Perhaps Mary felt sweet and good inside, but Laura didn’t. When she looked at Mary she wanted to slap her. So she dared not look at Mary again. -Little House on the Prairie

Twenty

The three women stared at each other. Fear flared in Kari’s eyes, and in Alta’s too. Chloe struggled to comprehend the incomprehensible. The air crackled as if one of the summer storms Laura had described so eloquently was about to explode. But the sky remained inexplicably blue and serene.

Finally Chloe asked, “What is going on?”

Alta and Kari exchanged an anxious look, the apparent adversaries now collaborators.

Something inside Chloe broke like a brittle twig. She glared at her sister. “What the hell is going on?”

“Oh, God,” Kari said.

“It’s a long story,” Alta said.

“It’s complicated,” Kari said.

“Very complicated,” Alta said.

Chloe’s hands curled into fists. “Alta, please go away.”

Alta’s face crumpled. “But Chloe, you don’t … I just … well, we just—”

Chloe swiveled her glare to Alta. The older woman swallowed her words, turned, and walked away. Kari twitched as if wanting to follow, but she rooted herself.

“Kari, what is this all about?” Chloe demanded.

“A quilt square.”

“A quilt square?” Chloe didn’t know what she’d expected, but it wasn’t that. “What quilt square?”

Kari hunched her shoulders and crossed her arms. “It was part of Miss Lila’s inheritance from her cousin. Laura made it.”

Chloe wondered if she’d gotten sunstroke. “Laura made it?” she echoed dumbly.

“Yes.”

“There’s a quilt square floating around that Laura actually made?”

“Yes,” Kari whispered miserably.

Chloe’s hand twitched with an overwhelming urge to smack her sister. She turned away, walked in a tight circle, came back. “After all I’ve gone through trying to verify the Bear Track quilt, after all the conversations we’ve had on this trip, and all along you—you—what? Do you have this quilt square along?”

“It’s in my suitcase.”

“And you never happened to mention that?” Chloe’s voice was rising, but she could have stopped a prairie wind more easily than corral her anger. “What the hell, Kari?” She walked away again. Alta had trudged toward the historic buildings, so Chloe went the other way, into the empty road.

“Chloe, don’t,” Kari pleaded.

“Don’t what? Don’t get mad? Have you said one thing this entire week that wasn’t a lie?”

“Of course I—if you would just listen—”

“I’ve spent a week taking a quilt Laura owned from site to site, and all the time you have a quilt square Laura made in your suitcase?” Chloe did another one of those walk away, walk back moves. “How come I never heard about this square before?”

“Stop shouting and give me a chance to explain.”

Chloe remembered Mom mentioning a carton of “bits and pieces,” including incomplete sewing projects, that Miss Lila had inherited from her cousin in addition to the complete Bear Track quilt. “Did you steal it from Miss Lila?”

Kari seemed to have run out of words.

“Oh my God. You did.”

“Not entirely … ”

Chloe stared at Kari, absolutely flummoxed. “Were you planning to sell the quilt square? Is that what’s going on?”

“It’s not a whole quilt, like what you have! It’s just a square, and—”

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

Kari abruptly advanced, one finger stabbing the air. “Maybe if you weren’t so damn sanctimonious all the time—”

“I am not sanctimonious!”

“Yes, you are!”

A station wagon came around a bend, slowed, and stopped. Chloe realized only belatedly that she and Kari were blocking the road.

Then she realized, also belatedly, that Alta’s travelers and Lucille were lined up along the fence, staring as the Ellefson girls paced back and forth, yelling at each other.

Then Chloe realized that she and Kari had made clear to everyone that they were traveling with a quilt Laura had possessed. And, evidently, a quilt square stitched by Laura’s very own little fingers as well.

With admirable restraint, the driver of the station wagon gestured politely: Any chance you could get out of the road? Kari backed toward the cabin, Chloe toward the prairie. The station wagon drove on.

Kari returned to the road. “Chloe.” Her tone was pleading now. “We need to sit down and talk.”

“I don’t want to be with you right now.”

“Please, I just—”

“I don’t want to even look at you right now.” Chloe turned her back, scrambled up the berm, and walked into the prairie.

The spring growth was waist-high at best, fescue and grama grasses, vetch and wild phlox and quinine. Chloe turned diagonally and cut toward the wooded strip bordering the prairie. Her head was buzzing like a jar of cicadas.

No wonder Alta had looked startled when I introduced myself and Kari, she thought. Since Kari used Anderson as a surname, Alta hadn’t known that her speaker and her partner in crime were sisters. No wonder Kari had looked stunned when Chloe confided that she’d overheard Alta pleading with someone at the Wayside. And no wonder that Kari had withdrawn when Chloe suggested that they ask Alta outright what—and who—was troubling her.

At the prairie’s edge Chloe half fell, half sat on the ground beside a sympathetic old oak tree. The day was still beautiful, the prairie still lush and green. A dragonfly shimmered among the flowers. A honeybee went about its vital work on a clump of clover. In the distance Chloe could just make out the roof of the replica cabin, still evocative.

But Kari was no longer Kari.

My sister is a thief, Chloe thought. And a liar too. So much for sisterly bonding.

What was she was supposed to do now? Chloe doubted she could get a cab to the airport way out here. Besides, she couldn’t fly with the quilt. Maybe she could rent a car in Independence. Or maybe she should ask Roel­ke to fly down …

Then she remembered that he was wrapped up with his farm thing. And she remembered asking if he was just trying to recapture a happy time in his childhood. Damn, she thought. I am sanctimonious. And a freakin’ hypocrite too. As he’d observed, that was exactly what she’d wanted to do on this trip. Seeing Miss Lila’s quilt had triggered a yearning so strong she’d been moved to tears.

Well, it couldn’t be done. Her own childhood was dead and gone. If Miss Lila’s death hadn’t proved that, Kari’s secrets and lies made it complete.

Chloe leaned back against the oak, trying to let its power seep into her. She wasn’t ready to think about Kari yet. Or some mysterious quilt square made by Laura. Or whatever was going on between Kari and Alta.

So she watched the prairie grasses and flowers, rippling ever so gently as if beckoning her to come and play. She had longed for quiet time to wander this ground, to feel the earth as it baked beneath the sun, to sniff the same kinds of flowers Laura once sniffed. Instinctively she closed her eyes and tried to empty her mind of the past half hour; tried to open herself to any lingering resonance of Laura. And for just a moment, she thought she heard a faint peal of laughter.

Then she remembered that Laura was only two years old when the family moved to Kansas—not the older child depicted in the story.

Chloe settled her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands. Laura Land was ruined. Laura wasn’t the girl Chloe had thought she was. Even Pa had let her down by bringing his wife and children here. Chloe could forgive him everything else—the moves, his restlessness—but bringing his family to this place that belonged to Indian people, people his wife feared and hated, was too harsh.

I give up, Chloe thought. She didn’t even want to find Laura anymore. And if she could lose her sister too, that would be just fine.

After concluding that his dream of buying his grandparents’ farm was out of reach, Roel­ke had done the only thing he could think of: he’d made some calls and booked flight time in a Piper J-3 Cub.

Now he stood on the tarmac at Morey Field in Middleton—a suburb of Madison—and studied the plane. It was forty years old and a thing of beauty: egg yolk yellow with a black lightning bolt on the side, sleek and lightweight. And it was for sale.

“The Cub is the ’57 Chevy of the aviation world,” said Tony Colin, the airport employee who’d walked Roel­ke out to the plane. “Not as fast as some, but cool. A real classic. Easy to fly and maintain. And this one’s a gem.” He patted the plane with affection.

“I can tell.” Roel­ke had already looked at the logbook. More importantly, he knew Tony to be a certified—and superb—mechanic. If Tony said a plane was in excellent shape, it was.

“The owner’s been leasing it to pilots who want flight time in a tail-dragger,” Tony said. “If you do buy it, you could continue to lease it out.” He chuckled. “You know what they say. If God had intended us to fly, he would have given us lots more money.”

“So true,” Roel­ke allowed, although honestly, after considering the price tag of a forty-acre farm, the idea of buying the plane of his dreams wasn’t nearly as daunting as it used to be.

He hadn’t flown in a while, and it felt good to climb into the rear seat and go through the preflight checks. Tony pulled the prop with a sharp snap and Roel­ke let the engine warm up until the oil pressure and temp settled in the green arc. He taxied to Runway 27 to the northwest. Before taking off he made sure the flight controls were free and correct, set the pitch trim to neutral, did a run-up to 1700 RPM, and verified that the carburetor heat was set. Finally he set power to full and left the earth, climbing at a steady 55 mph.

It was glorious. Pure joy. Roel­ke grinned. Piloting a plane wasn’t about getting somewhere. It was about seeing the world in a whole new way.

He banked left. Chloe might like this too, he thought. Funny, he’d never considered that before. Stupid, really. He’d been all caught up in whether she wanted to live with him, but having a flying companion would be good too. He’d been in a plane with her once, and they’d gone skydiving. She’d been pissed at the time, but it turned out okay. He imagined flying with her in the front seat, imagined her turning to smile at him. It could be good.

Chloe knew he dreamed of buying an airplane … but he didn’t think he’d told her how important Cubs had been during World War II. How many military pilots trained in them. He’d seen photographs of Eleanor Roosevelt posing in one to promote the Civilian Pilot Trainer Program. Chloe would be interested in stuff like that.

Although a careful and attentive pilot, Roel­ke had planned a route that passed several airports, just in case of trouble. He navigated over Mount Horeb, turned east to Verona, eased southeast, and passed Oregon, Stoughton, and Albion. He left the window up and the door open so he could feel the wind. Cubs were designed to go low and slow, and Wisconsin’s rural landscape unfurled below like an endless patchwork quilt. Some fields were still brown; others emerald with new growth. When he flew over Lake Koshkonong, the water sparkled like diamonds. The Kettle Moraine State Forest was a fresh green swath dotted with kettle ponds, bordered by farmland.

And one of those farms had been created by the first Roel­kes to arrive in Wisconsin, well over a century ago.

As he approached, Roel­ke didn’t have any trouble identifying the family place. The house and outbuildings stood like a child’s play set. He dipped lower but even then the unkempt woodwork, rampant burdock, and peeling paint didn’t look so bad.

My farm, he thought sadly. He could almost see himself walking the tree line with Chloe after a long day.

Then he remembered that Chloe hadn’t said she wanted to live with him.

Well, he and Libby would always share memories of this place. He remembered racing her to the springs in the creek.

Something about that last image lodged in Roel­ke’s brain. He summoned the feel of silt between his toes as the cold water bubbled up from underground in clear pools, and the sharp calls of a hawk, and the hot muddy smell of summer. But he couldn’t define why any of that was important.

Roel­ke sighed, made one more slow circle around the old place, and then headed back toward Morey Field. He had time to go farther, but his earlier pleasure had vanished. I’ll take this plane up another day, he thought.

But next time he wouldn’t be so stupid as to fly over the old homeplace.