Elm Creek Quilts [09] Circle of Quilters Read Online Free PDF Page B

the meeting, and as far as Maggie was concerned, it would be cruel to mislead them.
    “I can’t live off that income,” said Maggie. Worse, she had received only vague assurances from the director that their pensions would be protected. She also had a modest 401(K), but although she was only thirty-eight, she had hoped to take early retirement in ten years and devote herself to quilting and writing full time. That dream, she knew, was over.
    In a move that received criticism from some of the residents, the director informed their families first and allowed the family members to tell their parents and grandparents as they deemed best. Some of the Courtyard Quilters felt that Maggie had betrayed them by not telling them about the closure as soon as sheknew. “I wanted to tell you, but I couldn’t,” Maggie said. “The director forbade it.”
    “What do you care what he says?” glowered one of the quilters. “What’s he going to do, fire you?”
    “Don’t blame Maggie,” said Mrs. Stonebridge, kindly but in a manner that demanded cooperation. “She has professional responsibilities that take priority over ties of friendship. What if one of the patients from C Wing overheard us talking before their children had an opportunity to prepare them? Consider how that might upset the poor dears.”
    C Wing was where the patients with dementia and other serious chronic medical conditions resided. Thinking of them, the quilters relented. Some even murmured apologies, which Maggie accepted although she did not think she deserved them. She had wanted to warn them of what was coming, but she could not afford to give the director any reason to fire her.
    “I can’t bear to think our circle of quilters will be split up,” lamented Mrs. Blum.
    “We can try to stay together,” said another. “Maybe our children could find a place with room for all of us.”
    One quilter shook her head. “Not me. My daughter has already decided that I’m moving in with them. The girls will share a bedroom and I’ll get the extra.” She paused. “It will be wonderful to see more of the kids, but I’ll miss my girlfriends.”
    “We will have to keep in touch as best we can,” said Mrs. Stonebridge. “With any luck, two or three of us will end up in the same place.”
    The Courtyard Quilters nodded, believing their longtime leader by force of habit, or, Maggie thought, as an act of faith.
    That evening at the quilt shop, she taught her class so woodenly that Lois thought she was ill and offered to take over. Maggie briefly told her what the real problem was and forced herself to shake off her worries and get through the evening. She could not afford to lose this job, too.
    As she packed up her teaching materials, Lois entered the classroom with a magazine in her hand. “I’m tempted not to show you this,” she said, opening the magazine as she passed it to Maggie. “I would hate to lose you.”
    Maggie read the ad Lois had circled in red pen. “A quilt camp,” she said. “That sounds like heaven. But it’s all the way across the country.”
    “You could come back to visit. And teach for me.”
    “Don’t worry,” said Maggie, hugging her friend. “I couldn’t leave California.”
    “When you see Elm Creek Manor, you’ll change your mind.”
    Maggie doubted it, but she tossed the magazine in the box with her class samples and took it home.
    The next morning, she scanned the Help Wanted ads over breakfast. There were several listings for jobs in geriatric care, but none comparable to her current position in either authority or compensation. After a tense day at work, where she comforted more than one tearful junior colleague in the staff lounge and promised to write letters of recommendation for several more, she found Lois’s magazine in her quilt studio and gave the ad for the quilt camp teaching position a second look. After supper, she went online and Googled Elm Creek Quilts. She perused the camp’s own website