“Don’t wait supper on me.”
“All right. We’ll see you when you get back.” Thank goodness for the invention of the Crock-Pot. “I’ll save you a plate.”
“I’ll have my cell phone, but I have to turn it off in the courtroom.”
“No problem.”
The morning hours passed with their usual speed. Merry finished the project Jeff had given her and helped Mitzi with some of her work. The phone rang more than usual, and she collected a dizzying array of pink message slips for Jeff. Clients called to be scheduled and rescheduled. The FedEx guy made his daily delivery, and Daniel Gonzalez, the postman, left her a large stack of mail to deal with. Most days she brought her own lunch and ate it at her desk while she sorted the mail or ordered office supplies online. She was trying to decide which catalogs to keep and which to pitch when the phone rang yet again.
“McGavin Law Office. How may I help you?”
“Merry?”
“Yes?” Something about the caller’s voice made her pulse beat more quickly.
“It’s Sandra, from the day care.”
“Is everything okay?”
There was a pause, and then Sandra spoke again. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but I think you’d better come to the church. There’s something wrong with Hunter.”
Eugenie was never one to shirk her duties, but that first Monday in December, she slipped away from the library midafternoon to dash to Kendall’s Department Store. She’d seen their ad in the Sunday Sweetgum Reporter, and the men’s cashmere sweaters featured caught her attention. A perfect Christmas present for Paul. She’d been wondering what to get him. At first she thought of knitting him a sweater, combining it with her project for the Knit Lit Society, but somehow time had gotten away from her. Plus, she doubted the seed stitch was quite right for a man’s sweater.
She entered Kendall’s through the elegantly etched glass door. In her forty years in Sweetgum, she didn’t think this particular store had ever changed. Dark wood, gleaming counter-tops, the marble floor polished until it glowed. Kendall’s was a throwback to an earlier era, before shopping malls and the Internet. At Kendall’s, you could still find attentive customer service, brass doorknobs, and beautiful gift-wrapping.
“Good morning, Eugenie.” Alfred Kendall, a striking man in his midfifties, was the third-generation owner of the department store. His smile was as warm as his greeting. Over the years, Alfred had helped her pick out a myriad of wedding gifts, baby layettes, and Christmas presents. “What may I help you with today?”
“Hello, Alfred. I wanted to look at the cashmere sweaters that were in your ad yesterday.”
Alfred nodded sagely. “For Rev. Carson? A good choice. We have several colors that would suit him well.”
He led her to the men’s department and personally assisted her with her choice. She finally settled on a medium shade of blue—cerulean, Alfred called it—as well as a cream-colored oxford shirt and a jauntily striped tie. Eugenie was afraid she might have gone overboard. She and Paul hadn’t set a budget for their first Christmas together, but she was still a working woman with her own income, and she couldn’t think of anything or anyone she’d rather spend her money on than her new husband.
“Will there be anything else?”
Eugenie paused. Her eyes flitted for the barest of moments past Alfred’s shoulder, beyond the edges of the men’s department and across the store to a section she seldom visited. Lingerie. Just the name brought a blush to her cheek. So tempting and so embarrassing. She couldn’t. Not after all these years of playing the town spinster. Alfred Kendall would probably have heart palpitations if she asked to look at the negligees.
“No, Alfred. I believe that’s everything for now.”
“Would you like to have these gift-wrapped?”
“Yes, please.” The packages would look perfect under their Christmas tree, with Kendall’s distinctive green foil wrap and gold bow.
“If you don’t mind waiting, they won’t take long.”
Eugenie nodded, signing her credit card slip with a flourish, and Alfred disappeared to the back of the store. Left alone, the temptation was too great. She gravitated toward the lingerie section like the moon pulled through its orbit by the earth. She edged toward a rack of beautiful gowns, silk and lace and satin in pale, sumptuous colors, and had just reached out to finger a sleeve when a voice behind her almost made her jump out of her shoes.
“There you are.”
Hazel Emerson. Eugenie swallowed a groan before she turned to greet her nemesis.
“Good afternoon, Hazel.” She forced herself to mold her face into a pleasant expression.
“Well, I hope you’re satisfied.” The other woman’s eyes narrowed with anger, and the lines around her mouth looked deep as ravines.
“I’m sorry?” Eugenie couldn’t imagine what Hazel meant. She’d done what the other woman had wanted, throwing herself into church life to prove herself and her faith to the congregation.
“You’re doing your best to ruin your husband, and now you’ve succeeded.”
Eugenie paused before she spoke, a habit that had served her well over the years. “Ruin my husband?” she finally asked, deciding she’d better seek clarification before she said anything that might actually harm Paul’s career.
“The pledge campaign was a disaster. Budget cuts right and left. We’ll be lucky if we can pay the light bill.”
Eugenie forced herself not to betray the slightest hint of surprise. She’d been aware that the budget wasn’t in great shape, but Paul hadn’t indicated that any imminent disaster loomed.
“Hazel, I doubt that matters are as dire—”
“He’s going to go part time! How much more dire could they be?”
“Part time?” At that, she couldn’t keep the surprise from showing on her face. “Where did you hear that?”
“My husband’s on the finance committee. Are you telling me you didn’t know?”
Eugenie gritted her teeth and shook her head. “Not about Paul cutting back on his hours.”
“Oh, I doubt very much he’ll cut back on his hours. Just on his pay.” Hazel shot her another dark look. “But since you have your own salary, why should you worry?”
Thankfully, at that moment Alfred Kendall reappeared with her beautifully wrapped packages. In light of Hazel’s bombshell, though, they didn’t excite her as much as they had only a few moments before.
“Here you are, Eugenie. Oh, hello, Hazel.” He nodded in greeting. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Thank you, Alfred.” Eugenie relieved him of the packages, eager to make a beeline for the door. “I’d better get back to the library.” She tossed a quick good-bye to Hazel over her shoulder and sped toward the entrance.
If Hazel Emerson had possessed this information for more than thirty minutes, then Eugenie could be sure everyone in Sweetgum already knew. Why hadn’t Paul told her that the budget difficulties hadn’t been resolved?
It was the first secret either of them had kept in their marriage. That scared Eugenie, almost as much as the fear that the budget troubles were her fault. She knew better than anyone the power of small-town gossip. She also knew as well as anyone that when it came to ministers, expectations were as high as they were unfair. She’d thought it would be enough, saying yes to everyone who asked for her help. What more could they want?
She hurried around the corner toward the library, wondering when Paul would tell her about his difficulty. And why he hadn’t already.
Hannah always looked forward to Saturdays, mostly because they didn’t involve going to school. When she was little, school had been something she liked because it allowed her to escape from her mother for a few hours each day. When she reached middle school, though, things changed. “Peer pressure,” adults liked to call it. “Social mutilation” was Hannah’s name for the torture that went on each day between eighty thirty and three o’clock. Freshman year hadn’t changed anything. She was still an outside
r, and hanging out with Josh hadn’t brought her any newfound popularity—just more scorn from Courtney and her crowd.
Josh had a different lunch period than she did, so she only saw him for a few minutes before school, when everyone congregated on the steps waiting for the bell to ring. Sometimes they talked for a few brief moments after school before he had to be in the weight room for off-season conditioning.
Saturdays, though, as precious as they’d been—an escape from the nightmare of high school—were even more precious now. Because now she spent Saturdays with Josh.
Today they were meeting at Sweetgum Creek, at the familiar place where it narrowed and Josh had spent all those hours trying to jump across it. Hannah pushed aside some underbrush as she approached the creek and prayed there wasn’t any poison ivy. She slid down the steep bank and almost lost her footing in the crumbling soil before righting herself in the sandy stretch that lined the edge of the water.
It was almost like a little beach. The creek, not more than five or six feet wide here, tumbled over scattered rocks and pooled in places near the edge. Even though it was the first Saturday in December, gnats still swarmed, and here and there small fish flopped on the surface in search of food.
Hannah slid her backpack off her shoulders and opened it. She’d brought an old blanket for them to sit on and some sandwiches and Coke. She’d also brought a bottle of water because Josh was pretty health conscious and would probably refuse the soft drink.
Hannah stretched out on the blanket and let the hood of her sweatshirt act as a pillow. She looked up at the gray December sky and wondered when full-on winter would arrive. She did her best not to think about the thing bothering her, a subject that troubled her enough that she’d almost gone to Mrs. Carson to talk about it. At the last minute, she’d changed her mind. She wasn’t sure Mrs. Carson knew much more about men—or in this case, boys—than she did.
The winter formal was next Friday night, and Josh still hadn’t mentioned it. He couldn’t possibly be unaware of the event. The school halls were plastered with signs, and the cheerleaders had set up a table in the cafeteria to sell tickets. Josh had to know the dance was next week. And he had to know she was expecting him to ask her, especially after the homecoming incident.
“Are you asleep?”
She jumped at the sound of his voice and scrambled to a sitting position. Why hadn’t she heard him coming through the underbrush? Because she’d been lost in thought, daydreaming about him, of course. On her own little Josh Hargrove planet.
“Sorry” He plopped down beside her on the blanket. “Didn’t mean to scare you.” He wore jeans, a long-sleeve T-shirt, and a fleece vest.
“You didn’t.” She smiled at him and tried not to look too eager. “I was just thinking.”
“About me?” he teased, and when she blushed, he laughed and leaned over to kiss her. “Excellent.”
She didn’t know whether he meant the kiss was excellent or he liked the fact that she was thinking about him, but she didn’t care. He was happy to see her, and that was all that mattered.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said. “My mom wanted me to do some stuff for her before I left.” He frowned at the mention of his mother.
Hannah shrugged. “No big deal.” But she’d noticed in the last week or so that he’d started to show up just a little late for whatever they’d planned to do. Don’t be paranoid, she told herself, but she couldn’t quite silence the doubts that had taken root.
“What do you want to do today?” he asked.
Hannah nodded toward her backpack. “I brought some sandwiches. We can just hang out if you want.”
She wanted to talk to him, draw him into conversation, and somehow, in a subtle way, bring up the subject of the winter formal. Or better yet, get him to bring it up. If they were going together, she needed time to talk to Mrs. Carson about a new dress. Camille had one at the shop that had almost made her drool, a dark purple silk that looked sophisticated without being too old. It was an amazing dress, and although Hannah wasn’t particularly a girly-girl, she desperately wanted that dress. Even more desperately, she wanted to wear it to the winter formal as Josh’s date.
“What time do you have to be home?”
Hannah glanced at her watch. It was a little after noon. “I told Camille I’d come by the dress shop in a while and help her do some stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Cleaning. Pricing things. Just stuff.”
“I still think it’s a ripoff that she doesn’t pay you.”
Hannah looked away. She’d been too proud to tell Josh that she worked at the dress shop in exchange for clothes. It sounded too pathetic, too… trailer park. “I like helping Camille.”
“Can’t you blow it off, just for today? I’ve barely seen you this week.”
His dismissive attitude irked Hannah. She didn’t like being taken for granted as a girlfriend, but her real fear was that maybe he wasn’t taking her for granted at all. Maybe he just liked her as a friend and she was reading too much into it. But how could you read too much into a guy’s feelings when he kissed you on the sidewalk after a football game in full view of God and everybody? That had to matter more than who he took to homecoming.
“I have a life, too, Josh.” She turned away to dig in her backpack for the sandwiches. Mrs. Carson had helped her make them—thick piles of turkey on fresh bread from the bakery on the town square. The librarian didn’t think a sandwich was finished until you’d put some fancy mustard, lettuce, and tomato on it. For Hannah, who had lived on bologna and Wonder Bread for years, it seemed like a lot of bother. But it also seemed nice.
Josh put his hand on her shoulder, and she swiveled back around to find him looking at her sheepishly, apology in his eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m being a jerk.”
She nodded. “Yes, you are.” She only wished she had the guts to elaborate on that statement.
“Can I still have a sandwich?”
“Have two.” She tossed a couple of Ziploc bags at him. “Or else you’ll be hungry in an hour.” All that weight lifting must burn off a jillion calories, because Josh was always hungry.
“Thanks.” He leaned forward and brushed another kiss across her lips. His mouth, so soft against hers, made her think of Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler. Before Josh, she would never have understood the hoop-skirt-wearing main character. But now…
“Josh—” She stopped, unwrapped her sandwich, and stared at it as if it contained the answer to all the mysteries of the universe.
“What?” He took a bite of his sandwich large enough to choke a horse.
“I was wondering…” How in the world was she supposed to ask without asking?
Josh chewed, swallowed. “Wondering what?” He grinned. “Great sandwich, by the way.”
“Thanks.” She picked at the bread, tore off a few crumbs, and tossed them to a bird perched on a rock a few feet away.
“What were you wondering? How I got to be so awesome?”
His teasing grin made her stomach flip, which she would have enjoyed more if she hadn’t just swallowed a bite of her sandwich.
“I guess I was wondering”—she took a deep breath—“I guess I was wondering if I needed a new dress for the winter formal.”
She waited, her heart pounding, for his response. For a long moment, he didn’t say anything, just looked at her with an unreadable expression.
“Hannah—”
Now she really regretted that bite of sandwich. She could see the pity in his eyes. She’d been a fool, read too much into his attention. He didn’t want to date her, not openly. But then why had he kissed her? Taken her to the Dairy Dip? She felt the blood rushing to her cheeks.
“Never mind.” She jammed her sandwich back into the Ziploc bag, then stuffed it into her open backpack. “It’s not important.” She reached for the zipper, knowing that she had to get out of there. Had to run and run and keep running. She was such an idiot. In a flash she was on her feet and swinging the
backpack over her shoulder. “I’ve got to run. Camille’s expecting me.”
“Hannah, wait.” He was on his feet too, and he caught her arm, holding her in place. “I need to explain.”
She whirled around to face him. “Who are you taking?”
One tiny sliver of hope still lodged in the vicinity of her heart. Stupid, idiotic hope. And then she looked in his eyes, and it died.
“I’m taking Courtney.”
Hannah bit her lip to keep the tears from flowing. Pain was always better than weakness. She’d learned that from her mother at an early age. “Whatever.” She looked down at his hand on her arm. “Like I said, I’ve got to go.”
“You know I’d rather take you.” He released her arm but didn’t move away. “But my mom—She’s been a mess since the divorce. She hates it here. And it made her so happy when I took Courtney to homecoming.” He frowned. “It’s just a stupid dance.”
“Then why go at all?” She shouldn’t ask. Shouldn’t stand there and let him grind her heart into the sand beneath their feet. “Tell your mother you don’t want to go.”
“She just wants the best for me—” He broke off when he saw her bite her lip again, almost drawing blood. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I understand.” Hannah shook off his hand and stepped back. “Your mom wants you to date the perfect little pompom girl, Merry McGavin’s precious daughter. Not some piece of trash like that slutty Tracy Simmons’s spawn.”
“Stop it.” Now he was angry too. “You know that’s not true.”
But it was true. “Nice try, Josh.”
“I just need time to get her used to the idea of you and me. After my stepfather dumped her, we didn’t have much choice but to move back here. She’s been really depressed. She talks about Courtney nonstop, keeps pushing me to ask her out. I wanted to tell you, but—”
The Sweetgum Ladies Knit for Love Page 17
