Letters from a Patchwork Quilt

Prologue

Prologue

St Louis, 2015It was coming apart. Hand-sewn with stitches so small as to be barely visible. Meredith took it out of the battered old trunk and stretched it out on the bed, smoothing the surface with the palm of her hand. The fabric crinkled slightly, stiff under her fingers. It was a bit grubby – pretty though. The fabric shapes were in calico and cotton, in a combination of delicate shades of blues and greens. It would look perfect in the guest bedroom. Then she remembered she wasn’t going to keep the house.

She picked the quilt up and took it into the study, where she rummaged about on shelves and in cupboards until she found her mother’s sewing box. The quilt would have to be repaired before she could risk laundering it. She settled herself into the low armchair in front of the windows and let the autumn sunshine wash over her. Meredith couldn’t remember the last time she’d sat down like this to do something for herself. To sew. To paint. To write for pleasure. The last year had been swallowed up with caring for her mother in the final phase of her illness.

Needle threaded, she calculated how to begin the repair. The quilt was a complicated design, a sampler of several different intricate patterns. She started to fold one of the pieces under where it had buckled up, when she noticed the stiffness was caused by the paper pieces still present between the layers of fabric. If she was going to wash the quilt she’d have to remove them. She folded the flap of material back and gently eased out the piece of paper. It was quite thick, a lightweight card rather than paper and covered in neat, old-fashioned, cursive writing in black ink, the edges ragged where the needle had caught them as it penetrated the fabric. She set it on one side and carefully removed another piece until she had a small collection of hexagonal shapes laid out beside her on the table. Strange that the pieces had been left inside instead of being removed as the quilt was pieced together. She picked one up to read it and realised that it was part of a letter. She took the backing off the quilt and worked her way through the pieces, extracting each paper template one by one.

It took her nearly an hour to fit the pieces together, straining her eyes to read the tiny florid handwriting with its loops and curlicues. Using a magnifying glass, she worked her way slowly through the text.