Last Chance Knit & Stitch

by Ramsay, Hope

  Les Hayes, Molly’s best friend, was going to blow more than a gasket when he heard what she had to say. Heck, he was probably going to throw a piston, too.

  She found him bent over the Shelby’s engine compartment, which had been divested of the radiator, the battery, and all of the engine’s hoses and belts. Tonight they were supposed to pull the block and the tranny. The plan from there was for Les to rebuild the engine while Molly started work on the body.

  The car’s seats and dashboard had already been pulled last week and sent to an auto upholsterer up in Columbia that Molly worked with.

  “Hey, Molly,” Les said without looking up from the engine compartment. “How was your day?”

  “Probably the crappiest of my life.”

  Les looked up. Grease darkened his forehead and smudged one cheek, making his baby blues look bluer than ever. His curly brown hair puffed from around his Wolfe Ford hat. Momma always said that Les was a cool, tall drink of water. Yeah, branch water, maybe. He had an unpredictable temper.

  Which made him a lot like Molly. They could fight like a couple of junkyard dogs sometimes over the right way to proceed on a restoration.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Well for starters, Momma ran away and left me in charge of the Knit & Stitch.”

  “Yeah, I heard about that. So now that you’re in charge, are you going to reopen the store?” He said this with a wicked grin.

  “Stop it. It’s serious. I’ve got twenty messages from knitters in my voice mail. They aren’t going to be happy when they find out I’m not going to reopen the shop.”

  “So don’t fret about it.”

  “I’m not going to. Not about the yarn shop, anyway. We have much bigger problems. I just came from Ira’s wake, and his son is planning to close the dealership.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what he told me. He’s hot to get his daddy’s estate in order, and then he’s hightailing it back to Paradise.”

  “Paradise?”

  “That’s where he lives. It’s in California.”

  Les laughed. His laugh was goofy and adorable and kind of high-pitched and joyous. And seemed out of proportion to the crisis at hand. “Don’t you laugh, Leslie Hayes. This is serious. What are we going to do if Wolfe Ford goes out of business?” She started pacing.

  “Oh, I doubt it will go out of business. The family will probably sell it. There are a lot of Ford owners living around here who need warranty service. No one’s going to leave those folks high and dry. So we can negotiate with the new owners, whoever they turn out to be.”

  She stopped pacing. “I wouldn’t be so sure. You didn’t talk to Simon Wolfe. He couldn’t have cared less about the business. And he’s not a car guy. He’s always looking at his watch like he can’t wait to leave. He could give a crap about the Ford owners in Allenberg County. I have a bad feeling about this. We’re going to lose our garage space for the Shelby.”

  “Mol, you don’t know that for sure, and you’re just making yourself crazy worrying about something that hasn’t happened yet.”

  “Maybe it hasn’t happened, but we need to plan for it anyway. It’s a shame we can’t afford to buy the old Coca-Cola building yet.”

  Molly’s long-range plan was to buy that abandoned building in Last Chance and turn it into a car-restoration business with a garage in the back where the old loading dock was and a showroom in the front. She had other dreams, too. Big ones. Like trying to interest Speed Channel in a show about a lady garage owner.

  But first, she needed to restore the Shelby. Everything hung on that car. Finding it had been her stroke of good luck. The little old lady in Olar had no idea what was sitting in her barn. She’d wanted only four thousand dollars for the old car. Restored, the Shelby would probably sell for close to a quarter of a million.

  “Maybe we can get a loan and use the car as collateral,” Molly said. “I could talk to Dash Randall. He’d probably be willing to finance us. He loved what I did to his Eldorado and that old Ford truck of his.”

  “Jeez, Molly, you’re getting way ahead of yourself.” Les settled himself on a shop stool. “If we get a loan, that means we’ll have to form a real, legal partnership. That costs money, too, and I don’t want to go into debt. Besides, if the dealership closes, I lose my day job, which is another reason not to be thinking about borrowing money.”

  “Yeah, I thought of that. Maybe we could rent the Coca-Cola building instead of buying it outright.”

  “That still takes money. And we need tools and a lift.”

  “You’ve got tools in storage. Damn. I sure do wish your granddaddy hadn’t sold his house and moved to Tallahassee. We could have used his old garage like we did for our first two cars.”

  “Yeah. Maybe old man Nelson has barn space we could borrow.”

  “I can’t paint a car in a barn, you know that. It’s too dirty. I’m gonna have to pay to have someone paint the car if I can’t use the space here. I mean, even this space isn’t as clean as I really need. I need a painting booth. But at least we can fake it here, and Ira has a killer air compressor.”

  “Well, I don’t know.” Les rubbed the furrows in his brow with his greasy hands. He did this when he was thinking, which is why his face was always dirty after a long day at work.

  “I thought you were going to be furious. I know I am.”

  He shrugged. “There is nothing to be furious about. I’m sad about Ira. I’m worried about the people who work here. But venting anger on you or the car or the wall isn’t going to change any of that. This is beyond my control. It’s beyond yours, too.”

  “Well, I think it might be best if we didn’t pull the tranny and engine tonight. It would be easier to move the car semi-intact.”

  “Okay. So you wanna go get a beer?”

  The next morning, Molly dragged herself off to the Kountry Kitchen because there was no milk for her coffee or cereal. Obviously, Allen had consumed it all and hadn’t given a single thought to replacing it—something that would never have happened if Momma had been home. Momma had a built-in radar that alerted her to milk shortages, pantry emergencies, and overflowing laundry baskets.

  Molly had not inherited this knack for homemaking.

  And she was exhausted. She and Les had sat up for hours, drinking beer while they tried to figure out what to do next.

  “What can I get you besides coffee?” Ricki Wilson, the waitress, asked as she filled Molly’s coffee mug.

  “State-of-the-art garage space and someone to manage the Knit & Stitch,” she muttered, then took a big slug of coffee. She could practically taste the caffeine.

  Ricki put the coffee carafe on the counter. “How much does the job pay?”

  Molly blinked up at the waitress. Her hair was platinum almost all the way down to her roots. She wore a standard pink uniform from right out of the 1950s. And boy, she sure did fill out that dress. “You mean you’re interested in managing the Knit & Stitch?”

  “If the pay is right.”

  “I can’t afford to pay anyone, Ricki.”

  “Well then, your goose is cooked. Because, usually, people only work for a salary.”

  Molly thought about this for a moment. “I guess I could hire someone. But I have no clue how much I could afford. I mean, until yesterday afternoon, Momma had it covered.”

  “Yeah, I heard all about how your momma left town. At lunch yesterday, everyone was talking about that note your momma left on the front door of the shop.”

  Molly held out her cup, and Ricki refilled it. “If Momma leaving town and putting a snippy note on the door of the Knit & Stitch is the biggest news in town, that’s just pitiful. There are much bigger problems. Simon Wolfe told me last night at his daddy’s wake that the Ford dealership is going to be closed.”

  “No way.” Ricki leaned in. This was obviously more important gossip.

  “Yup, it’s true. He’s not even interested in selling it. He’s just going to close its doors and wh
isk Miz Charlotte back to Paradise, California, where he lives.” Molly’s pulse started pounding in her forehead. She didn’t even care whether this headache was caused by Simon Wolfe’s insensitivity or last night’s beers. She chose to blame Simon. He was at the root of her car trouble. “Do you think if I drink enough coffee this problem will disappear?” she asked Ricki.

  “Which one? The yarn shop or the car dealership?”

  “Both.”

  “Nope. But you could hire me to manage the yarn shop and that would solve that problem.” Ricki’s voice had dropped to a near whisper, and she glanced over her shoulder to make sure T-Bone Carter, her boss, didn’t hear what she was saying. “I’d do anything to get a job that doesn’t require me to be on my feet all day.”

  “Do you know anything about knitting?”

  She shook her head. “No, but I could learn. I know all about cash registers and such. And I’m reliable.”

  Molly had to give her that. Ricki had been very reliable since she’d returned to Last Chance a couple of years ago. Before that, maybe not so much. Everyone in town knew how she’d broken Clay Rhodes’s heart way back when and how she’d come back to town looking for a second chance that didn’t happen.

  “I don’t know if I can afford you,” Molly said. “If the dealership closes, I’m going to have a lot of expenses.”

  Ricki pulled a pen from her apron pocket and wrote something on her pad. She put the paper in front of Molly. “That’s what T-Bone is paying me in base wages. And it’s not even minimum wage. He’s counting on me getting tips to make ends meet.”

  Molly looked at the number. It was shameful. Still, she had no idea if the yarn shop could support an employee. “Ricki, let me think about this, and I’ll get back to you.”

  Molly finished her breakfast. She had a few minutes before she had to be at Ira’s funeral at Christ Church. She wanted to take down the note on the Knit & Stitch’s door and put one up that said “Closed for the Foreseeable Future.”

  And then, time permitting, she wanted to take another look at the abandoned building on the opposite corner of Chancellor and Palmetto Avenue. It had once housed a Coca-Cola bottling business. Arlo Boyd, the main commercial leasing agent in town, had been trying to find a tenant for years. With no success. The “For Lease” sign in the big front windows had been there so long it was sun-faded.

  Once, a long time ago, people could stand on the sidewalk and watch the bottling process through those big picture windows. Molly didn’t remember that time, but she’d heard people talk about watching the glass bottles moving down the assembly line, filling up with soda, and being capped off, while a handful of people managed the process.

  It wouldn’t take much to turn the front portion of the building into a showroom for restored cars. And then people could once again stand on the sidewalk and peer in at something amazing.

  Molly wanted that building. She had dreamed about it for so long that it almost felt as if it already belonged to her. Maybe Dash Randall, the not-so-silent partner in Angel Development, would give her a loan to make her dream come true.

  But she couldn’t go to Dash on her own. Les had to agree, since they jointly owned the Shelby. And right now, Les wasn’t worried. He seemed to think everything would work itself out.

  She left the Kountry Kitchen and headed up the sidewalk. But when she reached the Knit & Stitch, Kenzie Griffin was waiting at the front door with her eighteen-month-old baby on her hip.

  “I’m not open,” Molly said, her voice kind of snotty and short-tempered, but that didn’t deter Kenzie in the least.

  “I’ve got to have another skein of alpaca,” Kenzie said. “I’ve called every yarn store in a fifty-mile radius, and no one but you has what I need.”

  “But I’m not open.”

  “Molly, be reasonable. I’ll just pop in and get the yarn and then I’ll be gone.”

  “Yeah, and you’ll tell your friends that I let you get the yarn, and then everyone will think the store is open. But it’s not. Momma may have left me in charge, but she failed to think about the fact that I already have a full-time job at the Grease Pit.”

  “But you have to open the shop. The Purly Girls are coming this afternoon, and you’ve got knitting lessons scheduled for folks. People love this store. You can’t close it down.”

  Guilt gnawed at her innards, even though, technically, Momma had closed the store, not Molly. But that stupid note had let everyone know it would be Molly’s fault if the store didn’t reopen.

  And here she’d been all ticked off at Simon for closing the car dealership because his daddy was gone. But hadn’t Momma put her in the same darn place? Even worse, Molly could practically hear Momma’s voice whispering like Jiminy Cricket in her ear. Momma would tell her that she needed to be nice, and sweet, and reasonable. But at what cost? That was the question. Tension coiled up her backbone, and her already stiff shoulders tightened a little more.

  “I can’t be two places at one time. I’m only human.” Her voice came out like a whine, and she regretted it. She didn’t like whining. She liked being honest and direct.

  “Oh, Molly, I’m sorry. Let me help you, okay?” Kenzie said.

  “How?”

  Kenzie’s husband was an engineer who worked at deBracy Ltd. They rented a tiny house north of town, waiting for their new home to be built. She didn’t have a garage or a lift.

  “Let me mind the store today,” Kenzie said. “Annie needs a set of DPNs, and Lola May needs some of that pink Baby Ull. She’s frantic because it’s for Jane’s baby, and the child is due any minute. I can handle it. And Junior can nap in his stroller.”

  Kenzie was solving the wrong problem. But hey, if it got the knitters of Last Chance off Molly’s back, that was one less thing to worry about.

  “Okay. It’s a deal. And the yarn you need is on the house, ’cause I don’t think I can afford to pay you.” Molly pressed the store’s keys into Kenzie’s hand. “Just take Momma’s stupid note off the front door, please. And I’ll see if I can get away from the Grease Pit a little early to help you with the Purly Girls meeting at four o’clock. It might be tough, though, since Bubba’s going to be off all day. If I don’t make it, you can drop off the keys at the Grease Pit after the meeting.”

  She turned and escaped down Palmetto Avenue like a coon with a dog on her tail. She didn’t have much time before the funeral, and she needed to beat feet before any more knitters showed up and sidetracked her from her main purpose—finding alternative garage space for the Shelby before Simon closed down Wolfe Ford.

  CHAPTER

  4

  Daddy had lived for football, and the Davis High School Rebels, old and young, came out for his funeral in droves. There were at least half a dozen members of the 1990 championship team there, including Stone Rhodes, the quarterback, who was now the sheriff of Allenberg County. He came with his new wife, Lark Chaikin, a Pulitzer Prize–winning war photographer who had retired from the battlefield and was reinventing herself as a fine-arts landscape photographer. Her debut book, Rural Scenes, sat on Simon’s coffee table back in Paradise. He had been thoroughly bewitched by her photos of the South Carolina swamps.

  Stone wore his sheriff’s uniform, but the other members of the team had donned their Davis High jerseys. In fact, the sanctuary was awash in purple and gold flowers.

  It might have been a Rebels reunion except Coach was missing, still off fishing somewhere in the wilds beyond the reach of cell phones. Simon was disappointed. Coach had been the one who’d kept him together in high school, even though he had only been the kicker. There wasn’t anything Simon wouldn’t do for Coach. Even now, so many years later.

  Coach’s daughter was there, sitting in the back of the church, wearing the same outfit she’d worn yesterday and looking a little wrinkled but as pretty as ever.

  She was grown up now, and he kept glancing over his shoulder to where she sat in the back pew. Each time, he caught her staring at him. He was so aware of her s
tare that the back of his neck started to burn, as if her laser-beam glare were searing its way through his spine.

  She was angry. He didn’t blame her. But there was nothing he could do about it.

  After the service, the family hosted a buffet brunch at Mother’s house, out in her garden, which had always been one of the prime spots on the annual garden tour. The garden looked a little neglected these days, but Simon may have been the only one to notice. Mother had been fastidious about two things in her life, her appearance and her garden. She still looked great, but maintaining the garden was now beyond her abilities.

  Mother drifted through lunch in a fog. She hardly spoke, and she hadn’t yet recognized Simon. Several times during this long, difficult day, she turned to Aunt Millie or Uncle Rob and asked why someone with such long hair was present in her garden.

  In the face of this sad turn of affairs, Simon retreated into the shade of the oak trees at the back of the yard. He was hiding out, even though he knew he ought to be playing host. But that would require taking over from his uncle Ryan, who seemed to want to be in charge of everything.

  Besides, it had been so long since he’d spent any time in Last Chance that he didn’t recall names or faces. So it made sense to let Uncle Ryan manage things.

  The day wore on. The crowd dwindled down to family. By two o’clock, the May heat had driven everyone inside.

  They sat quietly, not really having much to say to one another. Cousin Charlene, a veterinarian, got called away on an emergency. Cousin Rachel, who was three months’ pregnant and clearly exhausted, hovered over everyone trying to keep the family from going entirely silent.

  And then Uncle Ryan dragged Simon off to Daddy’s study for a man-to-man talk about “things.” His uncle spent a good hour explaining why he had rounded up all of Daddy’s creditors and was going to file in court to force Wolfe Ford into a receivership. He said it was because of the outstanding loans owed to the bank where Ryan was the manager.