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

quilters had the patience for such painstaking work, and she knew only one personally—her late mother. But Rosa had never seen this quilt among her mother’s collection.
    “I’ve never seen it before,” she finally admitted, reluctant to disappoint Elizabeth. “I suppose I could look through the album and see if it appears in any of my family’s photographs, but I’ve looked at them so many times. I think I would have recognized this quilt if it were in any of them. It seems too new for my great-grandmother’s handiwork.”
    “I thought you had made it.”
    “Me?” Rosa shook her head. “Why would you think that?”
    “Because of this.”
    Elizabeth turned over the quilt and showed Rosa a square of lace-trimmed satin appliquéd to the back. Upon the square, a wreath of needlepoint rosebuds surrounded a pair of intertwined initials embroidered in silk—R. D. and L. J.
    For a moment, Rosa could only stare in stunned amazement at the letters, but then she tentatively touched her fingertips to the embroidered monograms. R. D. for Rosa Diaz, her maiden name. And L. J. could refer only to—
    “What is it?” Elizabeth asked, concerned. “Do you remember the quilt now?”
    “No,” Rosa replied, bewildered. “I’ve never seen this quilt, but I—I do know this embroidery. This is my mother’s work.She made these stitches. And this satin and lace. It came from Ana’s baptismal cap.”
    Ana’s baptism, an occasion that should have been full of joy, had been shrouded in grief, following soon after the death of Rosa’s firstborn son. Though John had banished Isabel from the Barclay farm, he was unaware that she had come to the church to share in her granddaughter’s holy day. But Rosa had known her mother would attend, just as she had attended her other grandchildren’s christenings.
    After the ceremony, Rosa had spotted her mother at the back of the church, standing in a darkened alcove and disguised by a heavy black veil, and she felt a pang of gratitude and shame. Her mother shouldn’t have to lurk in the back of the church at her granddaughter’s baptism; she should have sat proudly in the first pew, as John’s mother had done, as was a grandmother’s privilege. Trailing behind the others as they left the church, Rosa drew the quilt over Ana’s head to protect her from the cold November rain, and as she did, she gently swept off Ana’s soft satin cap, trimmed in lace to match her baptismal gown, and let it fall to the floor of the vestibule behind them. Rosa knew her mother would keep it, recognizing it not only as a memento of the blessed occasion but also an apology for all that Isabel had been denied that day—and had been in days past, and would be in years yet to come.
    “But—why? And—when?” How had the pure white satin of Ana’s christening cap come to appear in this unfamiliar quilt embroidered with Rosa’s initials and Lars’s—Lars, the man whose family Isabel had despised, the man Isabel had forbidden her to marry? Rosa swiftly turned the quilt over and studied the pieced stars, running her hands over the patches until her fingers came to rest on a piece of ivory sateen that was wondrously,painfully familiar. “This was from her wedding gown. I know it. And this—” She touched a triangle of pink floral calico. She could never forget the soft cotton print she herself had sewn so lovingly. “This was from the dress Marta wore on her first day of school. But how did my mother come to have it? I don’t understand. Where did you find this quilt?”
    “Both quilts were in an old steamer trunk in the cabin,” said Elizabeth. “On the Jorgensen farm, where your family once lived. I assumed your grandmother had forgotten the older quilt there when they moved out, but as for the newer—”
    “Oh, no, no. They left nothing behind. The homespun-and-wool quilt was in my mother’s home all my life. It never left her bed. But this star quilt—” Rosa looked from one quilt to the