Last Chance Knit & Stitch (6 page)

Simon wondered if he’d ever been this fearless or this sure of himself. He could remember when he was four or five, walking to town with Mother. He’d been required to walk at a steady pace—not too fast, not too slow. He’d been required to hold Mother’s hand at every intersection, even when he’d been eight or nine, as if Mother had tried to keep him a baby. She had never understood just how humiliating many of her rules were for an active boy.

But he’d never rebelled. For some reason, he’d never found the courage to break away until he was an adult.

Of course, he had managed to escape from time to time, especially in the summer, when Luke Raintree liberated him. And since Luke was the grandson of a former governor, Mother had allowed Simon to spend endless unsupervised hours out at the Jonquil House, the Raintree family’s summer home on the Edisto River.

A happy sigh escaped his control as warm, sun-drenched memories tumbled through his mind. He hadn’t thought about Luke in a long, long time. He’d suppressed a lot of those memories. Now he was stunned to discover that some of them weren’t painful.

No doubt he was thinking about Luke because Junior had red hair and freckles. And Junior seemed to have the same
joie de vivre
that Luke had possessed in vast quantities. Luke was the kind of person that drew people to him. He was a natural-born leader.

Simon swung the toddler up onto his hip, just before the kid raced into traffic. “So, kiddo, are you going to be a leader one day?”

“No!” the toddler said emphatically and squirmed. “Down!”

“Not in the middle of the street.” He pointed to the truck going by. “You’d get smashed flat.”

“Mah fat,” Junior parroted with an emphatic nod of his head. “No no.” He waved his finger in the air and looked so adorable that Simon laughed.

“What an unexpected delight you are,” Simon said to the kid. And he meant it. He had no desire to be a parent. God only knew what damage he might do to some unsuspecting child. He had no good parental role models. But
there was something about the innocence of children that always cheered him up.

Just so long as he could hand the kids back to their parents when they soiled their diapers. He gave Junior a little sniff test. Thankfully, the kid passed.

They crossed the street so Simon could walk by the old Kismet movie theater. It was shrouded in scaffolding, while the sounds of drills and saws wafted out from the open doors. Simon remembered sitting up in the back row with Luke and Gabe Raintree watching horror movies and eating Dots. Simon hated the black ones, but Luke had loved them.

It made him happy to see The Kismet rising from the ashes. The last time Simon had come to Last Chance, the theater had been closed. It was like an omen to him then.

And now?

He was pondering that question when the past found him.

Zeph Gibbs came sauntering out of the movie theater wearing a pair of frayed overalls and looking a whole lot older than Simon remembered.

Simon stopped in his tracks, and Junior squirmed and said, “Down.”

“Zeph?” Simon said.

The old black man turned. “Well, I declare.” A big smile stole over his face. That smile hadn’t changed one bit. “What in the world are you doing with Junior?”

The kid stopped squirming. Instead, Junior rested his head on Simon’s shoulder and played coy. Then he got distracted by the handkerchief in the pocket of Simon’s suit jacket.

“I’m taking him off his mother’s hands for a while.
He trashed the Knit & Stitch, and the girls have a meeting going on over there. I’ve been sent out for doughnuts. Zeph, how are you doing?”

“Oh, I’m fine. Just the same as always. I heard about your daddy. I’m so sorry.”

Simon looked up at The Kismet’s marquee. “So you’re working here. Doing carpentry?”

“I am.”

“Do you go hunting much?”

“I do. And fishing. I built myself a little house out near the swamp. Near the governor’s place.”

Junior dropped Simon’s handkerchief onto the sidewalk. “Uh-oh,” the toddler said, looking down at the object like a redheaded angel.

Zeph picked up the handkerchief and handed it back to the baby.

“Do the Raintrees ever go out there anymore?” Simon asked.

Zeph shook his head and studied the concrete sidewalk. “No, sir, the old governor is long passed, and Gabe—well he’s famous now. Lives in Charleston.”

Simon should have known better than to ask. Of course the Raintrees hadn’t come back. He’d even read one of Gabe’s novels a few years ago. It was too dark and violent for Simon.

Suddenly all those happy memories turned gray. And the painful ones percolated to the top. He needed to get away from Zeph before they overwhelmed him. “Well, it’s nice to see you again, but I’ve got to get going. I’ve been sent on an errand, and you know how Mother can be. I’ll be here in Last Chance for a while settling Daddy’s estate.”

Zeph nodded but didn’t look up. “It might be best if you didn’t come out to the Jonquil House or anywhere out that way.”

Simon understood. The memories had to be painful for Zeph, too. So he nodded and headed on down the sidewalk.

A
fter the Purly Girls meeting, Molly fired up Momma’s computer and took a look at the yarn shop’s profit and loss statement.

Jeez Louise, Momma was doing much better with her business than she’d let anyone know. To hear Momma talk, the shop had been barely making a profit. But to Molly’s astonishment, the Knit & Stitch had been bringing in modest yet steady income for a long time. Further investigation of the accounting software revealed that Pat Canaday had been socking away the profits and living entirely on Daddy’s paycheck.

On Friday afternoon, just three days before she left, Momma had taken a huge chunk of cash out of her money market account. With that much money in her pocket, she wasn’t coming back anytime soon.

This discovery left Molly reeling. Maybe Momma hadn’t gone to see the world like she said. Maybe she’d taken all that cash and moved off to some other town and was planning to permanently set up shop there. Molly
suddenly missed her momma something fierce. Surely Momma wasn’t gone for good?

She wasn’t going to cry over it. No, sir. The way Momma had slunk out of town had been hurtful and maybe just a little bit hypocritical. Momma talked a great line about being mindful and calm and collected, and all the while she was orchestrating her getaway. Well, running away didn’t seem like a very good way to deal with problems. And Momma running away made Molly hopping mad. So mad that she actually thought about hauling out that dumb book Momma had left for her and trying one of those one-minute meditations.

But there was a silver lining in this disaster that Momma hadn’t fully thought through. The shop was earning enough to support an employee. Of course, that would eat into any profits Molly would pocket, but if she could hire someone to manage the store, then whatever was left over could be plowed into the Shelby, or maybe used to rent the Coca-Cola building. Maybe things were looking up.

So Molly called Ricki Wilson, and the next morning at o-dark-thirty they met at the front door of the yarn shop. Molly had Ricki fill out all the necessary employment forms and then gave Ricki the one-hour training session on the point-of-sale equipment, which Molly had repaired last night.

Then she escaped, intent on getting a cup of coffee at the Kountry Kitchen—there still wasn’t any milk in the refrigerator at home—before heading off to work.

As she left the store, her attention was drawn down the block, where Simon Wolfe was peering through the big picture windows of the Coca-Cola bottling plant while simultaneously talking on his cell phone. Molly immediately went on guard.

She didn’t like anyone peering into those windows. That building was hers, and Simon needed to keep his distance.

He’d already upset things in this town, even if he
had
taken Junior off Kenzie’s hands yesterday afternoon and come back with doughnuts and a completely tamed toddler.

Kenzie had been flabbergasted when Simon had taken a seat in the couch at the front of the store and quietly played with Junior for the better part of half an hour.

So he was the Pied Piper when it came to demon children; she still didn’t trust him. He had no right to be investigating her building.

She needed to know what he was up to. So instead of heading toward the Kountry Kitchen, she strolled up the street toward the abandoned building. As she got closer, she could hear what he was saying into his cell phone.

“Well, it’s got windows. They don’t face north.” He stopped talking and looked up at the sky. “They face east. I suppose it would do.” He backed away from the windows and started pacing, listening to whoever was on the other end of the line.

This morning, he’d traded in his wool slacks for a pair of faded blue jeans and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to expose sinewy forearms with a road map of veins traveling across them. His Toms lace-ups were beginning to fray at the toe, but they gave him an air of shabby urban elegance that didn’t belong anywhere in the vicinity of Last Chance.

He was still talking into his phone. “This building is probably the best I can do. And it’s only short-term. But I have to get back to work, so I need you and the painting here ASAP.”

Molly listened unabashedly as he discussed plans for the next several weeks with someone who was probably his assistant. It didn’t take her long to realize that he was going to see if he could lease her building and turn it into some kind of studio.

What the heck? He had hundreds of square feet in his daddy’s house, which was practically a mansion. Why did he need to rent commercial space? She needed to put a stop to this right away.

When he finally finished his call, she stepped right up to him, hands on her hips. “You can’t lease this building. It belongs to me,” she said bluntly.

Molly had no idea what a sardonic stare was, but she reckoned that the look she got from Simon probably qualified as one. Although she had to admit maybe his look was more surprised than anything else. After all, there was a big, if faded, “For Lease” sign in the building’s window. She scrambled to explain. “I mean, it doesn’t belong to me … yet. But it will. Soon. I’m going to put a car showroom and garage in there. So you can’t have it.”

He stood there with this hard-to-read expression in his eyes and those infernal curls at the corners of his mouth doing their thing. He said nothing, though. It was annoying how much Simon could say without opening his mouth.

“It’s too big for a studio anyway.” Molly forged onward, laying out all her arguments. “You don’t belong here.”

“You’re right about that. But I’m here. For a while anyway—while Eugene Hanks wades through my father’s affairs. And I need a place to paint.”

“You could paint at home.”

“No, I don’t think so.” He didn’t elaborate, and Molly got the feeling that arguing about that would get her nowhere.

“Well, you can’t paint here. It’s mine.” She turned on her heel and walked away, painfully aware that she had just sounded like some kind of pitiful little kid facing down one of the big boys on the playground. Only Simon hadn’t behaved like a bully. A real bully would have mashed her flat or said something mean or ugly about her butt or her hair.

No, Simon didn’t do any of those things. He’d just stood there looking at her from out of those big, brown eyes. Okay, so they didn’t look sardonic; they looked kind of puppy-dog-ish. Which was annoying as hell because Molly had always wanted a puppy but Momma was allergic. And sad puppy eyes were like kryptonite to her. One look and she was rendered soft and pathetic and … girlie.

Damn.

Simon watched Molly as she headed back down the sidewalk, her dark curls lit up by the morning light, and her hips swaying in a pair of baggy pants. She had a long, confident stride, like a person who knew exactly where she was going in life.

He admired that.

She was a piece of work all right. She always had been. Even as a little girl in her overalls, standing with her daddy on the sidelines of every Rebels game.

He let go of a breath. It was all ancient history, better forgotten, like those summers with Luke Raintree. He’d spent years pushing those memories deep. No sense in
dredging them up now. He was getting out of this place as soon as he could.

He turned and inspected the old building. The place was run-down, practically decrepit, and way too big for him. But it had the advantage of having large windows and being close to his parents’ house, without actually being in it.

He couldn’t paint at home. Mother would have a fit. His art had always been a bone of contention. Even more important, Mother didn’t know who he was. She vacillated between treating him like a servant and a thief.

In a sad way, he
was
a thief. And Aunt Millie and Aunt Frances weren’t above trying to guilt him about it, while Bubba thought he should just drop everything, go to war with Uncle Ryan, and assume management of the car dealership.

But none of those actions made any sense. He couldn’t live permanently in this town. He was willing to stay in order to unsnarl his father’s finances. He would try to convince Uncle Ryan to sell the dealership instead of liquidating it, but he wasn’t becoming a car salesman. And of course, he’d have to see about selling Mother’s house and making an informed decision about her future care.

That might take weeks or months.

But Simon didn’t have weeks or months. He needed to focus on finishing the Harrison commission, which was due to be installed at the end of July in Harrison’s new country estate in Sonoma.

He needed a sizable temporary studio to finish the painting. And he didn’t have time to screw around. So Angel, his assistant, was going to bring the unfinished painting all the way across the country.

He looked down Palmetto Avenue. When he was a
teenager, he couldn’t wait to get away from this place. The feeling hadn’t changed.

He needed to get back to Paradise. But before that, he had a meeting with Eugene Hanks, and then he needed to visit Arlo Boyd at the real estate office and see if the owner of the building would rent it to him cheap.