by Tess Rothery
“I’ll get you some coffee.” Hudson was an early riser, like Taylor. A decade of retail life had done this to her, and he was just wired that way. Taylor pulled the pillow over her head and waited for his return. She had a long day of work ahead of her. Hopefully Belle would take Dayton to Cooper’s and the three kids could just sort of hang out there. They’d be safe, surely.
Or maybe Taylor could sequester all of them in the apartment and make Clay stay with them. He’d been working out, after all. He was like a short little bodyguard now. She pushed her pillow to the floor and got up.
Downstairs Hudson was frying some eggs to go with the coffee. Taylor sat at the table and dropped her head to her hands. “Don’t say it.” She wasn’t in the mood for a lecture about her need to find someone to talk about her “troubles” with.
“Got it.” He didn’t sound pleased.
Belle and Dayton came downstairs together. Belle looked like she had been out all night, as in fact, she had.
Dayton looked like a child. A young girl, to be precise. Wrapped up in a billowy, flowered bathrobe of Belle’s with short, pink hair lightly tussled from sleep, and thin bare feet, Taylor had a good idea what Dayton’s birth gender was. Dayton’s big, cornflower-blue eyes set in a face with sculpted cheekbones and that long, elegant nose, Taylor wondered why Dayton didn’t embrace femininity? Few people woke up in the morning looking ready for a photoshoot.
Taylor stood up to get coffee. It was none of her business what Dayton wanted out of life, and Taylor had to chalk her thoughts about a future in modeling up to a lack of coffee.
Dayton got a cup of coffee as well, then followed Belle into the living room.
Their voices carried, though Taylor could tell they were trying to be quiet.
“I stayed because I saw a murder, Belle.” Dayton’s shivery voice might have been put on. Taylor wasn’t sure.
“Who hasn’t?” Belle’s rolling eyes could be heard all the way in the kitchen.
“Anyways, I like your sister.” Dayton’s voice didn’t carry as well as Belle’s, but Taylor caught that.
Taylor smiled.
“I guess you like my pajamas and bathrobe and bed too.” Belle laughed, but not happily.
“I’m just trying to not get killed, okay?”
“You have always been such a frigging drama queen.”
“Whatever. You need to get some sleep.”
“Ugh.”
“Would you rather I went back to my empty house and waited for the guy who stabbed the chaplain to find me?”
“Have you lost your mind?”
Taylor couldn’t take it anymore, so she joined the fighting teens.
“Dayton’s not crazy. We did see a murder, and it sounds like the murderer might have seen…” Taylor hesitated.
“Me,” Dayton interjected. “He might have seen me.”
Belle’s eyes were glued to her phone.
Taylor looked back and forth, wondering if these two were even friends.
“What are you guys fighting about?” Taylor nestled herself into the corner of the couch. “Last I remembered you guys were besties.”
“That was then.” Dayton’s voice did have a drama-for-drama’s sake sound to it. Taylor sympathized a little with Belle.
“Did one of you steal the other’s guy or something?” Taylor teased.
Belle tilted her chin up.
Dayton’s eyes narrowed.
“Cooper?” Taylor said the name with disbelief. “Surely Levi wouldn’t like that.”
“Who says Belle stole Cooper?” Dayton turned the steely eyes to Belle.
“Do I want to know?” Taylor asked.
“No, you don’t. You just want to go make a buck and then spend it.”
“Yeah…I’m not a trust fund kid, after all.” Taylor referred to the half-a-million-dollar life insurance policy sitting in trust for Belle. Both of them would have vastly preferred their mother over the money, but it didn’t change the fact that Belle had a whole lot of money.
Dayton snorted. “At least we know Cooper doesn’t love me for my money.”
“Whatever. I’ve got to go.”
“At five forty-five in the morning?” Taylor challenged her sister. She was being dumb and deserved it.
“Yeah. I’ve got to go to bed.” Belle stormed upstairs.
“Are you going to tell her what’s going on?” Taylor asked Dayton.
“I tried.” Dayton stared at the floor.
“Do you want breakfast or not?” Hudson asked. He seemed impatient, which wasn’t unusual in the morning, but wasn’t pleasant either.
“No, thanks.”
“Dayton?”
“Sure.”
Taylor followed Dayton to the kitchen. “Can I change my mind?”
“Yes.” He set a plate on the table. One egg over easy and a piece of toast. Taylor helped herself to the jam, since it was hers, since this was her house being overrun by people who didn’t live here. “Dayton?” she asked as she slathered the toasty wheat bread with some blackberry jam. “I have an idea for keeping you safe today, if you don’t have something up your sleeve already?”
Dayton sipped a cup of coffee. “Maybe I’d better see what Cooper is doing.”
“Clay works from the apartment upstairs at the shop. He’ll be there pretty much all day. I’ll be downstairs, you know, running the shop all day too. You could stay with us.”
Hudson made a disdainful “humph” sound from his spot at the stove.
“Was that you offering to babysit?” Taylor asked.
“I overreacted last night.” Dayton stood. The plate of egg and toast Hudson had just set down was untouched. “I’ll hook up with Cooper and then, I don’t know. Maybe we’ll go talk to the police one more time. But I don’t need a babysitter.”
“That was the wrong word, I’m sorry.”
“I highly doubt Clay would see hanging out with a beautiful girl like Dayton all day as babysitting.” Hudson’s deep sexy voice was annoyingly sarcastic.
This was why Taylor rarely stayed the night with him.
He really was the worst in the morning.
Dayton cringed.
“He’s not too old to notice you,” Hudson said. “And some men think newly-legal eighteen-year-olds are fair game.”
“You’re disgusting.” Taylor didn’t give Dayton a chance to respond. She did find it interesting that Hudson hadn’t been corrected for using the girl label.
“I could be wrong.” Hudson shrugged. “I’m not thirty yet. Maybe things change when you get old.”
Taylor had turned thirty with literally no fanfare, not so many months ago. She hadn’t advertised the day to Hudson, but he had to know.
Dayton looked at her with dismay in those light blue eyes. “Hudson’s kind of a jerk.”
“You’re telling me.” Taylor put her plate in the sink and went upstairs. Later he’d probably apologize and say that she had scared him with her scream and that he didn’t mean to be such a snot, but you know what? He wasn't the friendliest in the morning. She didn’t like it, and she didn’t have to like it. Clay was many things, including the loser who hadn’t been willing to move to Comfort with her when she needed him, but at least he had the wisdom to keep his jerkiness to himself in the morning.
Three minutes after Taylor got out of the shower, Hudson knocked on her bedroom door. “Hey, Taylor?”
“Come in.” Taylor was wrapped in her own girly bathrobe and drying her hair.
“Sorry.”
“I know.”
“I don’t like the idea of you sending that kid to spend all day with Clay.”
“He’s not a bad guy.”
“He’s a human though, and she’s grown into a stunning girl. I don’t want to sound like a creep, but some guys are especially drawn to girls in crisis.”
“First off, you seem very confident in your ‘girl’ assessment.”
Hudson laughed a deep hearty gut laugh. Then he paused to catch his breath.
But he shook his head and started laughing again. Finally, he took one more deep breath, stopped laughing, and stared incredulously at Taylor. “Dayton? Dayton’s dad is my sister-in-law’s brother. Were you…were you confused about her being a girl?”
Taylor scrunched her mouth. “No.”
He stared, not open-mouthed but just about. “You were confused. The trouble is, you spent too much time in Portland.”
“The trouble is, Belle wanted me to be confused. Plus, Dayton’s almost six feet tall, right? And anyway…”
He put a friendly arm around her shoulder. Taylor shrugged it off. “So, you’ve known her since she was born, and you want to protect her from Clay who you feel is definitely a creep. She’s a newly legal eighteen-year-old and I’m just old…”
He wrapped her in his arms, this time less “friend” and more loving.
She rested her head on his broad shoulder. A jerk in the morning, yes, but such a strong, kind one.
“You’re not old. You’re….”
“If you say anything that relates to cheese or wine, so help me…”
“Shoot, we went to high school together.” He kissed her cheek and let her go.
“That’s better. Even if I was a senior when you were a freshman, we were literally in high school together.”
“Don’t lock Dayton in an apartment with a guy I don’t trust, please?”
“Do you have a better idea?”
He sat on the edge of her bed while she looked through her closet for something to wear.
“Maybe let her take care of her own business?”
“Everything looks safer after the sun rises, doesn’t it?”
“Exactly. It’s not like someone else is going to die today.”
Chapter Four
Hudson drove Dayton to Cooper’s, and Taylor went to the shop to film with Roxy.
Roxy had her box of hats with her. “Are you sure you don’t want to try the pincushion?”
The hat she spoke of was cute. And if Taylor was a sewing-themed clown, it would have been perfect. She forced a smile, much like the one she’d be using in the video. “I’m sure.”
“You could use a different one. How about this one? It’s cute.” She held out a bucket hat made of tattersall patchwork in blues and reds and yellows with a band of faux rope.
“Very nautical. Maybe when we do a compass rose block, we can use that.”
“You’re not much of a hat person, are you?” Roxy had settled the pin cushion on her head. It was adorable. Taylor could see why she wanted it on video. It looked just like a pin cushion, right down to the hat pins sticking out of its top.
“I just don’t think I could pull it off, to be honest.”
Roxy tilted her head and considered Taylor. “You looked great in that beret, a long time ago, but it doesn’t really go with what you’re wearing.”
Nothing did. Not that Taylor had a busy print on, because she had learned not to do that. But today she was sporting their brand-new Flour Sax polo shirt in dusty rose with the logo in a faded lime green with a khaki collar. It was far from stylish, but the colors were correct for the kinds of printed fabric sacks flour and feed used to come in. For that reason, the shirts looked nice with the stock they carried.
The shirts didn’t look nice with any of the bright, bold, or whimsical hats Roxy had in her tote.
“We’ll find a great hat one of these days.” Roxy shut her box of hats. Her grin was infectious, and Taylor was almost recovered from her cranky morning.
Since Clay took over bookkeeping and Taylor focused on advertising, their sales had gone up considerably. Roxy had been given a raise, and they had even hired back Willa, the sweet grandmotherly lady who had been their part-time help when her mom was still alive. Willa would be in later today to run a class.
For the last several years, Grandpa Ernie had spent his days in the back of the Flour Sax, in a little living room like area, or wandered the shop visiting with customers. As an accomplished tailor, he could answer questions and sell fabric as well or better than any of them. But now that he spent his time at home with Ellery, Taylor had expanded their classroom space. His recliner had a place of honor in the corner, next to an expanded coffee bar.
Customers asked after him. Some ladies really missed the old guy, but mostly their regulars were excited that they were offering classes again and that they could fit more than six at a time.
Taylor exhaled and tried to get her mind back to the task at hand. Today’s video was risky. Instead of a handy how-to, Taylor was giving a tour of their classroom space and talking about how classes go. She didn’t know how their YouTube followers would respond, but she was ready to mix things up a bit.
Comfort, Oregon was a quilt town, and four shops lined Main Street: Bible Creek Quilt and Gift, which offered Churchy style fabrics and gifts; Dutch Hex, which was almost a direct copy of her store except Amish themed, and Comfort Cozies. Some of the ladies, well, technically just Carrie from Comfort Cozies, had been asking if Taylor would tour all of the stores for her show.
On the one hand: no.
Roxy and Taylor weren’t doing all this work to benefit the other stores.
But, on the other hand…maybe?
If viewers liked the tour of the classroom, Taylor could tour the other classrooms. They were trying their best to be a destination town with nothing but the four quilt shops on one side of Main Street and the Antique Mall on the other side. Anything that got quilters to town was worth it. But if viewers didn’t respond well to a tour of her own classroom space, there was no way she was touring someone else’s shop.
As they filmed, Taylor stumbled over words as well as furniture. She took over an hour to get enough footage for their final fifteen-minute video.
“I guess it’s better you weren’t trying to keep a hat on your head.” Roxy gave her a sympathetic pat on the back.
“There were a lot of sewing machine cords….” Taylor pointed to the floor, though she knew she had tripped over her own two feet as much as anything else.
“Jonah is sending some video for you to approve later today.” Roxy’s son Jonah, who was going into his senior year of high school, did all their editing. Belle managed the behind-the-scenes things at YouTube, the uploading and money, and so on.
“That’s great. Tell him I appreciate him.”
“Trust me, he knows.”
YouTube revenue had returned almost to the levels it had been for her mom, now that they had regular video going out. But it would probably never be what it had been. Laura Quinn had just been better at it. Better at everything, really.
Taylor looked out the window at the sunny day in Comfort.
By the time her mother had been thirty, she’d had a husband and a ten-year-old. A year later, she’d be a widow.
Taylor thought about her dad every day, even if it was just a little. She didn’t know exactly how much losing him when she was eleven had done to gild his image, but it had to be quite a lot. A firefighter, he’d been killed on the job, tragically, and not just Taylor, but the whole town remembered him as a hero.
She once overheard her Grandma Delma say she felt sorry for any boy who’d try and marry Taylor. No one could live up to her father.
She could see him in her mind’s eye: tall, broad shouldered, holding his firefighter helmet under his arm, his baggy fireman britches held up by suspenders, walking toward her.
No, he probably hadn’t had any flaws.
None worth remembering anyway.
If Dad had been snotty in the morning, no one remembered.
The bells above the door jangled as someone rattled it. They didn’t open for several more hours, so Taylor planned to ignore the noise, but she glanced that way and spotted Sissy Dorney on the other side of the door.
Sissy was Cooper’s mom.
Cooper was Belle’s closest friend.
And after helping Sissy find out who had killed her aunt Reynette, Taylor realized Sissy was likely one of her closest
friends.
She let her in.
Sissy had a way of coming in like a whirlwind. She was tall, but not that tall, blousy, but not really fat. A hairdresser, but more often than not her own hair was a shaggy mess of dark roots and frizzy curls. “Tell me what’s wrong with Dayton. I can’t get a word out of the kid.” Sissy was dressed for work in a black tunic over matching pedal pushers and black clogs for a long day on her feet.
Taylor was on her feet most of the day as well, but at least Taylor got to walk around. Sissy owned her own shop just around the corner from Flour Sax.
Taylor patted her head self-consciously. She needed her bangs trimmed, and if she was going to stick with highlights, she needed to get in and get them touched up.
It was only nine. They didn’t open till eleven. Taylor had planned on consulting with Clay about the books beforehand, but couldn’t get the idea of him wanting to be a bit…overly protective…of Dayton out of her head.
Poor Clay.
He had no idea what nefarious things Hudson had suggested.
She had no desire to spend time with Clay this morning.
“Let’s head over to Café Olé so we can talk.”
“I can’t stand that place. Let’s go to Rueben’s and get a real breakfast instead.” Sissy wasn’t wrong to suggest it. Rueben’s Diner was a solid morning choice.
“Whatever you say.” Taylor led Sissy back out, and Roxy locked up after them.
Rueben’s was busy and noisy. The perfect environment for sharing secrets. They took a booth in the back. Sissy ordered a pancake platter and Taylor had a coffee and cinnamon roll.
“She told you about the murder?” It felt funny calling Dayton “she” after all this time. Almost sacrilegious.
Sissy lifted an eyebrow, then just smiled. “Yes, she did.” As far as the teens were concerned, Sissy was the expert. She had three kids of her own: Pyper, Cooper, and Breadyn ranging in age from twenty to thirteen. “She told me some dramatic story about a man in disguise who had a knife and how she thought he saw her, but don’t you think if all that was true, I’d have heard it on the radio this morning?”
