Free Elm Creek Quilts [12] The Winding Ways Quilt by Jennifer Chiaverini Page A

she had yet to encounter a wrinkle she couldn’t smooth out with the right iron and sufficient time.
    The next morning, Sarah and Matt drove the pickup into downtown Waterford, a college town of about 35,000 permanent residents and 15,000 young adults, who swelled the population when Waterford College was in session. The downtown bordered the campus, and aside from a few city government offices, it consisted mainly of bars, trendy restaurants, and shops catering to the students and faculty. The local residents knew they owed their livelihoods to the transient student population, and although they were grateful for the income, many resented the dependence. Sometimes the town’s collective annoyance erupted in a flurry of housing and noise ordinances, and the students would strike back with boycotts and sarcastic editorials in the school newspaper. Since Sarah had friends on both sides of the fray, she stayed out of it and enjoyed Waterford’s small-town appeal as well as the cultural amenities the college offered.
    They passed the square, a popular park near Waterford’s busiest intersection, and ascended Hill Street on their way to the medical office. Sarah was relieved they would avoid Main Street bordering the college campus because she still found it difficult to drive past the empty storefront where Bonnie’s quilt shop had once been. Not long after moving to Waterford, lonely and miserable in her unsuccessful job search, Sarah had passed the shop while running errands and had paused to admire a beautiful Lone Star quilt in the window. Its bright colors and intricate design charmed her inside, where she met Bonnie, Summer, and several other future friends—and learned that the reclusive owner of Elm Creek Manor had made the Lone Star quilt in the window. Sarah often wondered how different her life would have been had she not wandered past the shop that day. Now the thought of seeing an empty space where the red-and-gold GRANDMA’S ATTIC sign had once so proudly hung pained her. She could only imagine how much worse Bonnie felt.
    Inside the clinic, Sarah left a urine specimen and stepped gingerly on the scale, steeling herself that those numbers wouldn’t be coming down for quite some time. After leading Sarah and Matt to a private room that smelled of antiseptic soap and tongue depressors, the nurse asked Sarah to climb onto the examination table so she could take her vitals. “Your blood pressure is slightly elevated,” said the nurse, a woman with short, tight red curls and a wild abundance of freckles on her face and forearms. On her scrubs, penguins in red scarves skied down snowy mountains in defiance of the hot August sunshine outside.
    “That’s normal,” said Sarah, remembering to add deferentially, “right?”
    “We’ll want to keep an eye on it.” The nurse unfastened the pressure cuff and offered Sarah a brisk nod that was probably meant to be reassuring. “As I said, it’s only slightly elevated. Running in from the parking lot or hurrying up the stairs could have been enough to raise your numbers. We’ll take your blood pressure again at the end of your appointment just to be sure.”
    “You don’t think I have preeclampsia, do you?”
    “Ah.” The nurse made a few notes on Sarah’s chart. “I see we’ve been reading the Internet.”
    “I can’t afford to go on bed rest,” Sarah explained. “I’m going to work until my due date.”
    The nurse rested one freckled hand on her hip. “It’s much too early for preeclampsia, but I’m sure that in the unlikely event you come down with it, you’ll follow the doctor’s instructions and do whatever is necessary for your health and the health of your baby.”
    “Of course,” said Sarah, and Matt nodded as if he would see to it personally. If bed rest was the worst-case scenario, she could still make it work. She could invest in a laptop computer and work from bed, and keep the phone within reach. But it would not come to that, she