Free Elm Creek Quilts [09] Circle of Quilters by Jennifer Chiaverini

in love with his wife, and that includes my own husband, as much as I hate to admit it.”
    “What are you talking about? Nate worships the ground you walk on.”
    “You’re half right. He worships the
ground
. I know he loves me and he loves the boys, but the reason he’ll never leave me is that he knows he’ll never find anyone else who will agree to wash and reuse aluminum foil.”
    “I don’t think Sean will leave me for another woman, either,” Janice acknowledged. “But it’s not just about the money. I need this. Don’t get me wrong. I love being a mom. You of all people know I do. But I need something else. Something that’s just for me. Sometimes …” Janice gestured to the playground, where Connor had all but disappeared beneath a shrieking, laughing pile of children. “Sometimes I feel that the woman I was before I became a mother is drowning, and if I don’t reach in and hold her above the waves long enough for her to take a breath, she won’t make it.”
    Karen did not know what to say. In silence they watched the older children play until their two toddlers kicked their dangling legs and fussed, indignant at being forgotten in the swings.

They ate lunch at the park and played for an hour more before a chain reaction of toddler meltdowns set in, signaling the end of the play date. Karen drove around for a half hour before Ethan and Lucas fell asleep in their car seats. Then she turned the car toward home, torn between guilt for the waste of precious fossil fuels and giddiness at the thought of perhaps as much as an hour to spend as she pleased. Miraculously, she was able to carry Lucas to his crib and Ethan to the living room sofa without waking either boy.
    After checking the answering machine and the mail, she hurried downstairs to the basement. If they ever saved enough money for a larger house, Karen would insist upon a home with an extra, above-ground room she could claim as her own, a quilting room that could double as a guest room. For now, a desk salvaged from a garage sale, a second-hand sewing machine, and two stacks of milk crates for storage served as her quilt studio.
    She switched on the baby monitor and pulled out the magazine, settling herself down on a metal folding chair in front of the desk. She had read the ad so often that the magazine fell open at the proper page, and she read the requirements again although she had nearly memorized them. The Elm Creek Quilters wanted someone accomplished, but they were not asking for the impossible. Karen knew how to piece and quilt by hand as well as by machine, and she considered herself especially adept at foundation paper piecing, which ought to qualify as a “notable quilting technique.” She met the requirements. Other applicants would probably far exceed them, but Karen could not let the potential competition discourage her from applying.
    The logistics of returning to work would make the competition for the job seem like a breeze. Ethan would need to be transported to and from nursery school three mornings a week. Lucaswas still nursing, and she didn’t relish the thought of hauling a breast pump to Elm Creek Manor. She would just have to wean him. If she’d had any backbone at all, she would have stopped nursing him months ago, but it was less exhausting to simply give in to his demands. Eighteen months was definitely old enough for her to wean him without guilt, and it would be easier once she had a strong motivation to stick to it.
    But who would care for the boys in her absence? She had heard too many alarming reports of day care centers to contemplate one for her children, but Nate’s job was secure—and would become more so, once he had tenure—and they could afford a nanny. Her heart quaked at the thought of peeling her sobbing babies from her legs and handing them over to a grandmotherly woman with a crisp British accent and her hair in a bun, but she quickly turned her thoughts to the beautiful estate where the quilt