twelve
I turned the knob, pushing the back porch door open with my hip, and heard Gigi’s squeal from the dining room. I dropped the groceries with a thud onto the kitchen countertop and rushed to make sure it was a squeal of joy, not pain. One look at her face and I had my answer.
“I’m on the Etsy,” she said excitedly. She jabbed her finger at the screen and I winced at the fingerprints she left. “We are sold out! Not one dress is left! Boom shakalaka!” She jumped up from her chair and roped me into a mix of the boogie and the twist. I laughed and danced with her until we were both breathless. Gigi looked at me, eyes shining.
“You did good, kid,” she said, panting. “I’m so proud of you.” She kissed me on the cheek and then started in again with the boogie. “All those dresses, all over the country! Girls are wearing our dresses, and now girls can’t even get our dresses because we’re all out. We are limited editions!” She giggled.
I clapped giddily. “Let’s make more! Where do you get your fabric? I can put in an order tomorrow.” I was already walking to the laptop to Google Gigi’s fabric source and write down the phone number.
Gigi laughed. “Do you have a time machine, kiddo?” She shook her head and picked up an empty teacup next to the computer. “I bought that stuff from a fabric store in Des Moines in 1979. Betty Lou’s Window Shop, I remember. It closed not long after, but I loved that store.” She kept talking, reminiscing about Betty Lou while I stared at the screen.
Nineteen seventy-nine? I stopped, my hands poised over the keyboard. No name, no serial number, not even the store where it was purchased. I stared at the screen, feeling my breathing become shallow. Google would be no help to me now. No fabric would bring our little enterprise to a grinding halt. No fabric meant New York was still dangling far out of my reach.
I’d earned enough to pay off my credit cards, give some to Gigi despite her protests, and save a bit for sewing supplies. I was operating in the black, but just barely. To grow at all, I knew, would mean an investment, but I’d been hoping Gigi’s fabric supply would be local and cheap. I could only imagine what vintage bolts might cost if I had to start sourcing them bit by bit from individual vendors across the country.
It was just before I let myself fall asleep that evening, my breathing finally becoming steady after my mind took a long and rambling replay of the day’s events, when it came to me. My eyes flew wide open. I knew someone better than Google. I knew Luca.
“The fabulous and gifted Grace Kleren!” Luca’s Italian accent exclaimed into his work line. I winced, hoping no one else within earshot of him knew my name and the likely legendary story of my Nancy freak-out and bathroom breakdown.
“Hey, Luca,” I said more softly, as if trying to encourage him to turn down his own volume. “How are you?” I was calling from a perch on Gigi’s front porch swing. An old Buick puttered by on an otherwise empty street. A squirrel scolded me from the crook of an oak. “Wait. I have to ask. What can you see right now?” I hated the longing in my voice, but there it was.
“What am I seeing?” He paused, taking it in before answering. “I’m standing in my office, so I see a stack of back issues I need to comb today, looking for an inspiration for a spring plaid. I see the detritus of my morning, which includes the remains of a pastry from Bubby’s and a mostly empty coffee cup from Sid’s.”
I whimpered. I couldn’t help it.
“And,” he finished, “I see a view of Midtown, sunny and full of all sorts of people who should be dressing better. It’s a tiny view, as my window size is commensurate with where I stand on this corporate ladder, but it is, in fact, a window. And you, sweetheart? What is your view of Iowa?” He drew out the word as if trying it on for the first time.
I sighed. “A squirrel.” I stopped there. The squirrel was enough.
Luca laughed. “Oh, honey. Time to get yourself back to New York.”
I sat up a bit in the porch swing, stopping its momentum with the toe of my sneaker. “That’s the plan,” I said. “In fact, it might come earlier than I’d thought, but I need your help with a little detective work.”
Forty-five minutes later, I was helping Gigi weed unwanted rogues in her backyard garden when my cell phone buzzed in my pocket. I straightened, feeling back muscles I hadn’t remembered for years, and swiped to answer.
“I found it.”
I let out a whoop. “Luca, you are a marvel. You found the source with only photos of the dresses? I am in awe of you.”
“As is only natural,” he purred. “The fabrics are all from the same warehouse, still in business, and just outside Omaha, Nebraska.”
Why was it that whenever Luca said the name of a Midwestern city, it sounded like he was consulting a phonetic dictionary? Gigi was watching my face and I said, phone away from my mouth, “Luca found our fabric at a warehouse in Omaha.”
“Hello, Granny!” Luca called through my phone. “Lovely to meet you, darling!”
“Luca says hello,” I passed along to Gigi, who smiled.
“Tell Luca he’s welcome here anytime. I owe him a home-cooked meal for his trouble,” she said before turning back to the first row of butter lettuce.
“Oooh.” Luca was cooing after hearing his invitation. “I’d love that. I have the perfect pair of trousers that would serve that occasion. A gorgeous linen, exquisite hand, magenta. To. Die. For. I got them in Firenze with my mammina. I could get Yolo a matching collar. We would stun.”
I bit the inside of my cheek to prevent my laugh-snort from escaping. How I would love to see Luca striding the streets of Silver Creek in his magenta linen pants. This town could use a little shake-up, and I thought Luca in magenta was a great place to start. Erin Jackson might have to take to her bed to recover, but I was all in.
“Bring the pants and come anytime,” I said, wishing he’d take me up on it. “And thank you so much for your sleuth work, Luca. I owe you big-time.”
He gave me the name and contact info for the warehouse in Omaha and we were just about to hang up when he stopped me. “Grace, honey, I almost forgot. The woman on the phone said she had more than enough fabric for you, about two hundred bolts.”
“Wow,” I said. “Yes, that should do it and then some. I won’t need nearly that much.”
“Well, that’s the thing,” Luca said. “She said you can have the fabric but you must take it all.”
My eyes widened and I felt a knot settle in my stomach. “All of it? Luca, I can’t possibly afford all that.” The business was going well but not well enough for what two hundred bolts of vintage fabric would cost outright.
“Oh, I think you can,” he said breezily. “If you can pick it up, she said, it’s all yours.”
I hung up with Luca, thoughts spinning. Gigi stood, hands on the small of her back, and wiped the sweat from her neck. “What’s the trouble?”
I started to pace. “The good news is that we have the opportunity to acquire a whole lot of beautiful fabric for free.”
“Good gravy.” Gigi opened her mouth slightly, mirroring my shock at our good fortune. “What could possibly be the bad news?”
I turned on my heel and started up the walk. “The bad news is that there is no way two hundred bolts of fabric will fit in the back of your minivan.”
Gigi waved away that concern with one soil-caked gardening glove. “Well, that’s not bad news at all. There are plenty of people with trucks around here.”
“Right,” I said, stopping now to open the contacts in my phone. I frowned with my fingers over the screen. “Gigi, you’re going to need to give me names. I don’t know anyone well enough to call with a request like this.”
She nodded, serious. “True. It is a big ask. Taking a day off work, driving all the way to Omaha and back, lots of time on the road when you could be spring planting.” She shook her head quickly. “Never mind. You were right. This is bad news.” She turned back to her gardening but was humming. Loudly and with too much happiness than befitted the situation.<
br />
I crossed the distance between us and stood, watching her work. I narrowed my eyes at the top of her gardening hat. “Gigi.”
“Hm?” She didn’t stop her work breaking up the soil in the flower bed under her feet.
“Why do I get the feeling you are not worried about this truck issue?”
“Oh, honey, because I’m not.”
“Want to clue me in?”
Gigi stood and faced me. Her eyes got unnaturally large and unnaturally innocent. “Why, Grace, you do know just the right person for this job. He’s not a farmer, he’s as kind as they come, and as Providence would allow it, he has a very nice truck.” She passed me her phone with a grin. “Look under ‘Favorites.’ Right below your name.”
I stood motionless, staring at Gigi’s phone in my hand, well after she went back to work and well after I admitted to myself that she was right. I needed help and I knew the only one able and willing to do what I needed was the guy I least wanted to trouble.
I hung up three times before taking a deep breath and letting the call go through.
“Miss Gigi,” Tucker answered, “I think there’s something wrong with your phone. You called me three times before we got a good connection.”
I swallowed hard. “Tuck?” I said, and I could see Gigi’s shoulders shake a bit as she started to laugh. “I need a favor.”
thirteen
Tucker pulled slowly into the sprawling parking lot of Triad Fabrics and Textiles and found an empty spot in front of what looked like administrative offices. He tugged the keys from the ignition and turned to me. “We made it.”
I had to stifle a sigh of relief, and not because we’d covered the last mile between Silver Creek and Omaha. We’d made it through almost three hours of polite conversation, a feat I didn’t know I could repeat on the return trip. It turned out that being friends with this man required an attention to detail I hadn’t known I possessed. Turning to him, I forced eye contact and said, “I’m really grateful for this kindness, Tucker. I know you had to rearrange all sorts of stuff to make this happen today. So thank you.”
He broke our gaze but not before I saw a smile form. “I know it’s hard to believe, but spending time with you is a step up from drywall repair. Even if it’s going to Nebraska.”
I laughed, rolling my eyes. “You Midwesterners are so elitist.” I pulled open my door before Tucker could point out the hypocrisy in those words coming from a recent New Yorker. We covered the distance to the front door, my pulse starting to quicken as I got closer to the next step in building my nascent business.
A woman with a pinched expression sat behind an oversize computer monitor. “May I help you?” she said. Her hair was impressive in its height. I must have stared too long because Tucker cleared his throat.
“Yes, we’re here for some, um, fabric.” Definitely the first time he’d uttered those words in his life, and I stepped in to rescue him.
“Yes,” I said. “I believe my friend Luca Beneventi from Milano called? We’re here to pick up the entire Ibiza collection.”
The receptionist was smiling at Tucker, who had taken off his ball cap and was combing his fingers through a messy mop of hair. The effect seemed to mesmerize her.
“All of it,” I said, too loudly, in an effort to make the woman look at me and not the hunk of burning love next to me. “Two hundred bolts, if I’m not mistaken.”
The large number had the effect I wanted. She tipped her face to me, her expression skeptical. “The Ibiza? Are you sure you have the right name?”
“I’m sure,” I said, smiling. “I know you’ve had it awhile, but I’m happy to take it off your hands.”
“That’s a whole lot of fabric for an elementary teacher or a 4-H project or whatever you’re thinking.” She pursed her lips and clacked a bunch of keys on her keyboard. She shook her head. “I’m going to need you to submit a written request for such a large comp order. My guess is your Luca person talked with my sub, Lorraine, who had no authority to make this decision.” She raised her eyebrows and stared me down, willing me to defy her. I opened my mouth but Tucker intervened.
“Ma’am, I appreciate that you’re doing your job. I own my own company and I know how important it is to have someone I can trust, particularly in your position. The face of the company, that is.”
The face of the company looked up at him and batted every one of her mascara-heavy lashes.
An hour later, we were back on the road, all two hundred bolts snug and protected under the tarps in the back of Tucker’s truck.
I shook my head again. “You were shameless with that woman.” I took another lick of my ice cream. We’d stopped at Ted and Wally’s, and I was happy to report the breathless hyperbole we heard from locals at a nearby gas station was based in truth not hype. My balsamic caramel blackberry was changing how I felt about the world, and Tucker’s scoop of smoked salted bourbon Ho Hos (yes, Ho Hos) was making even a broad-shouldered construction king swoon.
Tucker swiped a spoonful of blackberry and swallowed thoughtfully. “Nah, not shameless. Just polite. People appreciate good manners these days.”
My laugh wasn’t dainty but it made my point. “Manners and eye candy. A deadly combo.” I grinned at him. “Thanks for using your chiseled jaw to help me avoid paperwork. It was very gallant of you.”
He scratched his head and looked pained. “You’re welcome? Is that what I say to that? Good grief, Kleren. You can make a man blush.”
I was enjoying watching him squirm. “I believe you have a forever fan in Blanche of Triad Fabrics.” I returned to my ice cream and tried for a cavalier tone of voice. “The list of women who’ve fallen for Tucker Van Es gets longer by the day.”
He polished off the end of his ice cream. “My list is actually pretty short.” He stole a glance at me before shifting his gaze back to the road. “And stubborn.”
I saw the half smile on his face and felt my stomach flip. “Well, I’m grateful that you didn’t let our sordid past keep you from doing me a solid today. Thank—”
“Grace,” he said firmly, taking his eyes off the road to seek out mine. “If you thank me one more time, I might have to toss my cookies. And I don’t want to do that, Grace. I just ate some incomprehensibly good ice cream, and I’d rather not ruin it.”
I laughed at his intensity, which only made him scowl. “All right. I get it,” I said. “As long as you know I’m grateful. I mean, you don’t exactly owe me anymore. Now that we aren’t a thing. Or not that thing, anyway. Now that I’m off the list.” I cringed as soon as the last word was out of my mouth. I stared straight ahead, wishing my old tendency to ramble was one I’d left in New York.
A few moments into my self-berating, I realized Tucker’s shoulders were shaking with laughter.
“What?” I demanded, still stinging with my utter failure to keep the conversational plates spinning.
“I just can’t get over this new Grace. The one who is so careful with her words and worried she’ll say the wrong thing.” His eyes brimmed with mischief when he stole a glance in my direction. “It’s a little odd, I must say.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “This is not the new me,” I said, defensive. “This is the new Grace-with-Tucker-but-not-dating-Tucker me. I’m trying it out.”
“How’s it working?” He didn’t even try to hide his grin.
I pursed my lips. “It’s exhausting.” I slumped in my seat while he laughed. I just let him have his moment. My dignity was in shards anyway. After a minute or so, I said, “At least I have one consolation.”
“What’s that?” he asked through a smile that hadn’t faded.
“At least I know my name was stubborn on that list of yours.” I shrugged. “It feels pretty good to be a legend.”
“Oh, I didn’t say you were a legend necessarily,” he said breezily as he changed lanes. “Just stubborn.” He didn’t turn to witness my frown but I was pretty sure he knew it was there. “Crazy stubborn. And I tried all sorts of
things, I’ll have you know.”
“Like what?” I turned to watch Nebraska fly by my window, my heart picking up a bit of speed. I thought of Natalie the grocery goddess and her perfect figure and glossy hair and wondered where Tucker placed her on this list of his. I tilted my head and waited for his response, my body language conveying more bravado than I felt.
“Oh, let’s see.” Tucker sighed. “I went through a long angry-country-song phase, trying my best to replace any remaining hope that Stubborn Girl would find her way back to me with the more realistic emotion of anger. No dice. She stayed on the list.”
I turned back to my window, watching the bright green of spring fields rush by in a wash of color.
“I tried hypnosis—”
I snapped my gaze back to his profile. “You did not.”
He laughed. “You’re right. I didn’t. But I did pray a lot.”
“You really did?” I said, curious.
“Sure, I did,” he said easily. “I pray about most things, so stubborn women definitely make the list.”
“Why?” I said, a little roughly. I tried more gently. “That is, why do you pray? What do you get out of it?”
He raised one eyebrow when he looked at me. “We’re going there, then?”
I shrugged. “We have about three hours left in the car. Might as well tackle God while we’re at it.”
He chuckled. “Three hours might not do it, but we can take a stab at it.” He stretched out a bit in his seat. “I pray to continue a conversation.”
“A one-way conversation?” I said, not liking the bitterness that crept into my voice but deciding if we were doing this, I might as well be honest. “The last time I tried to pray in earnest, it felt distinctly one-way.” A snapshot of myself curled up on my pink bedspread, my teenage self racked with grief, settled in my thoughts, and I felt anew how lonely one could feel when waiting for a distant God to break His silence.
He nodded slowly. “Sometimes it feels one-way. Often it doesn’t.” He paused. “Gracie, when was the last time you went to church?”
Heart Land Page 11
