Wherever Grace Is Needed (22 page)

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Authors: Elizabeth Bass

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From behind her, Grace called out, “You do realize that you make it hard for anyone to like you, don’t you?”
“Thank you, Miss Broken Record of 2011.” Jordan turned. “You do realize I don’t care whether anyone does or not, don’t you?”
There went the guppy face again. But at last Grace stopped and shook her head, sighing. Surrendering. “Just grab the flippin’ rabbit and let’s get out of here.”
27
A
N
I
NVITATION
G
race inspected a Deutsche Grammophon label on an album, trying not to get her hopes up. According to her research, the record was worth either two hundred dollars or twenty-five cents, depending on how the tulip design looked. The trick was deciphering whether she had a gold mine tulip or a dud tulip.
The slight acceleration of her heartbeat as she checked the details was saying gold mine.
Her father hadn’t stopped pushing choice items from his record collection on her—even as he deplored her giving up her store and selling things on-line. Most days started out with his bemoaning the fact that she was in Austin at all. But she knew he wanted her here; anyway, it was a fait accompli now. They had informed Darla Swinton her services would not be needed. Grace was the live-in help.
The record she was inspecting was one of Lou’s Telemann Viola Concertos. She wouldn’t have thought of selling it, but he actually had two copies because Sam had bought him a duplicate one year for Christmas. And she was beginning to think that Sam was a genius, because this one seemed to be an original stereo pressing, which could be worth quite a bit.
Someone knocked at the door and she braced herself, preparing for it to be her dad bugging her about the album again. Once he’d handed it to her to sell, it was all he could think about. After all the albums he’d lugged in for her to look at—all of which she’d had to declare without value—he would be gleeful.
Without turning, she announced, “You’re sitting on a gold mine.”
Behind her, Steven said, “Glad to hear it.”
“Oh—sorry. I thought you were Dad.” She frowned. It was the middle of the day on a Thursday. “What are you doing here?”
He took a seat on a folding chair. From her desktop he grabbed a push puppet of a burro in a serape and sombrero and started fidgeting with it. “I drove Muriel home, so I decided to drop in.”
“Muriel Blainey?” That name, and the formally casual tone of his voice, shot off a warning flare in her mind.
He nodded, pulsating his thumb so that the burro nodded too. “Turns out, we share a divorce lawyer.”
The world’s longest business trip was officially over, evidently.
“As Muriel pointed out, we’re both in the same boat.” Steven’s expression was grave. “Of course, she’s worse off than I am. I might have had to leave my old practice, but she’s being forced out into the workplace, back to her old profession.”
“You make it sound like she was selling her body.”
He drew back. “She was a real estate agent.”
“Oh, sorry, I was wrong. It was her soul she was selling.” Grace laughed. “Real estate agent. It fits.”
“I don’t see anything funny,” Steven said. “The poor woman’s had her life turned upside down.”
Poor woman?
“Oh, Steven, be careful.”
“Careful of what?”
“Can’t you see? She’s one of those bulldozer women you always end up with.”
He sputtered. “That I—?
What?”
“Sara . . . Denise . . .” She arched a brow. “Now Muriel Blainey.”
He was not convinced. “It sounds to me like you’re projecting. Ben jerked you around, so now you think the same thing’s going to happen to me. But what’s Muriel done to make you so suspicious?”
That was a good question. And the answer was . . . nothing. Maybe she
was
just projecting. But what was she supposed to do about that gnawing queasiness in her stomach at the idea of Steven in Muriel’s clutches? Even though, God knows, Steven was not without faults. He wasn’t exactly Valentino, and he had a complete lack of sentimentality.
For the first time, she noticed that he had brought a bundle of letters in with him. “What’s this?” she asked, picking it up off the desk.
“Your mail.”
Out of the stack she picked out a cream-colored envelope that looked like an invitation.
“I got one of those, too,” he said.
She eyed him questioningly, and when he didn’t clue her in, she tore open the envelope. Inside was a wedding invitation.
You are cordially invited . . .
To Truman and Peggy’s wedding!
Steven shook his head. “I don’t know why they just didn’t go to city hall months ago.”
There. No sentimentality.
“Because this is a big deal. Huge.” Even though she had been irritated by their coupledom in the beginning, even she could see the momentousness of their marriage. “Uncle Truman giving up bachelorhood at eighty-two? Peggy throwing off her spinster schoolteacher mantle at seventy-four?”
“All the more reason for them to hurry up and tie the knot without any fuss. At their spot on the actuarial tables, time is of the essence.”
“They want to make it an occasion,” Grace told him. “I can understand that. I just worry about Dad.”
“Why would Dad care? He knows Truman’s asked her.”
“But still. Peggy’s his old friend. His companion.”
“Dad never was her
companion,
” Steven argued. “They were just friends.”
“Bull. That’s just what Peggy’s saying now.”
“You romanticized them, but you weren’t around that often.”
It was so irritating. These first-wave Olivers could always trump her with the you-weren’t-around argument. “But when I
was
around, so was Peggy.”
“Well, of course—because she liked you. Naturally she’d want to come visit more often when you were here.”
Grace had never considered that possibility before.
“The wedding’s in three weeks,” Steven told her. “Doesn’t give you long to rustle up a date.”
“You could be my date,” she said.
He squirmed uncomfortably, and the burro began flopping over again.
“Oh, no,” Grace breathed. “You didn’t invite
her
.”
“Muriel had already received her invitation. So naturally when the subject came up . . .”
Grace groaned.
“What’s the matter? It’s just a small family wedding.”
“Whose wedding?” Lou asked from the doorway.
Steven and Grace both jumped. They hadn’t heard him come in. He frowned, looking from one to the other.
Grace took the invitation out of her lap and handed it over. “We were talking about this. Truman and Peggy’s wedding invitation.”
Lou took it and examined it. As he did, Grace studied his rough hands. His fingernails were dirty and jagged. Should she suggest a manicure? Nail care was one of the many things she’d never considered for her dad—little day-to-day things a person did that you took for granted until you realize that suddenly they weren’t doing them at all.
He tossed the invitation on the desk. “I knew about that. Truman told me.”
“You never mentioned it to me,” Grace said.
“I don’t have to tell you everything that happens, do I?”
“No, but—”
She was stopped by the expression on her dad’s face, which was mottled red with anger. He had done a double-take at something he’d seen on the desk. He picked up the Telemann record.
“What are you doing with this?”
“Oh!” She hadn’t told him yet. “Good news! I think it’s worth around two hundred dollars.”
“Over my dead body, it is!” he shouted at her. “Who gave you permission to go putting my things up for sale?”
The blood drained from her face. “You did.”
“Like hell, I did.”
She didn’t know what to say. Tears jumped to her eyes, but she wasn’t about to let them fall. This wasn’t about her, she told herself.
This wasn’t even really him.
She sent an imploring look to Steven, hoping he would intervene. He struggled for words. “Dad, Grace wouldn’t—”
“Naturally you’d take her side,” his father said, interrupting. He dismissed them both with a scowl and a warning for Grace. “Stay out of my things.”
When he left, Grace and Steven lowered themselves into their chairs again and looked into each other’s eyes. Neither of them could find words.
 
Crawford showed up to help her after school, and Lily filtered in and then back out when she failed to capture Crawford’s attention. Dominic came in later to walk Iago before it got dark, while Grace fixed dinner. She and her father ate in silence, and then he sat down in the living room to watch an old DVD of
Columbo
that she’d found at the library. Since Christmas, he’d been watching DVDs more and reading less.
Grace felt cooped up in the house and went out to the backyard for air.
“Hey there,” a male voice said over the fence.
She instinctively looked over toward Ray’s house, even though she knew it was the wrong direction. Wrong voice, wrong fence, wrong guy.
Since Thanksgiving, things had been awkward between them. Ray was keeping his distance from her—maybe he didn’t want to upset his children, and she certainly didn’t want to add to his family tension. Or maybe she’d only been imagining—or overestimating—the connection between them.
But she had also wanted to wall herself off a bit from him. In no way did she want him or anyone else to think her decision to stay with her dad had been influenced by the fact that Ray was next door. The idea was preposterous, really. A grieving widower with three kids and a communication problem? Not exactly the bachelorette’s dream.
So they waved at each other occasionally from their respective driveways and heard news about each other from Lily and Dominic and left it at that. But she never quite managed to banish him from her mind.
Grace pushed off the porch and strolled toward Wyatt, who was grinning at her over the fence. “Care for a martini?” he asked, waggling his brows with mock seduction.
Or maybe that was actually his real seduction technique. With Wyatt there was no telling.
She laughed. “Sure.”
What the hell. It had been a crappy day. A martini couldn’t hurt.
By the time she made it around his gate, he was already busy shaking up a batch on his patio. “Outdoor living in the middle of February,” he said, pouring her a glass. “This is why I love Texas.”
He handed her a drink and pointed her toward one of two chaise longues.
She flopped down and looked up at the sky through the limbs of a live oak. She’d expected Wyatt to take the other chair, but he perched at the foot of hers instead. He was wearing jeans and a tucked-in polo shirt, and smelled of cologne, cigar, and alcohol. It appeared that happy hour had started a while back.
She felt the first stirrings of alarm.
“Where’s Pippa?” she asked.
He laughed. “Pippa flew the coop.”
She hadn’t heard that—and it seemed like something Crawford would have told her. Not that she didn’t believe Wyatt. It couldn’t be easy for a man to admit his fiancée had dumped him.
She frowned. That afternoon, Crawford had mentioned that he was going to a friend’s house tonight. “So you’re all alone?” she asked.
He smiled. “Not anymore.”
She scooted up a little straighter.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Nothing—I’m just not sure these chairs were meant for two.”
“Oh, sure. They can withstand a lot of action, if you know what I mean.” He chuckled and then sobered up again in the next second. “Sorry. That’s not what I meant to say. I meant to tell you . . . well, that I know what you’re going through.”
“What I’m going through?” she repeated, mystified.
“With your dad. My grandmom had it.”
“What?”
“Alzheimer’s.”
Her mouth dropped open. “How . . . ?”
“I’ve picked things up from Crawford,” he explained, “and other clues. Like the time he set your house on fire. I put it together later. Mom was always having to watch my grandmom.”
“I didn’t know.”
“It’s heartbreaking. It almost killed my mother, taking care of her mom. She finally had to put her in a home.”
Grace shuddered. “I couldn’t do that.”
“But it’s hard staying with him all the time, right?” he asked. “You gave up your business back in Portland, Crawford said.”
She shrugged. “I’m just transferring it on-line. The physical store was probably doomed anyway. This might not make as much money, but it won’t be as much stress, either.”
“Well, anyway,” Wyatt said, “I just wanted you to know that there’s somebody nearby who knows what you’re going through. You’re not alone.”
For a moment, she found it hard to speak. She took a swig of her martini. “Thank you.”
Wyatt frowned and touched her chin with his hand. “Hey.”

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