Elizabeth Lynn Casey - Southern Sewing Circle 10 - Wedding Duress (3 page)

Tori relinquished the plate of white chocolate brownies to Georgina’s trusted housekeeper, Betty, and followed the mayor down one hallway and across the next. The constant chatter that usually guided her feet toward the correct room on any given Monday night was noticeably absent.

“We are meeting tonight, aren’t we?” she asked, hiking her sewing bag higher on her shoulder.

Georgina’s answer came via a nod and a direction-gesturing finger that led her to the sunroom and the five very quiet members of the Sweet Briar Ladies Society Sewing Circle it was tasked with hosting for the evening. Stopping in the doorway, Tori took in the room and the unfamiliar semicircular seating arrangement it offered.

“You can sit anywhere you want except there.” Georgina’s finger shifted direction to indicate a lone chair
positioned at the mouth of the semicircle, its only real view the faces of the women who barely looked up in acknowledgment of Tori’s arrival. “That one is being saved.”

Debbie looked up from the piece of pale blue material stretched across her lap and nodded toward the vacant spot to her left. “There’s room right here between Melissa and me if you’d like.”

Crossing the room with tentative steps, Tori accepted the bakery owner’s invitation and settled herself into place, conducting a mental inventory of the room’s occupants as she did.

Margaret Louise . . .

Dixie . . .

Melissa . . .

Debbie . . .

Beatrice . . .

“Where’s Rose?” she asked. “And—”

The melodic peal of the doorbell and the gnashing of teeth to her left and right cut her off mid-question.

“The rat has arrived,” Dixie said from between clenched teeth.

Margaret Louise’s head and shoulders shifted against the back edge of the couch she shared with Dixie, her normally boisterous voice void of anything resembling humor or lightness. “Okay, everyone, it’s time to paint your butt white and run with the antelope.“

“We’re ready,” Debbie and Melissa said in unison while Beatrice’s chin dropped closer to her chest.

Georgina gave one final look around the room and then crossed to her own chair beside Margaret Louise. “I think I’ll just let Betty show her in rather than exert the effort it would take to greet and escort her myself.”

Confused, Tori leaned into whisper territory with Debbie. “What’s going on? Who’s here?”

“Tell me you really don’t need me to answer that . . .”

“I—wait. Leona is actually
coming
?”
she clarified more loudly than she’d intended.

“Why wouldn’t she?” Melissa interjected. “Aunt Leona never thinks she does
anything
wrong.”

“I reckon she’s ’bout to think differently real soon.” Margaret Louise pushed her sewing project off her lap and replaced it with two tight fists. “Why, I’ve always known my twin was prickly, and maybe even a bit mean at times, but
this
? Why, she’s as crooked as a hound dog’s hind leg and twice as dirty.”

Melissa nodded along with the rest of the women in the room then pointed at her mother-in-law. “What she said.”

“It’s high time Leona got an earful or two about the way she treats people,” Debbie said, scooting forward on the couch. “It’s just not right.”

Slowly, Beatrice’s chin parted with her chest to reveal a tentative yet hopeful smile. “Guess what, Victoria?”

She slid her gaze in the direction of her young friend. “What?”

“Reenie, Kellie, and Sophie are delighted with Miss Gracie.”

“Reenie, Kellie, and . . .” The words trailed from her mouth as the staccato sound of Leona’s heels in the hallway kicked off a mashing of lips and grinding of teeth across the room.

“The Brady children,” Beatrice said by way of whispered explanation before returning to the scout patches she’d chosen as her sewing project for the evening.

Georgina grabbed a pair of dress slacks from the table
to her left and positioned the hem of one leg across her lap. “No one look at her, no one acknowledge her,” the mayor hissed from between clenched teeth. “When she squirms, we let her have it with both guns blazing.”

In true domino style, one head after the other tilted downward to focus on whatever project was being tackled by each person—Luke’s scout uniform, Georgina’s dress slacks, Dixie’s pillow, Debbie’s latest apron, Tori’s candy pouches for the wedding guests, denim overalls for Melissa’s youngest, and something delicate and blue just getting started in Margaret Louise’s capable hands.

“Good evening, everyone,” Leona said as she breezed into the room with a Chanel handbag on one arm and a bow-laden bunny under the other. “I’m sorry I’m late but it simply couldn’t be helped. Paris had her fitting for her extra special bow for Victoria’s wedding and the fabric the girl had used was completely and utterly beneath my standards.

“I mean, truly, could you imagine my precious Paris wearing cotton for an event that clearly demands the finest silk?”

The only sound Tori detected in the room came from her own throat as she swallowed and then stole a peek in Leona’s direction.

Sure enough, she was rewarded for her attention with a glare that was subsequently shared with the top of each and every head in the room.

When the panoramic death glare was complete, Leona addressed her nose-twitching sidekick. “This is why I’ve spent so many hours discussing the finer points of manners with you, my precious angel. They make a person stand out in a world that’s growing ruder by the second.”

Margaret Louise laid her needle atop the pale blue fabric and, pinning her sister with a stare, addressed her son’s wife with her words. “It’s a shame how many folks think the do as I say, not as I do mentality works, ain’t it, Melissa?”

“It sure is,” Melissa said as she, too, found a holding place for her needle. “Especially when it almost never works.”

“Kids learn more from observation than they do words.” Debbie smoothed her hands across the apron taking shape across her thighs and then sighed. “So if a parent is nasty, the offspring tend to be nasty as well.”

“Poor Paris,” Georgina clucked. “If only someone had warned her off outside of Ella-May Vetter’s house all those years ago.”

Leona’s mouth gaped, then closed, then gaped again.

“Maybe it’s time to return Paris to the wild, where she’ll have a fighting chance to live out her days as a decent bunny,” Dixie said before dropping her pillow cover into her tote bag.

“You take that back, you old—”

Georgina rose to her feet, stopping Leona’s angered response with a splayed palm. “Don’t you dare stand in my home and insult Dixie.”

Stunned, Leona stepped back. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.”

Leona’s eyes widened on Georgina. “You’re going to reprimand
me
for insults?” Without waiting for a reply, Leona pointed at each and every sewing circle member in the room, except Beatrice. “Have you
heard
the way I’ve been treated since I arrived? The lack of greeting followed by the blatant disrespect toward me as Paris’s mother?”

“No. I heard it. Heard each and every word. But that was all true . . . and justified.” Georgina placed her hands at her hips and continued her stare down with Margaret Louise’s taken-aback twin sister. “You yourself said you spend your days teaching Paris about manners yet display none of your own.”

“
I—I
have no manners?” Leona sputtered before pointing a finger at each and every woman in the room and then setting Paris on the floor and matching Georgina’s stance. “How many thank-you notes have you gotten from any of the people in this room following a sewing circle meeting you’ve hosted? Wait. I’ll answer that for you.
None
.”

“We ain’t talkin’ ’bout those kinds of manners, Twin.”

Leona transferred her stare to Margaret Louise. “What other kind of manners are there?”

“The kind that have you bein’ nice.” Margaret Louise’s focus slipped to her feet as her normal lighthearted tone became one of hushed disgust. “The way Mama and Daddy always taught us to be.”

“What on earth are you babbling about, Margaret Louise?”

“We saw your show last night,” Debbie said, joining in the exchange from her spot beside Tori.

Leona’s scowl morphed into a pleased smile and a noteworthy blink. “It was even better than the first few, wasn’t it?” Flipping her free hand over and curling her fingers inward, Leona examined her latest manicure for any sign of chipping. When she saw no evidence of any flaws, she stroked the top of Paris’s head. “Stan, at the station, told me they’ve been getting calls all day from viewers who want more—more style hints, more color hints, more—”

One by one, they went around the semicircle completing Leona’s sentence with “meanness,” “nastiness,” and a few other appropriate fill-ins. Some, like Georgina and Dixie, seemed to take pleasure in as many synonyms as they could possibly come up with before Margaret Louise brought an end to it all with one simple question.

“How
could
you, Twin?”

“How could I what?” Leona asked, perplexed.

“How could you hurt Rose the way you did?”

“Hurt Rose?” Leona echoed. “How did
I
hurt Rose?”

Georgina opened her mouth to respond, but instead walked away.

Tori searched Leona’s face for any indication her friend was kidding, but there was none, the absence of such evidence only serving to replace her own anger with an all-encompassing sadness.

For Leona.

“Leona, I feel sorry for you, I really do.”

She heard the immediate gasps from Dixie and Georgina, and the delayed ones from Melissa and Debbie, but she opted not to let either derail her from the rest of what needed to be said. “Anyone looking at you from the outside knows you are a beautiful, stylish woman. Those of us who have had the opportunity to see beyond the surface know your inner beauty can be even more breathtaking when you let down that guard you have against the world. Yet despite those blessings, you still have this insatiable need to elevate yourself at the expense of others.”

When Leona said nothing, Tori continued, the memory of Rose’s face the previous night guiding the appropriate words through her lips. “When I moved here two-plus years ago, I was still in a tremendous amount of pain from
my great-grandmother’s passing. Getting to know all of you helped the healing begin by giving me a core group of friends whom I could both laugh and cry with. But Rose? She showed me the tenderness and quiet understanding that I always equated with my great-grandmother. And I know I’m not the only one she does that for.”

“You couldn’t be more right, Victoria,” Debbie said quietly.

Beatrice, who’d remained silent until that moment, looked up long enough to blink away a tear of her own. “She was my Miss Gracie right up until Miss Gracie arrived here yesterday morning.”

Tori nodded. “I know you two spar a lot. And I know she starts it every bit as much as you do, Leona. But I’ve also seen her look at you with the same love and tenderness she shows the rest of us . . . and you can’t deny that.”

Margaret Louise held up her hand to indicate it was her turn at bat. “Any love and tenderness Rose has shown you, Twin, has been misplaced. In fact, thinkin’ ’bout the way you’ve been included in this group ’cause of me makes me sick to my stomach.”

Leona’s left brow rose nearly to her hairline. “Oh?”

“This is a sewin’ circle, Twin.”

“And your point?”

“You don’t sew.”

“I bring color to an otherwise dull group simply by being here.”

“That may have been true on occasion, Twin. But more often than not, you’ve brought pain . . . to people I care ’bout.”

Leona’s eyes narrowed to near slits. “Are you saying you don’t want me in this sewing circle anymore?”

Margaret Louise’s chin rose into the air. “For starters, yes.”

Tori touched the grandmother of eight’s arm with a gentle, yet firm grip. “Margaret Louise, don’t . . .”

“Why, Victoria? Leona can’t blame the cow for the milk goin’ sour.
She
did this . . . not me.”

A steady vibrating sound somewhere off to their right brought Beatrice to her feet with a hushed apology and a much-needed break in the tension. “I’m sorry . . . I didn’t realize I’d left my phone on.”

Then, reaching into the tote bag Luke had decorated for her the previous Christmas, Beatrice retrieved the still-vibrating device from its depths, flipped it open, and held it to her ear. “Is everything okay with Luke, Mrs. Johnson?”

Tori stole a glance in Leona’s direction as the rest of the room waited for Beatrice to complete her call, the blatant sadness on the sixtysomething’s face poorly hidden behind exasperated anger.

“I’m at Mayor Hayes’s home for my sewing circle meeting . . . Yes, my friends are here with me now . . .”

Tori tried to take advantage of the unexpected temporary cease-fire between Leona and everyone else to come up with a way to make things right, but it was hard. She was every bit as angry at Leona as the rest of them.

Leona had hurt Rose, publicly humiliating their elderly friend in front of a town Rose had called home since birth. Sure, Leona could be forced to apologize to Rose for her cruelty, but the damage was already done.