Last Chance Knit & Stitch

by Ramsay, Hope

  The funeral home’s foyer was dark and smelled of lemon oil polish. Simon checked his baggage with the cloakroom attendant and made his way into a large room with big bay windows hung with heavy draperies. The drapes blocked all but a little crack of sunshine.

  He checked his watch. After all his worry, he was half an hour early, and all alone with the guest of honor.

  Daddy was stretched out in a bronze-colored coffin wearing his purple and yellow Davis High Football booster shirt. The coffin’s lining was also in the school colors. Simon wondered how Mother felt about this. She had never been a big Rebels fan.

  Simon stared down at the corpse, so peaceful in death. His father had been a handsome man, with piercing blue eyes and a strong chin. His eyes were closed now, and the dark hair that Simon remembered had gone to gray. Daddy’s big hands were crossed on his chest, and he still wore his wedding ring.

  What irony. Mother and Daddy’s marriage had been a disaster. The two of them could hardly speak without igniting an argument. And Simon had lived his life between their battle lines.

  A familiar futility settled in his gut. It had taken years to learn how to recognize this feeling. And it sucked big time that he found himself unable to reason the pain away. He wanted to be numb. He wanted not to care. But instead, the wounds of his youth opened and bled.

  He checked his watch again and paced the room to the window. He pulled away the drapes and stared out at a colorful garden filled with an abundance of flowers. If only he could escape to that bright place.

  He wanted to get out of here. He needed to get back to his painting. The Harrison commission loomed over him like the sword of Damocles. He should never have let Gillian negotiate that deal, but he and Gillian had been in the appeasement phase of their relationship. He’d let her have a little bit of control, and then he’d realized that it was a mistake. Now Gillian was gone, and only the problematic commission remained.

  “Oh my goodness, Simon, is that really you?”

  He turned to discover a thin, sixty-something woman with carefully coiffed white hair and hazel eyes. She wore a simple black suit—the kind old ladies wear to funerals.

  Who was this person?

  “Don’t you know me, honey? It’s Aunt Millie.”

  He blinked a few times. She had changed. The last time he’d seen her, Aunt Millie had tipped the scales at 170 pounds, easy. But this woman couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds soaking wet.

  He couldn’t move, which was okay because Millie wasn’t paralyzed. She hurried forward, threw her arms around him, and held on fiercely. He remembered then. Aunt Millie had always been a refuge.

  “I’m so sorry about your daddy, son.” She patted his back and then smiled through her unshed tears. “I’m so glad you’re here. Your uncle Rob is bringing your mother up the back way. I know it will warm her heart to see you here.”

  Simon’s insides went free falling. He hadn’t seen his mother for eighteen years.

  A moment later Mother entered the room, her hand wrapped around Uncle Rob’s forearm as if she needed his support. Mother had not changed. She had celebrated her sixty-fifth birthday this year, but there wasn’t a single gray hair on her head. In some cynical corner of his mind, Simon knew that Mother probably kept a weekly appointment at the local beauty shop, but that didn’t matter. She was Mother. Still.

  She turned her gaze on him, and it was like getting hit with a shotgun blast. All the unpleasant memories of living with Mother and Daddy tumbled through him. And yet he wanted to run to her and hug her. He had missed her, even if he couldn’t stand being with her.

  “Mother.” He took a few steps toward her, but he didn’t get close enough for an embrace.

  Charlotte Wolfe took a step back, her big brown eyes growing wide and fearful. “Who are you?”

  The words burned right through his middle.

  “Now, Charlotte,” Aunt Millie said in her most patient of voices. “It’s your boy, Simon. Don’t you remember him? He’s come home to take care of you.”

  Simon opened his mouth to protest, but before he could utter a word, his mother shook her head. “No, he’s not Simon. I would know my boy. Simon would never wear his hair long like that, or go around unshaven. Don’t you try to fool me, Millie.” Mother clutched Uncle Rob’s arm and looked up at him with a wide stare. “Ira, you tell Millie she’s wrong.”

  Uncle Rob, Mother’s older brother, stared down at his sister with a look of pity. “Darlin’, Ira’s passed. Don’t you remember? It happened on Saturday. He had a heart attack.”

  She blinked a few times, and her eyes seemed to brighten just a little. “Oh, yes, I remember.” She turned to stare at the casket, her expression resolving itself into lines of grief. Uncle Rob escorted Mother to a seat on the opposite side of the room and hovered over her.

  Aunt Millie sagged where she stood. She looked tired. “So now you know,” she said. “Charlotte is having a very bad day today. I’m sure it’s the shock of Ira’s passing. There are some days when she’s almost herself. Don’t you worry, she’ll remember you eventually. You haven’t changed that much. You still look like the Polk side of the family.”

  “How long has she been like this?” His voice sounded like it came from a very great distance. Here he’d been thinking he could breeze in for the funeral and make a quick escape. Obviously, that wasn’t going to happen. It was like the ground beneath him had turned to quicksand.

  “Charlotte’s been fading away for about five years. It’s progressed pretty slowly. And your father took good care of her. So today is hard.”

  “Daddy took care of her?”

  “Of course he did.”

  “But they could hardly stand one another.”

  “That’s not true. Your folks had their share of fights, but they loved each other. Your daddy adored her. And he was so good for her. He was a bighearted man, Simon. And you broke his heart badly.”

  “They broke mine first.” His voice was hard and tight.

  Aunt Millie patted his back. “Son, I don’t really know what happened between you and your folks. I never could really understand it. I know they had dreams for you that weren’t what you wanted, but that wasn’t a good reason for you to leave and never come home. And now I’m afraid it’s time for you to pay the piper. Your mother needs to be cared for.”

  Of all the things waiting for him here in Last Chance, this was the most unexpected. He had thought he was coming to say good-bye to his father, and then he’d go back to his nice, orderly life in Paradise. The truth was beginning to sink in.

  “I guess I’ll have to take her back to California with me. I’ll find a retirement home or something.”

  Millie stiffened. “You can’t do that. You can’t take her away from the home she loves. She’s put her whole heart and soul into that garden of hers. And you can’t take her away from her friends in the garden club and the Purly Girls.”

  “Purly Girls?”

  “She’s taken up knitting. The occupational therapist said it would be good for her because gardening is getting difficult. She needs to be watched when she’s using her tools. Last month, she pulled up all her daffodils. She thought they were weeds. So we’ve been encouraging the knitting.”

  “She can knit in California. That’s where I live. I realize she needs to be taken care of. But I’m not moving back to Last Chance, Aunt Millie. I’m just not.”

  “Listen to me. I love you, but if you take your mother to California and shove her into a nursing home, I will be so disappointed in you. I will not let you warehouse her.”

  “I didn’t say I was going to shove her into a nursing home. I’ll find a nice place for her with a mountain view.”

  “Simon”—Millie invested his name with a world of censure—”that would be exactly like warehousing her.”

  Millie was right, of course, and that thought wrapped itself around his neck and squeezed. Then Millie went on to tighten the noose.

  “You know, son,�
�� she said, “you’re going to have to stay for a little while anyway. There are legal issues. Eugene Hanks wants to talk with you about your father’s will. And your uncle Ryan is very agitated about the financial situation at the dealership. You know his bank loaned your daddy a lot of money.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Your daddy’s business is practically bankrupt.”

  “How could a Ford dealership be failing in a place like Allenberg County?”

  “The economic downturn hurt business, I guess. Your uncle Ryan has been talking about forcing the dealership into receivership. Of course, if you were willing to stay and help run the business, your uncle might change his mind. And it’s important to save the dealership. There are about forty people who work there. It would be a disaster for this town if Wolfe Ford went out of business.”

  He looked at his watch again. He didn’t know where else to look. Aunt Millie was crazy if she thought he was going to go into the business of selling cars. The bank would never go for it. Simon was an artist, not a car salesman. And he had a very big commission due in two months. He didn’t have time for this.

  He looked up toward the casket. His mother sat dry-eyed and hunched-shouldered by his father’s corpse. Hell and damnation. How had it come to this?

  He rudely turned away from Aunt Millie and went searching for the outside door—the one that led to the garden he’d seen through the windows. He sat down on a bench in the warm sunshine and watched a couple of goldfinches as they visited a bird feeder. They were the same color as the coreopsis that grew in clumps along the perennial border. He tried to clear his mind and focus on nothing at all.

  But the coreopsis sent him back in time.

  He remembered the day his mother had taught him the name of that flower. He’d been a little boy. He used to love spending time with Mother in the garden, getting dirty and learning the names of the flowers and the colors that went with them. All those different shadings of yellow, from buttercup to Carolina lupine. He’d learned them all at his mother’s knee, along with an appreciation for how colors go together. He used that knowledge every day he painted.

  And now the woman who had taught him this one, important thing didn’t even recognize him.

  Despite all his efforts to dam them up, a flood of tears deluged him.

  Molly stood beside Ira’s casket gazing down at his body. He looked pretty good for a dead man.

  Ira Wolfe had been one of Davis High’s biggest boosters. His contributions had refurbished the football field, paid for the new lighting system, and kept the team in uniforms. Which probably explained why the dealership was having some financial problems. Ira was generous to a fault.

  Her vision smeared with unwanted tears. Who the heck was she crying for? Ira for being dead, Momma for being gone, or herself for having her life scrambled? Jeez louise, this was pitiful. She never cried. About anything. It was one of her life rules. No one would take a girl mechanic seriously if she cried. Ever.

  “Thank you for coming.” The voice was deep and accent-free. She turned. Well, hell. Simon Wolfe obviously didn’t have any rules about crying. His eyes looked puffy and bloodshot.

  And they widened in surprise. “It’s you,” he said. “I should have realized.” His gaze traveled upward, taking in her hair, which she’d left down because she’d been too late to wrestle with it. She really needed to whack it off.

  Simon’s gaze dropped and lingered for more than a moment. Holy crap, he was ogling her boobs.

  A totally unwanted body flush knocked her sideways. Whoa. What was that all about?

  Guys in Last Chance never ogled her. She wasn’t pretty or graceful or anything like that. So of course, guys talked cars and sports with her rather than looking or touching or making themselves nuisances. Over the years, she’d had a couple of friends with benefits. But they were just bed buddies. And besides, she wasn’t interested in girl-boy entanglements. They were a big waste of time and always managed to get messy and emotional.

  She needed to put distance between herself and this guy who was old enough to be a member of the 1990 dream team. Which made him practically middle-aged.

  “Uh, look,” she said in a no-nonsense voice, “there’s something I need to tell you. See, your daddy loaned me some space in his garage, where I’ve just started working on a full body restoration of a 1966 Shelby Mustang that I found in a barn up in Olar. I work there after hours, and I’m aiming to get the car finished by September for the Barrett-Jackson auction in Vegas. I’m hoping to hit pay dirt with this car so I can quit working for LeRoy and start a restoration business of my own. So, anyway, when you get around to taking a tour of the dealership, I just want you to understand that the Shelby belongs to me and my partner, Les Hayes, who’s your daddy’s chief mechanic. Don’t be thinking that that car is one of your assets. Oh, and I have a set of keys to the building. So don’t freak out if you see me there late at night, okay?”

  The curls at the corner of Simon’s mouth deepened into a semi-smile, which looked a bit incongruous given the state of his eyes. “I’m not planning to take a tour of the dealership,” he said. “And I’m not all that interested in cars.”

  “Not even a Shelby Mustang?” Her incredulity showed in her voice.

  “Not even a Shelby Mustang. My plan is to wrap up things here just as fast as I can and head back home. I think you should plan on the dealership being closed or sold.”

  “You’re going to close the dealership?”

  The muted conversations in the room halted, and a dozen heads turned in their direction. Oh, crap, she’d practically shouted the words, hadn’t she?

  “Uh, sorry,” she said in a much smaller voice, even though she felt like screaming her outrage at the sudden reversals in her life. “But you can’t let that happen.”

  “There’s nothing I can do to prevent it.”

  “But I’ll lose my garage space. Not to mention the fact that half of my friends own F-150s and go to Wolfe for their warranty service.”

  “What do you expect me to do, Molly? I’m an artist, not a car salesman or mechanic. I have no business running a car dealership.”

  Well, that was obvious. She just hadn’t put all the puzzle pieces together until right this minute. Of course Ira’s death was going to screw up everything.

  “But what are you going to do with your momma?” She was grasping at straws now. This was the man who’d run away from home and never come back. Not once. Not even at Thanksgiving or Christmas.

  “I don’t know. But I do know I’m not staying, and I’m not going to take over Daddy’s dealership. I’m not a car guy.”

  “Which makes you really odd for a man, you know that?”

  Annoyance sparked in his dark eyes, and Molly immediately regretted the rancor in her words. Why couldn’t she keep her mouth shut? Or learn how to deliver a put-down with a saccharine voice, like a southern belle. Unfortunately, she was missing the Scarlett O’Hara gene.

  “I’m not the only odd one here,” he said. “I’m willing to bet you don’t know how to sew or knit or cook.”

  “Ha! I do so too know how to knit.”

  “Oh?” He frowned, his dark gaze cataloging her. “Don’t tell me. You knitted that sweater, didn’t you?”

  “I did.”

  “It’s very nice.” He said this with another obvious glance at her boobs. Her internal thermostat went wacky again. Or maybe the funeral home’s air-conditioning was on the fritz.

  She was tempted to let him think she was some kind of super woman, capable of changing spark plugs and whipping up an apple pie all in a day’s work. But actually, she didn’t want to be a super woman. So why was she arguing with him?

  She met Simon’s gaze directly, squared her shoulders, and told the truth. “My mother owns the Knit & Stitch, the yarn shop in town. She taught me to knit when I was little, and I took to it. I blow at cooking and sewing, though, and I don’t even care.”

  “Well, half odd is bet
ter than all the way odd,” he said in a teasing tone.

  Jeez louise! This conversation had taken a strange and uncomfortable turn. It was time to extricate herself. “Look, I’m sorry for your loss. I loved your daddy. He believed in me when no one else would, and he gave me a place to see if I could realize my dreams. I told him a million times that he needed to quit smoking those cigars, and …” Her voice wobbled the minute she thought about Ira standing in the middle of the showroom with an unlit cigar clenched in his teeth. She was never going to see him there again. He was never going to stop by and admire her body work. She was on her own now. And about to lose her garage space.

  Her nose filled up with snot, and the urge to bawl became almost unbearable. She sniffled back her suddenly overflowing nasal passages. She was not going to cry. Not even for Ira Wolfe. He wouldn’t want her to cry over him. Not in a million years.

  Ira would just want her to finish that Shelby and get going building her business.

  And wouldn’t you know it, right then Ira’s too-handsome and somewhat odd son reached into his pocket and pulled out a fine linen handkerchief. He held it out for her, his eyes filled with kindness and deep empathy. “You know, Molly, I could say the same thing about your father. He definitely believed in me when no one else did. I owe him a great deal.”

  She could refuse that hankie the way he’d refused to shake her hand earlier in the day. Or she could accept the handkerchief and his words as the peace offering they were intended to be.

  She snatched the handkerchief and quickly blotted her eyes and blew her nose. She wanted to hand it back to him but realized that a snotty handkerchief was kind of gross. “Uh, I’ll wash it and get it back to you,” she said as she crammed the soggy cloth into the pocket of her slacks. “I guess I’ll need to remember to bring tissues for the funeral tomorrow.”

  Simon glanced down at his father. “Me too.”

  CHAPTER

  3

  A lonely fluorescent light illuminated a corner of the Wolfe Ford service center, lending the cavernous space an eerie quality. Molly hurried across the spotless gray floor, her sneakers squeaking with each step. She’d stopped at home on her way back from Ira’s wake to change into her work clothes. She was brimming with news and gossip.