Elm Creek Quilts [06] The Master Quilter by Jennifer Chiaverini Read Free Book Online Page B

next time you see Bonnie, you can tell her you’re leaving Grandma’s Attic at the end of March.”
    Summer agreed. She might as well offend everyone in the same week.
    By Sunday morning, Summer had finished unpacking and was growing pleasantly accustomed to having Jeremy around, although she still felt like a guest in his apartment rather than an occupant of her own space. While making room for her soy milk and herbal teas in the kitchen and rinsing the tiny black hairs from his morning shave down the bathroom sink, Summer told herself the feeling would pass in time.
    As suppertime approached, Summer prepared her mother’s favorite three-bean salad and kissed Jeremy for luck. A light snow fell as she drove to her mother’s neighborhood, the streets shrouded in midwinter dark despite the early hour. She parked in the driveway and steeled herself as she approached the front door. Her mother admired her independence and trusted her ability to make her own decisions—or so she said. Now was her chance to prove it.
    “Mom?” she called, opening the front door. There was no reply. Summer set down the bowl on the hall table and removed her coat and boots when something else struck her: She detected no aroma of her mother’s lentil and brown rice soup.
    Hurrying into the darkened kitchen, Summer called out again and was rewarded with a muffled reply. She found her mother in her office, eyes fixed on the computer screen, papers strewn across the desk, academic journals scattered all over the floor.
    “Hi, kiddo,” said Gwen, frowning at the computer. “What’s up?” She gasped and spun around in her chair. “Oh, no. Supper.”
    Summer grinned and tapped her watch. “Sunday at five o’clock.”
    “I completely forgot.” Gwen absently smoothed her long auburn hair, the same shade as Summer’s but streaked with gray. “We could send out for pizza.”
    “I brought a salad. If you have sandwich makings, we’ll be fine.”
    As Summer set the table, Gwen layered Gorgonzola and crushed walnuts on sourdough bread spread liberally with pesto. “That’s the best I can do on the spur of the moment,” she said as she set one on her daughter’s plate.
    Summer assured her it was delicious, then couldn’t contain her curiosity any longer. “What are you working on in there? Something for the conference?”
    Gwen shook her head and loaded her fork with three-bean salad. “I don’t want to talk about it. It’s too depressing. This is fabulous, by the way.”
    “It’s your recipe. What’s too depressing?”
    “As it happens, I’m not going to be in charge of the conference after all.”
    “Why not? I thought the new department chair always ran things.” Her mother winced, and Summer guessed the rest. “You weren’t made department chair?”
    “Nope.”
    “But you seemed so sure you would be.”
    “I was.” Gwen took a bite of her sandwich, her expression hardening. “The outgoing chair informed me, on behalf of the committee, that they needed someone with solid academic credentials in, and this is a quote, ‘substantial, hard research.’”
    “What’s wrong with your research? You publish at least three articles a year. The book you edited with Laurel Thatcher Ulrich is coming out this fall. Your last conference paper was quoted in The Washington Post . What could that committee possibly object to?”
    “My topics.”
    Summer shook her head, uncomprehending.
    “I write about quilts.”
    “Well, yeah. Quilts as cultural and historical artifacts. You’ve written about what certain quilts tell us about American society in particular eras. What else would they expect a professor of American Studies to do?”
    “Write about a less frivolous art form, apparently.”
    “They said that? They used the word frivolous ?”
    “Merely implied, but the outgoing chair did encourage me to turn my attention to sculpture or painting or architecture if I’m that fixated on art.”
    “Let me get this straight,”