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

camp was held, the friendly, encouraging faculty, the joy of creativity and camaraderie she longed for in her daily life but had not truly felt since quilt camp. At the time, in the middle of her first pregnancy, she had laughingly described her week at Elm Creek Quilt Camp as one last opportunity for fun before the demands of motherhood took hold. A few months after Ethan was born, she finally understood why the other mothers at the Candlelight welcoming ceremony had nodded knowingly instead of smiling at her joke.
    She would hire the best nanny in the world, she told herself. A Penn State student majoring in elementary education or premed with a concentration in pediatrics. Mary Poppins. The nanny would be so nurturing and affectionate that the children would not even realize Karen had left the house until she returned home in the evening. They would run to meet her at the door as they ran to meet Nate, and they would beg cuddles and kisses as they told her about their fun, educational, and enriching day. They would probably cry when Nanny said good-bye. They would probably cling to her and beg her to stay for supper. On weekends,they would ask why Nanny had not come, and if they fell and scraped a knee, they would sob for Nanny rather than their mother.
    She had not even mailed in her application yet, and already guilt and jealousy had set in.
    She brushed the thoughts aside and plugged in her laptop. She had nearly finished updating her résumé—she had very little to add—when Lucas’s cry pealed over the baby monitor. After scrambling to conceal all evidence of her activity, she ran upstairs to her younger son, vowing that she would tell Nate her intentions that evening as soon as he came home from work.
    She procrastinated by waiting until after supper, for that brief period of relative calm after the boys finished eating and ran off to the living room to play and before they returned to ask for popsicles. Karen insisted on clearing the table while Nate finished his water, realizing too late that this was a sure sign she wanted something from him. They never waited on each other except on birthdays, after arguments, or when one was feeling amorous and was hoping to overcome the other’s desperate need for sleep.
    Until Karen quit her job, they had always divided their expenses equally. Even on their first date, she had insisted on paying half of the check. Nate had put up a modest fight, but eventually his desire to convince her he was a modern, sensitive, egalitarian male overcame his instinct for chivalry. They were students, with students’ modest incomes. Frequent dating would quickly bankrupt him if they didn’t split the costs, and neither wanted anything to stand in the way of seeing each other again.
    Karen had never expected a simple blind date for lunch to turn out so well, even though her roommate and her roommate’s boyfriend had been trying to set them up all semester. For months, heavy course loads and a general reluctance to find out exactly why their mutual friends considered them an ideal match prevented them from arranging to meet. Eventually they ran out of excusesand agreed to meet between classes for a quick bite to eat. Karen skipped her favorite seminar to stay for a dessert she really didn’t need and more amazing discoveries of all she and Nate had in common—a fervent belief in the musical genius of Paul Simon, an inability to care about professional sports, an almost embarrassing depth of knowledge of
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
lore. Nate’s earnest charm and warm sense of humor had quickly erased Karen’s doubts about their four-year age difference and the gap between Nate’s graduate student status and her own as an undergraduate junior. He had already confessed his environmentalist leanings, and after he walked her to her car and saw a late model, low-emission, fuel-efficient Volvo at the curb, he seized her hand and kissed it. Karen was suddenly very glad her parents had