Larkspur Road (12 page)

“What else does Drew say?”

“Nothing.”

“It’s okay, Grady, you can tell me. I’ve met guys like him before; nothing you can say will surprise me. What does he say?”

“He says I’m lazy.” Grady’s voice was a low mumble. “And a loser. He said he can tell I’m headed for trouble.”

“That’s a load of crap.”

As the boy glanced quickly at him, Travis saw uncertainty in Grady’s eyes.

Damn that asshole. He’d never met Baylor, but what he knew was bad news. Any man who went off on a kid, basically told him he was worthless and would never amount to a hill of beans, was a son of a bitch. Why in hell did Val put up with it?

They were almost at the ranch. Pines whipped by as he chose his words carefully. “The only place I see you headed, Grady, is where
you want to go.
Wherever that might be. You’re in control of your life. You have it in you to achieve
whatever you set your mind to. And don’t let Drew or anybody else tell you different.”

“But…in a way, he’s right, isn’t he?” Grady sounded miserable. “I messed up last year in school and I…I got into fights and stuff. And now it’s too late. Everyone thinks I’m stupid and a troublemaker. I can’t fix it. No one can. That day Mom put me on the plane, I overheard her on her cell. She told her friend Annie that I’m going to flunk fifth grade.”

He hunched back toward the window, and Travis couldn’t see his expression any longer but the hopelessness in the boy’s tone hit him in the gut.

“So I’ll have to repeat the whole stupid year, while all my friends…” His voice quavered and he gulped. “I really only had one friend. One real friend. His name’s Scott. And he’s gonna be a year ahead now. Everyone will be, for the rest of my life. They’re all going to think I’m stupid. A loser.”

Travis tried to remember what it had felt like to be ten. To feel that kind of peer pressure, where what everyone else thought and said and did was the end all and be all. It was hard to fathom—he didn’t remember worrying about what everyone thought when he was young.

Maybe because he’d always had his brothers and Lissie and his parents to back him up.

Sure, he and Rafe and Jake had fought plenty among themselves, but no one had better put down any of the Tanner boys or their sister, or they’d all band together as solid as a wall of iron spikes.

The boy on the seat beside him had no one to back him up, apparently, except maybe this kid Scott and, for what it was worth, his mother.

Until now.

“Hey. I’m only interested in what
you
think.” He glanced over at Grady. “Do
you
think you’re stupid? Or could you have done better if you’d tried harder?”

“I guess so.”

“Would you work your butt off, if you had another chance?”

“Sure, but—”

“All right then. There’s hope.”

“What do you mean? What kind of hope?”

“Might be something you can do about having to repeat fifth grade.”

“Like what?” Grady looked so doubtful that Travis had to fight to keep from shaking his head. The boy was too young to have such a dim view of the world. A kid should feel like anything is possible. Not like his future is written in stone, that if you make a mistake or two, there’s no chance in hell it’s going to turn out okay in the end.

“Let me check into a few things, and I’ll get back to you soon. I promise. In the meantime, how about we take that ride?”

His son’s face lit up again for the first time since Travis had raised the subject of school. “We can still ride to the creek?”

“Sure. I’ll meet you at the barn in a few minutes and we’ll saddle up. I need to make a quick phone call first.”

After parking the Explorer in the driveway, and watching Grady race toward the ranch house with Starbucks and Tidbit bounding out from the pasture to meet him, Travis yanked out his cell. He punched in Lissie’s number. She picked up on the second ring.

“Trav, can I call you back later? I’m in the middle of fixing supper—,” she began, sounding busy and distracted, but he interrupted her.

“This will only take a minute. I need a tutor for Grady. Give me a name. The best teacher in Lonesome Way.”

That night the brightly lit basement of the Lonesome Way Community Center was packed with women. Women of all shapes, sizes, hair colors, and coffee preferences. They ranged in age from twenty-three to eighty-six.

Aside from all of them living in Lonesome Way, one other thing united them. They were quilters. Some were beginners, some had been piecing and stitching and appliquéing for more than half a century—but all of them were drawn together by the lure of creativity and the desire to make something of lasting usefulness and beauty.

Every one of the Bits and Piecers leaned forward in their chairs to watch intently as Evelyn Lewis, the recording secretary, shared a video from the quilt show she’d attended in Cody, Wyoming, the previous month.

“That quilt is similar to the one I’m making for the exhibition,” Karla McDonald, the newly elected treasurer, murmured to Mia as a quilt of redwork sweetheart blocks with flowered borders flashed onto the screen and the audience
murmured appreciatively. “But I’m going to try some ribbon borders on mine.”

“That sounds beautiful,” Mia whispered back.

A striking batik quilt came up next on the video, which occasionally jumped from one colorful quilt to the next a little too wildly for her stomach.

As a lovely old-fashioned patchwork quilt in orange and green filled the screen, she realized she hadn’t given much more than a passing thought to her own Starry Night quilt in days, not since she’d finished her design and figured out her yardages. She’d decided to use a whole-cloth background and do appliqué for the stars. But she’d need to get sewing—and soon. Leaning back in her chair, she made a mental note to head out to the quilt shop in Livingston tomorrow and stock up on supplies.

The exhibition weekend in July would be here before she realized it and she needed to set aside the next week to make a start. This would be the fourth year she’d be sewing an exhibition quilt without Gram working beside her, sharing her ideas and advice.

She knew she ought to be used to it by now, but in some ways she wasn’t sure she’d ever get used to it.

Shortly before the meeting ended, Karla rose to her feet, holding the delicate silver box that usually contained spare change, cash, and checks from member dues, and which, after the quilt exhibition, would hold a single slip of paper containing the total amount of money raised from ticket sales and the quilt raffles. At the end of the day Karla would tally up the donations and write the total on a note inside the box—a box Gram had once used to hold hair clips and ribbons, and which she’d donated to Bits and Pieces in place of the old cardboard cigar box that had been used for the past thirty years. Then Becky Hall, Mia’s cochair in charge of the quilt exhibition, would step to the podium and thank everyone for coming and for their contributions, and Mia would stand beside her to open the box and read the total aloud.

“Don’t forget, everyone,” Karla said, holding the silver box aloft, “we want to raise more money this year than any other.” She looked around the room. “There are so many women and children in need. Let us all make beautiful quilts and make a beautiful difference.”

There was a quick smatter of applause and a ripple of excitement and determination surged through the room.

Then the meeting ended and the women all came to their feet, chattering and eager as they headed toward the stairs. Mia spotted Martha Davies carrying her cardboard coffee cup in one hand while clutching the fat quarters she’d won in the drawing tonight in the other.

Remembering what Martha had told Sophie about Aunt Winny, she began weaving her way toward the owner of the Cuttin’ Loose, but found herself waylaid by her cochair. Becky wanted to fill her in about Tobe’s Mercantile, which had all but agreed to purchase a square on the community quilt they’d be raffling off. Becky was to confirm with them in a day or so. She then asked Mia if she planned to exhibit any of her grandmother’s quilts at the fund-raiser. By the time Mia promised to select one, Martha was already halfway up the stairs.

Mia darted after her, skirting others with a hurried smile. She finally managed to catch up with her in the community center parking lot.

The salon owner, whose short bob of hair was dyed a rich shade of bordeaux this month, was trying to remember where she’d parked her car.

“Martha, I see it. It’s right over there. Look, next to Hannah’s Taurus.”

“Well, don’t you have eagle eyes, dear? It pays to be young, that’s for sure.” Martha beamed at her. Beneath the nearly full moon, she appeared closer to seventy than eighty. Her dangling gold earrings with citrine stones glistened in the moonlight as other quilters began to stream into the parking lot, calling soft good-byes to each other.

Martha headed briskly toward her car once more and turned her head in surprise as Mia fell into step beside her.

“Do you have a minute, Martha? I wanted to ask you about my aunt Winny. I heard you knew her years ago.”

The older woman stopped short and glanced at her, making a tsking sound. She immediately resumed walking. “Well, of course I did. We went to school together. She was a year behind me.”

As she reached her car, she peered sideways at Mia. “It was a long time ago,” she added with finality and opened her car door.

“Was Winny a friend of yours back then?”

“Well, no. I wouldn’t call her a friend. Aside from your dear grandmother, her own sister, Winny didn’t have many friends. Not girlfriends, anyway. She had plenty of boyfriends,” she added, her lips puckering.

“Why only boyfriends?”

“Mia, dear, what’s the point in talking about this? What’s done is done. In my experience, there are times when it’s best to leave the past alone.”

“But someone in this town must know what happened between Winny and Gram.” Mia searched Martha’s eyes. “Do you?” she asked softly.

The other members of Bits and Pieces were nearly all gone now, the parking lot practically deserted. Only the distant sound of country music floating from the Double Cross Bar and Grill broke the quiet of the night as Martha peered into Mia’s eyes and hesitated, biting her crimson-painted lips.

“You
do
know, don’t you?” Mia said slowly.

“The point is, if your grandmother wanted
you
to know, I think she would have told you, dear.”

“Gram might have had her reasons for keeping it to herself—but that doesn’t mean I don’t have the right to know. Gram’s gone, Martha. She’s been gone for three years. But Aunt Winny is
here
. She’s family, and she’s alone. She
doesn’t want me coming anywhere near her and I don’t have any idea why.”

As the older woman drew in her breath, looking trapped, Mia pressed on.

“Samantha and I are the only relatives Winny has left. We have a right to some answers about our own family. To know what happened.”

For a moment the other woman looked like she was planning to refuse again. To simply climb in her car and go home. But then she searched Mia’s face once more, and slowly, she nodded.

“I don’t know everything that happened.” Her voice was low, resigned. “Alicia wouldn’t speak much about it and neither would her parents. I only know one thing. There was a horrible falling-out and Winny destroyed something before she ran away. Something precious that belonged to your grandmother. It was only a few weeks before Alicia married your grandfather. And there was no turning back after that.”

“What?” Mia felt her breath catch in her throat. “What did she destroy?”

With a sigh, the older woman whispered the words that struck Mia like tiny swords.

“She burned up your grandmother’s good luck wedding quilt.”

Brittany was curled up with Samson on the small sofa in the den, eating the last crumbs of a macadamia nut cookie from A Bun in the Oven and watching a rerun of
The Gilmore Girls
, when she heard a car’s engine in the driveway. Her heart skipped a beat at the same moment that Samson leaped off the sofa and raced in a blur toward the front door. He was barking like ten big dogs instead of just one tiny one, as if he knew whoever was out there was trouble.