by Ramsay, Hope
“You have never shown any interest in this family or its business, Simon,” he said in a censorious tone. “You’re patently unqualified to run a car dealership. So it only makes sense for the bank to take it over and see what can be recouped from the mess your father made. Your daddy may have been loved by the football team, but he was a terrible businessman. I suspect, in this economy, it will make more sense to liquidate the business instead of searching for a buyer.”
Ryan had always been just a little coldhearted. And clearly, he wasn’t at all worried about Daddy’s employees or customers. He only cared about the money. But then he came from the Polk side of the family. Simon distinctly remembered his grandfather, who had been a banker, too. Grandfather had been cool, aloof, and stern. And Grandfather had made money his god. Mother and her brothers had all been affected by having a father who was that way.
He escaped Uncle Ryan only to be cornered in the kitchen by Bubba, Rachel’s husband, a mechanic at Bill’s Grease Pit and clearly the other family black sheep. “You can’t let Ryan bully you, Simon. You have to stand up to him. There are forty-some-odd people working at the dealership. They’re going to lose their jobs. And it’s worse than that. The folks who own Fords will have to drive a long, long way to get warranty work done on their vehicles. At the very least, you have to convince him to sell the business, not liquidate it.”
This was the longest speech Bubba had made all afternoon. He was an interloper in the family, even if it was clear that Rachel adored him. It had probably taken a lot of courage for Bubba to corner Simon and speak his mind.
But what could Simon do? So he told Bubba the same thing he’d told Uncle Ryan. He was leaving just as soon as he could get things wrapped up. Daddy’s will would have to go through an elaborate probate process.
And he’d have to plan for the expense of Mother’s long-term care in California. That undoubtedly meant selling the house, which would break Mother’s heart. But his choices were limited. And the house was Mother’s main asset.
At about three o’clock, Mother roused herself from her stupor. She got up and went to her room, emerging fifteen minutes later wearing a bright flowered dress and carrying an equally bright tote bag.
“Well,” she said to everyone. “I’m off to my meeting.”
Aunt Millie got up. “Uh, honey, today might not be a good day to go.”
Mother’s eyes grew round. “Nonsense. We meet every Tuesday afternoon. It’s my Christian duty to go. Besides, we’re knitting poppies for the VFW to sell on Memorial Day, and this is our last meeting before the holiday.”
She pulled away from Aunt Millie and headed toward the front door. She got there and stopped. Her shoulders sagged, and she looked like a puppy dog standing at the door waiting for a master who had been away too long. “I forgot. Ira won’t be coming to pick me up, will he?” she said in a low voice. For all the emotion it packed, it remained steady.
Simon couldn’t let her stand there by herself looking that way. He remembered earlier times—when he’d been five or six. He’d shared a special relationship with his mother, once. And in some deep way he understood her need to escape the people in this room with their various agendas. “It’s all right,” Simon found himself saying. “I’ll take you to your meeting. It’s at the Knit & Stitch, isn’t it?”
Mother looked up at him. “Who are you?”
“I’m S—” He stopped. If he told her he was Simon, she’d get upset. She had been doing that all day. “I’m a friend of Millie’s.”
“That’s right,” Millie said. “He’s come to help you out for a little while.”
“Oh.” She nodded. “How kind of you to take me.”
At three-forty-five, Molly left Bill’s Grease Pit and hightailed it up Palmetto Avenue to the Knit & Stitch. LeRoy, her boss, wasn’t all that happy about it, seeing as she’d missed part of the morning because of Ira’s funeral. But Kenzie had left her a frantic message on her voice mail. Molly needed to go.
The Purly Girls were, by and large, a bunch of very sweet ladies who were all gradually losing their minds. For some of the old gals, this trip to the yarn shop and Sundays at church were the only times they got out. Momma made a big production of Purly Girls meetings, serving sweet tea and cookies.
That was so not going to happen today.
She hit the shop’s door at a dead run, hoping she could untangle whatever crisis Kenzie was having and still make it back to the Grease Pit. She wasn’t dressed for the yarn shop. Although she had scrubbed her hands before leaving the pit.
She opened the door to hell.
“Oh my God, no, Junior!” was the first thing Molly heard as she entered the shop. And with good reason.
Eighteen-month-old Junior was running laps around the little table in the middle of the store where knitters came to sit and work on projects. Clutched in his fat little hand was the end of a skein of gray Himalayan yak, and the yarn was spooling out behind him as he ran around and around the table, effectively tying the chairs to it.
His mother, wearing an exhausted expression, chased after him while the little demon giggled and evaded her grasping hands. His usually calm mother let forth a string of profanity that was enough to turn Molly’s ears blue.
And that’s when she realized that someone, presumably Junior, had ripped the labels off the alpaca and merino skeins that were stored in the low shelves in the front of the store. The labels lay strewn across the carpet like autumn leaves.
And someone had mixed up all the colors.
She strode into the store and cut off the little bugger as he began his fifth lap around the table and chairs. She extricated the yarn from his fat hands, picked him up by his armpits, and handed him back to his frazzled mother.
“Oh, God, Molly, I’m so sorry,” Kenzie said. “Lola May came by to get her baby yarn, and while I was talking with her, well …” She surveyed the labels strewn across the carpet at the front of the store.
“And then Cathy called to find out if we still had a specific dye lot of the yarn she’s using for Jane’s baby blanket. And he got into the yak. Honestly, we were doing great until about half an hour ago, except for the juice incident.”
“Juice incident?”
Kenzie’s freckled face turn a shade of red that clashed with her carrot-colored hair. “He kind of spilled it.”
“And …”
“He used a skein of cashmere to mop it up, but it turns out cashmere isn’t all that absorbent, and uh …”
“Where did he spill the juice, Kenzie?”
“It ran from the counter into your Internet router. The router kind of sparked and then went dead. And then, of course, the credit card thingy stopped working. So when Lola May bought her Baby Ull, I couldn’t run the credit card. But I did take her credit card number down. Maybe you can get your credit card thing fixed and run the charges tomorrow?”
Molly wondered if it was situations like this that had Momma spending all that time in her meditation corner. Because right at the moment, Molly was ready to strangle Kenzie and her adorable baby. She gave the demon child her evil eye. Which didn’t help the situation because the kid started squirming and kicking and then howling.
And Kenzie, who apparently was not one of those firm or demanding mothers, put the child down as she said, “I’ll just get the scissors and free the chairs.”
But Junior had other ideas. The kid took off at a dead run toward the front of the shop, clearly thinking of making an escape. He timed it perfectly—just as Simon Wolfe, wearing the same dark suit he’d worn at his father’s funeral, opened the door for his mother.
The kid managed to evade Charlotte, but Simon was too quick for him. He caught Junior before he could take even one step out onto the sidewalk. And then, with a laugh, he held the demon child way up over his head. The kid squirmed and giggled. “You don’t look like a Purly Girl to me,” he said in that deep, accent-less voice. It was a weird kind of scene, because Simon didn’t look like the kind of guy who
had any experience with children. And yet he tucked that kid under his arm like a football, and the kid giggled as Simon followed Charlotte into the shop.
As always, Charlotte looked elegant and fashionable and above it all as she glided in like royalty. Molly couldn’t miss the family resemblance between Simon and his mother. And yet Molly couldn’t imagine Charlotte handling a demon toddler as effectively as Simon had. In fact, Molly couldn’t imagine Charlotte having any kind of interaction with anyone younger than about twenty.
Charlotte stopped in her tracks and surveyed the litter on the carpet, the giggling infant, and the yak-tied table and chairs.
“What is going on here, Molly?” she asked. “Where in the world is Pat?”
“Good question. I’m hoping she sends postcards and lets us know.”
Charlotte blinked but didn’t respond. No doubt Molly’s snarky comment had confused her. But, lady that she was, Charlotte put on a good front and pretended she hadn’t heard anything.
“Come on in, Charlotte. You’re a little bit early,” Molly said on a sigh, then turned just in time to see Kenzie frantically cutting through the strands of yak to liberate the table and chairs. Her bottom lip was quivering, and she looked like she was about to start bawling.
“It’s okay, Kenzie,” Molly said as she pulled out a chair for Charlotte. “Now, Miz Charlotte, you make yourself comfy. I’m afraid I don’t have any cookies right at the moment, but maybe I can pop down to the doughnut shop and get some Bavarian creams for today’s meeting. How’s that sound?”
“I like Pat’s cookies,” Charlotte said with a sniff, then aimed her gaze at Molly’s hands. “Molly Canaday, your fingernails are filthy. Go clean them at once.” Charlotte shivered in revulsion.
Was it shame that made Molly curl her fingers into her palm? Was it shame that made her feel Simon’s presence like a weight in the room, dragging her down? She had washed her hands. But of course, her nails were cut down to the quick, and there was always just a little bit of residual grease along her torn and ratty cuticles. Bottom line, Molly didn’t care if her hands were dirty. But she resented Charlotte for pointing them out for everyone to see.
“To whom does this belong?” Simon asked, cutting through the alien emotion that was making Molly’s face flame hot. She turned. He was standing there in all his sartorial splendor, bearing the demon under his arm. The boy hung limp and subdued.
“Oh, my God,” Kenzie said. “I’m so, so sorry.” She rushed forward and took the toddler from the man. A suddenly tractable Junior settled in his mother’s arms and put his little red head down on her shoulder. He aimed his angelic smile at Simon.
And the apostrophes at the corner of Simon’s mouth curled up. Obviously, the guys had bonded.
“Are you Charlotte’s son?” Kenzie asked.
“That man is not my son!” Charlotte said. “Millie hired him to do some odd jobs around the house.”
And just as quickly, Simon’s smile disappeared. He gave both Molly and Kenzie a little shrug that seemed filled with both resignation and something else—was it sadness? But he covered over the emotion almost as quickly as it flashed in his eyes.
“Do you want me to run down to the doughnut place for you?” he asked. He cast his gaze over the yarn labels and the tangled mass of yak in Kenzie’s hands. “I could take the baby with me. What’s his name?”
“We call him Junior,” Kenzie supplied. The little demon seemed to know a friend when he saw one. He reached out for Simon. And the man took him in his arms again like he knew how to handle an eighteen-month-old.
“I’ll take my time,” Simon said, casting his gaze over the havoc that Junior had caused.
“Oh, that would be wonderful,” Kenzie said.
“Wait,” Molly said. “What are you doing here? No one expected—”
He gave Molly a direct and deeply unsettling stare. “Mother insisted on coming. I think she needed to escape from the family. And that’s a feeling I understand pretty well.”
“Oh. Well.” The words dried up in her mouth. He wasn’t even trying to hide from his history, was he? She suddenly didn’t know quite what to make of this man.
“It’s okay, Molly. I’ll go get the doughnuts.”
And he turned on his heel, the baby riding his hip. He headed out the door and almost ran over Savannah White, who was dropping off her aunt Miriam Randall.
Simon put Junior down on his feet, and the two of them ambled up the street in the direction of the doughnut shop.
Savannah and Miz Miriam came into the yarn store.
“My goodness, Charlotte, was that Simon just now?” Miriam asked as she settled herself into one of the chairs.
“That man is not my son. Why is everyone saying that? I just told Molly, he’s a handyman and chauffeur that Millie hired for me.”
“Wow, Miz Charlotte,” Kenzie said, “for a handyman he sure does dress nice. That suit he was wearing looks like Hugo Boss, or maybe Kenneth Cole. And he’s like some kind of Pied Piper. I mean, Junior took one look at him and stopped misbehaving. How’d he do that?”
Savannah turned and gave Molly a funny look.
“What?” Molly asked. “Do I have grease on my face again?”
Savannah nodded. “Yeah, maybe just a little on your right cheek.”
Molly wiped her cheek with her hand. “Guess I’ll go wash my face. And my hands.” And then after the meeting, she’d have to make a quick trip up to Orangeburg for a new router. Never mind the laundry, or the grocery shopping, or finding someone without a toddler to mind the Knit & Stitch. Or her job at the Pit. Or what she was going to do with the Shelby.
She headed toward the small storeroom at the back of the shop, but before she could reach it, Kenzie said, “I promise. I’ll pay for all of the crochet hooks.”
Molly turned. “Crochet hooks?”
“Well, I put Junior in the storeroom for a minute when Annie Jasper came by for some superwash merino. I’m afraid he opened up a few packages of hooks. He was building a house with them, you know, sort of like Lincoln Logs?”
“Right.” Molly nodded and headed into the storeroom. “A few packages” turned out to be more than a dozen, and the crochet hooks were scattered everywhere. She headed into the bathroom in the back and inspected herself in the mirror.
There wasn’t a speck of grease on her face. So why had Savannah given her that goofy look? Why had she lied about the grease? Molly looked down at her hands. They were pretty clean, too.
She turned on the tap and started washing them again, cognizant that all of this was part of Momma’s grand plan to turn her into some kind of girlie-girl who wanted to run a knitting shop instead of a body shop.
Junior was fearless and opinionated and not the least bit worried about being with a stranger.
Simon wondered if he’d ever been this fearless or this sure of himself. He could remember when he was four or five, walking to town with Mother. He’d been required to walk at a steady pace—not too fast, not too slow. He’d been required to hold Mother’s hand at every intersection, even when he’d been eight or nine, as if Mother had tried to keep him a baby. She had never understood just how humiliating many of her rules were for an active boy.
But he’d never rebelled. For some reason, he’d never found the courage to break away until he was an adult.
Of course, he had managed to escape from time to time, especially in the summer, when Luke Raintree liberated him. And since Luke was the grandson of a former governor, Mother had allowed Simon to spend endless unsupervised hours out at the Jonquil House, the Raintree family’s summer home on the Edisto River.
A happy sigh escaped his control as warm, sun-drenched memories tumbled through his mind. He hadn’t thought about Luke in a long, long time. He’d suppressed a lot of those memories. Now he was stunned to discover that some of them weren’t painful.
No doubt he was thinking about Luke because Junior had red hair and freckles. And Junior seemed to have the same joie d
e vivre that Luke had possessed in vast quantities. Luke was the kind of person that drew people to him. He was a natural-born leader.
Simon swung the toddler up onto his hip, just before the kid raced into traffic. “So, kiddo, are you going to be a leader one day?”
“No!” the toddler said emphatically and squirmed. “Down!”
“Not in the middle of the street.” He pointed to the truck going by. “You’d get smashed flat.”
“Mah fat,” Junior parroted with an emphatic nod of his head. “No no.” He waved his finger in the air and looked so adorable that Simon laughed.
“What an unexpected delight you are,” Simon said to the kid. And he meant it. He had no desire to be a parent. God only knew what damage he might do to some unsuspecting child. He had no good parental role models. But there was something about the innocence of children that always cheered him up.
Just so long as he could hand the kids back to their parents when they soiled their diapers. He gave Junior a little sniff test. Thankfully, the kid passed.
They crossed the street so Simon could walk by the old Kismet movie theater. It was shrouded in scaffolding, while the sounds of drills and saws wafted out from the open doors. Simon remembered sitting up in the back row with Luke and Gabe Raintree watching horror movies and eating Dots. Simon hated the black ones, but Luke had loved them.
It made him happy to see The Kismet rising from the ashes. The last time Simon had come to Last Chance, the theater had been closed. It was like an omen to him then.
And now?
He was pondering that question when the past found him.
Zeph Gibbs came sauntering out of the movie theater wearing a pair of frayed overalls and looking a whole lot older than Simon remembered.
Simon stopped in his tracks, and Junior squirmed and said, “Down.”
“Zeph?” Simon said.
The old black man turned. “Well, I declare.” A big smile stole over his face. That smile hadn’t changed one bit. “What in the world are you doing with Junior?”
