“It’s okay.” That he hadn’t asked her first. “Don’t worry about it.”
Obviously he didn’t think she had a life. But she did and she actually needed more time for it. She’d thought she’d only had Mitchell left to marry off before she could retire her tiara and take that time for herself.
There was someone else she’d flirted with the idea of making time for, though, but it was definitely too soon for him. And Millie was so old-fashioned, she’d never actually learned to flirt. Was it as easy as getting a dye job?
“Mom? Are you okay?”
She nodded, pushing the crazy thought from her mind. She didn’t really need anyone or anything else in her life. Even with Pop married and moved out, it was too full now for her to fit in all the things she wanted to do, like shopping and gambling excursions with her Red Hat Society chapter, The Red Hot Hatters of Hilltop. She’d always wanted to travel, but Bruce had been such a homebody, and they’d had Pop and the boys to take care of then, too. She really wanted to take a cruise like several members of her Red Hot Hatters often did. She blew out a resigned sigh before assuring Steven, “I’m fine, just tired.”
He snorted. “From cleaning Mitchell’s place. I would have moved in with him, but I couldn’t stand his mess.”
Which multiplied by Steven’s would have given Millie nightmares. She would have had to beg Mitchell to hire a maid.
“I’m happy to have you here,” she insisted. But she hoped it wouldn’t be for long. While she wouldn’t mind his company, Steven belonged home with his family. The connection between a mother and child as strong as ever, she could feel his heart breaking, and hers ached, too.
He let out another ragged sigh. “Thanks, Mom. I need to ask you for another favor, though.”
“Anything.”
“I need you to go…” he drew in a quick breath, “to my house.”
He couldn’t call it home. He’d only been gone a few hours, but he couldn’t call it that anymore. Panic pressed on Millie’s heart. She refused to believe it was too late, though. Maybe she could still help.
But how could she, who had never interfered before, interject herself into the middle of a battle between a husband and wife when she had no real idea what their problems were?
“Steven, I don’t think it’s my place…”
“I just need you to pick up my briefcase. I’ve looked through the boxes I brought downstairs.”
Boxes? He’d already moved boxes of his stuff from his home to the basement?
“And I checked the trunk again. I can’t find it. I brought it home with me to do some work this afternoon. Can you go get it for me? I can’t go back there.”
“Steven, you’re going to have to… for Brigitte.”
“I can’t go back because of Brigitte. It’s too soon. We all need time to adjust.”
Millie worried that he was adjusting pretty quickly, then she saw his eyes and the tears he couldn’t blink away. He was hurting, and he didn’t want his daughter to see him in that kind of pain.
Millie hated seeing him in that kind of pain.
“Of course.” She blinked fast, pushing back her own tears. “I’ll go right now.” And give him a chance to pull himself together. She needed one, too.
She’d conveniently left the car running for a quick getaway. Hands trembling, she opened the door, then tossed the duster into the backseat. She rammed the Taurus into reverse, then glanced into the rearview mirror after she’d already started moving. Too late.
A man stood behind the car, his outstretched arm clutching a leash. But she couldn’t see the dog he usually walked at the end of it. She slammed on the brakes, the seatbelt biting into her sore muscles, but she didn’t care about that. She cared about him. He couldn’t lose his dog, too. He’d just buried his wife not that long ago.
She threw open her door. “I’m so sorry. Are you all right?”
She couldn’t look down. She was too afraid to see whether or not a furry, gray body lay beneath the tire of her car.
Chapter Two
“I only like two kinds of men: domestic and foreign.”
—Mae West
Millie held her breath until she heard an indignant yip. Then she let it out in a relieved sigh, glancing down at the small, bearded dog. “Oh, thank goodness. I thought I hit him.”
“No, you didn’t,” a deep voice assured her though it didn’t sound particularly relieved. Actually, it sounded a little disappointed. “You seem to be in a hurry, though, so I can hang onto this….”
She forced herself to meet Charles Moelker’s amazing blue gaze. Instead of feeling relief that she hadn’t harmed the dog, her heart rate accelerated more. It was silly, this giddy little rush she experienced whenever she saw her handsome neighbor. She wasn’t a teenager anymore, hadn’t been one for a long, long time. Though now, with her new hair color, she didn’t look like it had been that long. She reached up, patting her hair to surreptitiously check for more cobwebs, then she looked down at her yellow velour sweatsuit, which was smeared with streaks of dirt.
Charles, even in faded jeans and a gray sweatshirt, looked like he’d stepped off the cover of GQ. His bright eyes made her think of the carefree summer days of her youth and Pierce Brosnan, her personal favorite, although Charles’ slightly graying beard made him look more like Sean Connery. While Kim had teased that he was starting to look like his dog, a miniature Schnauzer, Millie understood why he’d grown it. He didn’t care about his appearance right now… or much of anything else.
She’d gone through a rough patch after Bruce’s death. But with the support of her friends, and the comfort of her memories, she’d never really felt as if she’d lost him. They’d been too close for too long for him to ever completely leave her. From that first night Pop had brought him home from the office, they had been inseparable, marrying the summer right after Millie graduated high school. That was old-fashioned, getting married that young, but she didn’t regret a minute of their time together.
Realizing she had been silently staring at Charles for some time, probably with her mouth hanging open, she said, “I’m sorry.”
“Your hair—I mean, your bowl.” He lifted an orange casserole bowl in his leash-free hand. “I was returning it.”
When she had nearly run him and his little dog over. “I’m sorry,” she said again, inwardly grimacing about sounding like an idiot.
Oh, she hoped Kim wasn’t anywhere around, lurking behind the trees and shrubbery, watching and laughing about this; Millie would never live it down, as Kim would be sure to share it at their next Red Hat Society chapter get-together. Millie peered around, but as short as she was, she could barely see across the evergreen shrubs lining her drive to the next door unit, let alone to Kim’s, which was another building down and across the street. The complex fit its name; all the buildings were carved into a woodsy hilltop with the dark brick walls and green slate roofs blending into the surroundings.
Millie reached out, taking the bowl from Charles’s hand, nearly dropping it when their fingers brushed and a funny little current traveled up her arm. Probably just another muscle twinge courtesy of Kim’s class. She hoped.
“Thank you,” he said, “for the casserole.”
“No problem.” She loved cooking; that was why she’d probably never be able to permanently retire the Domestic Goddess tiara no matter how tarnished it got. “I always make too much.” Considering she lived alone. Like he now did.
The dog yipped again, dancing around, eager to resume their walk, and reminding Millie that Charles wasn’t as alone as she was. Maybe she should get a pet; she wouldn’t have to worry about how to talk to one of them. Even Kim had a cat, although she swore she wasn’t keeping it; she’d recently inherited it from the elderly lady who had lived in the unit next to hers.
But Millie didn’t need a pet; she had Steven now. Flustered over her near-collision with Charles, she had almost forgotten.
“You don’t need to keep doing this,” Charles sai
d, his gaze on the dog, not her. Above the beard, she noticed a slight reddish tint to his skin. He had nothing to be embarrassed about.
“It’s what neighbors do,” she insisted. Especially at Hilltop. Despite the vast acreage it covered on the hill overlooking Grand Rapids, Michigan, the condominium complex was a tight-knit community. She’d certainly gotten her share of sympathy casseroles after Bruce had passed away. While she hadn’t always appreciated the tastes since she was a critical cook, she had always appreciated the gesture. But it was too bad everyone hadn’t used recipes from the Red Hat Society cookbook, like she always did.
He shrugged. “Maybe. But—”
She reached out, touching his arm much like she had Steven’s earlier. She meant it as a reassuring gesture. Instead she felt that disturbing little electrical charge again. “It gets better,” she assured him. “It takes time, but eventually it won’t hurt as much.”
He sighed. “It’s not as if I didn’t see it coming. Guess I just didn’t want to face up to it.”
His wife’s death?
It had happened while he and his wife were in Arizona. Although Charles was young, probably the same age as Millie, he’d already retired, and he and his wife had split their time between condos: summer and fall in Grand Rapids and winter and spring in Phoenix. But this year he’d come home early, in spring, and alone.
Millie hadn’t even known that his wife was sick, but then Mrs. Moelker hadn’t exactly been an easy woman to get close to. And Millie had rarely spoken to Charles; they’d exchange hellos when they’d bumped into each other at the community center but that was all.
“I’m sorry,” she said. Now that he had started talking, she didn’t want him to stop. Steven could wait for his briefcase.
“We weren’t married that long, you know,” he confided, with a resigned sigh. “I’ve been a bachelor most my life. I can survive being a bachelor again.”
“That’s a good attitude,” she said.
“Just wish she would have taken the dog,” he added.
To her grave?
“But there’s nothing wrong with the dog!” Millie had read about some people having their pets cremated with them. There were all kinds of eccentrics in the world; apparently Charles Moelker was one of them.
“There’s nothing wrong with Ellen’s new husband, either. I don’t believe he’s allergic to dogs.”
“What?” Millie asked. “Ellen’s new husband?”
“Yes,” he said. His brows, untouched by gray unlike his beard, arched in confusion. “Where did you think she was?”
“Dead.”
She felt like a fool the minute she admitted it. Here she’d been thinking his wife was dead and instead she’d just divorced him. Served Millie right for listening to Mrs. Ryers, Hilltop’s grapevine.
It didn’t help Millie’s embarrassment that Charles was laughing so hard tears streamed from the blue eyes that had apparently addled whatever sense Millie had.
“You thought she was dead,” he finally managed to gasp. “That explains the casseroles. They were pity casseroles!”
“Sympathy casseroles,” she insisted, hating to think of them the way he had. But he’d only just dubbed them that. What had he thought they were before?
Heat rushed to her face. Oh, no, he had probably thought she’d been trying to impress him with her culinary skills, that she’d been hitting on him. Her stomach churned with dread. And when he’d made the bachelor comments, had he been warning her off?
She’d thought the worst thing she could have done was run over his dog; she’d just found something worse, or at the very least, more humiliating. But she didn’t know which was more so: her thinking his wife was dead or his thinking that she’d used her cooking skills to make a pass.
Yes, she was way too old-fashioned to even attempt flirting. After Steven returned to his family, she’d see about getting a pet. She could always put it in a kennel when she traveled.
Grandma, I’m so glad you’re here,” Brigitte said as she opened the door and threw her arms around her. Her auburn hair tickled Millie’s nose as she squeezed tightly, sobs shaking her slender body. Already Brigitte was much taller than Millie, but then most people were.
She patted her granddaughter’s back. She wanted to offer words of comfort, things like, “Everything will be all right. They’ll get back together.” But there was no way Millie could make promises that she had no control over keeping. That wouldn’t help anyone.
“You’ll do something, right?” Brigitte asked, sounding like a little girl instead of the mature fourteen-year-old she was. “You’ll fix this.”
“Honey, I’d love to fix things, really I would, but this is between your mom and dad. I really shouldn’t interfere,” Millie said, her voice breaking as surely as her granddaughter’s heart was. “I’m sorry.”
Brigitte sniffled; her sadness tugged at Millie’s heart. “That’s what Mom said. That it’s between her and Dad, then she locked herself in her bedroom. But I can still hear her crying.”
If Millie listened hard enough, she would probably be able to hear her, too. They stood in the back hall, from which the utility room, kitchen, and the master bedroom branched. Oak wainscoting covered the bottom half of the walls, cheerful green and gold wallpaper the top half. Millie had helped Audrey hang that wallpaper when she and Steven had first moved in ten years ago.
Millie squeezed her granddaughter’s shoulders, holding her closer. “Brigitte…”
“I want to know why, Grandma. Why did Dad have to move out? What’s going on?”
Millie shook her head, which had first begun to pound when she’d found Steven moving into her condo. Her embarrassing encounter with Charles Moelker had compounded the pain. “I don’t know either, honey.”
Brigitte pulled away, swiping at her damp eyes and cheeks with trembling hands. “This is about me, too, Grandma. This is my family.” Her dark eyes were wide with fear.
Millie nodded. “I know.”
“And yours, too. If they don’t want to tell me because they think I’m a kid or something, they should still tell you. Did Dad?”
Millie shook her head. “No.”
“This is so stupid.”
Millie wanted to wholeheartedly agree, but she held her tongue. “Honey, I’m sure they have their reasons.” A couple wouldn’t throw away fifteen years of marriage without a reason. She hoped.
“What reasons?” Brigitte cried. “I have a right to know what they are!”
“Maybe you already do,” Millie pointed out, not that she wanted to pump her granddaughter for information.
Brigitte shrugged slender shoulders. “I don’t. I’m gone a lot for practice… for band and cheerleading.” Her bottom lip quivered, and guilt flashed through her dark eyes.
“It’s not your fault,” Millie assured her. “Your parents are very proud of you and everything you do.”
The lip stopped quivering, tugging up into a brief, beautiful smile that quickly dimmed again. “Maybe it’s because Mom went back to school.”
“Your dad supported her decision.”
“The decision, yeah,” Brigitte agreed. “But Mom complains that he doesn’t support anything else.”
“Your dad has a great job.”
“No, not with money. He doesn’t help her, you know. With dishes. With laundry. He doesn’t pick up after himself. That’s the only thing I’ve ever heard them fight about.”
Millie thought about this for a moment. Audrey had lived with Steven’s messy ways for a long time. Why get sick of it now? Unless Steven was wrong and she had met someone else.
“Please, Grandma, you have to help them get back together,” Brigitte begged, her big, dark eyes full of tears.
“Honey—”
“Come on, Grandma, you always fix everything.”
Millie wished she could.
A door creaked open, and Audrey stepped from her bedroom into the hall. “I thought I heard voices,” she said, sniffing back tears.
>
“Just me,” Millie said. Despite all the years she’d known her daughter-in-law, she felt awkward, like when she met Audrey for the first time and didn’t know what to say to this strange girl that her son loved but who Millie was afraid might break his heart.
“I should have known he’d send you—”
“For his briefcase,” Millie broke in to explain, just in case Audrey had been about to say something ugly.
Millie had always thought of Audrey as the daughter she’d never had, the one she’d been given later in life, after the angry adolescence, when they were able to enjoy each other. And they had. They’d shopped, baked, and had thoroughly enjoyed all the time they’d spent together. Millie didn’t want that to end now… even if Audrey and Steven’s marriage ended.
“I saw that he left it,” Audrey admitted, nodding. “Brigitte, can you get it for Grandma? I put it in the den.”
Brigitte stared hard at her mother, and Millie tensed, afraid that the girl, hurt and confused, was about to lash out at Audrey. But then the teenager sniffled and shuffled down the hall toward Steven’s den, leaving her mother and grandmother alone.
Millie shifted uncomfortably. Despite how many times she’d been in her son and daughter-in-law’s house, she felt like a first time visitor, as if she were a stranger selling magazines or candy bars and not entirely trusted beyond those few feet from the back door.
Audrey looked just as uncomfortable, shifting her gaze anywhere that it wouldn’t meet Millie’s. So Millie studied her with the same intensity her granddaughter had. Audrey’s swollen eyes were hollowed and underlined with dark bruises of exhaustion. Always slender, she was even thinner now, so much so that she looked frail. Breakable.
Millie couldn’t hold in the concern that clenched her heart. “Audrey, why didn’t you come to me?”
“Mom, this isn’t something I felt I should talk to you about.”
“You can talk to me about anything,” Millie insisted. “But more than talking, I wish you would have let me help you.” She cleaned Mitchell’s house. She could have cleaned theirs, too. “You’re running yourself ragged. You shouldn’t have been doing everything by yourself.”
The Red Hat Society's Domestic Goddess Page 2