Elm Creek Quilts [10] The Quilter's Homecoming by Jennifer Chiaverini

Author:Jennifer Chiaverini
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Adult, Historical
ISBN: 9780743260220
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2007-04-10T05:00:00+00:00

1910

Isabel had dreamed of Rosa finishing school and going off to college to become something important, perhaps a teacher like her aunt, but when the time came, Rosa did not want to go. She loved the Arboles Valley, she told her parents passionately, and her soul would wither away to dust if she had to leave it.

Miguel accepted her dramatic declaration, but Isabel grieved, not only to watch her daughter throw away an opportunity her parents had never had, but to hear another lie pass her lips. It was indeed love that kept her in the Arboles Valley, but not love for the land.

Rosa, who had always excelled at math, obtained a job as a clerk and bookkeeper at the Grand Union Hotel. For two years she balanced accounts and paid bills for Mrs. Diegel, the young widow who had returned to the Arboles Valley from Los Angeles to assume responsibility for the hotel when her father’s health failed. For two years Rosa was, by all appearances, a good and obedient daughter. After working all day at the hotel, she returned home and helped her mother with the housework. She gave half of her earnings to her parents for household necessities and saved the rest, except for the little she spent on sensible clothes suitable for work. She went to Mass with her family every Sunday morning, helped her brother with his homework, and spent Saturday afternoons in the company of friends, young women from good families with whom Isabel could find no fault.

But there were also mornings when Isabel went to the kitchen to find Rosa already awake, breathless and bright-eyed, preparing breakfast for the family, overly solicitous of her mother—squeezing her a glass of orange juice, asking if she had slept well. There were afternoons when Isabel passed through the Arboles Valley on her housecleaning route and crossed paths with the friend Rosa had said she planned to spend the day with—but Rosa was nowhere in sight. There were rumors passed along to Isabel by observant friends claiming that a young man stopped by the hotel on Rosa’s lunch hour nearly every day, and that he and Rosa had been spotted in the citrus grove holding hands or in the Arboles Grocery buying food for a picnic. Isabel did not trust the rumors entirely because some described the young man as black-haired and others as blond, but she knew the tales must have sprouted from some seed of truth.

When Isabel shared her worries with her husband, Miguel spread his hands helplessly and said there was little they could do. It was disappointing to think that their daughter might be keeping a secret romance from them, but she was twenty years old, a woman grown, and it was hardly surprising that she had fallen in love. They had done their best to raise her properly, and they had to trust that she would use good judgment and not stray into anything that might ruin her reputation.

“With all the rumors flying about, she may have already ruined her reputation,” retorted Isabel.

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