Let it Sew (11 page)

“Nooo,” Melissa chided. “She’s going to make Christmas cookies with them.” Lowering
her voice, Melissa peeked around Jake’s arm toward the virtual tree still posted on
the screen despite nary a straggler left on the Green. “And by the time she was done
telling me all the cookies they’re going to make and decorate at the center, that
sadness in her eyes was almost all gone. In fact, she said if Sweet Briar doesn’t
need her, maybe Tom’s Creek does.”

Chapter 14

Tori was waiting at her desk with two to-go cups of hot chocolate, a bag of Debbie’s
homemade truffles, and a foolproof plan when Margaret Louise barreled around the corner
and into the room, huffing and puffing from the brisk walk through the parking lot.

“There you are, Victoria. If I’d known you were in your office, I could’ve saved my
tootsies a few extra steps by comin’ in the back door instead of the front.” Margaret
Louise peeked her head back into the hallway and looked both ways before claiming
the chair across from Tori with an audible oomph. “I know my sister would say the
extra walkin’ is good for the waistline or some such foolhardy thing like that, but
the truth is it just makes you hungry faster.”

“Which is why I have truffles . . . and hot chocolate.” Tori slid the baby blue bakery
bag in the woman’s direction and grinned.

“Because you knew I’d be hungry from walkin’?”

Heat spread through her cheeks like wildfire through a prairie. “Um. Uh, well not
exactly. I just figured you might like a treat.”

“Don’t you pee on my leg and tell me it’s rainin’, Victoria. Besides, you’re not any
good at it anyway.” Margaret Louise folded her arms across her chest. “So quit goin’
’round the barn and just get to it, will you?”

She choked out a laugh. “There’s no fooling you, is there? Okay, I got this stuff
as bribery.”

Margaret Louise’s lips twitched as she looked from the bag of truffles to Tori and
back again. “Who are you tryin’ to bribe? Me . . . or
you
?”

“You.”

“Hmmm. ’Cause from where I’m sittin’, this looks like a bribe that would work on you.”

There were times when Tori was touched to find out how much her Sweet Briar friends
knew about her—her likes, her dislikes, et cetera. But sometimes the transparency
wasn’t such a good thing.

“I thought it would look like less of a bribe if they were things I liked?” she asked
before remembering to bat her eyelashes for added innocence the way Leona was always
after her to do.

“Don’t you go battin’ your eyes like my sister, neither.”

Tori closed her eyes and forced a sigh. The first act was going better than she’d
hoped. Just a little longer and her performance would be complete . . .

Her lashes parted to reveal a look of amused curiosity on Margaret Louise’s face.
“Okay. The bribery was intended for you but purchased with the notion we could enjoy
it together. And the reason for the bribery is because I need a favor. A great big
huge favor.”

The curiosity retreated to make way for Margaret Louise’s infamous face-splitting
smile. “I don’t need no bribery to help you with somethin’, Victoria. You should know
that by now. Just tell me what you need and it’s yours.”

Inhaling deeply, Tori plowed through the rest of her performance. “Since the firehouse
won’t be doing its annual Santa fire truck ride this year—”

“On account of a certain Grinch,” Margaret Louise interjected through lips that were
no longer smiling.

She nodded, then added the should-have-seen proviso to her line. “Since the firehouse
won’t be doing its annual Santa fire truck ride this year on account of a certain
Grinch, I—along with Dixie—have decided to roll out a slightly tweaked version . . .
here at the library.”

“At the library?”

“That’s right. Dixie first suggested the firehouse, though I think this particular
idea lends itself better to the library.”

The curiosity was back. In spades. “Tell me.”

“I was thinking something along the lines of Cookies and Books with Mrs. Claus.”

The faintest hint of a smile resurrected itself on Margaret Louise’s face. “On the
same weekend as the fire truck ride should have been?”

“Same weekend. Same time.”

“Can Mrs. Claus make it?”

She paused, letting her eyes do most of the talking. And then, “I sure hope she can . . .”

Margaret Louise’s cheeks rose nearly to her brow line. “Think Mrs. Claus can make
all of the cookies herself?”

“I think the kids would love that.” Tori rested her elbows on the top of her desk
and allowed her mind to veer off script momentarily. “And if we get everyone in the
sewing circle on board with this plan, Mrs. Claus might even have enough homemade
stockings in her bag to hand one out to everyone.”

“With some homemade treats inside?”

“If Mrs. Claus wouldn’t be too tired from making all those cookies . . .”

“Oh, she won’t be!” Margaret Louise’s brown eyes danced with excitement. “She’ll be . . .
tickled.”

“I’m counting on that.” Tori allowed herself a momentary mental pat on the back before
forging ahead for the closing number. “I’m also hoping that Debbie and Beatrice can
help us get the word out around town and that maybe
you
might help me transform the children’s room into something very Mrs. Claus-ish for
the day.”

For a moment, Margaret Louise said nothing, opting instead to do a little nonverbal
speaking of her own before haphazardly swiping their remnants from her cheeks. “Don’t
think I don’t see through what you’re doin’, Victoria. ’Cause I do. But that don’t
mean I’m not touched just the same.”

“Doing? What am I doing?” she asked, employing Leona’s angelically innocent tactics
once again.

“Givin’ me a Christmas project so I can forget about The Grinch.”

Harnessing all of the remaining theatrical ability she could possibly muster, Tori
allowed her shoulders to fall. “I guess I’m not as convincing as I’d hoped.”

Margaret Louise waved a pudgy hand in the air. “Don’t you worry none. It’s the thought
that matters. Especially if we can get Debbie to make a sign announcin’ the event
and stick it right on Maime Wellington’s front lawn.”

Just as long as it’s not a For Sale sign on yours, my dear friend . . .

*   *   *

For most folks, the holiday season was most often equated with a flurry of shopping
and wrapping tucked around decorating and party going. For librarians, the holiday
season also meant an influx of high-school-aged patrons racing to locate research
books for the barrage of midyear term papers rapidly closing in on their due dates.

Some of the faces were familiar, of course, as their after-school visits were merely
an extension of those they’d been paying since they were old enough to sit still for
story time. But others were completely new, their discomfort in a library setting
as tangible as the books they seemed almost reluctant to touch.

Yet for the first time since Tori’s arrival, the ranks of the utterly clueless were
beginning to thin thanks to the teen book club her assistant, Nina Morgan, had dreamed
up and executed with the help of her husband, Duwayne. Both avid proponents of reading,
the couple had advertised the club on posters throughout Sweet Briar High School,
luring potential members with cool titles, cool discussions, and the kinds of snack
foods that spoke to teenagers. Within a matter of months, they’d built the club to
ten regular members and as many as twenty drop-ins depending on the book being read.

And while there were inarguably more students
not
in the club than
were
, somehow word seemed to have gotten out that the library wasn’t such a bad place,
much to Tori and Dixie’s delight.

“That Nina should get a raise when she returns from maternity leave,” Dixie spouted
as she moved from computer to computer, shutting each machine off for the night. “I’ve
never seen the kind of cooperation we got from those kids today. Why, they were almost
appreciative
this year.”

“I noticed it, too. And I actually had a few of them inquire about next month’s book
club, which will please Nina and Duwayne to no end.” Tori grabbed the last stack of
books from the research table and carried them to their appropriate aisles, the promise
of impending sewing circle treats providing a spring to her end-of-the-workday step.
“But that said, I’m so ready to just flop on Rose’s sofa and lose myself in my sewing.”

“You’re real good with those teenagers, Victoria. Real good. They respond to you in
a way they don’t respond to me.” Dixie shuffled over to the information desk. “They
just seem to see me as old. Like the library board did when they decided to retire
me two years ago.”

Tori popped the last book into its spot and joined the seventy-something at the desk.
“They respond to Nina more than they do me. And as for seeing you as old, I didn’t
get that today. Those two boys—the tall ones—seemed to take to you immediately, hanging
on every word you said about the Vietnam era.”

Dixie laughed. “Because I was the only one in the library who was alive at that time!”

Tori pulled her coworker’s purse from the bottom shelf of the semicircular counter
and held it outward. “Maybe. Or maybe they just found you to be cute.”

A flash of crimson rose in Dixie’s cheeks just before she snatched her purse from
Tori’s hands. “Oh, stop it, Victoria! Talk like that won’t get me preening the way
it does Leona.”

“I know. I’m just playing.” Tori backed herself against the counter and looked around
the empty room, the break in activity providing not only a moment to breathe but one
to remember with as well. “Dixie? Can I ask you something?”

Dixie stilled her hand inside her purse and gave Tori a once-over. “Of course . . .”

“You’ve lived in this town your whole adult life just like Charlotte and Parker Devereaux
did, right?”

Pulling her hand from her purse, Dixie made her way over to the stool and sat down,
the nod of her head answering Tori’s initial question while her mouth began filling
in the details. “My late husband, Tucker, and I got married about the same time as
Charlotte and Parker. We were only a few years older than they were, so we gravitated
toward each other fairly quickly. Why, we’d invite each other over for supper and
games, and spend the whole evening hootin’ and hollerin’ as Margaret Louise might
say. Sometimes, Parker would even invite his friend Jerry Lee and his wife, Sadie,
to join us, but Sadie was always a bit highfalutin for my taste. Liked being the center
of attention all the time.”

Tori crossed to the other side of the counter and brushed at a speck of dirt before
finding her next set of questions. “So you were friends when the Devereauxes had their
children, yes? First Brian and then Ethan?”

“We were.” Dixie’s eyes gravitated upward, their expression a giveaway to the mental
journey the woman was taking right there in the middle of the library. “I remember
the initial shock poor Charlotte had when Brian arrived with the problems he has.
She blamed herself for everything.”

She spun around. “Blamed herself? Why?”

“That’s what we did back then, Victoria. If something wasn’t perfect, we naturally
assumed we’d done something wrong to make it so. Ate the wrong foods, wore the wrong
clothes, drank the wrong tea, were being punished for some lie we’d told as a child.
We blamed ourselves for everything. Charlotte, I know, blamed Brian’s problems on
her one big blemish.”

“Blemish?” she asked.

“Brian’s arrival came six months after her wedding. Not nine.”

So Leona had been right about the mound under Charlotte’s wedding dress . . .

“Charlotte didn’t dwell there for long, though,” Dixie explained. “Why, she treasured
that little boy with everything she had. Parker, too, embraced that little boy as
the wonder she was determined he would be.

“Charlotte always had help, of course, that’s what money enables you to do . . . but
she always kept that little boy home with her rather than sending him off to a special
school or living facility as others in her financial circle often did when faced with
a similar trial.”

Tori took a moment to process everything Dixie said before moving on to the son who
had plagued her thoughts off and on since Frieda’s comment at the virtual tree-lighting
ceremony the previous night. “And Ethan? What was it like when he was born?”

Dixie slid off the stool and wandered out from behind the confines of the information
desk, her sensibly clad feet taking her halfway across the room before doubling back
once again. “Ethan came along about twelve years later and he was Charlotte’s vindication.”

“In what way?” she asked.

“I always suspected she saw Ethan as her gift to Parker. He was the son that he could
play ball with in the yard, the son he could coach through life, the son that would
carry on the family name and one day take the company’s reins.”

“Did Parker share that feeling?”

“He did. Which is why that young man could do no wrong. Ever.” Once again, the faraway
look was back in Dixie’s eyes, only this time it was accompanied by a hint of anger
and disgust. “And when he did, they’d swoop in and clean up his mess as if it had
been one of them who had made it, rather than Ethan.”

Tori was just about to comment when Dixie barreled on, the words pouring from the
former librarian’s pencil-thin lips. “Rose dealt with it when she had Ethan in class,
I dealt with it when he was here at the library, and people all over this town dealt
with it whenever that young man was within a stone’s throw. But by then, Ethan had
grown so accustomed to the routine that Charlotte seemed to think it was her duty
to carry on the status quo.”

“Parker, too, I imagine?”

Dixie returned to the counter and the purse she’d left open. “Actually, no. As time
went on and Parker began to travel, I think he began to see the monster they’d created
in Ethan. The willfulness, the sense of entitlement, the lack of remorse, all of it.
By then, Jerry Lee was working with the company, too, and he started letting Brian
assist him with different tasks. After a decade or so of watching the results, Parker
began to see that it wasn’t Ethan to hold out with pride but, rather, Brian.”

She watched Dixie reach into the purse once again, hunting, she suspected, for car
keys. “Is that when he opened the center out in Tom’s Creek?”