The Red Hat Society's Queens of Woodlawn Avenue

by Regina Hale Sutherland

  “You open the bidding,” Grace said, nodding at me.

  My fingers trembled a little as I scooped up my hand, fanned it out, and began to count my high card points. Three. Seven. Eleven. Fifteen. Nineteen. Twenty-three. It was all I could do not to hyperventilate. Balanced distribution. An obnoxiously large number of high card points. It was the hand of a lifetime, and one for which they’d been preparing me for a year.

  “Two clubs,” I said calmly without inflection, struggling to keep a straight face while my pulse raced through my veins. It was an opening bid that meant I’d hit the jackpot.

  And I had, thanks to the Queens of Woodlawn Avenue.

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  Domestic Goddess

  AVAILABLE IN DECEMBER 2006

  “I hate the word housewife; I don’t like the word home-maker either. I want to he called Domestic Goddess.”

  —Roseanne

  Feeling like the rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, Millie Truman pulled her gray Taurus into the driveway of her condo and pushed impatiently on her garage door opener. Late. She was running late. But like the rabbit, at least she looked good. She spared a quick glance into her rearview mirror, admiring the new do. Cinnamon. Since she loved the flavor so much, she’d taken a chance on the color.

  And it had paid off. Of course, now she would have to hear her friends, Theresa and Kim, say, “I told you so.” They’d been bugging her for a while to stop being so old-fashioned and get a dye-job. She had to admit they were right; she looked much younger than fifty-five.

  Except…had the beautician missed a gray hair? She reached up for the offensive strand, but it dissolved between her fingers like gossamer. A cob web.

  From cleaning Mitchell’s apartment. It figured. Her youngest son was responsible for all the gray hair she’d just gotten rid of, too.

  She’d stopped at his place after the beauty parlor, expecting to only have to do a quick dusting and vacuuming. But she found his loft apartment totally trashed, as her granddaughter would say, like the frat houses he and his brother had lived in during college. The big mess had probably not been the result of a party, though. It was just a consequence of his fast-paced lifestyle.

  He’d done a drive-by while she was there, rushing in to pack a suitcase for a business trip for the automotive firm where he worked. Except she had wound up packing the suitcase, after finding it shoved under his bed.

  She didn’t want to think about what else she’d found under there. She brushed her hand through her cinnamon curls again, dislodging another cobweb and shuddering.

  What had happened to his girlfriend Heather, who’d actually made an attempt to keep the apartment neat? Millie had asked, but Mitchell had just grinned and shrugged and made some smart remark about Suzy Homemaker types liking boring nine-to-five men like his brother, Steven, the insurance agent.

  Suzy Homemaker, indeed, Millie sniffed. She preferred the term her fellow Red Hatters used, Domestic Goddess. Millie had reigned as one throughout thirty-one years of marriage, and she’d loved it. Like she’d told her dear husband, it was her job.

  But Bruce died five years ago, and she should have been able to retire her tiara and spend less time cooking and cleaning and more time with her friends. But she’d still had Pop to take care of; he lived with her then…and Mitchell, the confirmed bachelor. At least she hadn’t had to worry about Steven, who was happily married with a beautiful daughter. Then. She was a little worried about their marriage now.

  But she didn’t have time for that either. She had to clean up, bake her snack contribution for Movie Night at the community center, and meet Kim, a neighbor and fellow Red Hatter, for dinner.

  Resisting the urge to check for more cobwebs, she tore her gaze from the mirror and noted that the door was up. But there was no room for her car in the one-stall garage of her end unit brick condo. Another car was already backed into it with its trunk lid lifted. She pressed the brake, stopping an inch shy of its front bumper.

  “What in the world…”

  A robber. That should have been her first thought. And she should have been fumbling in her purse for her cell phone to call 911 while backing away. But the black car looked vaguely familiar, or as familiar as the grill of a vehicle can look. And she’d feel pretty silly if she called the police on someone she knew, especially if it was, as she suspected, her oldest son.

  Of the few who had a key to her place, Mitchell was probably on a plane by now. And Pop was in Arizona with his new wife. Or at least he had been when they’d talked a few nights ago. Process of elimination left Steven. But like Mitchell had just pointed out, he worked nine to five. And it was only three o’clock.

  Hand trembling slightly, she shifted into park but left her car running as she stepped out. For a quick getaway? From her own house?

  Maybe the cinnamon dye had leaked into her brain. Or she spent too much time with Kim. Kim was the daughter of a retired police chief; she suspected everyone of something. The scary part was that she was occasionally right.

  Remembering that, Millie opened the back door of the Taurus and reached for something to use as a weapon. Her fingers closed over the handle of the vacuum, but the muscles in her shoulder protested as she started to lift it out.

  She couldn’t blame Mitchell for her cramped muscles though; those were courtesy of the aerobics class Kim had started at the condo community center. Millie couldn’t very well not attend since it had been her idea for Kim to start the classes after school budget cuts cost her a Phys Ed teaching position. But push-ups? Really? Kim had a tendency to treat her new students like her old ones, teenagers.

  Millie released the vacuum handle and reached for something else, pulling out a feather duster. Not very lethal. But with all the dust left on it from Mitchell’s place, it might make a burglar sneeze hard enough for Millie to escape…if the need arose.

  She drew in a quick, fortifying breath, then walked into the garage. The car parked in it was the same make and model Steven drove. While the trunk was open, the contents inside hadn’t been taken from her house. She didn’t own a laptop or a set of golf clubs. So unless her robber had a Robin Hood complex, she was safe.

  And if he did…she preferred jewelry to golf clubs and computers. Rings and necklaces. Tiaras she could do without.

  The door between the house and the garage creaked as it slowly opened. Millie ducked behind it and lifted the duster, hoping that her exercise-weary joints didn’t creak as loudly as the door hinges. Her heart beat hard and fast against her ribs as a dark shadow emerged from the house.

  Broad shoulders, thinning dark hair, expanding belly…he was not exactly her image of a cat burglar. He was her son. Steven caught sight of her and gasped, “Mom!”

  Millie’s heart rate subsided, and she breathed a sigh of relief.

  Steven sneezed and gestured toward her weapon. “What the heck are you doing? Dusting the garage? You take this neatness thing a little too far.”

  “Steven?” It wasn’t like she didn’t recognize him; what she questioned was what he was doing at her house, at three o’clock.

  “Did you have a golf outing?” she asked, waving the duster at his clubs in the trunk. “It’s a great day for one.”

  Not that she had spent much time in the gorgeous, warm weather, which was unusual for such an early spring day in Michigan.

  Steven didn’t answer her, brushing a slightly shaking hand over his thinning hair instead. He had his father’s hair, or premature lack thereof, as his younger brother relentlessly teased him. Maybe it was the hair loss, or his expanding waistline, but he always looked older than his almost thirty-six years. Today he looked even older, his face set in lines far too grim for a man his age.

  “Bad game?” she te
ased, though he wasn’t dressed for golf—he was wearing suit pants and a dress shirt. The jacket lay across the front seat of his car and his tie hung from the rearview mirror. He’d lost something all right, but it wasn’t a golf game.

  Her heart started beating fast again. Obviously she’d been right to worry about him.

  “Mom—”

  “Steven, what’s going on? You’re here in the afternoon, with the garage door down—”

  “I shut the garage door because of your nosy neighbors. I already had a run-in with that crazy lady—”

  “Crazy lady?”

  “The neighbor who’s packing.”

  He probably didn’t mean luggage or a can of mace either. Besides being Hilltop Condominium’s aerobic instructor, Kim was the unofficial neighborhood watch captain. Nothing and nobody got past her. “That’s Kim.”

  “Dirty Harriet.”

  “Actually, Harry’s the gun,” she said, and if Kim had brought it out, she’d really been concerned. But since she’d left, she must have ruled Steven out as a burglar.

  “She named her gun?”

  Millie smiled. You really had to know Kim for a while before you realized she wasn’t crazy. Just a little intense. “It’s not real.”

  “Could have fooled me,” he said, brushing that hand through his hair again. It was shaking even more.

  But Millie didn’t believe it was his run-in with Kim that had him so upset. “It’s an air gun. Kind of like the BB guns you and Mitchell had growing up.”

  That they’d used to shoot each other before claiming the resulting welts on their skin were chicken pox. Millie might have fallen for it, too, had they not both had the chicken pox.

  “Those can really hurt,” Steven said. He would know.

  “She didn’t use Harry on you?” Millie asked, horrified. Because he looked like he was hurt. His brown eyes were dark and wounded, his mouth tight and devoid of his usual easy smile.

  “No,” he assured her, “but I could have done without meeting him today.”

  Somehow she knew he was talking about more than the uncomfortable sensation of looking down a gun barrel. As she looked again to his partially unpacked trunk, she had that uncomfortable sensation herself.

  He shrugged, his broad shoulders bobbing slowly up and down as if they carried a burden too heavy for him to bear. His gaze kept sliding away from hers. He couldn’t meet her eyes, like when he’d been a little boy and had, on the rare occasion, done something naughty. Unlike his younger brother, he’d never wanted her disapproval or disappointment.

  “It’s not a big deal,” he said. “It’s good to know someone’s looking out for you.”

  “Hey, I look out for me!” She brandished the dark pink duster, leaving a trail of cobwebs across the garage floor that she’d just swept that morning. Now she would have to dust it.…

  One half of Steven’s mouth lifted in a half-hearted smile. “So now you’re Dirty Harriet.”

  “I do feel pretty dirty,” she admitted, letting him stall for time.

  Unlike Mitchell, Steven had always confessed his misdeeds to her. She’d only had to wait a little while until his conscience got the better of him and he spilled all. He’d been the one to tell her what had really caused the welts on his and Mitchell’s skin. BB’s.

  “I just finished cleaning your brother’s apartment,” she explained her dirtiness, hoping there were no more cobwebs in her hair.

  Steven’s face twisted into a disgusted grimace. “I don’t know how he lives like that.”

  Millie knew that if it weren’t for Steven’s wife, Audrey, his house would look the same way. “I love it when you drop by, but I’m surprised—”

  “It’s so early,” he finished for her, his voice thick with emotion, “and that I’ve brought luggage.”

  She hated to ask, afraid of what he might answer, so she just nodded.

  “Audrey made me come home for lunch today. I thought—” He sighed, a ragged gust of air full of resignation. “It doesn’t matter what I thought. I came home to my packed bags. She threw me out.”

  “Audrey threw you out?” Millie couldn’t digest it; like the half-eaten pieces of pizza left in the boxes on Mitchell’s coffee table, the thought made her queasy.

  Steven and Audrey had met in college. While he’d finished, she’d dropped out to marry him. They’d been together seventeen years, married almost fifteen; they had Brigitte, who was just starting her teen years.

  “No…”

  He nodded, his hazel eyes filling with tears. “I don’t understand it, Mom,” he said, blinking furiously before lifting a box from his trunk and heading into the house with it. In the foyer, at the top of the stairs, which led to Pop’s old apartment in the walk-out basement, he turned back and said, “And really I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “But you and Audrey…you need to talk,” she protested. “The last thing you should do is move out.”

  “It’s what she wants, Mom. She doesn’t want me around anymore.”

  Panic pressed heavily against Millie’s heart, stealing her breath away more than any of Kim’s outrageous exercises ever did. Steven, Audrey and Brigitte were the perfect family. Well, maybe not perfect. They had their arguments, but that was normal.

  Except that things hadn’t seemed normal for them lately. They’d been strained. But marriage was like a rubber band; it could get stretched to the limits but snap back tightly, not even showing any traces of how far it’d been stretched. Unless…it broke. The divorce rate proved how many times that happened.

  “Steven,” she said, reaching for his arm as he started down the stairs. “You’re not giving up, not like this, not after so many years together.”

  He sighed and bowed his head, refusing to turn toward her. “Mom, it’s not that simple anymore.”

  “Marriage isn’t.” Not that she could complain about hers. All her memories of Bruce were happy ones; at least the ones she’d kept alive were. Maybe there’d been others, but if so they were few and far between, and not worth remembering.

  “But it shouldn’t be this difficult, either,” Steven said, running that slightly shaking hand over his hair.

  “What’s difficult?” Millie asked, desperately wanting to understand. Despite noticing the strain, she hadn’t wanted to ask before. From the minute her sons had been born, she’d vowed not to become one of those mothers, the kind who interfered in their lives. She’d trusted them enough to let them live their own.

  “Until…” he started, his voice thick with emotion, “she went back to school.”

  Audrey had recently gone back to college to finish up the nursing degree she’d started so many years ago. She wanted to be an RN. Millie had applauded her determination and been so inspired by it that she’d gotten serious about retiring her own tiara. Now a horrible thought occurred to Millie. “Oh, no! She met someone else.”

  He laughed, a short bitter sound. “No, but I almost wished she had.”

  “Steven!” She fought the temptation to whack him with the duster; her son was already hurting.

  He jerked his hand through his thin hair again. His whole body was shaking now: with frustration and shock. While Millie had noticed the strain in their marriage, she wondered if he had. His next words confirmed that he hadn’t. “If she’d found someone else, then I could actually understand why she threw me out.”

  “You need to talk,” she maintained. “We’ll go back to your house. Brigitte can come stay with me while you and Audrey work things out.”

  He shook his head and squeezed his dark eyes shut, probably trying to hold in the tears she saw glistening in them. “No, Mom, it’s too late. Or it’s tod soon. I’m not sure what it is anymore.”

  It was not fair to him or Audrey but most especially not to Brigitte. That poor girl…

  “Oh, Steven…” She squeezed his arm, trying to express her love, support and willingness to help any way she could. The phrase, too little, too late, taunted her. She refused to accept
that. “You have to try.”

  He nodded. “I know. But not now. It—” One tear fell, sliding down the hard line of his taut jaw. “—hurts too much, Mom.”

  The shock, the pain…it was too fresh. She understood that. “But you will.”

  “After some time. But I have to ask you something, Mom.”

  “Of course you can stay here.” But it was a little late to ask that since he’d apparently already brought some stuff down to Pop’s old apartment. It consisted of a bedroom, bathroom and a family room with a little kitchenette in one corner.

  Steven blinked, surprised again. “Well, that, too. I didn’t think—”

  “It’s okay.” That he hadn’t asked her first. “Don’t worry about it.”

  Obviously he didn’t think she had a life. But she did and she actually needed more time for it. She’d thought she’d only had Mitchell left to marry off before she could retire her tiara.

  There was someone else she’d flirted with the idea of making time for, though, but it was definitely too soon for him. And Millie was so old-fashioned, she’d never actually learned to flirt. Was it as easy as getting a dye-job?

  “Mom? Are you okay?”

  She nodded, pushing the crazy thought from her mind. She didn’t really need anyone or anything else in her life. Even with Pop married and moved out, it was too full now for her to fit in all the things she wanted to do, like shopping and gambling excursions with her Red Hat chapter, The Red Hot Hatters of Hilltop. “Fine, fine, just tired…”

  He snorted. “From cleaning Mitchell’s place. I would have moved in with him, but I couldn’t stand his mess.”

  Which multiplied by Steven’s would have given Millie nightmares. She would have had to beg Mitchell to hire a maid.

  “I’m happy to have you here,” she insisted. But she hoped it wouldn’t be for long. While she wouldn’t mind his company, Steven belonged home with his family. The connection between a mother and child was strong as ever, she could feel his heart breaking, and hers ached, too.