Read the book: «The Christmas Wedding Quilt»

PROLOGUE

JO MILLER WAS sure she liked her next-door neighbor. There was no reason not to. She and the other woman were both in their early thirties, both professionals. Any number of mornings in the three years Jo had lived in her San Diego condo, she had noticed the other woman downstairs in the parking lot, leaving for work decked out in tailored suits and gotcha heels.

Of course if Jo really liked the petite blonde with the friendly smile, why couldn’t she remember her name?

“So I told the UPS man I would keep it for you,” the neighbor said of the package she had just presented to Jo. “I hope that’s okay? I know how hard it is to track down a delivery once they take it back to the warehouse, especially in December, when they’re so busy.”

Jo realized it was now her turn to speak. “That was so nice of you.”

“Of course, I didn’t realize you would be gone so long. I hope nothing spoiled. It looks like a gift.”

Jo glanced down at the package newly resting in her arms, set there before she and her suitcase could escape into her home and close the door. She was so exhausted she could hardly make out the spidery writing. She squinted, then her heart threatened to stop midbeat. “Oh...” She swallowed.

“I’m sorry, I hope it’s not bad news.”

“No, no...” Jo clutched the package to her chest. “I’m just back from Hong Kong. I...I...” She shook her head. “I’m exhausted, that’s all.”

“No wonder. I thought I’d call out for pizza in a little bit. Would you like to share? My treat? I bet you don’t have a bit of food in your fridge.”

Jo shook her head, a reflex that was her standard response to invitations. “I need sleep more, I’m afraid. Maybe another time?”

The blonde smiled, but without conviction. In three years she and Jo had never crossed each other’s thresholds.

“Sleep well, then.” She opened the door that was only two feet from Jo’s own. “And I’m Marian, Jo. Marian Parker. In case you change your mind.”

The door closed behind her, but not before Jo glimpsed soft peach walls, a slipcovered sofa, and a Christmas tree with twinkling lights in the corner.

She stood staring at Marian’s door for a moment, then fumbled for the keys she had slipped into her pocket during the limo ride from the airport and unlocked her own.

Pulling her suitcase behind her, she stepped into a room that was a mirror image of Marian’s, but only in layout. Here the walls were a gloomy taupe and the furniture sleek black leather with chrome armrests. The only pop of color vibrated from a pillow on the sofa with geometric designs of chartreuse and shocking pink.

Right after Jo had signed the lease here, her mother had decorated the condo as a surprise. Jo had opened her door after another business trip to find it the way it was now.

The surprise had come during Sophie’s interior decorator phase, which had been sandwiched between her jazz singer phase and landscape photographer phase. Jo’s walls were dotted with out-of-focus black-and-white photographs of Point Loma and Venice Beach, framed in more chrome. Thankfully a year had passed without additions. These days Sophie was busy channeling a spirit guide named Ocelot Lee, who was slowly revealing the secrets of the universe in exchange for large infusions of cash to the medium who arranged his visits.

The decorating scheme made it hard not to think about her mother, but right now Jo wanted to think about Aunt Gloria, who had sent the package.

Gloria Harrison had been a constant presence in Jo’s life, first when Jo’s father was alive and the extended Miller family spent large portions of every summer together in the family summer cottage at Kanowa Lake in western New York. Then later, too, after Harry Miller’s death, when Sophie had moved Jo to California, where she could have her daughter to herself. Aunt Gloria had continued to call frequently, and send birthday and Christmas cards, making it clear in her own sweet way that Jo would always be a Miller, and neither distance nor the death of her father changed that.

Now Aunt Glo was gone, and with her the last real link to the Millers. There was still plenty of family around. Jo had distant relatives as well as three first cousins, women close to her in age. Once upon a time the four had been as intimate as sisters, but time changed so many things.

Of course time had been helped by Jo herself, who as an adult had been too busy to keep in touch. Her cousins were now strangers.

Like her next-door neighbor.

Gloria had died two weeks ago while Jo was in Hong Kong. Sophie had emailed the news, generously offering to find out if Ocelot Lee could pass on a message from the departed Gloria, an unusual offer in more ways than one, since Sophie had never wanted to share her daughter with her father’s family.

Jo wished she could have flown home for the funeral. She had owed Aunt Glo that grueling trip and more. But leaving Hong Kong in the middle of tense negotiations would have been as good as throwing up her hands in defeat. In the end, with so much riding on her presence in China, she had wired a huge arrangement to the funeral home and made a donation to her aunt’s favorite charity. She had sent a card to her cousin Olivia, Gloria’s daughter, and told herself she would call Olivia when she returned.

Except for the sadness, she had expected that to be the end. She had not expected to receive a package from her aunt, a package that had obviously been sent just before her death.

Jo realized that somehow she was now perched on the sofa, picking at the tape along the edges of the box. Sophie’s granite coffee table didn’t yield anything as practical as a drawer for scissors, so Jo rose and took the package into her study. At her desk chair she carefully sliced the tape with a letter opener and tugged it apart.

Inside lay two smaller packages wrapped in tissue paper. She opened the smaller of the two to discover two pieces of jewelry—a brooch in the shape of a fan, studded with red and silver rhinestones and tiny seed pearls, and a thin silver chain with an enameled locket.

A note in the same tentative handwriting read:

These belonged to your grandmother. I wanted you to have them.

Jo blinked back tears. As Aunt Glo was dying she had still been thinking of Jo. Her quickly failing health was clear from the handwriting, which was a shadow of her formerly robust script.

Moments passed before she remembered the second package. She carefully set down the jewelry and unfolded the paper.

For a moment she couldn’t put a name to the object she was holding. Then she realized that the fabric in her hand had been carefully folded and padded so it wouldn’t crease. She unfolded the first layer, slipping out more tissue paper until a large square was lying across her lap.

The fabric was the beginning of a quilt, a beautifully appliquéd folk art rendition of Hollymeade, the Miller family cottage on the shore of Kanowa Lake. It was eighteen, maybe even twenty, inches square on a royal blue background with one silver star shining directly over the house. The house itself, with its wide front porch and its second story turret—where she and her cousins had formed a secret club the year she was ten—was decorated for Christmas. The century-old holly trees that gave the house its name were also embroidered with ornaments of red and gold, and strings of lights that seemed to twinkle. A bright green wreath adorned the front door, and snow covered the ground.

Jo looked closer. There were two snowmen, or more accurately a snowman and a snow-woman, to the left of the house. The snowman wore a shiny top hat and tails. The snow-woman was dressed as a bride, with a long veil and a bouquet clutched in front of her.

She whistled softly because suddenly she understood what she was holding. “Olivia’s bridal quilt.”

Jo knew her cousin was getting married at Christmastime next year. She had expected to be invited and expected to be too busy to attend. She hadn’t expected to receive a portion of the bridal quilt that her aunt had been making for her only daughter.

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.