The Calico Heart Read online

  The Calico Heart

  by Patricia Kiyono and Stephanie Michels

  Published by Astraea Press

  www.astraeapress.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and events are fictitious in every regard. Any similarities to actual events and persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental. Any trademarks, service marks, product names, or named features are assumed to be the property of their respective owners, and are used only for reference. There is no implied endorsement if any of these terms are used. Except for review purposes, the reproduction of this book in whole or part, electronically or mechanically, constitutes a copyright violation.

  THE CALICO HEART

  Copyright © 2013 PATRICIA KIYONO, STEPHANIE MICHELS

  ISBN 978-1-62135-118-4

  Cover Art Designed by For the Muse Designs

  From Patricia Kiyono: For my fellow quilters at the Helping Hands Quilt Guild of Fairhaven Ministries. Your fellowship and support have sustained me through many difficult times, and I have been blessed to work with you.

  From Stephanie Michels: For Mom, who always believed in me, this one is for you.

  Chapter One

  "Bye, Mom! Bye, Dad! Love you!"

  "Bye, honey. Love you, too,” Sylvia Miller called back then laughed as a shower of iridescent bubbles surrounded her daughter Lynne and new son-in-law.

  The tiny orbs floated around the couple, blending with the sparkling beadwork on Lynne’s sweeping wedding gown and adding gemlike twinkles to her veil. The newlyweds laughed with delight as they raced, hand-in-hand, through the bubbles blown at them by the wedding guests. Her daughter looked like Cinderella rushing down the castle steps to her carriage. Only this time, it was a gaily decorated, red Mustang convertible, and her handsome prince was right at her side.

  Wasn’t it just yesterday that Lynne and her older brothers had been playing make-believe in the big sandbox in the backyard?

  The time had flown by so quickly. The kids’ mud pies and toy cars had quickly given way to rock posters and laptop computers when they’d reached their teens. Now, her babies had grown up and left the nest. The boys both had thriving careers in Chicago, and Lynne was moving on to a new life with Ron.

  As always, Dave seemed to read her mood. His arm tightened around her waist. She leaned into him, grateful for his unspoken comfort, as she continued to wave to the newlyweds until their convertible disappeared from sight. Their guests returned to the air-conditioned comfort of the church hall, but Sylvia remained outside with her family, blinking back the nostalgic tears that clouded her vision. It wouldn’t do to be caught crying on such a joyous occasion.

  Too late.

  "Waterworks alert." Dave Junior’s cheeky warning told Sylvia she’d been busted. "Mom’s about to cry," he added with a grin.

  Her eldest son resembled his father more every day. They were both tall and handsome in their tuxes. However, D2 – as the family called him – appeared to be a lot more comfortable in formalwear than Dave was. Her poor hubby had fidgeted with his starched collar ever since he’d put it on that morning. He’d done the same thing on their own wedding day.

  More tears blurred her vision at the tender memory. She blinked again then lifted her chin and returned her son’s smile. "I am not!"

  "You really expect us to believe that?" Her middle child chuckled. John was a couple inches shorter than his father and brother but shared their good looks. Now, his brown eyes twinkled as he leaned down to touch his forehead against hers. "Admit it, Mom, you’ve cried at every major occasion in our lives."

  "Major?" Dave echoed. "Are you kidding? Boys, your mother would cry at a stop sign if it reminded her of one of you."

  "Can I help it if I’m so proud of my family?"

  Her husband sent their sons a knowing look. "All I can say is it’s a good thing I have a decent job. I could retire in luxury on the small fortune I’ve spent on her waterproof mascara all these years."

  "Oh stop it," she protested and gave him a playful swat on the arm. "I’m not that bad,"

  Her husband chuckled and gave her the killer smile that had won her heart back when he was a varsity football player and she was a lowly high school sophomore. Time might have threaded gray through his wavy, black hair and thickened his waistline a bit, but even after twenty-six years of marriage, that smile could still make her go weak in the knees.

  Twenty-six years. It was hard to believe so much time had passed since the day they’d been the young couple driving away on their honeymoon. Of course, she and Dave had only headed from their quiet ceremony to the cozy home they’d purchased – the same ranch home in the suburb of Grandville, Michigan, where they had raised their family and still lived. Lynne and Ron, on the other hand, were heading to the airport for a romantic two-week getaway in Europe.

  Sylvia envied them a little. She’d always wanted to travel but had never been further from Grand Rapids than a few camping weekends on the shore of nearby Lake Michigan. Still, she had no regrets. She and Dave would have the time to travel once they both took their early retirements. She’d already resigned her position as a professor of mathematics at Grand Valley State University. The board had accepted her letter of notice at the end of the semester. Soon, Dave would retire from his CPA position with Davis Andrews, a prestigious national consulting firm. She smiled, thinking of the thick bundle of travel brochures she’d stashed in the drawer of her sewing table just waiting for that day to finally arrive.

  "...should have let one of the boys drive them to the airport," Dave grumbled now as he held open the foyer door for her. The boys had apparently gone inside while she’d been lost in her thoughts.

  Probably to avoid the usual lecture on thriftiness, she thought, turning her head to hide her amusement.

  "Long-term parking is such a waste of money," Dave continued. "They’ve already spent far more than they should have on this honeymoon. Ron and Lynne could have made a substantial down payment on a house with all that they’re blowing on the next two weeks."

  "Honey, Ron already has a beautiful home in Heritage Hills. Lynne loves it."

  "Maybe so, but those old homes need a lot of upkeep. Do you have any idea how much it costs nowadays to replace a boiler or a heat pump in one of those places?"

  Sylvia smiled indulgently as they took the steps down to the church’s family center in the lower level. Leave it to my conservative CPA to think of furnaces on a glorious June evening.

  "And what if Lynne gets pregnant?" he asked. "Or Ron could lose his job. Anything can happen in this economy. They should have put the money in the bank so they’d be prepared."

  Sylvia smiled and hugged him affectionately. "Oh, David Miller, I love you!" she declared.

  He stopped on the landing while she was still on the step above him and turned. Leaning forward, he brushed his lips against hers and murmured: "Even after all these years?"

  "Hmm, let me think about that." She pretended to consider the idea.

  "Maybe this will help," he suggested, wrapping his arms around her. He pulled her toward him then lowered his lips to deliver a kiss so passionate it nearly took her breath away. He pulled her closer, molding her body against his and kissed her again.

  "Oh, yeah," she whispered when they broke from the intimate embrace. "Even after all these years."

  "Well that’s good," he replied. He brushed his fingers over her cheek. "Because I love you, too, Sylvie, more every day."

  He gave her a quick kiss then held out his arm to her. "Shall we rejoin our guests?"

  She nodded happily. With his arm around her waist, they went down the remaining steps to the family center.

  The church’s wedding coordinat
or had done a wonderful job with simple decorations. With Dave and the boys’ help, she’d draped the ceiling with huge swags of white chiffon fabric. Inside the folds, she’d tucked dozens of sapphire blue and pale teal balloons to match the colors of the bridesmaids’ dresses. Suspended in the center of the ceiling, where the swags met, was a huge pair of white wedding bells surrounded by spirals of ribbon in the same sapphire and teal. In the middle of each of the hall’s tables, blue and teal gerbera daisies floated in a glass bowl centerpiece. Now that the festivities had wound down, Sylvia could take a moment and savor the lovely setting. She and Dave moved around the room, visiting with their guests, chatting leisurely, and making certain everyone had had enough to eat and drink.

  "I see Sue and Ellen already have things almost packed up," Sylvia remarked as they neared the long, linen-covered table where two of her best friends, Ellen Wheeler and Sue Visser, had presided over the display of wedding gifts. Now, the two women were busily boxing up the gifts and cards to make it easier to transport them home.

  "Want me to find the boys so they can carry some of this stuff to our car before they head back to Chicago?" Dave asked.

  She nodded. "Great idea. I’ll help the girls pack up whatever is left. It shouldn’t take us more than a few minutes to finish."

  He gave her a quick hug then went to find their sons. Sylvia’s friends looked up as she joined them then hurried over to give her big hugs.

  "Everything went so well, Syl!" Ellen exclaimed. "Lynne made such a beautiful bride."

  "You look lovely, too." Sue agreed, continuing to tape shut the box she held. "You always look lovely, but that shade of blue is stunning with your black hair."

  "Thanks. It’s Dave’s favorite color," Sylvia told them then motioned to the pile of boxes on the table. "What can I do to help?"

  "Just stand there and talk to us. We’re almost done," Ellen replied, reaching for the next gift. It was the exquisite bedspread their quilting group had finished for Lynne and Ron. The newlyweds had opened it before dinner so everyone could admire it.

  "Let me have that one," Sylvia said and reached out to take the beautiful gift. She ran her hand over it, lightly tracing the dainty stitches with a fingertip. "I still can’t believe we got it done in time."

  "We probably wouldn’t have if it hadn’t been for Lila," Ellen said then looked behind Sylvia and laughed. "Speak of the old slave driver, and here she is."

  "Did I just hear you call me an ‘old slave driver,’ Ellen Wheeler?" a petite older woman with carefully tinted blonde hair bustled up to them.

  "How about if I just say ‘here’s our slave driver now’?"

  "That’s much better." Lila Haggerty nodded. She might have celebrated her seventy-fifth birthday recently, but the little dynamo would be the last person to acknowledge her age. Besides, she could still run circles around most of them. She gave Sylvia a quick hug then paused to admire the quilt. "This is definitely one of the prettiest quilts I’ve had the pleasure of working on."

  "I could never have done it without you," Sylvia said. "All of you. I can’t find words to thank you enough."

  "No thanks are needed," Sue and Ellen said almost as one voice.

  "You would have done the same if it had been one of us," Lila added. "Everyone knows that. Besides most of us have watched Lynne grow up. So this is our way of showing her our love."

  The Wedding Ring quilt had been a gift of love from start to finish. Sylvia had special ordered the fabric for it, laid out the pattern under Lila’s watchful eye, then had painstakingly hand-stitched the design pieces herself. Afterwards, Sue, Ellen, and the other women in the quilt group had come forward to help assemble the blocks and hand-quilt the patterned top to the batting and plain backing. Lila had been even more determined than Sylvia to finish this quilt in time for the wedding. She’d organized the other quilters and went to the Stitching Post herself every day in order to oversee the time-consuming hand quilting. The other women had worked under her direction so every stitch was uniform and perfect. The spritely widow had far more quilting experience than anyone else in the group. In fact, over her lifetime, Lila had probably made more quilts than all of them combined, and each quilt was a masterpiece of exquisite handwork, so the others were happy to learn from her.

  Sylvia felt blessed to have such caring and loving friends. Their friendship went back a long time, almost to the days when she’d been a newlywed. In those days, she and Dave hadn’t had much money, so they’d always been on the lookout for inexpensive entertainment. One weekend, they had visited a local quilt show and stopped to admire the beautiful pieces on display in Lila’s booth. Sylvia told the quilter how she’d always wanted to try her hand at the craft. That’s when Lila invited her to a small quilt shop in Grandville, The Stitching Post, where she and a few other women met each week to sew and socialize.

  "We’re a modern day quilting bee, but thankfully minus the corsets and petticoats," Lila had told her with her impish grin. “You should visit the group.”

  Intrigued, Sylvia checked out the store the following Monday. While she was there, she met Myra Hodges, the store’s friendly owner, as well as Sue and Ellen who had happened to be shopping that afternoon. They’d also invited Sylvia to come back on Tuesday evening to meet the others. The next evening, Sylvia had kissed Dave goodbye after dinner and returned to The Stitching Post. She’d met the rest of the group and learned they were making lap quilts to donate to the veteran’s home for Christmas. The women had told her to pull up a chair then shared some of their own fabric scraps so she could lend a hand. With Lila’s help, Sylvia had started on her very first quilt that night Over the years, as the hobby gained popularity, the small group grew from the handful of friends to a congenial group of more than two dozen members. Housewives and professional women, newlyweds and retirees. The friends ranged in age from early twenties to a new member who’d decided to take up quilting for her eightieth birthday.

  "We’re as different as the various fabrics in this quilt," Sylvia mused as she tucked the precious gift under her arm and carried it outside to the car.

  Chapter Two

  "It was such a beautiful wedding," Sylvia remarked as she sat at the bedroom vanity to tissue off her make-up later that evening. "The weather was perfect. Not too hot, not too cold. This late in June, you never know what you’ll get."

  "I’m just glad to finally get out of this blasted tuxedo," Dave replied, tugging loose his tie and starting on the button of his heavily starched shirt.

  "You looked very handsome." She met his eyes in the mirror and winked suggestively. "Sexy."

  "I felt like a stuffed penguin. I don’t know why we had to have all the fuss."

  "Honey, she’s our only daughter. We had to do things up right for her wedding."

  "She’d have been just as married with a simple ceremony and reception in our rose garden. Just think what we could have saved on the flowers alone."

  "We would never have been able to fit all of our friends and co-workers – and Lynne and Ron’s – in our backyard," Sylvia said, repeating the same argument she’d given him when he’d first suggested a home wedding. "The church hall was the perfect solution. And we didn’t have to worry about rain or having a guest fall in the pool. Besides, it’s not like we didn’t have money already saved." She grinned. "I think you rushed to the bank straight from the hospital the day Lynne was born so you could set up a savings account for her wedding."

  "Nah. I waited until the next day," he admitted, sheepishly. "But we still went over budget..."

  "A little," Sylvia conceded, remembering a few bills she still hadn’t slipped into the pile of expenses on his desk. "But certainly nothing that will jeopardize our retirement plans."

  Dave mumbled something, but with his head buried in their closet, she couldn’t hear his exact words.

  "Look under your side of the bed," she called.

  "What?"

  "Your slippers. That’s what you’re looking for, isn’t it?"
She slathered a bit of extra moisturizer on her forehead where she’d noticed a few deep lines had recently appeared. "I think you left them under your side of the bed."

  Her husband crossed to the bed, bent to look under it, then held up the missing slippers with a triumphant smile. "Found ‘em!"

  "Whatever would you do without me?" Sylvia deadpanned.

  He pursed his lips and pretended to consider the idea. "Go barefooted?"

  "You hate going barefoot. I guess you’d better keep me around."

  "Oh, I don’t know," he said, coming to stand behind her chair. He leaned down and wrapped his arms around her then rested his chin on the top of her head. Meeting her eyes in the mirror, he smiled. "Just think how much I could save on your mascara alone."

  She laughed and swatted his arm. "As if you’d even know how much mascara costs. That’s one of the things my paycheck always covered."

  "Are you going to miss it?"

  "The paycheck?"

  "Well, that and the students. I know how much you love teaching."

  "I did love it. It was great being able to help kids understand math. The looks on their faces when they suddenly got it – when they went from struggling to understanding—" She paused and smiled. "It was priceless."

  "Was it like that when you tutored me?"

  She nodded. "Always. I love helping kids get to that ah-ha moment. But, now, I’m ready to move on to other, more exciting, experiences."

  "What do you mean?" He straightened and headed back to the closet to hang up his tux jacket.

  "Our travel plans, honey." She rested her elbows on the vanity and cupped her chin in her hands, letting her imagination roam. "Oh, Dave, there are so many places I’ve been dying to see. I can hardly wait until you retire, too, so we can take off.

  "Where would you like to go first? I’ve always wanted to visit the Texas Quilt Museum, but that’s pretty far for our first trip. I thought maybe we could head up north, to see the Mackinac Bridge and visit Mackinac Island. Tahquamenon Falls, too. Did you know the locals call them Root Beer Falls because of their–"