Sonoma Rose: An Elm Creek Quilts Novel Read Free Page A

her friend’s thoughtfulness, pained by the realization that it had been a long time since anyone had shown her such kindness. “Then it is even lovelier than I remember.” She sat down in a rocking chair, draped the quilt across her lap, and ran her hands over it. The fabric had softened with age, the colors mellowed, but it was no less beautiful. “I remember my mother cuddling me in this quilt when I was a little girl no bigger than Lupita. My great-grandmother made it when she was a young bride-to-be in Texas. Her parents had arranged for her to marry my great-grandfather through a cousin who lived in Los Angeles. The first time she saw him was the day he came to San Antonio to bring her back to El Rancho Triunfo.”
    “Triumph Ranch,” said Elizabeth.
    “Yes, and for many years the name rang true.” Rosa could almost hear her grandmother’s voice as she remembered her stories of days gone by, so full of happiness and sorrow, joy and disappointment. “They raised barley and rye. One hundred head of cattle grazed where the sheep pasture and the apricot orchard stand today. But my family lost everything in a terrible drought, the worst ever to strike the Arboles Valley. Every farm in the valley suffered. Some families sold their land after the first summer without rain, but by the time my great-grandparents decided to put El Rancho Triunfo up for sale the following year, there were no buyers. My great-grandparents sold all the cattle to slaughterhouses rather than let them starve. They were thankful and relieved when Mrs. Jorgensen’s grandfather bought the ranch and permitted them to remain on the land in exchange for their labor. The rains fell two months later. Mygreat-grandparents never forgave themselves for not holding out a little while longer, for giving up too soon and accepting less than the land was truly worth.”
    “They never forgave the Jorgensens either,” said Elizabeth carefully, “or so I’ve heard.”
    “That is also true.” The elder Rodriguezes had passed their anger on to their children, who had passed it on to Rosa’s mother, Isabel. Isabel had mourned the loss of the land all her life, and she had resented the Jorgensens from the time she was a young woman until she took her last breath. Her enmity extended even to the Jorgensen descendants, who had nothing to do with the sale of El Rancho Triunfo.
    Rosa stroked her great-grandmother’s quilt in wonder while Elizabeth unfolded the second quilt and held it up high by the corners so that only the bottom edge touched the floor. “It’s lovely,” Rosa said, wondering why Elizabeth believed the wrinkled, faded quilt belonged to her. Instead of the dark homespun plaids and wools of the hexagon quilt, it had been pieced from a variety of cottons, satins, and other fabrics that looked to be decades more recent. Rosa admired it politely, but she soon felt her gaze drawn back to her great-grandmother’s quilt. She could hardly believe she held it once more, and she could not imagine how it had come to be in the dilapidated old cabin on the Jorgensen ranch, especially knowing how her mother had felt about the Jorgensens. The last time Rosa had seen the quilt, it had been spread upon her parents’ bed in her childhood home.
    “I call this quilt the Arboles Valley Star.” Elizabeth folded the second quilt in half with the pieced top showing and draped it over the sofa. “I found it with your great-grandmother’s. Don’t you recognize it?”
    Although Rosa didn’t, she examined it more carefully forElizabeth’s sake. The complex, intricate pattern resembled the traditional Blazing Star in that each segment of the eight-pointed stars was comprised of four congruent diamonds, but the smaller diamonds fanned out in a half star in the four corner squares of each block, giving the quilt the illusion of brilliance and fire. Great care must have gone into the making of each block for the divided stars to fit the corners exactly so. Few