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So much had happened since Sarah had first proposed Elm Creek Quilts that it seemed impossible only eight years had passed. The women's friendships had thrived as their business had prospered, and they had seen one another past milestones and through some of life's greatest challenges—graduations, marriages, childbirth, one painful and contentious divorce, and countless reunions and partings, daily failures and small triumphs. Some of their founding members had left to pursue new dreams, allowing other teachers and artists to take their places among the circle of quilters. Summer was well aware that her own position was unique. She was a founding Elm Creek Quilter who had left to attend graduate school at the University of Chicago, but unlike the other former faculty members who had left, she had not made a clean break and started fresh elsewhere. She visited Elm Creek Manor often, taught a class or two during breaks between terms, and had absolutely no intention of ever selling her share of the business to a newcomer.

That didn't mean she considered Elm Creek Quilts to be her backup plan in case graduate school didn't work out. Elm Creek Quilts meant too much to her to be reduced to that. Anyway, a backup plan was entirely unnecessary because graduate school was definitely going to work out—even if she couldn't quite see how, at the moment.

Summer closed her eyes and took a deep, steadying breath. She'd figure it out. She had to. Until then, she would find respite in the company of friends in the halls of Elm Creek Manor, as so many other quilters had before her.

The car followed the narrow gravel road through the trees and soon emerged before a sunlit apple orchard. Summer glimpsed several women strolling amid the trees heavy with ripening fruit, some guests chatting happily in pairs or trios, others alone, lost in thought, perhaps pondering a new quilt design or the solution to a difficult assembly problem. Leaving the orchard behind, the cab passed a two-story red banked barn, climbed a low hill, and crossed the bridge over Elm Creek. The road widened on the opposite side, and all at once the manor came into view—three stories of gray stone and dark wood, its unexpected elegance enhanced by the rambling, natural beauty of its surroundings. The shorter of the two wings pointed west, toward the bridge, and the other wing stretched to the south. Where the two wings met there were four stone stairs and a gently sloping ramp leading to a back door. Campers clad in casual summer clothing passed in and out, enjoying some free time before the Welcome Banquet and Candlelight gathering, the official opening ceremonies of each new week of Elm Creek Quilt Camp.

The road led into a parking lot encircling a wide central island where two towering elms grew, spared from the paving contractors at Sylvia's express command. The lot was half full of campers' cars and a few vehicles belonging to staff and faculty, so the cabdriver pulled up behind the Elm Creek Quilts minivan, easily identified by the bright, multicolored logo displayed on both sides, a patchwork elm tree on the bank of a flowing creek. The minivan served as a shuttle to the airport, the train station, and downtown, and until Grandma's Attic had closed nearly two years before, it had carried eager shoppers back and forth twice daily. Bonnie had been heartbroken by the loss of her business, but within the past year she'd rebounded impressively. The previous autumn, she had accepted an old college friend's invitation to help launch the Aloha Quilt Camp on Maui, and it was off to a fantastic start. Like Summer herself, though, Bonnie would always have a place at Elm Creek Quilts.

Summer paid the driver and thanked him, grabbed her backpack and suitcase, and carried both up the stairs to the back door, a broad grin spreading over her face even as her heart pounded with something like apprehension.

The door swung open just as she reached for the handle.

"Well, if it isn't Summer Sullivan!" the petite octogenarian standing in the doorway exclaimed. She wore light cotton capris in a lilac print, a short-sleeved lilac-hued blouse, and a plum-colored cap atop her cloud of fluffy white hair.

"Hi, Vinnie," Summer greeted the camper, surprised. A lively favorite of the faculty, Vinnie attended Elm Creek Quilt Camp every August to celebrate her birthday and to reunite with far-flung quilting friends she had met on previous visits. "You're here early this year."

"Oh, yes. One of the other Cross-Country Quilters couldn't make it during my birthday week, so we adapted." Vinnie shrugged cheerfully. "Are you teaching this week after all? Sarah said you weren't. Is she holding out on me?"

"No, Sarah's right. I don't have any classes scheduled this week." Summer would have, except that in early March, as Sarah was preparing to arrange the faculty and course schedule for the upcoming season, Summer had told her that she wouldn't be available. After finishing her master's in May, she had intended to remain in Chicago for the summer quarter and immediately plunge into her Ph.D. studies.

Things hadn't worked out quite the way she had planned.

"I'm glad you're here all the same," Vinnie declared, beaming. "I've been wanting to tell you that I finally finished the Confluence quilt I started in your color theory seminar two years ago. Last month it took a blue ribbon at the Hamilton County State Fair!"

"That's wonderful," said Summer. "Congratulations!"