“You have no idea what this means to me,” he said, his entire face lit up with his smile.
Grace felt like a deer caught in the headlights in that split second before it got run over by a truck. She couldn’t tear her gaze away, nor could she find her voice to speak.
Fortunately, Phil tilted his head down as he checked his watch, breaking the direct eye contact. “I guess I’d better go. We’ve both got to get up for work tomorrow. Thanks again, Grace, and I’m sorry to have bothered you. Give me a call if you need anything or if there’s anything I can ever do for you. I don’t know how to thank you for this.”
She couldn’t speak past the tightness in her throat, so she simply nodded and showed him to the door.
The second she locked the door behind him, she pressed her forehead to the cool wood. Phil’s muffled footsteps faded into silence as he walked down the hall toward the elevator.
Guilt washed through her as, long after he was gone, she continued to listen to the silence in the hall.
She had no business paying such attention to Phil, regardless of his plight or how fascinating she found his interplay of expression. She wasn’t supposed to be interested in anything about Phillip McLean. She was only supposed to be helping Phil fix the damaged angel. Besides, she wasn’t doing this for Phil. She was doing this for Neil.
Neil. Whom she’d been dating steadily for the past year. Neil, whom she had recently begun to think was getting ready to ask her if, one day, she might be interested in getting married. Instead of thinking about Phil, she was supposed to be thinking about Neil.
Now, if she could only get the memory of Phil’s eyes out of her head.
two
Phillip snipped off the price tag and held the stuffed bear in the air. “Do you think she’ll like it?”
“Probably,” Neil muttered as he flipped through the listing page, then aimed the remote at the television. “I think all women like that kind of stuff.”
Phillip sat the little purple bear down on the coffee table. “I don’t care about ‘all’ women. I just want to know if Grace will like it. What are you doing turning on the television? She told us to be there at seven. It’s time to go.”
“But the game starts at seven.”
Phillip sighed and flopped himself down on the couch. “Come on, Neil. She’s doing me a big favor, and you, too. You’re the one who splashed coffee all over Granny’s angel. I don’t want to be rude. She said seven.”
“But it’s my favorite team. Go without me. I spent the whole evening with Grace yesterday. She knew that I planned to watch the game tonight.”
Phillip swiped his fingers through his hair as he stared at his friend in complete and utter disbelief. The last time he’d had a serious girlfriend, they spent every moment together until the relationship cooled and she dumped him. Since Neil had been going out with Grace for about a year, the excitement of a new relationship was apparently over. Still, Phillip figured that if he had a steady girlfriend, he would much rather spend the time with her than watching a hockey game, regardless of who was playing, at least until the play-offs.
“Come on, Neil. Let’s go.”
“I said go without me. Grace won’t mind. She’s probably just going to tell you all about how she fixed your angel. You don’t need me for that.”
Phillip opened his mouth, about to tell Neil that if that were the case, then he could watch the game just as well from Grace’s couch as from their own, but he stopped short. Since Neil and Grace had started going together, Phillip hadn’t been able to understand their relationship. Therefore, he wasn’t likely to figure it out today.
“Fine,” he snapped, not at all trying to keep the edge of sarcasm out of his voice. “Is there a message or anything you want me to pass on?”
“Naw. See you later.” Without waiting for a response, Neil turned up the volume on the television.
Phillip ground his teeth, feeling thoroughly dismissed. He left without another word.
On the drive to Grace’s apartment, his thoughts quickly changed from Neil and Grace’s relationship to Granny’s angel. By the time he buzzed Grace’s apartment and traveled up the elevator, he could hardly wait to see the angel restored to its former state so Granny would never know the disaster that had befallen it.
The same as his previous visit, Grace stood in the hallway outside her apartment door, waiting for him as he walked out of the elevator.
Her brows knotted as she watched the elevator door close behind him. “Where’s Neil?”
“Uh, he was. . .busy,” Phillip muttered, not at all appreciating the position Neil had placed him in. He forced himself to smile. “How’s the angel?” He held out the little stuffed bear he’d bought for her. “Here.”
Very slowly, she accepted his gift. “Thank you. What is this for?”
“It’s just a little something to thank you for helping me with the angel and especially for putting up with me when I barged in on you like that. Neil said you’d like it.”
The second his words left his mouth, Phillip mentally kicked himself. He’d only meant to put in a good word for Neil. Instead, all he accomplished was to, again, draw Grace’s attention to Neil’s absence.
Her cheeks turned a cute shade of pink. “That was very nice of you, but your thanks might be a little premature. Come in and I’ll show you.”
Phillip’s heart sank. He followed her into the kitchen, where the angel lay on the table, even more limp and shriveled than the way he left it. The only difference was, today, it was dry.
Grace slid the angel toward him, but he didn’t dare touch it.
“I washed your angel again to get all the old starch out, but restarching it is going to be more work than I originally antici-pated, so I stopped. Let me show you why. See the lining?” Leaving the angel on the table, Grace turned up the edge of the gown to show him where the lining joined the crocheted outer shell.
“The crochet cotton is going to require a very heavy-duty dose of starch to make it stiff enough to stand unassisted. At the same time, the lining has to be pliant enough to mold to the shape of the tree branch underneath. That means I have to take the satin lining off and starch just the crochet cotton, then sew it back on when the angel is dry. The same with the hair and the halo.”
Phillip stared at the angel. While he didn’t know Grace tremendously well, he knew both from various social activities at the church and from things Neil said that Grace was quite proficient at handicrafts. He hadn’t taken much notice of Grace before Neil started dating her, but since then, whenever her name came up, because of her association with Neil, he paid attention. On occasion, even his granny had mentioned Grace’s proficiency and talents with the items she donated to the fund-raisers and craft bazaars, which was high praise, indeed.
If Grace anticipated difficulty in restoring the angel, then he didn’t know whom else to turn to.
Phillip gulped. Hesitantly, he turned toward Grace. “Does this mean you can’t do it?”
Grace shook her head. “No, no. I think I can do it, just it’s not going to be easy. The hard part is going to be getting the angel to dry in the right shape. When I starch doilies, I use cardboard with a dish towel over top, then stretch the doily out with pins and wait for it to dry. I can’t do that with the angel because it’s so oddly shaped. The body is cone shaped, the head is round like a ball, the wings are flat, and the arms are tubes bent at a forty-five-degree angle. I haven’t yet been able to figure out how to contour all the different pieces at the same time until it’s dry, but obviously it can be done. That’s why I called you over, to see if we could put our heads to-gether and come up with some ideas.”
Phillip blinked and stared blankly at the bedraggled angel. Because he was familiar with the angel, he knew what it was supposed to look like, which was nothing like its present condition. Looking at it like this was almost painful. “Can’t we do it one section at a time?”
“No. Remember what happened when you wet one section
to wash it? The dampness seeped into the whole thing, and it went limp one section at a time. The angel is large. I know you don’t think it can be considered heavy, but it is when it’s wet, especially when you realize that it’s just made of thick, cotton thread. It’s got to support its own weight, which is a tall order for something so elaborate. Spray starch would never hold it. It needs to be starched the old-fashioned way, which means soaking it thoroughly. That means we have to figure out how to dry it into shape.”
Cautiously, he lifted one delicate white arm, then a limp wing, analyzing the various components and the construction of the angel as a whole. Pangs of guilt began to gnaw at Phillip as he began to realize the magnitude of what he had asked Grace to do. At the same time, tiny fingers of anger began to poke at him. The person absent and doing nothing was the person who was at fault.
He shook the thought from his mind and forced his concentration on the angel’s former appearance. Fair or not, he needed Grace to help him restore the angel, aside from the amount of effort required. He would deal with Neil later. Regardless of his growing anger, it wasn’t right to seek retribution. That was God’s job, although in this case, unnecessary, because, after all, it was just an accident. Phillip only wanted to have the angel back to the way it was supposed to be.
“I guess that means building a framework or something.”
“Probably. Do you know how your granny did it?”
“I don’t have a clue. I don’t want to ask her either, because if I do, she’s going to know something is wrong. My first thought is to put together some kind of support structure from underneath.”
Grace nodded and pressed her lips together so one corner of her mouth pointed downward. All thoughts of planning a structure deserted Phillip as he watched the interplay of thought on Grace’s face as she concentrated on the possibilities.
“Yes,” she mumbled, nodding as she spoke. “That would be first. We need something cone shaped.”
Phillip shook his head to get his thoughts where they should have been in the first place, which was not being amused by the cute way Grace scrunched her eyebrows. “We also need a cross section to brace and support the wings, yet keep them flat. I don’t know what we can do about the head and arms. . . .”
Together they discussed various ways to fashion a frame and decided, for lack of a practical solution, that a trip to the hardware store might spark some workable ideas.
Being Thursday evening, the store was open until nine, giving them opportunity to go while their ideas were fresh.
Oddly, once inside the store, Phillip discovered Grace was relatively comfortable around the tools and hardware. Even though she didn’t know the names of most of the common tools, she knew what they were for, which he found strangely refreshing. To his surprise, she knew the most about hot-melt glue guns. Phillip discovered she even owned one when she picked up a box of glue sticks to replenish her stock.
Slowly, they made their way through the tools, through the hardware and plumbing sections, and into the aisle for drapery hardware and fixtures. Eventually they found themselves in the end-of-the-season clearance section for yard and gardening supplies, still empty-handed.
Absently, Phillip ran his fingers over the cut edge of a marked-down spool of previously opened wire mesh that was sitting at the edge of the table. “I don’t know what we’re going to do. I can’t think of anything,” he mumbled, thinking out loud more than expecting to make conversation. Slowly, he ran his fingers over the cut edge of the reel, absently bending the wire as he spoke. “I have a bad feeling I’m going to have to ask Granny after all.”
“Chicken wire!”
Grace’s sudden exclamation caused him to jump, nearly knocking the spool off the table.
He turned to Grace, who grabbed the spool before it rolled away.
“This is great!” she exclaimed as she ran her fingers over the wire mesh, which was about a foot wide. “We could use this chicken wire to shape everything!” With her raised voice, a few people turned to stare. Grace’s cheeks turned a cute shade of pink, and she lowered her voice. “We can bend it into a cone, make tubes for the arms, and make a flat piece to stretch out and keep the wings straight. We can do everything except make it round enough to shape the head.”
“Chicken wire?” Phillip muttered, trying to imagine how to bend chicken wire with any amount of precision. The angel was only ten inches tall, and the arms were no bigger than his index fingers. The only way he could figure out how to obtain the correct shape and size would be a slow and painful process involving needle-nosed pliers, bending the mesh one frame at a time.
Grace’s face lit up, and she raised one finger in the air. “Oh! A balloon! Remember back in kindergarten, making papier-mЙchО animals? We can do the same thing, only on a smaller scale. We can use a balloon inside the head.”
Once again, the same people turned to stare. This time, Grace ignored them.
All Phillip could do was stare at the spool. Personally, he couldn’t see that her idea would work. However, he’d asked for Grace’s help and therefore had to accept what she suggested. He reminded himself that her reputation for making crafts preceded her—even Granny was impressed with Grace’s handicrafts. To boost his confidence that they really could fix the angel, Phillip envisioned the angel, restored and perfect, sitting atop his parents’ tree on Christmas morning.
Phillip looked upward to the signs suspended from the ceiling summarizing the contents of that aisle. “Do you think they sell balloons here?”
“I have no idea. Let’s find out.”
Without waiting for him, suddenly Grace walked away. Quickly, Phillip grabbed the spool and hurried after her.
When he caught up to her, he turned down the first aisle, expecting Grace to join him so they could begin their search. After a few steps, when he realized Grace had gone straight and wasn’t with him, he spun on his toes and quickened his pace to catch up to her on the center walkway.
“Where are you going?”
She pointed to the center of the store without replying and kept walking, straight to the customer-service counter.
“Pardon me,” she said to the young clerk behind the counter. “Do you sell balloons here? Not regular party balloons, but the smaller ones. The kind used for water fights.”
The girl’s eyebrows rose as she glanced briefly at Phillip, cleared her throat, then turned her attention back to Grace. Phillip grinned weakly, then backed up a step.
“I’m sorry,” the girl said cheerfully. “We don’t carry water-fight balloons here. We don’t carry any kind of balloons.”
The second Grace mumbled a quick thank-you, Phillip turned and headed for the checkouts. Once they were waiting in line, he leaned toward her, keeping his voice low. “What are you doing, asking for water balloons? Did you see the look she gave me? She must have thought we were crazy, thinking of water fights when it’s freezing outside.”
They shuffled forward in the line. “I wasn’t about to explain to her why we needed a small balloon. I know the discount megastore would have balloons, although I don’t know if they’d have the ones we need, especially this time of year. At this point, I’m ready to buy any kind of balloon. They should still be open. Want to go there on the way home?”
Phillip checked his watch. “I guess. The sooner we can get the angel fixed and back to normal, the better.”
He paid for the wire in silence, then listened to Grace talk about other projects she’d made for church bazaars over the years during the drive.
Unlike the hardware store, the megastore was crowded. However, this time women made up the majority of the clientele.
“I’ve never been here before. This place is huge,” Phillip mumbled as he glanced around the warehouse-size store. “I think I need some groceries. Since we’re here, do you mind if I pick up a few things?”
Grace checked her watch. “I don’t mind, but let’s get the balloons first so we don’t forget or run out of time.”
&
nbsp; Usually Phillip shopped for groceries at the neighborhood store, buying things when he needed them. He didn’t remember the prices of much that he bought, but it seemed, just as he’d heard, the superstore prices were lower. The only dis-advantage was having to buy everything in large quantities. However, since he knew he was saving money in the long run, every time he saw something he knew he would use, he added it to the growing pile in his buggy.
Every time he added an item, Grace quirked one eyebrow, but she said nothing until he added a flat of large economy-size chocolate muffins.
“I can’t believe you. Do you really think you and Neil are going to eat all those before they get stale?”
“The lady said they kept well in the freezer.”
Grace rolled her eyes but made no further comment as they continued walking.
The moment they arrived at the checkout, Phillip began to unload everything onto the conveyor belt, while Grace stood in front of him, watching everything go by. When he had the last item up on the belt, he reached into his back pocket for his wallet, and joined her.
She never stopped watching his groceries, as the clerk dragged each item over the scanner, then placed the scanned items into the second buggy. “I can’t believe everything you bought. In addition to all the cans and boxes, you have a whole case of frozen juice, a package of three roasts that you’re going to have to repackage before you freeze them, and this big bag of buns will have to go in the freezer, as well as that five-gallon tub of ice cream. I’m going to assume you don’t have a chest freezer, only the one in the top part of the fridge. Just how much do you think you’re going to stuff in there?”
“Uh. . . Maybe Neil and I are going to have to eat a lot of chocolate muffins in the next few days. Would you like to have a couple?”
“I think you’re missing my point. I came for balloons, and I’m leaving with balloons, milk, and bread.” She swept one hand in the air to encompass all his purchases. “Just how much cash do you carry around for impulse purchases?”
Truly Yours Contemporary Collection December 2014 Page 18