One More Last Chance

by Cathleen Armstrong

  With every eye in the room on him, Chris stood taller than ever. And to Sarah’s ears, he sounded as cocky as ever. “No, these are a couple dinners I made up and froze.” He smiled a half smile. “Don’t worry. I taped the heating instructions to the covers.”

  He may have thought he was fooling everyone with that aw-shucks grin of his, but Sarah knew a patronizing attitude when she was confronted with one. Boy, did she. And she was done with it. “Oh, thanks.” Her voice and smile were so bright they were almost brittle. “I can’t even boil water without instructions.”

  Everyone laughed, and Chris’s smile faded a bit. “Okay, then, I’ll stick these in the freezer real quick.”

  Conversation bubbled around her again, and Rita continued her efforts to take charge, but Sarah felt a twinge of guilt as Chris disappeared into the kitchen. She tried to avoid meeting her grandmother’s eye but knew that wouldn’t do her any good in the long run. Elizabeth had definite ideas about the obligations of hospitality and would have plenty to say about the way Sarah had spoken to Chris in front of the other guests. She shifted uncomfortably. She hadn’t been very nice, and truth be told, boiling water was just about the only thing in the kitchen she didn’t need instructions for.

  Sarah tried to make her way toward Chris when he came back from the kitchen, but he stayed to the edge of the room, and as soon as she could extricate herself from one group of guests, another claimed her attention to ask about her plans for the fall or to talk about what she had done to the house they continued to call the Carter place.

  “I don’t care what anyone says, this is real cute.” Juanita took Sarah’s arm as she tried to slip past. “And you are surely not the first young person to set up housekeeping with a bunch of old stuff nobody else wanted. You wouldn’t believe some of the furniture Russ and I started out with. But don’t you worry. You’ll have your own before you know it.”

  “Thanks, Juanita.” Sarah saw no point in trying to explain midcentury modern to Juanita. She was getting tired of explaining, anyway. Let people think what they wanted. She was happy, and it was her house.

  She had almost made it across the room to at least speak to Chris when Rita clapped her hands to get everyone’s attention. “Okay, everything’s all set and we’re ready to eat. Pastor, would you ask the blessing?”

  The room fell silent, and Brother Parker’s slow drawl asked God’s blessing on Sarah, on the little house that would shelter her, and on the food prepared and offered by so many loving hands. Sarah’s eyes filled as that love settled around her like a warm embrace. She blinked back her tears and looked up as everyone joined in the amen. Chris was smiling at her, and for some reason, his smile didn’t look quite so cocky. In fact, he had rather a nice smile, and she found herself returning it.

  “That breeze feels nice. It got warm in here with all those people.” Elizabeth sat at the Formica and chrome kitchen table sipping iced tea and watching Sarah put away all her pantry goods. The cool night wind coming through the back door ruffled the new curtains and brought the sound of crickets.

  “It was amazing. I don’t think I’ll have to grocery shop till Christmas.” Sarah tried to squeeze another box of cornmeal into the already crowded cupboard. “It almost makes me want to learn to cook.”

  “Oh, here. You’ll need this.” Elizabeth took a pad of paper from her purse. “It’s the guest list. I couldn’t write down what they brought since it was all in bags and whatnot, but I think this is one time when a generic thank-you might be acceptable.”

  “Thank-you notes?” Sarah knew the answer before her grandmother spoke.

  “If you sit right down tomorrow afternoon and get them taken care of, they’ll be behind you before you know it.”

  Sarah picked up the pad and flipped a page. “There are an awful lot of names here.”

  “And each and every person on that list brought you a gift for your pantry and prepared a dish for the potluck. They spent a lot more time on you than you’ll spend writing them their note.”

  “Yes, but there’s only one of me and there’s . . .” Sarah sighed and gave up. She hated writing thank-you notes, but she knew from a lifetime of experience that it would be easier to do as her grandmother suggested: sit right down tomorrow after church and get them done. If she didn’t, she’d have to explain to Gran why she hadn’t written them yet every single time she saw her. And Gran lived just two doors down.

  “And since we’re talking about common courtesy . . .” Gran raised an eyebrow and Sarah braced herself. Here it comes. “What in this world were you thinking poking fun at Chris that way this evening? Everyone else knew you were just teasing him a little, but he’s new and doesn’t know you like we do. He probably thought he’d done something wrong.”

  Sarah bit her lip. Even with her scolding, Gran was giving her way too much credit. If Chris thought he had messed up, it was because that was exactly what she’d intended for him to think. And thinking about it now made her feel rotten. She cleared her throat.

  “Yeah, that was uncalled-for. I guess I should apologize.”

  “Well, it wouldn’t hurt to clear things up.”

  Sarah plopped into a chair across the table from Elizabeth. “But Gran, he’s just out of place here. Tonight there was a room full of faces I’ve known all my life—and Chris Reed. Everyone else is all normal sized, and there he is sticking out of the crowd like a Wack-A-Mole. We’ve all been going to the Dip ’n’ Dine for the daily specials forever, and he wants to come in and change every last thing.”

  “He does? Who’d you hear that from?”

  “Juanita. You heard her.”

  “Well, you might want to take that with a grain of salt—at least till those changes start happening. But here’s a tip: the quickest way to help someone stop being a stranger is to make him feel at home.”

  Sarah just looked at her grandmother. The day she won an argument with Gran was going be a red-letter day indeed. She shook her head and sighed. “Want some more iced tea?”

  Elizabeth got to her feet. “No, it’s late and I need to get on home. Church tomorrow.”

  “I’ll walk you.” Sarah stood up and carried her glass to the sink.

  “There’s no need. I know the way.”

  “But I want to. It’s a beautiful night, and I love thinking you’re only two doors down.”

  Sarah waited on the sidewalk as Elizabeth made her careful way down the porch steps, then tucked her hand in her grandmother’s elbow as they walked down the street. She opened the gate to Elizabeth’s yard, and Gran gave her hand a pat as she pulled her elbow away.

  “I can take it from here, honey. The porch light’s on and the sidewalk’s lit up. You go on home.”

  Sam, Elizabeth’s giant gray tabby, came bounding off the steps with a large moth in his mouth, and Sarah stood at the gate listening to her grandmother fuss at him all the way up her walk.

  “If you think you’re going to bring that thing in my house, you’ve got another think coming, buster. So just drop it now, or plan on staying outside with it.”

  As if Sam understood, he dropped his prey and trotted past Elizabeth through the front door. She turned and waved at Sarah, still waiting by the gate. “Good night, sweet girl. I’m going to love having you for my neighbor.”

  “Me too. Shall I pick you up for church in the morning?”

  In the glare of the porch light, Elizabeth looked tired, and for the first time Sarah noticed that her indomitable grandmother was starting to look frail. Her smile, though, beamed strong and warm, even from the porch. “I’d love that. See you tomorrow.”

  Sarah watched the screen door close behind Elizabeth and started back down the street. The night wind, the lullaby of her childhood, rustled the leaves of the cottonwood tree, and overhead the sky was nearly white with stars. Her cousin Ray was the one who knew the stars, and she could never look at a night sky without remembering him patiently pointing out the constellations when she was a little girl and telling her the
stories that accompanied them—stories of mighty hunters, of women too vain to put down their mirrors, of golden-fleeced rams. That was the Last Chance that lived in her heart, that called her home when her strength failed her, a Last Chance as unchanging as the rocky hills that sheltered it and the sky that arched overhead. But Last Chance had changed. Ray was married now and living with his new wife in Santa Fe. Gran was actually beginning to look old, even if no one dared admit it. And then, of course, there was the Dip ’n’ Dine. If anyone was the poster child for change in Last Chance, it was Chris Reed, and that alone was enough to make her want him gone. The insufferable arrogance and that smug know-it-all attitude just made it that much easier.

  Chris leaned back in the one chair Fayette had left him that he liked, an overstuffed rocker, and closed his eyes. Tomorrow was Sunday, and he thanked the Lord for a day of rest. He had come to Last Chance prepared for the physical work required to run a restaurant. He was certainly no stranger to hard work. It was the other stuff that caught him off guard and really exhausted him. Temperamental chefs, he knew, but everybody in this town seemed to want a say in the way he ran his restaurant. And they were all agreed: he was doing it wrong.

  That party tonight felt almost as tiring as the day at the Dip ’n’ Dine that preceded it. And now that he thought about it, the chicken breast with artichoke hearts and mushrooms probably wasn’t the best choice for the pounding if he wanted to stop being the outsider. Cooks like Carlos worked a man’s job and were to be respected. Chefs, on the other hand, were a different breed entirely. He should have just picked up a jar of mayonnaise.

  He may have made some progress in spite of himself, though, thanks to Brother Parker. The pastor had taken him under his wing and seemed to know just which groups of guests they should join. That Chris was a three-letter man in high school and had played on a couple championship teams just seemed to fall naturally into the conversation, and Chris noticed a change in people’s attitudes. He may not have been one of the guys just yet, but they didn’t act as if he had just landed from Mars either.

  Chris’s phone buzzed, and he smiled as he pulled it out of his pocket. He had told Olivia to call him at 9:00, and she was right on time.

  “Hey, Liverhead. How’s it going?”

  “Fine. And I told you not to call me Liverhead. Liver is disgusting.”

  “Okay, I’ll try to remember. But you’re wrong about liver. Liver is delectable.”

  “Yuck. And you are weird.”

  Chris laughed out loud. Olivia never failed to delight him. “So where’s your mom? Is she home?”

  “Yeah, right. What do you think?”

  “And?”

  “And she made me have a babysitter. Like I’m three years old or something.”

  “Good. Let me talk to her.”

  “She’s on her own phone right now. She’s been talking since Mom left.”

  “Well, tell her to put down her phone and talk to me. Right now.” Chris heard Olivia’s sigh of exasperation and a mumbled conversation he couldn’t quite understand before a voice came back on the line.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi. This is Olivia’s Uncle Chris. You’re the babysitter?”

  “Yeah.”

  Man, she didn’t sound any older than Olivia. “How old are you?”

  “Twelve.”

  “Twelve?”

  “Nearly.”

  Chris took a deep breath to calm down. It wasn’t the babysitter’s fault that she was only eleven, or that someone had hired her to babysit when she needed a babysitter herself. But if there were two babies looking after each other, they could at least do a good job of it. “Okay, look. I want you to hang up your phone. Do you hear me?”

  “Okay. I’m almost out of battery anyway.”

  “Then you and Olivia put in one of her movies to watch until her mom gets home. Got that?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And if there is any problem whatsoever, you call me. Understand?”

  “Okay.”

  “Now put Olivia back on, and hang up your phone!”

  Chris repeated his instructions to Olivia and listened to the good-night kiss she sent over the wire before she hung up. She was so little.

  He gritted his teeth to the grinding point as he jabbed at his sister’s number on his contact list. It went straight to voice mail, of course. If Olivia weren’t three hundred miles away in Scottsdale, he’d be sitting on the sofa waiting for Kaitlyn when she got home. He loved his sister, but Olivia deserved better.

  5

  There was something in the air Sunday mornings that made them different from the rest of the week. Sarah had no idea what it was or why this was so, but she had no doubt that if she were taken out of some sensory deprivation chamber, taken to the middle of Last Chance, and asked “What day is it?” she would know.

  “I saw Lurlene up at San Ramon this week at the beauty parlor.” Elizabeth, sitting next to Sarah in the front seat, broke the silence of the empty streets. “She said to say hi and to tell you how sorry she was to have to miss your party. She had a church music conference in El Paso from Wednesday through last night.”

  Sarah glanced across at her grandmother and grinned. “Still trying to recruit me for the choir, is she?”

  “Well, no.” Elizabeth kept her eyes forward. “I don’t believe that came up.”

  Sarah laughed. The Cooley family was known to be musically gifted, and it had taken her years to realize that the gift may have passed her by. But even if she was the last to know she couldn’t carry a tune, she never let it stop her. She sang loudly and with gusto, just never at anyone’s particular request.

  “See?” Sarah parked her car under the elms. “We got here in plenty of time.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say ‘plenty,’ but we did get here before the service started.”

  “Ah, Gran, come on. What would you have done if we’d gotten here fifteen minutes earlier? You just sat on your front porch instead of in your pew, that’s all.”

  “I just don’t like feeling rushed.” Elizabeth opened her door to get out. “And if a person says she’s coming by at a certain time, then that’s when I look for her to come by.”

  Sarah made sure she was looking the other way before she rolled her eyes. No need to make things worse. “Okay, Gran. I’m sorry I was late. I’ll be more careful from now on.”

  That appeared to be all Elizabeth was waiting for, and her smile returned. “Well, as you said, no harm done. We made it in time.”

  As Sarah followed her grandmother down the aisle, she began to wonder if she might have made a mistake in moving so close. She loved Gran more than anyone she could name, and the idea of being able to care for Gran the way she had cared for Sarah had given her deep satisfaction. But Gran didn’t seem clear on who was taking care of whom.

  The choir was already filing in as they took their seats in the third row on the left. Maybe they had cut it a little bit close. Lurlene, the worship leader, turned to the congregation and in moments the sounds of praise and worship filled the old wooden building.

  Even over the enthusiastic voices filling the church, one strong baritone stood out and Sarah had to turn to see who it belonged to. Chris, of course. Who else? What a show-off. Well, knowing Lurlene, it wouldn’t be long before he was up in the choir, and truth be told, Sarah wasn’t really looking forward to seeing him stand out up there every time she came to church.

  Sarah deliberately turned her attention to the rest of the service. Chris got on her last nerve just by breathing the same air she did, but that would not completely dominate her return to Last Chance. She would not let it. She owed him an apology, and he would get one. After this very service if she could manage it. Then she would go on about her business and let him go about his. She had friends in town, even if most of them were married now. She had Gran to look after. And in just a few weeks she’d have a classroom of second graders to teach. She had a full life. A deep sense of peace settled over her and re
mained until Lurlene signaled the final hymn. Chris’s voice filled the church again. How irritating could one man be?

  Brother Parker raised his hands and pronounced the benediction, but not even that restored the fleeting sense of peace Sarah had experienced earlier. She was still out of sorts when Rita caught up with her.

  “Hey, Miss Sarah. I hope we didn’t leave you with too much of a mess to clean up last night.”

  Sarah smiled. The house had been left immaculate. Rita saw to that. But that wasn’t what she was looking for, and Sarah knew it. “Everything was perfect, of course. I can’t believe you did that for me. Thank you so much!” She gave the wiry redhead a hug.

  “And were you really surprised? Did anyone give it away?”

  “No one said a single word.” Sarah was thankful for a question she could answer easily. “I was just blown away by everything. I still am.”

  “Well, we love you and we’re glad you’re home to stay, and we want you to know it. Did you get everything you need?”

  “Everything I need and then some.”

  “Then we did what we set out to do.” Rita beamed at her and then waved as she looked past Sarah at someone behind her. “Oops. There’s someone I need to catch before they leave.” She patted Sarah’s arm as she left. “Glad you had a good time last night, honey.”

  Sarah took a deep breath. Rita was a whirlwind. She blew in, then she blew out again, and Sarah always needed a moment to regroup when she did. Elizabeth had gone on, and Sarah could see her talking to Brother Parker at the door.

  As she passed the pew where he had been sitting, Chris Reed stepped out into the aisle and joined her. She lacked about three inches in reaching his shoulder. Good night, he was tall. Almost instinctively, she moved over to put space between them. She didn’t like the feeling of being overpowered.

  “Good morning.” He smiled down at her.

  “Hi.” Did he do that on purpose? Loom over people like that?

  “I wanted to thank you for the party last night. It was a lot of fun.”