Anything for Her

by Janice Kay Johnson

  The strange thing was he’d swear she didn’t give a whole lot of thought to her appearance. She wore little makeup, wasn’t constantly flipping the ends of her hair the way some women did, listened with gravity when he or Sean talked and didn’t jump to regain center stage.

  No, he decided—the graceful lines she formed with every lift of her hand, every step or tip of her head, they were just her. Beautiful.

  He relaxed. You’re paranoid, he told himself, and knew it was true. He had good reason, though. He’d grown up with a master—or should he say, a mistress?—of presenting a pretty facade to hide an uglier reality. His very own mother.

  He and Allie had time to uncover each other’s reality. There was no hurry.

  Braking in front of the house, he hid a grin from his son. No hurry, except for the getting-her-into-bed part. His body was getting damned impatient.

  Not getting out yet, he gazed at the garage with its peaked roof. “Yep, a hoop’ll look great up there,” he said. He held up one hand, palm first, and Sean slapped it in an exuberant high five.

  “Yeah!”

  In total accord, they hopped out and went around back to let down the tailgate and collect the groceries.

  Nolan hoped he wasn’t trying to buy his foster son’s affection, but he didn’t think so. Deep inside him was rooted the belief that parents should do their best to give their kids what they needed. Whatever else he could say about his own parents, they’d done that.

  He, Jed and Anna had worn the right clothes to fit in. They’d been given bikes and even cars—albeit beaters—when the time came for each. And, yes, Dad had hung a basketball hoop above the garage. Anna hadn’t been interested, but Jed and Nolan had enjoyed some good times with that hoop. He wanted the same for Sean.

  There was nothing wrong with that, was there?

  CHAPTER FOUR

  FABRIC RIPPLED AS Mrs. Sellers pressed her substantial way down an aisle. Three hundred pounds if she was an ounce, she emerged triumphant at the back of Allie’s store. There she stood blinking at a sight she clearly found startling.

  “A new student?” She looked suspicious.

  Allie’s mouth twitched at the expression on Nolan’s face. He sat kitty-corner from her at the table, where they’d been eating lunch. “I’m afraid I haven’t converted him yet. Mrs. Sellers, this is a friend of mine, Nolan Radek. Nolan, Honoria Sellers, one of my favorite customers.”

  He stood and extended a hand. “Pleased to meet you.”

  Mrs. Sellers’s now-slit-eyed gaze lowered to Nolan’s large, work-roughened hand. It was a long, grudging moment before she placed her own tiny, plump hand in his for the briefest of shakes.

  She then surveyed their partially eaten lunches, spread out on the table. “A friend, you say.”

  Allie heard the beginnings of a laugh next to her, ended when Nolan cleared his throat.

  “Yes,” she said hastily. “We met when Nolan brought me a marvelous late-nineteenth- or early-twentieth-century quilt top to hand-quilt.” She told Mrs. Sellers the story and rhapsodized about the workmanship in the piecing. Her customer’s bristles subsided as Allie talked, until her nod at Nolan was almost pleasant.

  “Good for you, helping that boy remember family. I can see why Allie likes you.” Mrs. Sellers’s gaze switched to Allie. “I’ve decided to buy the green leaf print for the backing of my quilt. You’ve got enough, don’t you? You haven’t sold any off that bolt since I was in Friday?”

  “I wouldn’t dare,” Allie said truthfully. “I hid it away in back. Let me go grab it. And, yes, it’s nearly a full bolt. There’s plenty.” She stood. “Excuse me,” she murmured to Nolan, who nodded.

  By the time she’d fetched the bolt from her small back room, taken it up front and cut the required yardage with her rotary cutter, several other women had arrived and spread out through the store. Allie rang up Mrs. Sellers’s purchase and went to the back to rescue Nolan, who was being grilled by a pair of elderly women.

  Instead of being greeted by an expression of desperation, she found him suppressing a grin. She felt a now-familiar squeezing sensation in her chest. For some strange reason, his smiles always took her by surprise, rearranging his face until plain was the last word that came to mind.

  “These ladies want to know what a rude, crude man is doing, loitering around here,” he explained, straight-faced.

  They both giggled. “Now, you know we never said any such thing!” the elder of the two sisters protested.

  He smiled at her. “I was encapsulating.”

  She visibly melted. So did Allie.

  “Nonsense,” Edith declared. “We’re delighted to see Allie has found a rude, crude man.” She patted his shoulder. “It’s past time. She’s such a lovely young woman.”

  Nolan’s very blue eyes met Allie’s. “Yes, she is.”

  Of course, he couldn’t say anything else, could he? But she blushed anyway. “We were only having lunch and chatting, Edith.” Well, it’s true, she insisted to herself, even though she knew it wasn’t true at all. They’d been...bonding. Exchanging important information. Flirting, too.

  Allie turned to Nolan. “It doesn’t look like I’m going to be able to finish lunch right now. I’m sorry.”

  “I noticed,” he said. “Your sandwich and cookie will keep. I’ll take the rest with me.”

  She liked the fact that she had yet to see him display even a hint of impatience or irritation. Her first impression of him as steady and calm had been so far confirmed. He took her work seriously, too.

  She felt another funny little cramp in her chest that this time she identified as fear. Ridiculous, but undeniable. He scared her a little, maybe because he seemed too perfect. Too tempting.

  She was glad to be distracted by the sisters, who pounced on several bolts of gorgeous batik fabric that lay on the large table a safe distance from the food and drinks Allie and Nolan had been sharing. She had just begun unpacking a new shipment, which, if their reaction was anything to go by, would sell well.

  Edith, who had confessed to being eighty-three, and her younger sister Margaret were longtime quilters who had learned from their mother who had learned from hers. They were a rarity now; interest in the art had languished in America by the 1940s. Most women these days had to turn to classes and books instead of their own female relatives.

  After Nolan had left, pecking Allie on the cheek under the curious and pleased stares of half a dozen women, she advised customers, neatly sliced fabric from bolts and rang up purchases while diverting questions about him by handing out newly printed schedules for upcoming classes. As she did all this, she pursued the thought the Brown sisters had stirred.

  Most women probably took up quilting because they could make something beautiful they couldn’t otherwise afford. But there was certainly another element to the astonishing revival of quilting in the past twenty years. This was one art that offered a way of reconnecting with the past.

  Most patterns had a history. Some had been popular with women who’d traveled the Oregon Trail. Others had their origins in regional folk art—the Pennsylvania Dutch, or the quilts made by slaves that hinted at their African heritage. Women had named their patterns to celebrate personal and familial triumphs and tragedies, but also political events and figures.

  Mostly, though, Allie suspected, in the back of her mind, every woman who quilted felt the ghostlike presence of her own ancestresses, who had sought to keep their families warm and make something beautiful, too. These days when families weren’t as close as they’d once been, women felt a need to tie themselves to the past and make something for the future.

  Allie could talk glibly on the subject at great length. She often did, in fact, to newly excited quilters or as an introduction to a class for beginners. She didn’t exempt herself from her generalizations. But she had also never asked herself why the draw had been so powerful for her from the moment she stepped into that fabric store and saw the blocks the women in that class were sewing.
>
  So...what about me?

  Well, duh, she scoffed at herself. She was the quintessential woman with no past. Of course she wanted one, even if she had to stitch it together herself.

  It might have helped if Mom and Dad hadn’t abandoned so much when they fled their former life. Some of that, Allie thought, had been necessity, but not all. Mom would say she wasn’t sentimental. She didn’t like “old” anything. Allie had furnished her apartment from antiques stores; her mother didn’t understand why she didn’t want nice new things.

  As for Dad...Allie didn’t know. She thought maybe he had grieved so much for what he was losing, he hadn’t let himself hold on to any reminders.

  Could that be true of Mom, too? Allie let herself wonder, and discovered she had no idea. Perturbed by how much she didn’t know about her parents, she was immersed enough in her brooding not to notice how seriously a middle-aged woman was studying the Feathered Star quilt Allie had displayed on the wall until she began to ask questions.

  Allie had completed it almost a year ago, and had begun to think it might not sell. The colors were darker than she usually chose—earthy and comforting, she thought, but she’d overheard a woman murmur to a friend that it was gloomy.

  “I don’t know how you can put so much work into a quilt and then sell it,” said this woman, who’d introduced herself as Helen Richards. “It must feel like giving up your newborn baby for adoption. But if you’re really willing, I want it.”

  The Feathered Star quilt was queen-sized and elaborately hand-quilted. The price paid, with no quibbling, was exceedingly generous.

  Once Helen Richards happily left with her purchase, Allie found herself in her customary state after selling one of her quilts—torn between pleasure because her creation had found the right home, delight at the profit and grief at losing another piece of herself. She wondered if Nolan felt the same when he sold a sculpture.

  When Allie finally waved goodbye to her last customer of the day and closed out the cash register, her mood was strange. Yet there was really no reason to feel such a way.

  She’d been exceptionally busy today, and nearly everyone had spent money. With the sale of the quilt added in, she had no doubt she would find the receipts would be her new record. And she’d been able to see Nolan, even if their visit had been cut short. Lately she’d felt a little low in the morning of any day when she knew she wouldn’t see him.

  Maybe that was why she felt so unsettled.

  We’re dating. We’re having fun. I think I’d like to make love with him.

  That was all perfectly normal. So why did she sometimes wonder if the changes he was bringing to her life might not end up doing some damage?

  I’m a mess, she admitted to herself, and identified part of her fear: Nolan wanted to know her, and how did she dare let him guess how shallow that self was?

  * * *

  “HAVE I EVER had a pet?” Dumb question to induce panic, but it had. It was one of those stupid things that made her run a mental check. Taboo, or not taboo? Answer: not. “Um, yes. Not for a long time, though. Why?”

  Naturally, it was Nolan who had asked in one of the phone calls she’d begun to live for. They usually came around bedtime. Sometimes they talked for an hour, sometimes only long enough to exchange brief snippets about their days, to say without words, I was thinking about you. He always kept his voice quiet, and she suspected he waited until Sean had disappeared into his bedroom to call. She hadn’t mentioned these conversations to her mother, either.

  “I want to get Sean a dog,” Nolan said, sounding pleased with himself. “I thought we’d visit shelters this weekend.”

  “Did he ask for a dog?”

  “No, but I’ve seen him stop to pet them. He and his grandmother had some kind of terrier mix. I don’t know what happened to it. I hope it died before she did.”

  Allie knew exactly what he meant. On top of everything else, he’d feel guilty if the poor, bewildered dog had been taken to a shelter in the wake of Sean’s grandma’s death.

  “You didn’t ask?”

  “The dog was mixed in with other topics. I try to let him tell me the hard things when he’s ready.”

  She wondered if he sensed how deep her empathy for his foster son ran. She should hope not, because there was no way he’d understand it. What did a twenty-eight-year-old businesswoman have in common with any fourteen-year-old boy, never mind one with Sean’s background?

  Nothing, that’s what.

  Too much.

  “I thought maybe you’d like to come,” Nolan said. “You can advise us.”

  How a voice so low and rumbly could also be coaxing, she couldn’t have said. But she found herself reluctantly smiling.

  “Out of my great store of knowledge? Didn’t you ever have a dog?”

  “My mother didn’t like them. She always had a Persian cat. You notice I said she. These were not kid-friendly pets. They made great pillows, but that’s about all you could say for ʼem. Dumb as a box of rocks—and I know my rocks.” Amusement suffused that voice now. “Softer, though. I remember one that I was never sure could actually walk. I swear Mom would carry that damn cat to the litter box and then back again to its throne.”

  Curled up in her easy chair, Allie laughed at the image.

  “Not exactly a growing boy’s dream pet.”

  “A dog was bound to chase the cat, Mom insisted. I thought some exercise would do the cat good.” Plainly, he liked making her laugh. He wasn’t being entirely serious now. “That was assuming the dog ever noticed that the fluffy peach-colored mound at the end of the sofa was alive.”

  “So why didn’t you get a dog the minute you left home?”

  He was quiet for a minute. “Too busy, I guess. Ironically, I do have cats.”

  “No!” she gasped in mock surprise.

  “Make fun of me, will you.” There was the amusement again. “They showed up on my property about two years ago, a couple of scrawny half grown, half wild mongrels. Can a cat be a mongrel? Anyway, they’re only distant relations to my mother’s cats. I figured somebody dumped them. So I started putting food out, trapped ’em before the female threw a litter of kittens. They’re still mostly outdoor cats. They let me pet them, but haven’t decided whether to trust Sean yet.”

  “A dog might chase them,” she pointed out.

  Silence. “Okay, is it bad if I admit that hadn’t occurred to me?”

  “Very bad,” she said solemnly, suppressing this laugh.

  “We can be sure we get a dog that’s lived with cats before. Or a puppy.”

  Realizing how much she wanted to be with Sean and Nolan when they picked out the dog, she had to ask. “Do you really want me to come? This sounds like something the two of you should do together, without an outsider along.”

  “You don’t feel like an outsider,” he said, and his voice had deepened further.

  She had to press the heel of her hand to her breastbone to quell the sharp pang.

  “I... Thank you.” Allie closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Why don’t you ask Sean? My feelings won’t be hurt if he’d rather go without me. Please don’t press him.”

  “Fair enough,” Nolan said after a minute. “I thought you’d enjoy it.”

  “I would,” she admitted. “But not if I ruin the whole thing for Sean. Anyway, I really can’t afford to take Saturday off.”

  “I checked. They’re open on Sundays.”

  He’d checked because he wanted her to go with him. He was hinting at a whole lot more than a dating relationship, which shouldn’t have stunned her but did.

  “Let me know,” she said, working hard at sounding cheerful and offhanded. Nope, doesn’t matter to me either way. She ended the call as soon as she could without having him notice anything was wrong.

  It’s not wrong. It’s good. It’s great. I like him.

  Then why this flutter of alarm?

  I don’t know how to do this.

  And that, she realized, was the tr
uth.

  If she’d ever known how to be intimate with other people, she’d forgotten. She hadn’t had a really close friend since middle school. Before. Being so terrified of what she might inadvertently say, she didn’t dare say anything at all—which was an excellent way of appearing unfriendly to other teenagers. Or pathologically shy. Or maybe of making a person pathologically shy, eventually.

  Am I?

  Yes and no. Not in the quilt shop, but when the possibility of something closer arose...maybe. After all, she still had to think every time before she opened her mouth.

  The phone rang again shortly after Nolan and she said good-night, and she snatched it up, noting belatedly that the caller was her mother, not Nolan calling right back to say, Sean would love to have you come with us.

  Yeah, right.

  “Hi, Mom. This is late for you to be calling.”

  “I’m not quite as stodgy as you think I am,” her mother said with a laugh. “You start your day earlier than I do.”

  “That’s true. I was actually about to head to bed. Does that make me stodgy?”

  Mom laughed. “Really all I wanted was to line you up for a shopping expedition on Sunday. I was contemplating my winter wardrobe, and I decided it needs some major refurbishment.”

  Allie hesitated. “I...think I have plans for Sunday already. I’m sorry.”

  There was a tiny pause. “You think?”

  “We haven’t finalized them yet, but I did agree.”

  More silence. “This is the man you’re seeing?”

  Allie stiffened at her mother’s tone. Her fingers tightened on the phone. “Nolan. Yes.”

  “Well. I admit I’m disappointed. Since Sunday is the only day we can spend together.”

  Which was true enough—Mom worked the standard Monday through Friday, while Allie closed her shop on Sundays and Mondays.

  “Depending on where you want to go, we could make it an evening,” she offered, even as she regretted the lost time on Sean’s quilt.