Elm Creek Quilts [04] The Runaway Quilt Read Online Free PDF Page A

“But perhaps Anneke’s sister-in-law will identify the quilter.”
    She returned to the sitting room for the journal, and as Andrew examined it, her eagerness to read the book rekindled. All her life she had wondered about Hans and Anneke Bergstrom, the first of her ancestors to come to the United States. Now part of their history—Gerda’s thoughts in her own words—had been given to her. She told Andrew how she had found it, and was about to show him the troubling passage she had read the previous night when she noticed the time. She ushered Andrew from the room, promising to meet him downstairs for the Farewell Breakfast.
    She readied herself quickly, unwilling to be late for one of her favorite parts of quilt camp. Since Sunday afternoon, the latest group of quilters had enjoyed classes, lectures, and fellowship with new friends and old, and it wouldn’t do to simply send them packing when the week of camp concluded. Instead the campers and staff gathered on the cornerstone patio for one last meal together. After breakfast, they would sit in a circle, as they had seven days earlier for the Candlelight welcome ceremony. This time, each quilter would show off a project she had worked on that week and share a favorite memory of her stay at Elm Creek Manor. For Sylvia, their stories were one of the most gratifying rewards of the business. The campers’ stories never failed to amuse or surprise her, and she was pleased to discover anew how much Elm Creek Quilt Camp meant to her guests.
    Listening to their stories out on the gray stone patio made Sylvia treasure them even more. Surrounded by evergreens and perennials, the patio lay just outside what had once been themain entrance to Elm Creek Manor, back in the days of Hans and Anneke. Tree branches hid the cornerstone engraved “Bergstrom 1858” that had given the patio its name, but Sylvia thought of the marker each time she came there, and remembered how the patio had been her mother’s favorite place on the estate.
    By the time she arrived, the fifty campers and some of her teachers and other staff had already begun breakfast, laughing and chatting one last time together. One of these years we’re going to outgrow the patio, reflected Sylvia as she returned the quilters’ greetings. They might have to move to the north gardens or eat in shifts. The business had grown more rapidly than any of the Elm Creek Quilters had imagined, and what once had been a small camp operated by eight friends had become a thriving company with more than twice the employees and four times the campers of their inaugural year. Sylvia had retired from the day-to-day operations after her stroke nearly two years before, but she knew Sarah and her codirector, Summer Sullivan, valued her opinion and would continue to include her in the major decisions the company encountered.
    Sylvia valued their opinions as well, which was why she couldn’t explain her reluctance to tell them she had found Anneke’s hope chest. Instead she joined in the Farewell Breakfast activities and later bid the campers good-bye as if her only concern was that they had enjoyed themselves, would tell all their friends about Elm Creek Quilt Camp, and would return next year.
    When the manor was empty of all but its permanent residents, Sylvia returned to her room and studied the quilts. Then, abruptly, she decided to put them away, making the excuse that it was to minimize their exposure to light. She carefully refolded the quilts along different lines rather than return the stress to the seams and patches that had borne the burden for more than a century.
    She then placed the quilts and the journal deep in the back of her closet and shut the door on them as if she could blot Gerda’s words from her memory.
    That evening, Sylvia had an unsettling dream about Lucinda. In it, she was a little girl again, sitting on the footstool beside her great-aunt’s chair as Lucinda pieced a LeMoyne Star block.
    “Your