by Rebeca Seitz
“Really, go ahead. I’m fine.”
“Okay, thanks.” She turned and made her way around the back of the car. “I appreciate this. It’s just that this only happens once a year, and my friend is waiting . . .” She stopped on the far side of the car and looked at him. He could sue if he was hurt, and her luck with men right now meant he would sue and she would lose to the tune of thousands of dollars. “You’re certain you’re fine?”
“Go.” He made a shooing motion with the bag. “Happy shopping.”
Her mother always said never to look a gift horse in the mouth, and this was one time Jane would be obeying Elizabeth rather than giving in to her own desire to argue. She practically sprinted to the front door of The Savvy Scrapper, yanked it open, and burst inside.
“Jane!” Lydia was in the front corner of the store, surrounded by pink, yellow, blue, lilac, and pale green. She waved a die-cut of a bathtub and bubbles above her head. “I found the perfect stuff for Olivia and Oliver’s First Bath page.”
“Great.” Jane joined her, breathless. Her cheeks were tinged with pink.
“Okay, here’s the deal.” Lydia turned toward the back of the store and pointed. “All the Times letters are gone, the vellum is almost finito, and the dog section is getting riffled through as we speak. Where do you want to start?”
“Dog section.” Jane stuffed her keys into her purse. “I took great pictures this morning of Mrs. Hannigan picking up poop while stepping in another pile.”
“You are so gross. That poor woman, poop obsessed. To each his own, I guess.”
Jane scanned the rest of the store, making a quick plan to get the most stuff. “What can you expect? She’s lived there since before animals were allowed and tried to stop the changing of the rules. All she wants is a poop-free yard, and I can’t say I blame her.”
Lydia’s eyebrows rose. “You’re siding with Mrs. Hannigan?”
“I wouldn’t say I was siding with her, just beginning to understand where she’s coming from, that’s all.” Jane shrugged.
“Right. Go on over to the dog section. I’ll come over there when I’m finished here. Can you grab me that new paper with the red stripes and dark brown bones? I’ve got some pictures of Otis with Olivia and Oliver from last week.”
“Dale let that pug get near his precious twins? I thought you said the only thing he cared more about than SportsCenter was those babies.”
“Dale hasn’t seen the pictures yet. You know he never comes in my scrapbook studio. I think he gets hives when he thinks about how much money I spend on this stuff.” Lydia waved her hand to encompass the store. “He’s probably right.”
“Oh, please. Men are never right.” Jane turned toward the dog section. “Dogs, on the other hand, are wonderful companions who never cheat and can’t even turn on a computer.”
Lydia laughed and turned back to the wall of baby-themed paper in front of her, leaving Jane to take care of the dog paper. Stripes or flowers? She didn’t want to make the scrapbook too babyish, but she also didn’t want it to look too grownup. The papers were all on sale, so maybe she would just get both. Dale would never know, since he didn’t come into her studio anyway, and she could give some of it to Mac for Kesa’s baby book. She took two sheets of the pink and lime green-striped paper, then two of the blue rosebud ones.
“Men are never right,” she muttered under her breath.
Maybe Jane had a good point.
chapter 2
“And then she pushed this woman out of the way and grabbed the last two sheets of the bone paper.” Lydia laughed again as she and Jane settled into chairs at MacKenzie Allen’s big oak kitchen table later that day and told her all about the sale.
“You pushed a woman?” Mac asked.
“Well, just a nudge,” Jane admitted. “Anyway, let’s not get hung up on this. I’ve got a surprise for you.”
“Ah, finally, she spills the beans.”
“Listen, girls, I’ve been thinking, and I’m pretty sure I’ve come up with a way for us to make some money at this scrap-booking thing while doing a very good deed at the same time.”
“That’s our Jane, always the entrepreneur,” Lydia said.
“If it helps pay for my scrappin’ habit, I’m all ears, chile.”
Jane leaned into the table. Mac and Lydia followed suit. “Well, I was thinking about this past year and how I wouldn’t have made it through without the two of you.” She smiled at her old friend Lydia and her newly found girlfriend, Mac.
“That’s when I realized that I’d let my friendships slip when I got married. I’m not sure why, but it’s like I let everything go but my relationship with Bill. And I think that made me less of the woman I wanted to be. I like my friendships with you, our conversations, our scrapping time, all of it. I don’t know where I’d be without it.”
“Okay, much as I’m loving the love fest, tell me how this helps other women,” Lydia prodded.
“I’m getting there. I started thinking about why I had let my friendships go. And it occurred to me that, even if I had wanted to reach out to other scrappers in my area, I had no idea how to find them. Y’all know I don’t like taking classes, and that seemed to be the only way to find other scrappers, which left me with no easy way to make other scrapping friends.”
“You could go online,” Lydia suggested.
Jane nodded. “I could, but then I’d be making friends that could be on the other side of the country just as easily as down the block. Having friends whose houses I can go to, or shop with, or just hug every now and then isn’t something I could easily find online. So then it hit me.” Her chair creaked as she leaned back in satisfaction.
“Um, what hit you?” Mac asked.
“A business idea—a way to connect scrappers with other scrappers in their area and across the country. To help women connect with other women rather than neglecting such an important part of being female.”
“Okay, genius, I’ll bite. How do we do that?”
Jane leaned forward again. “With a web site of our own.” She grinned.
“But there are already a ton of scrapping web sites out there, Jane.”
“I know, but they all exist to sell stuff—which is fine. Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy to buy scrapping stuff all day long. But there needs to be a place that’s all about building relationships first. So, I built us a web site and”—she reached into her tote bag resting on the floor—“incorporated us.”
She set the boxes of letterhead and business cards on the table, pulling off the lids and watching her friends’ faces. Would they balk?
Mac reached in and pulled out one of the business cards with her name on it. “MacKenzie Jones, Vice President of Class Development and Web Site Management. Now that sounds highfalutin for this country girl.”
“Not really, Mac. It’s just a title that puts you in charge of coordinating our online classes and maintaining the web site. Since you help teach at the Creating Keepsakes convention every year and you love classes so much, I thought you’d like to be in charge of that.”
“Hmm, ’spose I might be able to do that.”
Lydia pulled her own card from the box and read, “Lydia Whitehaven, Vice President of Creative Direction. What does that mean?”
“Since you’re the one who loves to be creative and artsy, I thought you could be in charge of new products, techniques, and skills. You love the part of scrapping that is art form, and there’s a large portion of scrappers out there who agree with you, so we need someone in charge of addressing their needs.”
“So what’s your title?”
“Since the relationship part of scrapping is the most important to me, I would be Vice President of Club Communications, helping our members connect with each other at the local and national level, making sure they get plugged in.”
She watched as Jane and Mac looked at each other across the scarred table.
“You know, if my scrapping habit was helping to bring money in, Dale might
take a little interest in it,” Lydia said.
Mac looked at Jane, then nodded one time. “All right, chile, we’re in. Tell us how to get this baby up and runnin’.”
Jane squealed and pulled her business plan from the tote bag. “This is going to be so much fun!”
A few hours later, the leaders of Sisters, Ink sat around Mac’s scrapping table. Paper and embellishments lay scattered about.
“You know, if we gonna be in business together, we gonna need to know each other’s scrappin’ history.”
Jane looked up from her eyelet setter. “Scrapping history?”
“Mmm-hmm. Has Lydia told you about how she acquired her eyelet setter?”
Lydia looked up and rolled her eyes. “Oh, Mac, that’s water under the bridge by now. I’m sure everybody’s forgotten it, and, besides, that woman started it.”
“Started what? A fight?” Jane asked. “Two years I don’t talk to you and you go completely to pot. It’s a good thing I’m back in your life.”
“It wasn’t a fight, really—” Lydia started.
“Oh, yes, it was.” Mac’s voice was laced with laughter but brooked no argument. “Anytime somebody’s hair is left lying on the floor, it’s a fight.”
“Well, how was I to know she was wearing a wig?” Lydia got up and made her way to Mac’s wall of rubber stamps. “It looked real enough to me.”
“That woman had the audacity to get between Lydia and the last Clikit. Mind you, this was the year when the Clikit first came out on the market. I’m telling you, I’ve never seen a situation go from peaceful to painful that quick.” Mac snapped her fingers and laughed again. “Our Lydia pushed right back in front of the woman and grabbed that Clikit like it was the hem of Jesus’ robe itself.”
“Mac! Don’t be blasphemous.” Lydia snagged a baby bottle stamp and sat back down at the table, her dimple showing as she grinned. “I just got caught up in the moment.”
“‘Caught up’ is sayin’ it right, sister.” Mac’s eyes twinkled. “That woman tried to grab the Clikit from Lydia’s own hand. Well, she messed with the wrong sister. Lydia snatched it back, and next thing you know, they’re on the floor, pullin’ and slappin’ like there was no tomorrow. When the wig hit the floor, though, it was all over.”
“You took her wig?” Jane couldn’t quit laughing.
“Of course not. I left it lying right where it fell.” She paused, tilting her head. “I would never take a woman’s hair.”
The room filled with laughter.
“My lands, that was some convention.”
“It sure was. We’ve got to get our tickets to this year’s. It’s in four months, and you know if we don’t get signed up, all the workshops will be full.”
“Yes ma’am.” Mac left the table and sat down in front of her laptop. “I’ll get online and sign us up right now.”
“Hey, so long as we’re spilling scrapping secrets, I may have hurt a guy in the parking lot before the Savvy Scrapper sale.”
“You hurt a guy? What happened?”
“I didn’t see him coming and just opened my door right into his stomach. He wasn’t hurt badly or anything. Not that his huge male ego would have let him admit it if he had been.”
“He had a huge ego? How long did you talk to this man?”
Mac asked from her place behind the laptop.
“Long enough to know he’s probably the type that uses phrases like ‘little woman’ and such. He actually shooed me on into the store and told me he knew how women could be around sales.” Jane mimicked the guy’s shooing motion and rolled her eyes at the memory.
“Has he ever seen men around a TV during the draft pick or the Super Bowl?” Lydia asked. “Dale is just as rabid about sports as I am about my scrapbooks. Why do they think we’re so crazy with our hobbies when they’re just as crazy with theirs?”
“I know, I know. I let it go, though, so I could get on into the store. Arguing with a man right now just isn’t an option.”
“Yes!” Mac interrupted. “There are still tickets to the Creating Keepsakes show here in Nashville. Looks like ’bout half the workshops are sold out, including mine.” She continued clicking through the web site. “Y’all wanna take any of the classes?”
“I wish I could.” Lydia set out stacks of paper in varying shades of pink, blue, and green. “But I barely have time to get to the convention, much less take classes. I’ll have Oliver and Olivia with me, anyway.”
“I can’t either. I’ve got three fund-raisers to conduct and publicize in the next six months.” Jane chewed her lip and began placing her pictures of Wilson in groupings around the table. “I barely have time to scrap, much less sit down for others to tell me how. Besides, I’m not a class-taking kind of scrapper.”
The light from the computer screen cast a blue glow on Mac’s face. Jane rearranged a few of the pictures and assessed the new groupings.
“Oh, hey, did I tell y’all I finished the scrapbook of the Center’s banquet?” Mac got up and headed over to a bookshelf. She ran her weathered hands over the spines of the scrapbooks there and pulled out a purple one. Coming back to the cropping table, she began thumbing through the pages.
“Jane, we oughta get on your calendar for next year. Much as I love helpin’ those girls out in the midst of a crisis pregnancy, I don’t think I can put together a banquet all by my lonesome again next year. It near did me in tryin’ to take care of everythin’ this year.” She slid the scrapbook over to Jane.
“You’ve already scrapbooked that banquet?” Lydia asked.
“It was in February, for goodness’ sakes. When did you find time in the last month to scrap that?”
“I’ve been working on it by myself. I’d rather spend time on Tabby’s baby’s book when I’m working with y’all.” She shrugged as if working on two scrapbooks at once was no big deal.
“Sister, you are one amazing person.” Lydia shook her head. She pulled out her paper cutter and prepared to crop the pictures of the twins’ first bath. “My babies are four months old, and I’m just now finished with the birth story pictures. I thought I’d never get to the ones from their first month at home. I’m so behind.”
“Well, at least you’re moving forward,” Jane pulled out two 12x12 sheets of paper with white, yellow, and brown bones dancing across them. “All I’ve got to show for my scrapping efforts is an old wedding album I don’t want to look at and a new album full of moving pictures. I need to get out more, I think. Just to have something to scrapbook.”
“Been a year. Guess it’s time.” Mac slid the blade across a photo.
“You think?”
“To everything there is a season,” Lydia said. “Maybe it’s time for your season of starting over with a new guy.”
“I’ve always liked that about you, my friend.”
“What?”
“Your ability to come up with a quote or cliché for every single situation in life.”
Lydia stuck out her tongue, then focused on her layout. “I need help with a title, ladies.”
Mac and Jane came around to her side of the table and looked at the photos of little Olivia and Oliver lying in the kitchen sink. Each was surrounded by terry-cloth animals and a rubber ducky. Olivia was squalling like crazy, her face beet red, while Oliver had a sort of stunned expression on his face. Bath time had not been their favorite experience. Dale’s big hands were around Olivia, emphasizing the frailty of the baby regardless of the passionate strength shown in her temper. His mom was holding on to Oliver, watching Dale’s face.
Lydia had snapped a picture at the end of the bath as well. In this one, Olivia was sitting contentedly in her daddy’s hands, staring at one of the plush animals floating nearby while Dale’s mom wrapped Oliver in a yellow towel. The look of overwhelming love on both Dale and his mother’s faces took Jane’s breath. She stepped back over to her side of the table and picked up her pictures of Wilson, blinking back her tears before the others could notice. Will I ever get marri
ed again? Hold a child in my arms? Maybe it is time to start dating again.
“I’m gonna go see if I can’t rustle us up something to munch on.” Mac made her way to the stairs. “I’ll be right back.”
Jane picked up pictures of her and Wilson beside a moving truck. The dog’s sad eyes and lowered head were as forlorn as Jane had felt that day. The tight plastic feel of bubble wrap around her china and the sound of packing tape still made her feel panicky sometimes, even after a year. Her twelve place settings of Noritake’s Stoneleigh design still sat in their boxes, collecting dust in the spare bedroom closet. What do women do with all of the things they acquired during a marriage when it ends?Post them on eBay?
Now, there was an idea. If she sold some china, she could buy more scrapping supplies. Hmm, maybe there was a silver lining to this divorce business after all. Besides, scrapping was so much cheaper than therapy.
chapter 3
Jane rolled over and slapped the top of the alarm clock, groaning and praying for a bit more sleep. Why had she set it on a Sunday? She moaned when she remembered promising Lydia her presence at early service in church this morning. No way out. Who in their right minds got up at six-thirty in the morning on a Sunday on purpose?
She sat up and looked around the room. Not bad for a year after the move. No boxes remained in sight. Everything that could be unpacked was, and everything else was stuffed in the extra closet. Life, what remained anyway, was beginning to settle into a routine again. Now if only the expectation that Bill would walk through the door at any moment would go away, then everything would be great. Sometimes the empty key ring by the door still jarred her. Or the naked spot on the back of the couch, where he used to lay his coat. Even tripping over his big clunky shoes would be nice some days. The clutter could drive someone to madness and had done so to her the entire two years of their marriage, but the clutter also brought a sense of satisfaction. She’d been married, finally. Yeah, time to get back out there.
Jane jumped as her cell phone rang. Hopping up, she strode quickly to the front door and snatched her purse up off the floor. She plunged her hand in, grabbed the phone, and flipped it open.