend had not caught a bad cold on the same weekend Vinnie’s boyfriend was out of town visiting relatives, and if their respective groups of friends had not cajoled them into going to the dance anyway.

Vinnie had seen Sam before, since his girlfriend attended her school and Sam had occasionally escorted her to school functions. What Vinnie didn’t know until later was that Sam had seen her before, too, and thought she had a wonderful laugh and the most beautiful face he’d ever seen—an observation he kept to himself rather than share with his girlfriend.

When Sam saw Vinnie at the dance, he had to wait through several songs until she was free. Then he quickly stepped in and invited her to dance. His girlfriend didn’t like to swing dance, so he wasn’t as polished as some of the other young men, but Vinnie was an excellent dancer and made up for any of his shortcomings. He liked the way her eyes lit up with fun as they danced, and so he stayed by her side for the next dance, and the next, and before either of them realized it, they had spent the entire evening together.

Vinnie had enjoyed dancing with the tall, handsome man with the slow smile and the easy manner, but since he was three years older than she and was dating a senior from her own school, she didn’t expect to dance with him again after that night. She certainly didn’t expect to run into him the next day at the library, where she studied every Saturday afternoon with her friends. When he asked her to go out with him, at first she was too startled to reply. For one quick, guilty moment she thought of her boyfriend, but she accepted.

When one date led to another and they began to go steady, the senior girls at her school rallied around their scorned, heartbroken friend and made life difficult for Vinnie. Their eyes narrowed as Vinnie passed them in the hallways, and the whispers followed her wherever she went. Tramp, they called her, assuming that she must agree to all sorts of sinful things in the dark with Sam. Only that could have turned his head, when he had been so faithful for three years. Three years Sam and his girlfriend had been together, and yet he had broken off the relationship within a week of meeting Vinnie. A week!

Vinnie let her own boyfriend down more gently, and he took it bravely, which made Vinnie feel worse. But only for a little while: she was young, after all, and she was in love, and all that mattered was Sam and herself and the future they had begun to talk about, first tentatively, and as time passed, with greater assurance and hope.

Then the whole world erupted in war, and the United States was drawn into it. Sam, at twenty, was eligible for the draft, and for the first time since meeting him, Vinnie feared all their hopes and plans had been in vain. She cried when he asked her to marry him, because she knew his haste came from an all too plausible concern that if they did not marry soon, they might never have the chance. Aunt Lynn gave her blessing but cried a little over Vinnie’s leaving school. She also urged Vinnie to ask her father to give her away, because although she rarely saw him, he was, after all, the only father she had. Vinnie’s instinct was to retort that he had given her away a long time ago, but because Aunt Lynn wanted it, she agreed.

Within weeks Lena had whipped up a wedding dress and Aunt Lynn had planned a modest celebration. Her father escorted Vinnie down the aisle and gave her hand to Sam, then exacted a tearful promise that Sam look after his little girl. Vinnie wasn’t sure what astonished her more, her father’s emotion or his belief that he was relinquishing the role of her protector to Sam. If anyone ought to do that, it was Aunt Lynn, and her aunt would assume Vinnie planned to take care of herself.

But Vinnie was too joyful to dwell on the unhappiness of the past or the way her father had failed her. She danced with her father at the reception, but saved most of her dances for Sam, who had improved so much since that first swing dance they had shared that Friday night in spring, and who had since become her partner in so many greater things.

As the hour grew late, her father kissed her good-bye and tried, in his own stumbling way, to apologize. “I never wanted to send you away when your mother died,” he said. “Boys I understood, but I didn’t know how to look after a little girl.”

Suddenly she saw him not as her father but as a man regretting his mistakes, a man who had made unfortunate choices at a time when his reason was clouded by grief. He had not meant to hurt her, and ultimately, he hadn’t, because everything had worked out for the best. She embraced him, and in her heart, she forgave him.

Several weeks passed before Sam was called up. She feigned bravery for his sake and pretended to believe him when he promised her he would return. He survived the Normandy campaign when many of his friends did not, but Vinnie ached for him, wondering how long his luck would last. She prayed, alone in their apartment, and her days grew darker and more bleak as the war dragged on.

It was Lena who urged her to return to high school. At first Vinnie demurred, believing that as a married woman her place was at home, but then she began to long for her books and her friends, anything to ease the loneliness and fear of waiting. The school board rejected her application for readmittance, saying that married women were not permitted to attend classes with the unmarried girls.

But Lena, who knew something of how it felt to have one’s last hope snuffed out, refused to allow Vinnie to give up. She stormed into a school board meeting and demanded that Vinnie be permitted to return. She cited Vinnie’s excellent academic record and argued that their obstinance was not only unreasonable and unfair, but also unpatriotic, considering that Vinnie’s husband was risking his life for his country. “You make a mockery of all the women fighting on the home front,” she accused them, and said she’d see that the whole city learned of it.

They relented, and Vinnie resumed classes the next quarter. By the time Sam returned safely home from the war, she had her diploma and a job at the local library, a job she willingly gave up when their first son came along a year later. Two more sons followed, and then, at last, a daughter.

She loved all her children deeply, and knew that a mother shouldn’t have favorites, but she couldn’t help herself. This precious girl child, the last of her babies, was the child of her own heart. Vinnie was fierce in her determination that her daughter would never know the grief and loneliness she had known. She would protect her daughter as best she could, as long as she could, and would lavish upon her all the love and attention she herself had longed for as a motherless—and fatherless—girl. She would love her daughter and all her children as her aunt had taught her to love.

She named her daughter Lynn, and when her daughter married and bore a son and named him Adam after Vinnie’s own father, Vinnie extended her vow of protection to him. She wanted Adam to be happy, to know the blessing of love as his parents and grandparents had, and to be spared the loneliness that had been the burden of the great-grandfather whose name he bore.

For she knew Adam was much like herself, unable to completely enjoy his life unless someone shared it with him. She had learned well in her eighty-two years that she could not guarantee her own happiness, much less that of someone else, but she would do what she could to care for the people she loved.