“Why not, Evelyn? Unless you’ve just been saying you love me and don’t mean it? Or maybe you mean a different kind of love?”
He drew his brows together, his frown clouding his previously sunny smile. There was a sliver of sneering in his voice. “Maybe your love is the platonic sort—the kind you feel for an old school chum or a faithful spaniel? Because if that’s the deal, Evelyn, tell me now and I’ll quit making a fool of myself. Is that all I am to you? Your faithful spaniel?”
I reached across the table and grabbed Charlie’s hands. “Of course not, Charlie. You know that. When I say I love you, I mean I love you. I do. I love everything about you. Well, everything besides your tendency to be pushy,” I teased, smiling.
Charlie was not going to be jollied out of his mood. He wanted answers.
“Is there someone else, then?”
“Someone else? How can you even ask that? I love you and only you. You know that. But, Charlie, it’s not as easy as you make it sound. Once upon a time, I only loved Rob Dixon. And he only loved me. And then one day, after twenty-four years of marriage, he decided to love someone else. That broke my heart.” I pulled my hands away from his and stared down at the leftover pizza crusts littering my plate.
Charlie crossed his arms over his chest and jutted out his chin. “So because Rob Dixon turned out to be a faithless, heartbreaking adulterer, that means you’re afraid to marry me? After all this time and all we’ve been to each other, are you saying that deep down you think I’m just like Rob?”
Of course I didn’t. Charlie is nothing like Rob. In fact, Charlie is nothing like anyone I’ve ever met.
I do think about marriage sometimes. On those days when I’m tired of eating yet another meal alone, standing over the sink because it seems pointless to set the table for one, I dream of how nice my table would look with two white plates and a little vase of flowers in the middle. I dream of small talk about the news and weather, of private jokes and easy silences. I dream of arguing fearlessly with my beloved because I know that, in the end, we always make up. I dream of a man coming up behind me as I rinse dishes, twining his arms around my waist, of lips brushing the curve of my neck, telling me how delicious everything was, and then smiling that private, knowing smile, reaching for my hand, and leading the way up the stairs. I dream of cool white sheets, and the press of a masculine hand on the swell of my hip, of an outline of suntanned fingers spread fanlike against white skin. I dream of lips and fingers and secret sighs, of two heavy breaths sharing one rhythm, of bodies arcing toward one another, urgent and impatient. I dream of longings fulfilled, of release, of the comfortable weight of a torso resting on mine, covering me like a blanket, of falling asleep and waking to find that it wasn’t a dream at all, that he is with me still, husky-voiced after endearments murmured in a room lit by moonlight.
And when I dream this, when I dream of caresses and kisses and quiet talk, of being there for someone I love and him being there for me, and our being together lasting until we draw our last breath, the only hands or lips or voice I imagine is Charlie’s.
There is no one besides him.
When I do imagine marrying again, I can’t imagine being married to anyone but Charlie. But my imaginings are just that: flights of imagination, dreams that feel far removed in some distant someday, a thing too lovely, too perfect to ever really happen.
I have been alive a long time now, five decades and more, long enough to know that when dreams come true, they never come true in quite the same way you dreamed them. I also know that dreams don’t last forever, not always. And I guess that’s what I want. I guess that’s what is holding me back. I want forever. I want always. I want a guarantee. And I’ve lived long enough to know there aren’t any.
Why is Charlie pushing? Why risk spoiling a perfectly perfect dream by dragging it away from the soft-focus, pastel world of the imagined into the cold light of reality? I do want to marry Charlie. Someday. But now isn’t a good time and I tell him so.
“Why not?” he growls. “Now seems as good a time as any to me. In fact, now seems like the perfect time.”
I shook my head. “There’s too much going on, too many things up in the air, especially this wedding. I can only deal with one at a time, and right now the wedding I’m dealing with is Garrett’s to Liza. That’s drama enough for the moment.”
“Who says there has to be any drama? We could keep it simple. You. Me. A minister. Done. If we need witnesses, we can ask Garrett and Virginia. Keep the folderol and frippery to a bare minimum.”
“Gee,” I said. “You make it sound so romantic. Speaking of Virginia, there’s another problem. What am I going to do about Mom? She’s still upset with me. I’ve tried and tried to patch things up with her, but she’s so stubborn.
“She loves New Bern, I know she does. Everyone at the shop is crazy about her, staff and customers alike. Did I tell you? One of the women from her Mothers-to-Be quilting class had a little girl and named her after Mom. All her students just love her, and not just the ones in the shop,” I said, thinking of Mom’s Stanton Center students. Ivy had finally talked Mom into teaching a Mommy and Me beginner’s quilting class at the shelter. All those new quilters, from ages seven to thirty-seven, had already fallen in love with Mom and had dubbed her Grammie Ginny. To them she was more than just a patient teacher; she was a wise friend and, for some, a substitute grandmother.
“Between the wedding and the situation with Mom, I just don’t think it’s a good time to take such a big step.”
Charlie gave his chin a jerk. He thought I was inventing excuses to put him off, but I did have some legitimate concerns about the possibilities of a successful union between Charlie and me, now or ever.
“And it’s not just Garrett and Mom I’m worried about,” I said. “Charlie, when is the last time we were able to get away like this? Just take the afternoon or evening off for a real date?”
His gaze shifted from mine. He knew what I was getting at. “A week ago.”
I shook my head. “Nope. Nine days. Not counting quickie coffee dates before we dash off to work, you and I haven’t been able to find a spare moment to spend with each other in the last nine days. Nine. And this is the slow season! Come summer, we’ll be lucky to see each other every nine days, and you know it. I love you, Charlie, and I know you love me. But we both know that making a marriage work takes more than love. It takes time. And that is something you and I have very little of.”
“Well…” He scowled, thinking. “We could try harder to carve out time for each other. Maybe we could bring in some more help—hire managers or assistants or something.”
“Charlie,” I said softly. “You’ve tried that before. It never works. Every manager you’ve hired you’ve ended up firing within three weeks, sometimes within three days. The Grill is the love of your life, your baby. You’re no more able to hand over the running of the restaurant to a stranger than you’d be able to hand over your child to someone else to raise.” He opened his mouth to argue with me, but I raised my hand. “You know I’m right. And as far as me hiring a manager, I can’t afford to hire any more help. Not right now. The shop is doing much better financially, but I’ve got a lot of debt to pay off. I’ve only just been able to give Margot a long-overdue raise.”
“Well, what about Margot?” he asked. “Why couldn’t you promote her to manager? She’s a smart businesswoman.”
“She is,” I agreed. “I’d be lost without her. When it comes to marketing, accounting, and general organization, I couldn’t ask for a better partner. But she just isn’t the quilter that I am. Maybe she will be someday, but not now. She wouldn’t know what fabrics to order or how much, which patterns will be in demand next season, and, most importantly, she doesn’t teach. Half my job is teaching classes. The rest is divided up between ordering and keeping an eye on the inventory, helping customers choose fabrics or answering their questions about techniques, and sewing up class samples. Actually, sewing samples is about half a job
all by itself. When you add it all up, I’m doing the work of at least a body and a half. Who could I find who’s crazy enough to take a job like that at a salary I could afford to pay?”
Charlie balled up his fist and tapped it on the point of his chin, as if trying to jar loose some brilliant solution to our problem, but it didn’t seem to help. He offered no answer to my question.
“Face it, Charlie. You’re too much of a control freak to leave the care and feeding of your customers to a hired gun. And at the risk of sounding egotistical, I’m the only one around here who is quilter enough to actually run a quilt shop.”
I stopped, waiting for him to concede the rightness of my observations, but he just kept tapping his fist against his chin in a rhythm as slow and steady as the beat of a resting heart.
I was getting frustrated with his silence. Finally, I laid my whole hand out on the table, speaking the truth as it was.
“And there’s something else, Charlie, something more than just the difficulty of trying to find someone to do what I do. I love my work, Charlie. I really do. And I’m good at it! Do you know how long I’ve had to wait to be able to say that? Oh, I was a good wife and a good mother, but this is different. Maybe it sounds self-centered, and maybe it is, but after a lifetime of measuring my worth in terms of other people’s achievements, of how many promotions my husband got or how high my child’s grade point was, it feels good to be accomplishing something that is just about me.” I leaned in, urgent to make myself understood.
“I know I don’t do this alone. Margot, Garrett, and Ivy make my life a lot easier. But at the end of the day, this whole thing hinges on me—my ideas, my decisions, my hard work and, ultimately, my success. And I’m really proud of that success, Charlie. For the first time in my life, I’m proud of me! And I don’t want to give that up. Not right now.”
The unspoken end of that sentence, not even for you, hung in the air. I was quiet, waiting for him to say something.
“Charlie?”
Finally, he lowered his fist and rested it, still clenched, on the table. “All right, then.”
“All right what?”
“All right, then.” He took in a breath and let it out. “I’ll sell the Grill.”
“What!” I gasped. For a moment, I thought I’d heard him wrong. “Charlie, you can’t do that. You’d be miserable without the restaurant to run. You love the Grill!”
Charlie moved his head slowly from side to side. “You’re wrong. I do love the Grill, but it isn’t the love of my life, Evelyn. You are. And even if you are right and it turns out I’m miserable without a restaurant to run, I know I’ll be twice as miserable if, after waiting more than half my lifetime to find the love of my life, I let love slip away.
“I love you, Evelyn. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, and if selling the restaurant is what it takes to make that happen, then so be it. I’ll sell the restaurant.”
He was serious. Clear-eyed and calm and waiting to see what I would say next.
But I didn’t know what to say. It was a gesture of astounding proportions, but it was more than a gesture. I could tell by looking in his eyes. He meant it.
I wasn’t prepared for this, not now. And honestly, was it a good idea?
If we were to marry and have a hope of making our marriage work, we would have to find a way to spend more time together, but was Charlie giving up the restaurant the only option? Wouldn’t he come to regret it later? Resent it? Resent me?
“Charlie, this is a lot to think about. And with everything that’s going on right now…I just need some time to process this.”
“How much time?” His voice was flat, almost without emotion, as if he were negotiating a business deal.
“Well…I don’t know.”
“What about after the wedding?”
“The wedding? But, Charlie, that’s only a few weeks away. I need time to think. So do you. You may wake up tomorrow morning and decide you spoke too soon. You’ve poured your whole life into the Grill and now, just like that, you want to—”
“Six months,” he said in the even, definitive tone that game-show contestants use for declaring their final answers. “In six months’ time I want your answer. Will you marry me or won’t you? If you don’t know by then, you never will. That’s the deal. I won’t mention it again. Won’t bother you or pressure you or propose for the next six months. But then, one way or another, I want an answer. Okay?”
He extended his hand, his expression serious and solemn, as if we were about to seal some very important bargain. Which I guess we were. I took a deep breath and stretched my hand toward his.
“Okay.” I grasped his hand in mine just as my cell phone ringer went off. Margot was calling.
30
Evelyn Dixon
When I got back to the shop, Margot was standing by the door, waiting for me.
“I’m sorry to bother you, but when Franklin called looking for you, he sounded so upset. I thought you’d want to know.”
“What did he want? You said Abigail came home early. Is everything all right?”
I was worried about Franklin. After his heart attack, his doctor had told him to lose weight, get regular exercise, and avoid stress. The first two goals had been relatively easy to achieve, but the third was much tougher. Franklin was a successful and very dedicated attorney. It hadn’t been easy for him to reduce his hours and hand off some of his more demanding clients, Abigail excepted, to Arnie Kinsella. But at Abigail’s urging, Franklin had done so, and his cardiologist was pleased with the results. Within a few months, Franklin’s blood pressure had been reduced to near-normal levels.
However, that was before. There was no prescription the doctor could give him to help temper Franklin’s primary source of stress at the moment: Abigail.
On the other hand, I thought, maybe there is. A few tranquilizers might do Abigail a world of good. Or, if she won’t take them, maybe the rest of us should.
“He wants us to come over,” Margot reported.
“Now? But we’re already set for tomorrow.”
“I know, but apparently Abigail and Liza had some sort of argument or…” Margot shrugged. “Well, I don’t know what happened, but whatever it was, it has Abigail pretty upset. As soon as she got home she went up to her bedroom and locked the door. She won’t come out and she won’t let Franklin in.”
Margot clucked her tongue sympathetically. “Poor Franklin. He didn’t know what to do, so he called us.”
I blew out a long, weary breath. This day already had more than its share of drama; I wasn’t relishing the thought of getting involved in more. But I knew Franklin. He was capable and clearheaded, exactly the sort of fellow you’d want on your side in any dispute or emergency, which was why he was such a terrific attorney. If Franklin Spaulding was calling for help, then something was really wrong.
“If she won’t open the door for Franklin, I can’t imagine she will for us. But”—I sighed—“I guess we have to try.”
I ran upstairs to the workroom where Ivy, Mom, and Dana, our first New Beginnings intern, were cutting bolts of turquoise, green, and purple fabrics into fat quarters to be packaged up and sent to our mail-order customers. Ivy and Mom were slicing through their fabrics with quick and practiced ease. Dana was more cautious, carefully positioning her ruler on the fabric before slowly cutting across the width of the cloth, pressing on her rotary cutter a little harder than she needed to.
Ivy looked up and smiled as I came in. “Hi, Evelyn. I’m just showing Dana how to use a rotary cutter. She’s doing really well too,” Ivy said encouragingly.
Dana smiled at the praise, just barely. Still, that was progress. Donna Walsh had told me a little bit of Dana’s history of abuse, and it was particularly gruesome. When I first met Dana, she wouldn’t even look at me. She was so timid. After all she’d been through, I wasn’t surprised, but I had wondered if we’d really be able to help her.
“You might not,” Donna had admitted. “D
ana’s emotional scars are very deep. Let’s give her a couple of weeks and see what happens. If anyone can help bring her out of her shell, it’s Ivy.”
Obviously, Donna was right. Dana had a long way to go, but that shadow of a smile was a good sign. With time and Ivy’s patient encouragement, Dana just might make it.
“That’s great! Thanks, Dana. We’re sure glad to have your help. We’ve had a run on those block-of-the-month kits.” I looked at Dana and smiled and she did the same—just for a moment, but she did it, a real smile. Yes, indeed. Progress.
I turned to Ivy. “Hey, I hate to break up your little party, but Margot and I have to go over to Franklin and Abigail’s. Could you come downstairs and watch the shop? Maybe you could start teaching Dana how to help customers and run the register.”
Dana’s shy little smile fled. She looked absolutely terrified.
Ivy gave me a concerned glance and I realized that I’d made a mistake. The prospect of meeting customers, talking to strangers, was frightening to Dana. She wasn’t ready for that, not yet.
What was I going to do? Franklin needed Margot and me over at his place and Dana needed Ivy up here. But somebody had to wait on customers.
Mom came to the rescue. “There’s so much yet to do here,” she said casually. “We’ve got twenty kits to cut and package before closing. Why doesn’t Ivy go downstairs and work on the shop floor while Dana and I stay here and finish up?”
Ivy smiled. “Good idea. Sound all right to you, Dana?”
Dana nodded. She looked relieved. “Sure. Yeah. Virginia and I can do it.”
Sure. Yeah. Virginia and I can do it. Eight words. That was six more than I’d ever heard Dana utter at one time. Maybe she would be all right.
After giving a few instructions to the others, Ivy followed me back downstairs. As we walked away, I could hear my mother’s voice.
“Very nice, Dana. You’re getting so much faster. Now, see if you can’t ease up just a little on the pressure as you’re cutting. It’ll be a lot easier on your arm if you do. That’s it. Wonderful! Dana, you’re a natural!”
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