The Aloha Quilt (8 page)

As the hikers cheered and applauded, Brian grinned and asked, “Who’s first?”

A large man from Omaha volunteered, and soon he too had soared over the valley, whooping
and cheering and spinning all the way. “Remember to steer,” Brian reminded the others,
“unless you enjoy spinning around out of control like that.”

Bonnie felt sick at the thought of it, and she hung back as another man eagerly pushed
forward for his turn. She checked the security of her helmet, tugged on the straps
of her harness to tighten them even more, and began to question the value of her long-time
friendship with anyone who would trick her into doing something so terrifying, so
dangerous, so—

Bonnie rounded on Claire, barely able to keep her voice low enough for Claire’s ears
alone. “How could you do this to me?”

“Do what to you? Show you a beautiful bird’s-eye view of Maui and Lana‘i? Shake you
out of your depression with a jolt of excitement?”

“I don’t want a jolt. I don’t even like roller coasters! You remember our trip to
Cedar Point during sophomore year?”

“That was a long time ago. I figured you were over it.” Claire tugged on her ponytail
and adjusted her helmet. “Anyway, no one’s ever been killed on these ziplines. I checked.”

It was small consolation. “You can’t make me do this.”

“
I
know that. I’m glad you figured it out. No one can make you do anything.” Claire
turned and bounded up the stairs, harness jingling, calling to Brian, “Can I go next?”

Bonnie watched from below, silently fuming. Claire joked with Brian while he hooked
her harness to the zipline, and then, without an ounce of visible fear, she darted
to the end of the platform and leapt gracefully off. Swift and sure, she flew straight
across the valley and alighted smoothly on the other side.

“She’s done this before,” Bonnie heard another woman murmur to her husband.

No one else among them had, Bonnie realized. Some of the hikers were as nervous as
she, although no one seemed prepared to back out. Bonnie felt her faint courage wavering
with Claire at a distance; safely remote on the other cliff, she couldn’t grab Bonnie’s
arm if she started down the mountain on foot or chide her if she hesitated. But she
also couldn’t encourage her to step up and allow herself to be snapped on to that
precariously thin and fragile-looking cable except in mostly inaudible shouts that
were having little effect at the moment.

Bonnie knew she had to follow Claire immediately or she wouldn’t go at all.

She seized the handrail and forced herself up the stairs. “I’m terrified,” she confessed
to Brian and he took a gadget from her belt, snapped it to the top of the zipline,
clipped one part of her harness to it, and then the other.

“Terrified, huh?” he queried. All she could do was nod.
“You don’t think you can do it?” She nodded again. He pointed down the ramp, grinning.
“It’s easy. Just walk that way until you can’t anymore.”

Claire shouted something unintelligible from the opposite side of the valley.

Bonnie forced the rational part of her brain to shut up, gripped the harness as tightly
as she could, took one step down the ramp, and another, and another, and two more
on tiptoe, and suddenly she was gliding smoothly above the rainforest, mountains rushing
by on her right, sparkling ocean far below to her left. She began to turn in the harness;
in a flash she remembered Brian’s instructions and tried to steer, but she overcorrected
and began turning too far in the other direction. With small corrections each way
she managed to finish the ride facing mostly forward. All at once the platform ramp
approached and she stumbled breathless up to where Troy waited to detach her from
the zipline.

“Not bad,” he remarked, hooking her gear onto her belt. She barely heard him over
her pounding heart and Claire’s cheers.

“How was it?” Claire asked when she joined her at the base of the platform to await
the rest of the party. “Fun?”

“Mostly terrifying,” said Bonnie, catching her breath and slowly smiling. She had
done it, and lived to tell the tale. “A little fun.”

When the others reached their side of the valley, Brian and Troy led them down a trail
to the next platform. “See? We’re hiking,” Claire pointed out, as if that justified
all the other more significant details she had omitted.

The next zipline, Brian announced, was slightly longer than the first and faster.
Even so, Bonnie stepped up to the platform with a little less trepidation and found
the ride a bit less terrifying
and a lot more fun. By the third run, she was joking around with Troy as he hooked
her up to the cable, and when she landed smoothly on the far distant platform, Brian
declared, “You just ziplined into my heart.”

Halfway down, they broke for lunch on a lookout platform high above another valley—tasty
sandwiches, fruit, chips and salsa, brownies with raspberry sauce—and took in the
glorious views.

“Are you still angry at me?” Claire asked after they had finished cleaning up and
Bonnie took out her camera to snap photos of the spectacular views from the lookout
platform.

“A little,” said Bonnie, framing a shot of the beach far below. “You misled me.”

“If I’d told you the truth, you wouldn’t have come, and aren’t you glad you did?”

“I am now,” Bonnie admitted, “but that doesn’t change the fact that you lied to me.”

“I didn’t give you every detail. That’s not the same as lying.”

Bonnie had to laugh. “Actually, it kind of is.”

“It was the only way I knew to get you up the mountain,” Claire insisted. “Disapprove
on principle if you have to, but don’t pretend you’re sorry I did it.”

And Bonnie wasn’t sorry anymore, or even angry. She enjoyed every breathtaking second
of each flight over the rainforest, admiring the scenery, spotting waterfalls through
the foliage below and whale blow in the ocean miles away. Far too soon they came to
the last zipline, which Brian announced was the guides’ favorite. “Because it’s the
longest or the windiest?”

Brian shook his head. “Nuh-uh. Because this is the one where if people are gonna get
stuck, they get stuck.”

Bonnie felt a tremor of alarm. “We could get marooned halfway across?”

Troy grinned as he hooked himself to the zipline. “You probably won’t, but it helps
if you take a running start and cannonball across like this.” He strode to the back
of the platform, sprinted toward the end, and hurtled himself off the end with his
knees tucked up to his chest.

One by one the other hikers waited for their turns and imitated Troy’s explosive launch
from the platform. No one got stuck midway, although two petite women barely made
it to the edge of the platform where Troy reached out and hauled them in.

“What happens if someone gets stuck?” Bonnie asked Brian as he attached her harness
to the zipline.

“It depends if we like them or not,” he said. “If we like them, we go out there after
them and bring ’em in.”

“And if you don’t like them?”

“We slide about fifty pounds of weight down the line and hope it carries them across.”

Bonnie didn’t dare ask which group she belonged to. Her heart pounded almost as hard
as it had before the first ride. Walking down a ramp until the level cable lifted
her off the ground was one thing, sprinting off a platform and leaping into space
above a rainforest valley quite another. Would the harness hold? Would she make it
across? If not, would she get the kindly escort the rest of the way or the grudging
delivery of a burlap bag of weights?

“It’s leap of faith time, Bonnie,” Brian said.

She took a deep breath, backed up to the far edge of the platform, fixed her sights
on the opposite ridge, ran along the wooden boards, and flung herself over the edge
and into the air.

Chapter Four
 

Exhilarated, Bonnie and Claire chatted happily on the way back to the Hale Kapa Kuiki,
reliving the most exciting moments of the zipline hike and laughing about their few
minor mishaps. Clicking through the images on her digital camera, Bonnie thanked Claire
for arranging the adventure, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to say that Claire
had been right to deceive her. There were some lines she wasn’t willing to cross,
no matter how well things had turned out in the end.

“We really should get some work done today,” Bonnie said as they pulled into the parking
lot. Claire hadn’t hired her to ride ziplines and enjoy cookouts.

Claire agreed and suggested they meet in the conference room to brainstorm. “Grab
a notebook and pen, put on more sunblock, change clothes if you want, and meet me
on the lanai in fifteen minutes,” she said. “I’ll bring the drinks and snacks.”

Bonnie went upstairs to freshen up and gathered her thoughts as she gathered her things.
Just as she was settling down at a table on the lanai, Claire emerged from the kitchen
carrying a picnic basket, a notebook stuffed with loose papers,
and what appeared to be two grass mats rolled up and tucked into a beach bag. “Can
you take this?” Claire asked, indicating the bag with a nod as she juggled her other
burdens.

Bonnie hurried to assist, then broke into laughter as Claire led the way to a gate
almost hidden in the foliage at the back of the garden. “Let me guess. Your conference
room is the beach?”

“Wouldn’t everyone have a beach for a conference room if they could?”

They unrolled the grass mats on the warm sand beneath an enormous beach umbrella,
one of several set up for guests of the inn, and took out notebooks and pens. “I never
tire of this view,” said Claire dreamily, slipping off her sandals. “There are days
when I almost have to pinch myself because I can’t believe I’m lucky enough to live
here. It’s not perfect,” she added quickly. “Prices are much higher than on the mainland,
and we could buy a mansion in Pennsylvania for what we paid for our little bungalow.
It’s far from family too. We exchange visits when we can, but we can’t hop in the
car and drive to see the grandkids on the spur of the moment.”

“Life’s full of trade-offs,” Bonnie agreed. “But as far as I can tell, you and Eric
have it as close to perfect as anyone.”

Claire smiled. “I think so, too. Tempting, isn’t it? Just wait until winter, when
your friends back home call you to complain about the latest blizzard. You’ll never
want to leave.”

Bonnie laughed. “We’ll see.” Claire knew how to tempt her too well. She remembered
how Bonnie had always hated dragging herself out of bed on cold winter mornings and
bundling herself in layers for the frigid walk across campus through the snow.

They began their first official business meeting by discussing their goals for Aloha
Quilt Camp. Both wanted to offer
their guests a unique retreat experience with opportunities to learn new techniques,
to work on individual projects, and to experience Hawaiian culture. Bonnie emphasized
social activities for quilters to foster new friendships, and Claire threw around
a lot of business jargon about profitability and market share that convinced Bonnie
that her impulsive friend had, for once, thought ahead and planned carefully.

Then Claire quizzed Bonnie about the founding of Elm Creek Quilt Camp. Bonnie gave
her the condensed version of how Sarah had devised the plan to turn Elm Creek Manor
into a quilters’ retreat to preserve Sylvia’s family estate; how the combination of
Sarah’s business acumen, Sylvia’s teaching experience, and Summer’s Internet skills
had enabled them to launch Elm Creek Quilts within a year; and how the members of
their quilting bee had become the camp’s first teachers.

Claire stretched out on the grass mat, tucked the empty beach bag under her head for
a pillow, and frowned thoughtfully at the underside of the umbrella. “So… you assembled
your faculty first and allowed them to teach the classes of their choice. You didn’t
create a program and then find the best teachers for those courses.”

“We didn’t really assemble our faculty,” Bonnie said. “We were already friends, and
several of us had already taught classes through my quilt shop. Our interests are
so varied that we can cover all of the basic quilting topics and many more specialized
techniques without needing to bring in outside teachers. It just worked out that way.”

“Unfortunately, I don’t have a ready-made team of teachers hanging around,” said Claire,
sighing. “I’ll have to find them and recruit them.”

“Surely your quilt shop helps you keep in touch with all of the local quilting teachers.”

“Yes, but whether they’d want to leave their current gigs to help me is another question.”

“They wouldn’t be doing it as a favor. You
are
planning to pay them, right?” In response, Claire swatted her lightly with the nearest
suitable object, a piece of fallen palm leaf. “Working at a quilters’ retreat benefits
your teachers, too, and not just because of a paycheck. It’s great experience and
wonderful exposure if they enjoy traveling to teach workshops at quilt guilds or if
they sell their own pattern lines.”