Let it Sew (2 page)

“Parker?” she repeated.

“Her husband of almost fifty years. Provin’, of course, that good men are as scarce
as deviled eggs after a church picnic.”

“That’s why you never give a man more than five dates. Six tops.” Leona turned on
the soles of her expensive heels and made her way down the steps. “They can’t hurt
what they don’t have.”

Tori watched Leona swing her hips down the sidewalk and disappear behind a series
of hundred-year-old moss trees, her destination either the antiques shop she owned
on the town square or whatever lunch date she’d been invited to by some unsuspecting
man. “Margaret Louise? That sister of yours is a piece of work.”

When there was no response, Tori turned back to her troubled friend and focused her
attention where it was due. “Was Charlotte sick?”

Margaret Louise nodded. “She had Alzheimer’s and it was gettin’ pretty bad. I just
didn’t realize she was so close to dyin’. If I had, I’d have gotten my hide over there
sooner.”

She reached for her friend’s hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Hey. Go easy on yourself.
Between your grandbabies and your mother, you barely have time to breathe. Besides,
if she was as bad off as you say, she might not have even known you were there.”

A beat of silence was soon followed by a soft tsking sound. “Victoria, I can only
hope you’re right. Because maybe, if she couldn’t remember nothin’, her heart wouldn’t
have been hurtin’ so much at the end. That alone would have made her Alzheimer’s a
blessin’.”

Despite the fact that she’d never met Charlotte Devereaux, Tori couldn’t help feeling
bad for a woman who had spent her last five years on earth aching over a loved one’s
betrayal. It just seemed unnecessarily cruel. “She was surprised when he left?”

Margaret Louise snorted. “More like shocked. We all were. She adored the ground that
man walked on, and we all thought the same thing ’bout him.”

Tori swallowed back the lump that threatened to make speaking difficult, her own experience
in the blindsided-by-love department bringing Charlotte Devereaux’s plight much too
close for comfort. “Tell me she at least had someone by her side at the end. Some
children? A sibling? Someone?”

Hoisting her tote bag onto her arm, Margaret Louise turned in the same direction Leona
had gone and made her way to the sidewalk below, stopping to readdress Tori at the
bottom. “Considerin’ what she had
by her side
, as you say, Charlotte would have been better off on her own. Far, far better.”

Chapter 2

Tori reached her hand into the center of the wreath and pumped the brass knocker up
and down, careful not to dislodge the smattering of berries that popped out proudly
against their autumn-leaf background. She knew the decoration was designed to give
guests a seasonal welcome, but for her, it ushered in a momentary rush of inadequacy.

Despite the ever-growing collection of holiday decorations she housed in color-coded
bins in her own attic, Tori tended to put off their unearthing until it made more
sense to wait until the following year. Only the following year always brought its
own lineup of busyness capable of making time disappear from between her fingers.
And so the cycle continued . . .

“I’m glad to see I’m not the only one running behind.”

Tori shifted the plate of homemade brownies from her left hand to her right and gave
Debbie Calhoun her cheek for the inevitable kiss that was sure to follow. “A box of
Colby’s latest book arrived just as I was trying to get dinner on the table for him
and the kids and, well, I couldn’t resist looking at one . . . and then reading the
dedication . . . and the acknowledgments . . . and looking at my handsome husband’s
photo on the back jacket. Before I knew it, dinner was pushed off by thirty minutes.”

She had to laugh. “I wish I could say my reason for being late was equally noteworthy,
but it wasn’t.”

“Oh?” Debbie narrowed her pale blue eyes at Tori.

“I was looking at my calendar and getting stressed.”

“About what?”

She opened her mouth to answer but left the explanation unspoken as the massive oak
door that welcomed guests to Georgina Hayes’s home swung open, revealing the sixty-two-year-old
mayor of Sweet Briar herself.

“Victoria! Debbie! Come in, come in.” Stepping back, Georgina swept her hand down
the long hallway in front of them, the sound of chatter from the study making its
way in their direction. “Everyone was just saying how much they hoped you’d make it
tonight.”

“We’re here.” Debbie trailed Tori through the door and handed two powder blue boxes
to Georgina. “The top box has some pastries, and the bottom box has a French silk
pie.”

Tori’s stomach rumbled. “Did you say French silk pie?” she asked as Georgina took
the plate of brownies from her hand.

Wrapping her hand around Tori’s arm, Debbie fairly tugged her down the chandelier-lit
hallway, the bakery owner’s laugh echoing against the mahogany-paneled walls. “I will
never understand how you can eat the way you do, Victoria, and stay so slim.”

“Same way you do, I guess.”

When they reached the study, all chatter ceased as the members of the Sweet Briar
Ladies Society Sewing Circle looked up and smiled. Rose Winters, the matriarch of
the group, was the first to speak, patting the empty sofa cushion beside her frail
body. “Victoria, I saved you a spot right here next to me.”

“Thank you, Rose.” Extricating her arm from Debbie’s gentle hold, Tori set her tote
bag on the floor beside the sofa and claimed her reserved spot. “I’m sorry I’m late.
I got”—she glanced over at Debbie—“sidetracked.”

Nestling into the empty armchair between Margaret Louise and Melissa, Debbie grinned
back. “I believe you said you were sidetracked by stress.”

Just like that, every pair of eyes in the room was on Tori. Waiting.

“Did you hit a snag in your wedding plans?” Dixie Dunn mused over the pillow cover
she was hand stitching.

Tori met the woman’s questioning eyes and couldn’t help smiling at the memory of her
very first sewing circle meeting—a meeting Dixie had avoided out of anger. At Tori.

Now, two years later, Dixie had not only reconciled with the notion of Tori serving
as head librarian at Sweet Briar Public Library—a position the seventy-something woman
had held for more years than Tori had been alive—but also seemed to genuinely like
her.

Part of that, Tori knew, came from the many efforts she’d made to draw Dixie back
into the day-to-day operations at the library. The move had smoothed the woman’s ruffled
feathers and proven invaluable to Tori when her assistant, Nina Morgan, left on maternity
leave. The other part, she knew, had come from their mutual respect and love for books—something
that had proven to be an irrefutable common ground between them.

“Because if you did,” Dixie continued, “maybe I could help.”

“Wedding plans are moving along just fine,” Tori said. And they were.

“Is it the holiday book fair?”

Tori shifted her focus to the far corner of the room and the quiet brunette who sat
hunched over a portable sewing machine, working on what appeared to be a costume of
some sort. Beatrice Tharrington was the youngest of the circle, her meek demeanor
and British accent a stark contrast in a room of boisterous southern women. “The book
fair is stressful, yes, but Dixie has been a huge help these past few weeks in helping
to tie up all the loose ends.”

Dixie beamed at the praise, her needle-wielding fingers moving even faster as they
zipped above and below the pillowcase taking shape in her wrinkled hands.

“Then what’s wrong?” Melissa asked from her chair to the left of Debbie, the woman’s
eighth-time burgeoning belly peeking out from beneath a partially hand-sewn teddy
bear.

“Just trying to figure out how to juggle everything I have to do.”

Georgina lifted a glass of water to her lips and took a sip, setting it back down
on a nearby end table. “Maybe you should have held off on helpin’ with the Christmas
committee until next year or maybe the year after that.”

Rose drew back. “You’re helping on the committee, Victoria? When did you decide to
do that?”

“She didn’t,” Leona interjected from behind her latest travel magazine. “I decided
for
her. And for you, too, Rose.”

Dixie stopped sewing and pinned the cover of Leona’s magazine with a death glare.
“You volunteered Victoria for the Christmas committee when we’ve got the Holiday Book
Extravaganza in two weeks?”

Leona’s voice rose above the edge of the magazine. “With you helping her in both capacities,
Dixie, it won’t be so bad.”

“Both capacities?” Dixie echoed.

As Rose’s sputtering came to a stop, Tori leaned her head against the back of the
couch and waited for the inevitable war of words she knew was coming.

Rose didn’t disappoint.

“Are you telling me you volunteered Victoria, Dixie, and
me
to be on Margaret Louise’s Christmas committee without asking?” Rose hissed through
gritted teeth.

“It ain’t my committee no more.” Margaret Louise closed her eyes and inhaled sharply
before releasing it throughout the room with a sigh to end all sighs. “It was snatched
clear out of my hands by Councilman Jordan just so his online girlfriend can feel . . .
special.”

A hush fell over the circle, followed by a domino of gasps.

“But that’s
your
committee, Margaret Louise,” Debbie rasped. “You make Sweet Briar so . . . so perfect
at the holidays. Like something out of a fairy tale.”

Rose and Dixie turned a collective glare on the evening’s hostess. “Georgina? You
allowed this?”

Georgina’s broad shoulders rose and fell. “He took it to the council as a whole and
they agreed.”

“But you’re the mayor,” Beatrice protested in very un-Beatrice-like fashion.

“I’m the mayor, not a dictator,” Georgina reminded them.

Margaret Louise held up her pudgy hands. “This ain’t Georgina’s fault. Besides, no
one ever said it was my committee for life.”

“Well, they should’ve,” groused Rose before turning an evil eye in Leona’s direction
once again. “Why on earth would you volunteer us for a committee that was just taken
away from your sister? Are you really that heartless?”

Leona tossed her magazine onto the coffee table. “The way I see it, you old goat,
having the three of you on the Christmas committee will give Margaret Louise the say
she’s earned and keep this—this Maime Wellington person from getting too full of herself.”

“I’ll do it.” Dixie set her pillowcase to her left. “When’s the first meeting?”

“Tomorrow evening.”

Margaret Louise looked a question at her sister. “Tomorrow evening? But that’s Charlotte’s
wake.”

That’s all it took. Suddenly, all talk of Christmas committees and online hussies
gave way to news of the latest passing in Sweet Briar—a passing that touched nearly
every member of the circle.

“Do you realize, we wouldn’t all be sitting here together right now if it weren’t
for Charlotte Devereaux?” Melissa volunteered.

Dixie made a face. “Rose and I had something to do with creating this sewing circle,
too, you know.”

Heads nodded.

Tori reached into her tote bag and pulled out the wooden sewing box Leona had gifted
her shortly after moving to Sweet Briar. Setting it on her lap, she allowed her finger
to trace the horse and buggy carved into the lid of the simple antique box as a question
formed on her lips. “Why did Charlotte leave the group? Was it her health?”

“At the time she quit? No.” Rose pulled the flaps of her thin cotton sweater more
closely against her chest. “The Alzheimer’s came later.”

“Then why did she leave the group?” she asked again.

“Because she’d been humiliated, that’s why.” Dixie wiggled her way forward on her
chair and then pushed off the edge. “She worshiped the ground her husband, Parker,
walked on for five decades and then, one day, he up and walked out. And he did it
with some little thing he met while traveling for his computer business.”

Rose took the ball from Dixie and ran with it, her own voice suddenly thick with anger.
“She came home from a circle meeting one night and he was gone. Yanked her heart and
her spirit right out of her body when he left.”

Tori sucked in her breath. “That’s awful.”

“We tried to convince her to keep on sewin’, to use us as a soundin’ board ’bout that
pig,” Margaret Louise explained, “but she just shut down. Never really talked to me
none after all that.”

“She stopped talking to all of us after Parker left.” Georgina stretched her trouser-clad
legs in front of her and stifled a quick yawn. “Guess she was afraid we’d be looking
at her funny or something.”

It was a notion Tori understood. Because even though her late ex-fiancé had cheated
on her in the coat closet at their engagement party, she, too, had felt as if everyone
was staring at her over the days and weeks that followed. In fact, she’d been so certain
of the pitying looks, she’d spent virtually every nonworking hour holed up in her
then Chicago apartment.

It had been about avoidance.

And feeling sorry for oneself.

Fortunately, Tori had just been starting out in life, and after pulling herself up
by the boot straps, she’d set herself on a different course—one that brought her to
the head librarian job in Sweet Briar, South Carolina, and into the welcoming arms
of her fellow sewing circle sisters and her soon-to-be husband, Milo Wentworth.

Being in the late sixties at the time of the betrayal, though, had to be rough. It
made starting over so much harder. Tori said as much to her friends.

“What made it hard was that she didn’t see it comin’. None of us did.”

“Margaret Louise is right.” Dixie made her way slowly around the room, stopping every
so often to take a closer look at everyone’s sewing project. “Why, we all thought
Parker was head over heels in love with Charlotte. Least that’s how he acted.”

“What was he like?” Beatrice asked.

“He was a real straight arrow,” Georgina said by way of explanation. “You know, the
kind who didn’t ruffle feathers, didn’t complain for the sake of complaining. He just
ran his computer company and looked after his family.”

Debbie nodded. “Every night, after his hip replacement, I’d see him and Charlotte
going for a walk past the bakery, hand in hand.”

“Someone should have told him how ridiculous he looked wearing those dark brown leather
shoes with shorts.” Dixie continued her meandering around the room, her anger over
her late friend’s mistreatment rising with each step. “But that would’ve fallen on
deaf ears, I’m sure. He didn’t go
anywhere
without those shoes.”

“None of us thought less of Charlotte when he up and took off.” Margaret Louise threw
herself over her knees and reached into the sewing bag propped on the floor at her
feet. “We just felt sorry he left her with the headache of runnin’ a company she knew
nothing ’bout and skipped out on the family as a whole—leavin’ her to deal with that
no good-for-nothin’ son of theirs all on her own.”

Tori offered a distracted nod as the woman pulled two green-checked strips of stocking-shaped
fabric from the bag and sat up tall, smoothing them across her legs with a quick swipe
of her pudgy hand. Intrigued, Tori opened her mouth to inquire about Margaret Louise’s
project, but was thwarted by the woman’s daughter-in-law.

“Have you ever met him, Victoria?”

Pulling her focus from Margaret Louise’s lap, Tori fixed it on Melissa instead. “Who?”

“Ethan Devereaux?”

“Charlotte and Parker’s younger son,” Dixie clarified.

“I don’t think I’ve ever met him. The name isn’t . . . wait. Ethan Devereaux. Why
does that sound familiar all of a sudden?”

Dixie spun around from her spot in front of the large plate glass window overlooking
Georgina’s dimly lit French patio and shook a finger at Tori. “It’s familiar because
Ethan Devereaux is the reason the library board insisted on our patron conduct policy.”

Melissa scrunched up her pretty face. “There’s a patron conduct policy at the library?
I didn’t know that.”

“That’s because it was put in place for Ethan Devereaux and it’s never been needed
for anyone else,” Dixie said. “Folks around these parts are usually smart enough to
throw their gum in the wastebasket and to refrain from accessing the computer to watch
shoot-’em-ups with the volume turned on high.”