The Christmas Boutique Page 7

  While their classmates were celebrating the end of senior year, Brent, Will, and Greg were meeting with detectives and lawyers and court mediators. Brent sat for his final exams, but he was in court on graduation day and would not receive his diploma for weeks, by mail. The boys were accepted into a program for first-time, non-violent offenders. At their sentencing, Bonnie asked the judge for leniency. They had never been in trouble before, she said earnestly, and all three intended to start college in the fall. She couldn’t bear to think that their future prospects were ruined because of one very bad choice.

  “They threw those futures away when they broke into your shop,” said the judge, who clearly had expected Bonnie to demand justice and restitution. Yet, impressed by her pleas, he relented and sentenced the boys to probation and community service, which they would serve at Elm Creek Manor. He would consider the terms fulfilled after the boys worked the equivalent number of hours to earn back every cent they had caused in damage.

  “But that will take years,” exclaimed Mary Beth, rising. “Anyway, her insurance will pay for everything.”

  The judge regarded Mary Beth over the rims of his glasses. “What an astonishing sense of entitlement, given the circumstances. I’m beginning to see why your son is here today. If it takes years, so be it. They can work every summer and every semester break until the debt to the community is paid.”

  Chagrined, Mary Beth sank back into her seat and uttered not another word. Bonnie was satisfied with the decision, and Sylvia agreed to her part in seeing to it that the young men fulfilled their sentences. But judging by their grim expressions, the other Elm Creek Quilters thought that the young men had not been sufficiently punished.

  Perhaps no one had told them that the prestigious universities the young men had planned to attend had been informed of the crime, the plea bargains, the sentences. Brent had set his sights on the Ivy League as a ninth grader, and he had worked hard throughout high school to earn top grades and accumulate achievements. His acceptance to Yale had been the fulfillment of a dream. In mid-July, Yale informed him by certified mail that his admission had been revoked.

  After Mary Beth and Roger recovered from their shock, they desperately scrambled to have Brent reaccepted into Penn State, a college he had turned down months before. Somehow Roger managed it. It wasn’t the Ivy League, but, as Roger emphasized in the new, firm manner he had adopted since the disaster, Brent would get an excellent education there if he applied himself and stayed out of trouble.

  Soberly, Brent assured them that he understood.

  He and his two friends worked hard all summer long at Elm Creek Quilt Camp, probably harder than they had ever worked in their lives—mowing lawns, clearing brush, waiting tables, doing laundry, hauling suitcases, scrubbing trash cans. Diane’s two sons also spent the summer working at the manor, as they had for the past few years, earning an enviable sum for their own college expenses. Yet whenever Mary Beth glimpsed them returning to the house next door after a long day, they never seemed as exhausted, sweaty, and filthy as Brent was when he dragged himself over the threshold, famished and too tired to speak.

  When Mary Beth first noted the difference, Roger replied sharply, “They’re probably more used to hard work.” Indignant, she said nothing more about it, but she suspected the Elm Creek Quilters saved the worst, dirtiest, and most tedious jobs for Brent and his friends, and didn’t suffer a single twinge of conscience.

  If she were brutally honest, that was what she would have done in their place.

  Compounding Brent’s humiliation, Diane’s eldest son had been appointed foreman of the crew of teenage employees. If Brent put in only a halfhearted effort, it was Michael who ordered him to do the task over. If he showed up late, it was Michael who informed him that he could skip his lunch hour or stay after, but he would make up the time.

  Todd was going to Princeton and Michael was Brent’s boss—and would be, every summer and school holiday, until their sentences were completed. Mary Beth could only imagine how Diane must be gloating over their stunning reversal of fortune.

  “I can’t believe our son has to answer to that juvenile delinquent,” Mary Beth griped, watching through the window one morning as Michael hauled his family’s trash and recycling cans to the curb. She had let Brent sleep in, and he was still upstairs, racing to get ready for another difficult day.

  “Who are we to call anyone’s child a delinquent?” asked Roger, incredulous. “Mary Beth, don’t you get it? Don’t you understand how lucky we are? Bonnie could have demanded much worse and that judge would have been glad to comply. Brent is eighteen, an adult. He could be in prison right now!”

  His words struck Mary Beth with almost physical force. Shaken, she turned away from the window, brushing past Roger in her haste. Upstairs in her sewing room, she listened for the sounds of her husband and son departing. Only when she knew she was alone did she break down in tears.

  Roger’s words rang all too true. Brent had been granted a second chance, not because he deserved it, but because Bonnie had chosen forgiveness and mercy. Brent had been subdued and withdrawn ever since the sentencing, which Mary Beth had interpreted as an understandable reaction to an unjust punishment. She realized now that she’d entirely misunderstood. Brent wasn’t indignant or resentful, but stunned and relieved that the judge had been lenient.

  In the third week of August, the Callahans packed up Brent’s clothes and supplies, loaded up Roger’s car, and drove to University Park, where they settled Brent into his room in Geary Hall and checked in for orientation. After walking around campus to postpone their inevitable parting, they stopped by the Berkey Creamery for ice cream before saying their farewells with tearful hugs and last-minute advice in front of Old Main.

  “I’m not going to mess up here,” Brent told them, pulling out of an embrace that Mary Beth wished could endure for at least another minute. “I’m going to work hard. I’m going to make you proud of me again, the way you used to be.”

  Mary Beth and Roger immediately protested that they were proud of him, that they knew he would do brilliantly in school, but Brent frowned, shook his head, and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “I mean it,” he said, backing away. “I will. You’ll see.”

  He turned and walked off toward his dormitory. Mary Beth and Roger watched him go. If he had turned around, Mary Beth would have run after him for one more embrace, one more word of encouragement, but Brent had fixed his gaze straight ahead and did not even glance back over his shoulder.

  “He’ll be fine,” said Roger, a faint tremor in his voice. “He’ll be fine.”

  Mary Beth had no words. Roger took her hand—she could not remember the last time they had held hands—and they walked back to the car in silence.

  The sun was setting by the time they reached home. They drove over two desiccated newspapers at the foot of the driveway, pulled into their garage, and sat without speaking as Roger pressed the button and the door shut behind them, plunging them into gloomy dusk.

  Roger heaved a sigh. “I’ll take the suitcase inside.”

  “I’ll get the papers and the mail,” said Mary Beth, ineffably weary.

  She climbed out of the car, stretched, and made her way to the side door while Roger opened the trunk. Her legs were stiff from too much sitting, and as she staggered slowly down the driveway, whom should she see but Diane in her front yard watering the hostas.

  Please don’t let her notice me, Mary Beth silently begged the universe as she retrieved a few envelopes from the mailbox and stooped to pick up the newspapers. Naturally, when she straightened, she found Diane watching her. “Back from vacation?” she called, twisting the nozzle of the garden hose to adjust the spray to a fine mist.

  Mary Beth halted, arms full of sun-yellowed newsprint. “No,” she said flatly, “from taking Brent to school.”

  “Oh, that’s right. Penn State follows the same schedule as Waterford College.”

  Mary Beth slowly flipped through her ma
il—bills, notices of back-to-school sales, a credit card application. “Actually, Waterford College follows the same schedule as Penn State.”

  “Oh. Right.” Diane turned off the spigot and began coiling the hose. “Is Brent excited about the first week of college?”

  “Not really.” Mary Beth fixed her with a baleful look. “You know very well that he graduated in the top one percent of his class. He’s convinced that the classes won’t challenge him.”

  “I’m sure that won’t be the case, especially once he gets all those freshman requirements out of the way.”

  “He won’t have many of those, thanks to his AP credits. No one can take those away from him.” Then, almost as if she were thinking aloud, she said, “I told him to seek out other ways to enrich his curriculum—research projects, independent study. After graduation, he’ll be up against kids with degrees from Ivy League schools. He’s going to have to work ten times harder just to compete.”

  “You know, Penn State is an excellent university. Tim often collaborates with professors in their chemistry department, and he’s had nothing but praise for their facilities and faculty and the students he’s met. In fact, I think he’s a little jealous. And everyone knows Happy Valley is a great place to be a student. I know Penn State wasn’t Brent’s first choice—”

  “It was his last choice.” Fatigue took the edge off Mary Beth’s retort. “It was his safety school. He’s had his heart set on Yale since the ninth grade. I’m sure your son told you that Yale revoked Brent’s acceptance because of his legal troubles.”

  Diane shrugged, clearly uncomfortable. “Todd didn’t give me any details.”

  “Well, now you know, so let the gloating commence.”

  “Brent’s going to be fine. He’ll get a great education. None of this will hold him back, not in the long run.”

  “I hope you’re right.” She fixed Diane with a look of smoldering, helpless anger. “I want to blame you for this, but I can’t. I know I can’t. For weeks after it happened, at the shop—” She inhaled sharply, still incapable of admitting aloud what her son had done. “I kept thinking that if only you hadn’t humiliated me at the quilt guild meeting, Brent wouldn’t have lashed out. But that wasn’t where it all began. Maybe if I hadn’t reported you to the zoning commission about that skateboard ramp in your backyard, you wouldn’t have humiliated me at the quilt guild meeting. And back and forth, tit for tat, going all through the years, for as long as we’ve been next-door neighbors.” Mary Beth looked away, fighting back tears. “You know what keeps me up at night?”

  Diane shook her head.

  “Knowing that if it weren’t for me, and my bad choices, Brent might be settling into a residential college at Yale right now instead of a dorm at Penn State. My bitterness for you poisoned my child. What he did in that quilt shop he learned from me.”

  “You’re acting as if Brent has no future,” Diane protested. “He has to finish his community service and he’ll attend Penn State instead of Yale. Granted, that’s not what he wanted and it’s not what you wanted for him, but it’s not the end of the road. He still has the whole world open to him. He could take any path, go anywhere.”

  “That’s easy for you to say. Your son’s going to Princeton.”

  “My son didn’t wantonly destroy a woman’s livelihood.”

  “Right.” Ashamed, Mary Beth inhaled deeply and ordered herself not to lash out again. “It’s hard to break the habit of blaming you.”

  “Brent’s going to be all right. It might be hard to see that now, but he’ll be all right.”

  Mary Beth felt her eyes welling up with tears. “I didn’t know he could be so cruel, so destructive. But now—” She took a deep, shaky breath. “But now we know, and maybe it’s not too late to root out what I planted there, every time I was vindictive to you.”

  “I can’t let you take all the blame,” said Diane, a faint flush rising in her cheeks. “I chose to retaliate each time. I could have ignored you. I could have responded like an adult. I didn’t. I never tried to make peace.”

  Mary Beth shook her head. “I’ve hated you for so long I don’t know how to relate to you any other way but with anger.”

  To her astonishment, Diane looked genuinely hurt. “We don’t have to be friends. All we have to do is stop being so stupid.”

  Mary Beth stared at her, and then managed to laugh. “At least ten bitingly sarcastic remarks come to mind, and yet I can’t bring myself to say them.”

  Diane rolled her eyes. “I’ll use my imagination.”

  They stood in the driveway watching each other, each waiting for the other to make the next move. Suddenly Mary Beth realized that Diane had shaped the woman she had become, with terrible consequences. She had allowed her worst enemy to define her for far too long.

  A week later, Mary Beth was moping around the house after Roger had left for work, wishing she could think of a good excuse to drive down to Penn State to check in on Brent, when a knock sounded on the front door. To her astonishment, Diane stood on the doorstep looking profoundly uncomfortable. “Lemon squares?” she said, holding out a white plate loosely draped in plastic wrap.

  As Mary Beth accepted it, a memory stirred. “You brought us a plate of lemon squares when we first moved in, to welcome us to the neighborhood. I should have invited you in for a chat.”

  “I didn’t take offense. I knew you were busy.”

  Mary Beth closed her eyes and sighed. A few days afterward, she had dug up a row of forsythia bushes that, according to the lot survey the former owners had shown them, were on the Callahan side of the property line. That was what she told her new neighbor when Diane stormed over, close to tears, to demand an explanation. Diane had called the county and had paid for a new survey that confirmed the property line was precisely where the Sonnenbergs had always thought it to be, but the damage had been done.

  “I never did apologize for those forsythia bushes,” Mary Beth said, ashamed. “Just for the record, I honestly did think they were on my property.”

  Diane sighed. “Considering the way those evergreens are aligned, I can see why you would have.”

  An awkward silence descended.

  “Do you want to come in?” Mary Beth asked. “I could make some coffee or tea to go with these lemon squares.”

  Diane hesitated a moment, but then she smiled. “I prefer coffee, as long as it isn’t instant.”

  On the last day of August, a Saturday, Diane invited Mary Beth and Nancy Reinhart, the newly elected president of the Waterford Quilting Guild, to join the Elm Creek Quilters and their campers for breakfast at the manor. Sylvia was gracious and welcoming, although it was obvious from her expression that Diane had not forewarned her about the meeting she had arranged between the former rivals.

  Sylvia offered them a brief tour of the manor before leading them outside through the older, west wing to the cornerstone patio, where quilt campers were helping themselves to a marvelous gourmet buffet. At Sylvia’s urging, Mary Beth and Nancy joined the queue, filled their plates, and mingled among the campers and faculty. At first Mary Beth felt reserved and defensive, like a diplomat who had wandered unwittingly into enemy territory, but when the Elm Creek Quilters approached her and chatted with unfeigned friendliness, she began to relax. She and Nancy had a good conversation about guild procedures, and they agreed to meet for lunch before the next meeting to go over some of the accounts and records, which Mary Beth knew could seem arcane to a novice. She was surprised to discover how good it felt to know that she was helping Nancy and the guild without calculation, without receiving anything in return.

  When she wasn’t chatting with new acquaintances and former rivals, Mary Beth listened in as the campers reminisced about their week at Elm Creek Manor. She soon learned that although they missed their families back home, Elm Creek Quilt Camp had fulfilled their fondest wishes and exceeded every expectation, and they couldn’t bear to see the week come to an end.

  She too could have enjoye
d an experience like theirs, Mary Beth thought wistfully, every summer for the past several years, if not for her obstinacy and prejudice. Why had she wasted so much time making enemies of these smart, funny, talented women who loved the art and history of quilting as much as she did?

  It was a question she was determined to answer, no matter how painful the soul-searching.

  As she drove home afterward, Mary Beth mulled over all she had observed that morning and discovered one common thread: the Elm Creek Quilters and their campers seemed happiest when they felt free to express themselves artistically, and when they shared their gifts with others—offering encouragement, passing along knowledge, helping friends learn from their own mistakes.

  Perhaps if Mary Beth emulated them, in time she could find some peace and contentment of her own.

  In all the weeks since, as summer faded into autumn and cold winds blew in from the northwest, Mary Beth had sought peace in atonement, deeply remorseful for how her envy and spite had provoked her son’s destructive acts. Although she was too ashamed to attend quilt guild meetings, she helped behind the scenes by answering Nancy’s questions whenever she called or emailed, day or night. When her newly empty nest and her withdrawal from the quilt guild left her with too many idle hours, she devoted more of her time to charitable works, which included volunteering for the Good Shepherd Church facilities committee and pledging to donate three quilts to the Christmas Boutique rather than her usual one. Two were simple scrap quilts, cozy and colorful, perfect for snuggling beneath on a cold winter’s night. The third was much smaller, meant to be displayed as wall art, but far more elaborate—a Dove of Peace quilt, intricately appliquéd and pieced, rendered in fabric but resembling a stained-glass window image of a dove in flight, holding an olive branch. Though it was a complex work, it had come together swiftly, inspired by her yearning for peace in her heart, in her home, and in her community.