The Patchwork Bride - Hardcover

Dallas, Sandra

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1250174031 ISBN 13: 9781250174031

Verlag: St Martins Pr, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

From Sandra Dallas, the best-selling author of A Quilt for Christmas, comes The Patchwork Bride, the irrepressible story of a runaway bride.

Ellen is putting the finishing touches on a wedding quilt made from scraps of old dresses when the bride-to-be—her granddaughter June—unexpectedly arrives and announces she’s calling off the marriage. With the tending of June’s uncertain heart in mind, Ellen tells her the story of Nell, a Kansas-born woman who goes to the High Plains of New Mexico Territory in 1898 in search of a husband.

Working as a biscuit-shooter, Nell falls for a cowboy named Buddy. She sees a future together, but she can’t help wondering if his feelings for her are true. When Buddy breaks her heart, she runs away.

In her search for a soul mate, Nell will run away from marriage twice more before finding the love of her life. It’s a tale filled with excitement, heartbreak, disappointment, and self-discovery—as well as with hard-earned life lessons about love. Another stunning, emotional novel from a master storyteller.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

SANDRA DALLAS is the author of more than a dozen novels, including A Quilt for Christmas, Fallen Women, True Sisters, The Bride's House, Whiter Than Snow, Prayers for Sale, Tallgrass and New Mercies. She is a former Denver bureau chief for Business Week magazine and lives in Denver, Colorado.

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The Patchwork Bride

By Sandra Dallas

St. Martin's Press

Copyright © 2018 Sandra Dallas
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-250-17403-1

CHAPTER 1

The bright morning light that seeped through the attic window fell in streaks on the trunk which Ellen had opened. It was the third trunk she'd searched. She'd already gone through the contents in the barrel-back trunk and in the black metal one that had belonged to her grandmother. Now she looked through the leather trunk that she had brought with her when she'd gone to housekeeping on the ranch. She hadn't opened it in years. "At last," she muttered, pulling out a swath of white. She held out the fabric, slightly yellowed, then hugged it to her chest.

"What are you doing?"

Ellen whirled around. She hadn't heard him come up the stairs. "Looking for this," she replied, unfolding the garment. "Do you remember it?"

"You bet I do. You wore it when we were married. It's a dinger. You were, too." His eyes lit up.

Ellen smiled at him, surprised that such a little thing had stuck in his mind.

"What do you want that for?"

"For June's wedding quilt. The piecing's done, and I'm stitching it together. This morning I remembered it. I want it in the quilt. I'll cut a piece of it and tack it on."

"June's getting married?"

Ellen took a deep breath. She shouldn't have climbed the stairs. Her doctor had warned her, had said it wasn't good for her heart. She had taken the stairs slowly, resting on each landing, but still, she could feel the exertion. "June is getting married."

"Well, good for her. I hope he's worthy of her. She's the best of the bunch. When's the wedding?"

"You can ask her. She's downstairs in John's room, sleeping."

"June's here. Why didn't you tell me?"

Ellen clinched her fists, not at her husband but at fate. She had told him. In fact, he had gone into Durango with her the night before to meet June's plane. She had told him about the wedding, too, several times, and he had met their granddaughter's fiancé when the young man visited earlier in the year.

He turned his head to look out the window. "Maybe you did tell me. Maybe I just forgot," he said, sitting down on one of the trunks. "I forget an awful lot, don't I?"

"Your brain's just not big enough to cram everything into it. Some things have to get shoved out to make room for the new." She took his gnarled hand, the fingers twisted from where a devil horse had stepped on them, the skin mottled with scars and bumps, so many she had forgotten how he got them all. She loved his hands — gentle hands that caressed the horses, caressed her. She remembered those first years on the ranch, when he couldn't keep them off her, and even now, when he reached for her in the night, just to hold her, to know she was beside him. His hands remembered, even if he didn't.

He had forgotten so much. "It's age," the doctor had said, "age and being a rancher. How many times do you suppose he's been bucked off a horse?" Ellen had shrugged. "I don't know. Too many to count. Surely there's something you can do. I won't have it. This just isn't fair."

There was nothing to be done, however. The confusion and the memory loss would only get worse, the doctor said.

"He mixes up things. He talks about something that happened forty years ago as if it were last week. And then he can't remember what he did yesterday."

"Old age is like that, Ellen. Just keep an eye on him so he doesn't wander off." He paused, then added that wouldn't be easy with her own health. She couldn't go gallivanting all over the countryside following him around. She and her husband would be better off living in town, finding a little house or better yet an apartment, so she wouldn't be tempted to overdo things. "I don't suppose old Ben would do that, would he?" he asked.

"We're not that old," Ellen replied. "Wild horses couldn't drag Ben into an apartment. He'd dry up if he couldn't be in his mountains. And I'll die before I let anybody take him away from the ranch. You just wait and see."

"You might do just that. With that heart of yours, you'd be better off in town, too. Think about it, Ellen."

The doctor was right. Another year on the ranch might kill both of them. Still, Ellen wasn't willing to give up, not yet, anyway. Oh, she had talked to a realtor. Prices for ranch land were good, and the ranch would sell quickly, but she wouldn't sign the papers. She'd wait until spring and see how things were. She wanted one more winter in front of the fireplace Ben had built out of rocks he'd collected, the two of them warm in her quilts spread over the solid wooden chairs. They would talk about their life together. What did it matter that Ben couldn't remember all of it? She would remember for both of them. Then the memories would die with her. Nobody cared about the stories of an old woman.

"Come on. Let's go downstairs," Ellen said, gripping her husband's hand as she stood up, the white fabric under her arm.

Ben looked confused. "I know I came up here for something, but I can't remember what."

"You came up here for me."

* * *

Later that morning, after Ben was gone, Ellen sat in the sunshine on the porch, sewing. The branches of the cottonwood tree sent shadows across the quilt top. Here and there, the sunlight seeped through the leaves, illuminating the swatches of silk and brocade, causing them to shimmer. Ellen stopped with half-drawn thread and smiled at the patches in the dappled light. She set down her needle and touched a scrap of the white stuff with the tip of her finger. It was as soft as butter and dear-bought because it was French and old even back then. She rubbed her finger against a bit of lace, now discolored with age, remembering. Then she slid her nail over the plain white piece of cotton she had rescued from the trunk, stitching it into place. It was still as sturdy as the day it was woven. As she flicked away a yellow cottonwood leaf that had fallen onto the quilt top, she lingered over a slip of brocade, still white as starlight. She had saved the scraps for years. They marked the moments in her life, her mother's and grandmother's lives, and the lives of friends. So many memories, she thought. She tucked under the raw edges of the tiny piece of white she had cut from the sash. It was plain cotton and didn't quite fit in with the other scraps, but it held memories — the best memories, she thought, knotting her thread. It should be part of June's wedding present. She took out a large-eyed needle and threaded it with embroidery floss.

"Is that my quilt?" June asked.

Ellen had been too lost in remembering to hear the girl approach. She looked up and nodded. "This will be the last one, the best one," she said, remembering that Ben had said just that morning that June was the best. She had made a quilt for each of her grandchildren when they married. June was the youngest, and now, with the girl's wedding set for the end of October, little more than a month away, before her fiancé was shipped out to fight in the war in Korea, June would get the last patchwork bride's quilt.

"It's beautiful, Granny, but it's not at all like the one you made for Elizabeth."

"No, it isn't." Ellen had quilted a blue-and-white Irish Chain for June's sister. That quilt and the others Ellen had made for her grandchildren had been pieced from cotton, with a mixture of ancient scraps of calico and new-bought percale from Penney's in Durango. Ellen wasn't sure why she had made a Crazy Quilt now, using cuttings of silk and satin and lace, with only here and there a bit of white cotton. She'd...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: St Martins Pr
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2018
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1250174031
• ISBN 13: 9781250174031
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 294
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar