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AIDS quilt.” She shook her head and lowered her gaze to the flickering candle. “But that’s why I want to learn to quilt, not why I came here. I guess I could have taken lessons in Hershey, but I didn’t want any distractions. I want to be able to focus on what my brother meant to me, and for some reason I couldn’t do that at home.”
    The woman beside her put an arm around Renée’s shoulders. Renée gave her the briefest flicker of a smile. “When I walked around the gardens earlier today, I thought I could feel him there with me. I started thinking about the time when we were kids, when he taught me how to ride a two-wheeled bike.” Her expression grew distant. “I told him once, near the end, that I wished I had gone into AIDS research instead of cardiac surgery so that I could fight against this thing that was killing him. He took my hand and said, ‘You save lives. Don’t ever regret the choices that brought you to the place you are now.’” She stared straight ahead for a long, silent moment. “Anyway, that’s why I’m here.” She passed the candle to the woman on her left.
    The candle went around the circle, to a woman who was going through a painful divorce and needed to get away from it all, to the young mother whose husband had given her the week at quilt camp as a birthday present, to the elderly sisters who spent every year vacationing together while their husbands went on a fishing trip—“Separate vacations, that’s why we’ve been able to stay married so long,” the eldest declared, evoking laughter from the others—to the woman who had come with two of her friends to celebrate her doctor’s confirmation that her breast cancer was in remission.
    Sarah had heard stories like these in other weeks, from other women, and yet each story was unique. One common thread joined all the women who came to Elm Creek Manor. Those who had given so much of themselves and their lives caring for others—children, husbands, aging parents—were now taking time to care for themselves, to nourish their own souls. As the night darkened around them, the cornerstone patio was silent but for the murmuring of quiet voices and the song of crickets,the only illumination the flickering candle and the light of stars burning above them, so brilliant but so far away.
    Carol was one of the last to speak, and she kept her story brief. “I came to Elm Creek Manor because of my daughter.” Her eyes met Sarah’s. “I want to be a part of her life again. For too long we’ve let our differences divide us. I don’t want us to be that way anymore. I don’t want either of us to have regrets someday, when it’s too late to reconcile.” She ducked her head as if embarrassed, then quickly passed the candle as if it had burned her hands.
    Sarah’s heart softened as she watched her mother accept a quick hug from the woman at her side. They exchanged a few words Sarah couldn’t make out, then listened as the next woman told her story.
    I will try harder, Sarah resolved. They would have a week together to sort things out. She wouldn’t let the time go to waste.
    But as the days went by, she learned that promises were more easily made than kept.
    The quilt camp schedule was designed to give the guests as much independence as possible to work on their own projects or do as they pleased. After an early breakfast, Sylvia led an introductory piecing class, lectured on the history of quilting, or displayed the many antique quilts in Elm Creek Manor’s collection. After some free time, the quilters gathered at noon for lunch. On rainy days they met in the banquet hall, but when the sun shone they picnicked outdoors, in the north gardens, near the orchard, on blankets spread on the sweeping front lawn, or on the veranda. Requests to lunch on the cornerstone patio received polite refusals and the promise