The Beach Quilt Read Free

clients. Jonas and Marie had a Facebook page; Sarah had told her father about it, but he didn’t have any interest in following his brother’s life via the computer. From what Sarah could tell, there was no animosity between the two men, just a vast canyon of difference.
    It was interesting, Sarah thought, as she put her dishes into the dishwasher, how two people could grow up in the same household and yet decide on two very different walks of life. She wondered if she and Stevie would become another pair like their father and uncle, amicable but also kind of indifferent to each other. That, Sarah thought, would be sad. She would try her best not to let that happen.
    Sarah peered out one of the kitchen windows at the snowy scene. Nothing made Sarah happier than being outdoors. She found rain refreshing and thunderstorms exciting. Snow was beautiful. Even high humidity could be borne when the payoff was a vista filled with wild flowers and buzzing bees. Most times, her ambles were solitary because she just didn’t know anyone else who shared her passion for the outdoors. Justin, her boyfriend, teased her about being “Nature Girl” (his idea of fun was a beer and a baseball game on TV) and Cordelia vastly preferred to spend her free time shopping or watching movies. Kicking through fallen leaves or climbing over the decaying remains of dead trees or tramping along a stretch of hot white sand did nothing for Cordelia. She didn’t care, she said, for extremes of temperature (cold made her skin flake and heat made her hair frizzy) and she found rocks boring (they just sat there).
    Sarah turned away from the window and looked around the kitchen with fondness. She loved every bit of her home, from the embroidered sampler over the sink to the old marble lamp in the living room; from the slightly slanted floors on the second level to the way the wind sang through the old, ill-fitting windows in the living room. Every inch, every possession held charm for Sarah, largely because the house was the one in which her father’s paternal grandfather had been born. His father and mother had owned it after his grandfather’s passing, and Joe Bauer, Sarah’s dad, had bought it from his parents when they retired to a smaller place closer to the heart of town.
    Though the land on which the house sat was no longer used for commercial farming, Sarah’s parents had planted a big vegetable garden, and Cindy, her mom, maintained a lovely flower garden. There had been some talk about raising chickens, too, but when the girls had admitted they would probably not be into cleaning the coop, the idea had been abandoned.
    The house was a classic old farmhouse, white clapboard and two stories high with an attic that extended the length of the structure and a big porch out front. The first floor contained the kitchen and mudroom in back, and the living room in front. Stairs to the second floor were against the right wall of the front hall. The second floor contained Sarah’s parents’ room in front, Stevie’s bedroom next, the house’s one bathroom, and at the very back of the house, Sarah’s bedroom.
    The rooms throughout the house were small and the ceilings low by contemporary standards. It felt a bit like a warren compared to the more open plan of the Kanes’ development house. There was no central air-conditioning, but there were window units in the bedrooms. As a result, the first floor of the house could feel brutally hot and close in summer. Fans did little to alleviate the oppression of the heavy, still air; most times, the Bauers didn’t even bother to waste the electricity.
    Sarah went up to her room now to change her socks. They had gotten slightly damp, which meant that she had to waterproof her boots again. If she were lucky, they would last for one more season. Good boots were expensive.
    From her bedroom window, there was a perfect view of the extensive vegetable garden and