Round Robin (41 page)

Carol felt a flicker of pride beneath her worry. Matt actually thought she and Sarah were close enough to have heart-to-heart talks, that Sarah would confide in her mother what she wouldn't tell her husband. “I'll talk to her,” she promised, and watched as relief came over her son-in-law's face.

Matt thanked her and left. For a long while Carol sat in silence, her gaze fixed on the doorway. The past weeks had shown her a man she had not seen before. Without fail, Matt had treated Sarah with compassion and gentleness despite her inexplicable behavior. There were no orders for her to cheer up, no bitter reminders that he had been right to worry about their dependence upon an elderly woman, no complaints about the additional duties he had been forced to assume. He was so unlike Kevin that Carol wondered how she ever could have seen any similarity between the two men. Instead of manipulating the recent events to his own advantage, to score points in the battle of wills, Matt had set aside the old disagreements for the sake of his wife. His behavior was all Carol could have hoped for.

She had misjudged him.

She sighed and left the room. Someday soon she would make it up to him, to both of them, but for now, she had to see to Sarah.

The library was the most logical place to begin the search. Sarah spent nearly all her time there these days, staring at the computer or at the cold, dark fireplace. Sometimes she left the manor without telling anyone and disappeared for hours. Carol had watched from the window once and saw her daughter cross Elm Creek and vanish into the woods, but where she went from there, no one knew. Everyone needed private time, but Sarah had been spending far too much time alone. Matt was right. It was long past time someone spoke to her about it.

When Carol opened the library door, she saw that the lights were off and the draperies were pulled over the windows. The only illumination came from the computer. Sarah sat motionless before it, leaning toward the screen, her hands flat on the desktop, as if they alone held her upright.

Carol softly closed the door behind her. “Sarah?”

She didn't respond.

“Sarah, honey?” Carol said, raising her voice slightly.

Sarah looked up slowly, and the sight of her wrenched at Carol's
heart. She looked as if she hadn't eaten or slept for days, and her face was drawn and haunted. “Oh, sweetie,” Carol said, stricken. She swallowed and forced her voice into a nurse's brisk tone. “You're going straight to bed, and when you get up, I'm going to fix you something to eat. What would you like, soup and a sandwich, maybe?”

“I'm not hungry,” Sarah said distantly, returning her gaze to the computer screen. “I can't rest. I have work to do.”

“Surely it can wait. Nothing is so urgent that it can't wait an hour or two.” Or five or six, if Carol had her way.

“This can't wait,” Sarah whispered. “This is important. This is urgent.”

Carol came closer, near enough to see that Sarah was running an Internet search. “What are you looking for?”

“Information about stroke.”

“Oh.” Carol hesitated, watching as Sarah highlighted some text on the screen and clicked the mouse. “Are you trying to find something to help Sylvia?”

“Yes.” Sarah's voice shook. “I'm also looking for the causes, to see if stress, or a fight—to see if being upset can do it, if it can make someone—”

“Oh, Sarah.” Carol ached to see her daughter in such pain. “You didn't make Sylvia have that stroke.”

Sarah took a shallow, quavering breath. “I think maybe I did.”

“You didn't.” Carol put herself between Sarah and the computer screen, shaking her head. “You didn't. That's not how it works. It wasn't your fault. It was never your fault.”

Sarah looked up at her mother for a long, silent moment before she began to sob. Carol bent down and embraced her, and Sarah clung to her as she hadn't since she was a child. Carol brought her away from the computer over to the sofa, where she held her and rocked her back and forth, and told her that everything was going to be all right. Everything would be fine.

Sarah felt better after her mother described Sylvia's progress. Sarah had noted some of these improvements from a distance, but she had been too ashamed to visit Sylvia and talk to her about them. That needed to change.

When she felt strong enough, she dried her tears, washed her face, and went downstairs to find Sylvia. She was out on the veranda with Andrew. The rain, though just a gentle shower, had been enough to keep them under shelter. When Andrew saw Sarah hesitate some distance away, he offered to get Sylvia a cup of tea. As he passed Sarah on his way into the manor, he paused long enough to clasp her shoulder and smile encouragingly.

Sylvia's gaze followed Andrew as he went inside, and her eyebrows rose when she spotted Sarah. “Well,” she said, straightening in her chair. “Look who it is.”

Sarah took a hesitant step forward. “Hi.”

“Hi yourself.” Sylvia returned her attention to the Broken Star quilt pieces in her lap.

“How are you feeling?”

“Oh, just fine, thank you.” She gave Sarah a sidelong glance. “You can come closer. It's not contagious.”

Sarah took the chair Andrew had left. “How's the quilt coming along?”

“Slowly but surely. I'll be ready to layer it soon.” She let her hands fall to her lap and regarded Sarah over the top of her glasses. “I suppose next you'll be asking me what I think about the weather.”

Sarah gave her a wan smile. “How did you know?”

“I know all sorts of things about you, Sarah McClure.”

“There are a few things I'd just as soon have you forget.”

“Hmph.” A smile flickered in the corners of Sylvia's mouth as she resumed her work.

Sarah watched as she pinned a green and a blue diamond together,
her movements slow and deliberate, but confident. “Do you want me to thread the needle for you?”

“No, thank you. That would be cheating. My therapist wants me to practice my hand-eye coordination. Michael and Todd offered to let me borrow their video games, but I declined.”

Sarah laughed, but then she could think of nothing else to say. How could she explain why she had neglected her friend for so long? How could she ever express how sorry she was for the awful things she had said? How could she even begin to describe the terror she had felt watching Sylvia collapse, and the grief and loneliness she felt every time she thought about losing her?

“Sylvia,” she began, “I'm sorry. I wish I could—”

“All is forgiven, dear.” Sylvia reached over and patted her hand. “Let's not waste any more time on our silly misunderstandings. I'm going to be fine. Let's be grateful for that and be friends again, shall we?”

Sarah's heart was full. “I'd like that very much.”

“Good.” Sylvia gave her hand one last brisk pat before she picked up her quilt pieces again. They sat in silence for a long moment, listening to the gentle fall of rain on the veranda roof.

Then Sylvia spoke. “Did I ever tell you that when Andrew first saw you on television, he thought you were my granddaughter?”

“No.” Sarah inhaled deeply, then breathed out what felt like a lifetime's worth of grief and regret. “You never told me that.”

“Well, it's true. That's what he said.”

“I think that's just about the nicest compliment I've ever received.”

“I'm sure it's not the nicest one,” Sylvia scoffed, but a faint tremor in her voice betrayed her true feelings.

When Andrew returned with Sylvia's tea, Sarah left the two alone and returned inside. She walked through the manor to the back door, intending to go to her secret place beneath the willow on Elm Creek, but then she thought of another place she'd rather be. As soon as she thought of it, the urgency to be there spurred her on, so that she hurried out the back door without bothering to put on her raincoat. She ran across the bridge,
along the gravel road past the barn, beyond it to the orchard, where she knew she would find Matt.

She searched the rows until she spotted him. She almost didn't see him, so well did his earth-tone rain poncho blend into the trees around him. He was checking the soil at the base of a newly planted sapling when Sarah called his name.

“Sarah?” he called out in disbelief, rising as she approached. “What are you doing out here without your jacket? You're soaked.” Then he grew alarmed. “Is something wrong? Are you all right?”

It was only then that Sarah noticed how the cool rain had soaked her clothing and plastered her hair to her face, and she suddenly felt self-conscious and foolish. “I'm fine,” she said. “I just—” She broke off and shrugged. “I missed you.”

His expression grew serious. Sarah held very still as he walked through the mud toward her.

“I missed you, too.”

Then he wrapped his arms around her and held her close.

As the June days lengthened and the dark nights grew milder, Sylvia finished piecing her Broken Star quilt. She layered and basted it by hand, by ritual, each step performed methodically, patiently. This quilt was not meant for a quilt frame, where her friends would pitch in and help her finish it in a fraction of the time. No, this was one project she could not rush. She would quilt it alone, in a hoop held snugly on her lap. Her friends could support and encourage her in her work, as she knew they would, but this quilt was hers alone to see through to the end.

It was just as well that she decided this, for her friends were already using the quilt frame for a project of their own, one made by many hands and with an abundance of love.

S
ylvia studied her face in the mirror, then tried to force her features into a smile. One side of her face moved naturally into place; the other did not. Sylvia sighed and pushed back the disobedient flesh with her fingertips. There. Now, if she could just think of some excuse to walk around with her hand on her face all day, she'd be fine.

She turned away from the mirror and reminded herself to focus on the gains she had made in the weeks since the stroke rather than dwell upon the little that had been lost. She had been able to return to her room on the second floor; she could walk with barely a stumble; her speech, though not as crisp as it had once been, was clear. Her quilting abilities had survived the experience virtually intact. She had even managed to finish her Broken Star quilt in time for the brunch the Elm Creek Quilters were having that Sunday morning as a farewell party for Carol and Andrew.

It was a shame they had chosen the same day to leave. Sylvia was thankful that the purpose for Carol's visit had at last been accomplished: Carol and Sarah had finally begun to resolve their differences. They still had more work to do, but the gulf between them had been bridged, and both seemed committed to the healing. Carol promised to return for a visit over the Christmas holidays, so they would be seeing her again soon.

As for Andrew—she did not know when she would see him again. He
had stayed so much longer than he had intended, and recently his daughter had been phoning every week to ask when she should expect him. Sylvia understood that he had obligations elsewhere, commitments to fulfill. She knew that he had to leave, but she would miss him.

She sighed again and sat down in a chair by the window. The summer had come to Elm Creek Manor at last. It was hard to remember, sometimes, that those dark green hills had ever been covered with snow, that in the mornings the sound of wind in the bare elms had woken her rather than birdsong. She thought she could still detect the fragrance of apple blossoms on the breeze, though she knew the orchards were past flowering for the year. The trees had grown thick and lush so that she could barely see the barn on the other side of Elm Creek through the leaves.

Except for the newly paved parking lot behind the manor, the scene from her bedroom window was unchanged from the time she was a young girl greeting the days with a heart full of happiness and expectation. An entire summer day would have awaited her, full of promise and fun. If Richard wanted, she would take him riding; together they would head out to the far edge of the estate that Hans Bergstrom had established so many years ago. If Sylvia was in an especially good mood, she might have invited Claudia to join them—if only because Claudia would pack them a picnic lunch. The sisters and brother would spend the whole day outdoors, returning hours later, hungry and happy, just in time for supper. Later that evening, Sylvia would steal off alone to her favorite place on the estate, a large, flat stone beneath a willow on the bank of Elm Creek, where she would listen to the murmur of the water flowing over rocks and watch the fireflies as the stars came out far overhead. And she would dream of her future, and plan, and wish, and promise herself that she would travel and have adventures and fall in love with a handsome man who liked horses—but she would always come back to this place, to Elm Creek Manor, to home.

Would she be able to find that stone again, that willow, if she searched for them? Should she even try? Perhaps it would be better to leave the past in the past and embrace the future that she had almost not been
granted. She did not want to seem ungrateful to the fate that had given her so many second chances.

A tap on her door interrupted her reverie. “Are you watching for our friends?” Agnes asked.

Sylvia turned away from the window and smiled. “No, just enjoying the view.”

“It's a beautiful day.” Agnes crossed the room and peered outside. “A beautiful day for a drive, don't you agree?”

Sylvia said nothing.

Agnes sat down in the opposite chair. “It's a shame Andrew has to leave so soon.”

“Hmph. I'm surprised he stayed as long as he did. His daughter in Connecticut has been asking for his visit for weeks now.”

Agnes reached over and took her hand. “Sylvia, Andrew will stay if you ask him to.”