An Elm Creek Quilts Sampler (116 page)

“Sure.” He held the door open for her, and she entered. Yawning, he indicated the kitchen and said, “I’ll get dressed and be there in a minute.”

Natalie laughed. “Don’t bother if you’re comfortable. I’ve seen you in far less than that.”

Instead of answering, Adam went to his bedroom and threw on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. By the time he returned to the kitchen, Natalie had set the table for two and had placed the rose in a bud vase she had once bought him. She smiled when she saw him and began unpacking the bag. “Hungry?” she asked.

Adam nodded and sat down. “You should have called.”

“Why? Do you have company?”

“No, but I might have.” He didn’t intend for the words to come out so sharply, but Natalie took no offense. Instead she served him his cappuccino, and he wasn’t surprised to find that she had remembered exactly how he liked it. Resigned, he helped himself to a bagel. “You should have called.”

She just laughed at him and changed the subject. She looked bright and fresh and pretty, not at all as she had the last time they were together. If she remembered how angry and hurt she had been that night, she gave no sign as she asked about his family and updated him on the ever-worsening situation at Lindsor’s.

She was well into a description of the most recent layoff scare when the doorbell rang. “Aren’t you popular,” she said, irritated by the interruption.

With a sudden surge of anxiety, Adam went to answer the door.

It was Megan, smiling and carrying a paper bag.

“Happy Valentine’s Day,” she said, kissing him. “I was going to use my key, but I saw the car in the driveway and figured you had company….” Her gaze traveled past him and her voice trailed off.

He didn’t need to look to know Natalie had joined them in the foyer.

“Hi, I’m Natalie,” Natalie said, stepping forward to shake her hand. “And you are?”

“Megan.” As she shifted the bag to shake Natalie’s hand, Megan met Adam’s gaze with pained confusion. “Megan Donohue.”

“What’s in the bag?”

“Oh.” Megan looked down distractedly. “Groceries. I thought I would make breakfast.”

Natalie smiled indulgently. “How sweet of you, but we’ve already eaten.”

“Natalie came over just this morning,” Adam broke in. “I wasn’t expecting her. She surprised me.” He heard how his babbling was making the truth seem false. “Do you want to come in?”

“No—no, thanks. I’d better get home.” She wouldn’t look at him. Abruptly she turned and headed for her car.

Adam followed her outside. “Megan, she just showed up about a half hour before you did. Uninvited.”

“Uh-huh.” She fumbled the key in the lock.

“It’s true.”

“Fine, it’s true.” She opened the door and placed the bag inside.

“If you believe me, why are you acting like this?”

“Acting like what? I’m not acting like anything.”

Adam put his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him. “Megan, I wasn’t with her last night. I was with you.”

“I know.” Finally she looked at him, and her gaze was cool and steady. “It’s this morning I’m concerned about.”

He couldn’t believe the coldness in her expression. He remembered then how Keith had betrayed her and felt a tremor of something close to fear, fear of losing her. “I wouldn’t lie to you. You know that.”

She nodded, but said, “I have to go.”

“Megan…”

But she climbed into the car and shut the door. He stood shivering in the driveway and watched her drive off.

He walked back to the house. Natalie was waiting in the foyer. “Isn’t she going to stay for breakfast?”

“Stop it, Natalie.”

“I didn’t know she was coming over,” she protested. “But what’s the problem? It’s just a misunderstanding. You’ll sort it out.”

Adam wasn’t so sure. “You should leave now.”

“Don’t take this out on me—”

“Just go.” He returned to the kitchen without looking back and called Megan’s house.

He waited all day, but she didn’t return the message he left on her answering machine, nor did she respond to his email notes. After school the following afternoon, he hurried home to check his answering machine, but if Megan had phoned, she had not left a message.

He tried her number again and hung up as soon as the machine picked up. Later that evening he phoned again, and this time, Robby answered.

“Hi,” Robby greeted him happily. “Guess what? I got an A on my spelling test today.”

“That’s great. Congratulations.” Adam was about to ask for Megan when he heard her voice in the background.

“It’s Adam,” Robby told her, then paused. “Oh. Okay. Adam, my mom wants to talk to you.”

“Megan?” Adam waited, eager to hear her voice. “Are you there?”

Her voice was soft, nearly a whisper. “Yes.”

“Are you still angry?”

“No.”

Relief washed over him. “Can I come over tonight so we can talk?”

There was a long pause. “I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

“But Megan …”

“I also don’t think you should see Robby anymore.”

“Megan, please don’t do this.”

“Good-bye, Adam.” He heard a gentle click, then the line went dead.

Days later, Megan reflected on what Vinnie had said at quilt camp, that there were no coincidences, that in life you meet the people you need to meet. Perhaps that was true, but as Donna had added, perhaps the reason one needed to meet someone wasn’t what one thought. Perhaps she and Adam had been destined to meet, but not because they were meant to spend the rest of their lives together. Adam might have come into her life to prove to her that she could find love again—although not with him.

She accepted the situation sadly, because she had no other choice. She only wished she could explain things in a way Robby could accept and understand. She couldn’t tell him what had really happened that morning at Adam’s house, but although it would have been simple to say that Adam was too busy to be Robby’s friend anymore, somehow she couldn’t bear to say something so untrue. So she simply told Robby Adam couldn’t come over anymore, and when Robby asked why, she fell back on the phrase she had promised herself never to utter as a parent: “Because I said so.”

Julia couldn’t think of any place she would less rather be than Kansas in late February, except for the more specific hell of the
Prairie Vengeance
location shoot in Kansas in late February.

A knock sounded on her trailer door. “Five minutes, Miss Merchaud,” someone called. With a sigh, Julia rose, checked her hair and makeup, and drew on her parka. They must have finished shoveling off the cabin, a task that wouldn’t be necessary if the weather would cooperate, or if production hadn’t been delayed so long. The scene scheduled to shoot that day was supposed to take place in September. Since even in this part of the country a six-inch-thick blanket of snow didn’t suit September, the cabin and grounds standing in as the Hendersons’ homestead had to be cleared off. Ellen grumbled that if they had used her original script, they would have been able to film these scenes on schedule, which would have meant last October at the latest. Privately Julia agreed with her, but she worried that the young woman was growing careless. At first she had had enough sense to keep her complaints to herself when Deneford was around, but as the script changes accumulated, she had abandoned her sense of discretion. Julia had warned her to be cautious, since Deneford could ruin her movie career, but Ellen had said, “I almost don’t care anymore.”

“Wait until you’re sure you don’t care anymore, and then you can gripe to your heart’s content,” Julia had retorted, and Ellen contritely pledged to try.

Someone had shoveled a narrow path from the door of Julia’s trailer to the cabin, where the crew was busily preparing for the shoot. The cast, barely recognizable in their thick coats, sipped coffee from foam cups or paged through their scripts. Julia spotted Noah McCleod, the actor playing her elder son—and the only member of the cast she was in any mood to speak to that morning—sitting in a chair reading a book.

He smiled as she approached. “Do you know much about geometry?”

“Not much,” Julia admitted. “Although a friend of mine has a grandson who teaches it. Unfortunately, he’s in Ohio, so he won’t be much help. Where’s your tutor?”

“In the trailer with the flu.”

“Delightful.” No doubt they would all catch it soon. Suddenly she had a hopeful thought: If she fell ill, she might have to go to the hospital. “Where’s Cameron?”

Noah shrugged. “In the wardrobe trailer, last time I saw him.”

“Again?” The actor who played her youngest son seemed to grow half an inch every day, much to the chagrin of the wardrobe mistress.

Deneford joined them. “Are you two ready?” Without waiting for an answer, he said, “Julia, you’ll be at the quilt frame with your friends. Noah, when you and Cam run up to tell her about the rattlesnake, I want to see real fear. Okay? Can you do that?”

“Sure, I’ll just think about my geometry homework,” Noah said good-naturedly, and set his book aside. “See you soon, Ma.”

Julia smiled. “Very well, son.” The extras had already removed their coats and sat shivering around the quilt frame in front of the cabin. Julia kept her parka on until the last minute, taking her place just before the shot.

She sat down, greeted the extras cordially, and slipped her thimble on the first finger of her right hand. Closing her eyes, she summoned up her character and called up memories of warm autumn days. When she opened her eyes again, she could almost forget the cold.

“Action,” Deneford ordered, and the scene began. Sadie and her fellow settler women worked on the quilt, discussing the ominous news that cattle ranchers planned to buy up their town.

Out of the corner of her eye, Julia spotted a grimace from the cinematographer, who made a gesture of disgust as he spoke to Deneford. “Cut,” Deneford called out. “Take a break. A short break.” Shivering, the extras scrambled into their coats.

“A break, already?” Ellen groused, arriving to hand Julia her coat.

Julia thanked her and was about to suggest they get some coffee when Deneford called her over. “Don’t let them change the lines,” Ellen hissed. Julia gave her a look that said,
As if I have a choice.

She joined the two men, who had withdrawn somewhat from the others. “Yes?” she asked.

“We have a small problem,” Deneford said. “It seems that your hands …” He looked to the cinematographer. “How did you put it?”

“They’re too old.”

Stung, Julia fought off the instinct to hide her hands behind her back. “I beg your pardon?”

“They look too old,” the cinematographer said. “When I move in close enough to follow your quilting, the camera picks up every wrinkle and vein. When I pull back far enough for your hands to look Sadie’s age, I can’t tell what you’re doing.”

“Well, what do you suggest I do about it?” she asked crisply.

Deneford and the cinematographer exchanged a look. “Is there anything you can do to make your hands seem younger?” Deneford asked. “Could you wear gloves? Not those winter gloves. You know the type I mean. Kid gloves, I think they’re called.”

“I can’t quilt with gloves on.”

The cinematographer shook his head and said to Deneford, “We aren’t going to find a local hand model who knows how to quilt.”

“We don’t need a hand model,” Julia snapped. “My hands are perfectly appropriate for my character. Sadie was a frontier farm wife. She worked with her hands from dawn until dusk in every season. She would have had weathered hands.”

“There’s weathered, and there’s aged,” the cinematographer remarked. Julia glared at him.

Deneford intervened. “All right. We’ll go ahead and film it as is. If I don’t like the dailies, we’ll think of an alternative.”

Julia gave them a sharp nod, not trusting herself to speak. She stormed back to her place and practiced her relaxation breathing. Silently she cursed the cinematographer. Her ability to quilt had won her that role, and in another moment Deneford might decide to put Samantha Key and her Young Sadie hands in Julia’s place.

She calmed herself in time for the second take, which went perfectly. Always the dictatorial perfectionist, Deneford called for a third and fourth without giving the women around the quilt frame time to slip into their coats and warm themselves. Julia contented herself with dreaming up horrible accidents that might befall him this far from civilization.