Authors: Elizabeth Lynn Casey
The fact that it belonged to one of the sweetest members of the Sweet Briar Ladies Society Sewing Circle was simply the icing on the cake. Icing Tori got to taste once every eight or nine weeks.
“I hear the library took a hit,” Debbie said as she pulled Tori in for a hug. “Did we lose a lot of books?”
Inhaling the mixture of lilacs, flour, and vanilla that clung to the bakery owner’s skin, Tori nodded. “We lost about ten percent of our collection. But it could have been a lot worse.”
Debbie stepped back, studied her from head to toe. “And the rugs? The tables? The chairs?”
“They’re all salvageable for the most part. The rugs will dry and the furniture is fine. In fact, if the windows had been in better shape, we wouldn’t have suffered damage at all.”
With a quick glance around the corner, the woman lowered her voice, her pale blue eyes rounding as she continued. “And the children’s room? Is it—is it okay?”
She couldn’t help but smile. The children’s room, which was a project that had been near and dear to her heart from the moment she arrived in Sweet Briar, had become a source of pride for the town’s most loyal patrons as well. Its story-filled walls, jam-packed shelves, and costume trunk had made it a destination of choice for parents and youngsters alike. “Miraculously, it was untouched. No water damage whatsoever.”
Debbie released a sigh of relief. “Boy, will Suzanna and Jackson be happy to hear that. They were in an absolute panic when Colby told them the library had been affected by the storm.” Tucking her arm inside Tori’s, Debbie led the way down the wood-planked hallway that linked the entryway with the rest of the house. “You should have seen the way Jackson’s lip quivered at the notion he might not be able to wear the Peter Pan costume while acting out his fight with Captain Hook. It nearly tugged my heart right out of my body, Victoria.”
A swell of voices greeted them as they approached the hearth room on the backside of the house, the familiar sound a welcoming respite from a long and trying day. Turning to Debbie, Tori stopped just short of their final destination. “I have to admit, I was surprised when Margaret Louise told me we were still on for tonight. With the storm and the cleanup, it seems as if sewing would be the last thing on anyone’s mind.”
“Sewing is therapeutic, you know that.”
“But Rose . . . shouldn’t we be coming together to help her instead? We can sew and gossip another time.”
“We don’t gossip, Victoria. We
visit
.”
“And
talk
.”
“And talk,” Debbie confirmed as she pushed a hand through her dirty blonde hair.
“About other people.”
Biting back the smile they both knew was there, Debbie brought her eyebrows together in quizzical fashion. “Do we do that?”
Tori laughed, the sound echoing her arrival to the members of the circle assembled just out of view.
“Now go on in. I’ll join you in just a second—after I make sure Colby has things under control with the kids.”
“You
know
he does, Debbie. That husband of yours is nothing if not the absolute epitome of a Renaissance man.”
A reddish hue crept across her friend’s face as her ever-present smile grew still wider. “You’re right.”
“I know.” Squeezing Debbie’s hand, Tori turned toward the room that housed her fellow sewing comrades, a group of ladies who had opened their hearts and homes to her over the past six months. “Well, I’ll head inside now and—”
“But that’s not
all
I know,” Debbie teased as she, too, began walking, her path taking her toward the front door and the knock that signaled the arrival of yet another circle member.
Tori stopped midstep. “What are you talking about?”
“Rose needs the therapy as much as anyone else.”
“Rose needs—” She stopped, Debbie’s words finally registering. “You mean she’s here?”
“She’s here.”
“Why didn’t you say so?”
“You didn’t ask.”
She considered her friend’s words. “I didn’t ask just now, either . . .”
“True. But I couldn’t handle the worry on your face any longer.”
Transparency had always been her downfall. “That obvious, huh?”
“That
endearing
.” Debbie shooed her hands at Tori. “Now get in there before Dixie starts stamping her feet at my door, will you?”
Hoisting the strap of her tote bag higher on her shoulder, Tori grinned. “Feet stamping is better than finger wagging.”
“Keep talking, Victoria, and I’ll get both.”
As Debbie headed toward the front door, Tori turned back to the hearth room, the promise of seeing Rose with her own two eyes propelling her forward. It was hard enough to imagine anyone picking through storm damage without a mate by his or her side. The thought of an elderly woman going it alone in less than perfect health was even worse.
“Oh, Victoria, we’re so glad to see you.” Georgina Hayes said by way of a greeting from her spot on the armchair to the left of the fireplace. “I had hoped to get over to the library today to check on things but I got sidetracked by fires that seemed to be igniting—one after the other—all over town.”
Stopping just inside the doorway, Tori nodded at the town’s top elected official, a tall, dark-haired woman with a no-nonsense set to her jaw. Despite the fact that the position was virtually a birthright thanks to her kinship with her mayoral predecessors, Georgina took her role seriously, looking after all things Sweet Briar.
“Compared to what I’ve been hearing, the library fared relatively well compared to other—”
“Fires? Did you say, fires?” Beatrice Tharrington looked up from the khaki-colored skirt she was sewing, her eyes wide. “Luke didn’t hear a single fire engine all day. He busied himself with blocks all afternoon, crafting skyscrapers and some such things like that. Had he heard the hint of a fire engine, he would have abandoned building in favor of begging to go outside and watch. He’s such an adventurous little bloke.”
The youngest in the room, Beatrice often faded into the background among the more talkative members of the circle, her rare bursts of conversation—laden with a British accent in a roomful of southerners—tending to bring an awkward hush to the room and a subsequent flush to the nanny’s face.
“I—I’m sorry. I shouldn’t blather on like that.”
“And why not? Blatherin’ is good for the soul.” Margaret Louise shot her hand into the air and motioned Tori toward the empty sofa cushion to her right as she continued to encourage Beatrice out of her cocoon. “Just ask Georgina.”
“Ask
me
? Ask
me
? Isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black?” Georgina huffed as she swiveled her body to the side and reached into the sewing box she’d propped beside her chair. “I don’t blather. I
explain
. I
encourage
. And I do my best to
rally
.”
“Rally what?” Leona Elkin lowered her latest travel magazine to her lap and peered at Georgina over the top of her glasses.
“My constituents.” Turning back to Beatrice, Georgina took charge of the conversation once again. “When I mentioned fires, I meant in a figurative way, my dear. Every time my office would address a problem—such as a power outage or a downed tree—another would pop up in its place. Happened time after time. But ’round about noon, folks who weren’t affected by Roger started showing up . . . asking how they could help those who weren’t so lucky.”
“Noon, you say?”
Tori turned her head to the right, smiled at the sight of Rose bent over the hem of a blouse in a lamplit corner. “Rose! I’ve been so worried about—”
“Noon,” Georgina confirmed, cutting Tori off midsentence. “It sure does a mayor good to see her residents chipping in and helping each other through difficult times.”
“Kenny showed up long before noon. Crack of dawn brought him to my door,” Rose said proudly, her slipper-clad foot setting her chair to a gentle rock.
“Kenny?” Beatrice sputtered.
Rose’s eyes narrowed. “Yes . . .”
The nanny sat up tall, her half-sewn skirt slipping to the floor in favor of a white-knuckle hold on both armrests of her chair. “K-Kenny? Kenny is
here
? In Sweet Briar?”
“Of course,” Rose snapped. “It’s where he’s been since the day he was born.”
Beatrice’s face drained of all color. “He was born in Texas!”
Rose’s eyes rolled skyward as a chorus of groans broke loose around the room. “Not
that
Kenny, Beatrice. Kenny
Murdock
.”
Beatrice’s shoulders slumped. “Oh.”
Confused, Tori bypassed Margaret Louise’s offer and sank into the closest chair she could find—one that put her directly next to her personal Sweet Briar encyclopedia. Lowering her voice to a barely discernable level, she put words to the question begging to be asked. “Um, Leona? What did I just miss?”
“
Miss
, dear?”
“With Beatrice . . .”
Flipping to the next page in her magazine, Margaret Louise’s twin sister
tsked
softly under her breath before providing the answer Tori sought. “Beatrice is obsessed with Kenny Rogers.”
She snorted back a laugh. “Kenny Rogers? You can’t be serious.”
Leona’s gaze traveled across the room and stopped on Beatrice. “I can’t?”
Tori followed suit, studying the disappointed woman with a new set of eyes. “Well, how obsessed is obsessed?”
“Have you heard her phone ring?”
She shook her head.
“‘Islands in the Stream.’”
“Okay, but lots of people use songs as ringtones. It’s really not that unusual, Leona.”
“Do lots of people carry a picture of the person who
sings
their ringtone?”
Tori swallowed. “I don’t know for sure but I imagine some do . . . if they really like that particular artist.”
“Do they also insert their own face into the picture to make it look as if they’ve spent time together?”
“Insert . . .” Lowering her voice still further, she lifted her palms from her lap and held them outward. “Look, if I’ve learned anything over the past six months or so it’s the importance of not judging people. So, she likes Kenny Rogers . . . big deal.”
“If you say so, dear.” Leona shifted her magazine to the end table beside her seat, then set to work plucking imaginary lint from her tweed skirt with perfectly manicured hands. “But as you well know, obsessions of that nature can get out of hand.”
Leona was right. They could. And they did. But she also knew that obsessions of the dangerous variety weren’t commonplace in a town the size of Sweet Briar, South Carolina. Surely the recent obsession-based abduction of Colby Calhoun—Debbie’s author husband—had met the geographical quota for the next century or ten . . .
“What are you working on this evening, Victoria?” Rose’s voice, frail and husky, broke through her wool-gathering, snapping her back to the here and now.
Setting her tote on the cushion between herself and Leona, Tori pulled a stack of multicolored fleece pieces from the bag. “I’m working on scarves for a women’s shelter I used to volunteer at back in Chicago. Now that I’m living here, I figured this was a way I could contribute from a distance.”
“How are you making them?” Margaret Louise bellowed across the room, her eyes narrowed to near slits as she bobbed her head in such a way as to provide the best view of Tori’s project.
“Well, I’ll stack these four long rectangles together in alternating colors—this one will be blue, white, blue, white. I’ll sew a straight seam right down the middle,” Tori explained as she held the pile up for all to see. “Then, it’s just a matter of cutting from the outer sides toward the center seam to create a boa type effect.”
“That’ll be real pretty,” Debbie said as she returned to the room and motioned the last of the circle members to the empty space beside Margaret Louise.
“I hope so,” Tori said. “Some of these women have next to nothing. I figured this was something I could do . . . something that can make them feel pretty when they step outside on a cold winter’s day.”
Needles stilled and machines quieted as the circle members stopped to listen to Tori’s description, the allure of a new sewing project reaching each of them in a way the others could understand.
“I got the idea from Melissa, actually.” Tori laid the fabric across her thighs and looked around the room before focusing on Margaret Louise. “Is Melissa coming?”
The woman shook her head. “Not tonight. Lulu wasn’t feelin’ well after school today. I offered to whip up some of Mee-Maw’s famous feel-better-brownies and look after the young-un so Melissa could get out, but she declined.”
“I don’t know how that one keeps from going stir-crazy with seven kids. I’d be in a padded room.” Leona shook her head as she swept her hand across her lint-free skirt.
“If you had
one
you’d be in a padded room.” Margaret Louise’s laugh, hearty and loud, brought a smile to everyone’s lips. “That’s why you have no offspring, Twin.”
Leona tapped her chin with a bejeweled finger. “I have Paris.”
“Garden-variety bunnies don’t count,” snapped Rose.
“Paris is anything but garden-variety,” Leona argued. “He’s intelligent . . . smart . . . attractive . . .”
Rose rolled her eyes amid the pockets of laughter that sprang up around the room. “He’s a
bunny
, Leona.”
“He’s more than that, Rose.”
“Oh good heavens,” the elderly woman grumbled in disgust.
“How many scarves do you plan on making, Victoria?” Beatrice asked, her quiet voice serving as a cease-fire in a war that was as much about personality differences as the topic at hand.
“As many as I can make. The shelter has beds for nearly twenty women on a nightly basis but they also do an out-reach program that reaches another thirty to forty.”
“You could make hats, too. Something that matches the scarf and keeps their head warm at the same time,” Georgina suggested as she shifted in her seat. “Maybe add some sort of decoration or fringe.”
Tori smiled, her own initial excitement for the project multiplying in the wake of Debbie and Georgina’s enthusiasm. “I hadn’t thought of that, but you’re right.”