Sweet Carolina Morning

by Susan Schild

  The shop owner gave her a knowing look, sipped her tea, and turned back to the television.

  The last model wore a satin dress with a split tulle skirt over slim Audrey Hepburn cigarette pants. Sitting up straighter, Linny turned to Aria and quietly said, “That’s the one.”

  Aria smiled at Linny and rose. “Let me go take a look at my computer to get you all the particulars. What’s the date of your wedding?”

  “Sometime in the next two to three to four months.” Linny flushed, again, feeling like she’d won the award for crazy bride.

  But Aria just nodded serenely. “We can do that.” She glided out of the room.

  Delighted, Linny gave Kate a gentle nudge to wake her. “I found it,” she said, feeling exultant. “I found the perfect dress.”

  Kate rubbed her eyes and frowned. “And you let me sleep through it?”

  Linny grinned at her and held up the remote. “It’s all right here.”

  Kate oohed and aahed and made Linny replay the section on the retro dresses four times. Finally, she clasped her hands together and turned to Linny, her face pink with pleasure. “I just love it. It’s elegant, original, and slightly peculiar: just like you.”

  At the cash register, Linny handed Aria the credit card for the deposit. The total was a fraction of what she’d spent on her other dresses but still a tidy sum. Jack had told her not to worry about the cost, but the memory of being left penniless by Buck had deeply ingrained in her the importance of frugality. She signed the slip.

  Kate snaked a hand through her arm. “You’re worth it,” she whispered, guessing what Linny was thinking.

  She nodded, reassured. While Aria put in a call to the designer to discuss sizing and accessories, Kate glanced at the messages on her phone and Linny idly stared out the window. She watched the driver of a late-model Jaguar make two unsuccessful attempts to parallel park in a spot in front of Aria’s shop and elbowed Kate, grinning. “That’s just how I parallel park.”

  Kate saw the maneuvers and smiled as the driver finally pulled into the space. But her eyes widened as a man stepped out of the car. “Look,” she whispered.

  Linny frowned. Dr. Willis Faison, minister of Sanctifying Redeemer Baptist Church, locked the door of the gleaming Jaguar, smoothed back his silver hair, and strode off.

  Kate tapped a finger on her mouth, looking thoughtful. “He talks about the church’s tight budget, but he drives a brand new Jag?”

  Linny raised a brow. “The Christian thing to say would be ‘judge not,’ but guess what? I’m judging. I think it’s strange.”

  “I do, too.” Kate bobbed her head in agreement. “Not a nice man.”

  * * *

  A few moments later, they buckled in and as Linny carefully wove the Volvo down the narrow brick streets of the neighborhood for the drive home, her phone rang.

  Kate held up a hand. “No talking and driving. I’ll get it.” Pulling the phone from Linny’s purse, she saw the number and smiled. “It’s Jack.” She took the call, “Linny Taylor’s administrative assistant. May I help you?”

  Whatever Jack said made Kate giggle and Linny smiled, liking the fact that the two were so fond of each other. “Tell him we had good luck today and that I’ll fill him in when we talk later.”

  Kate conveyed her message, listened for a moment, and tilted the phone away from her mouth. “Jack wants you two to meet his mama and daddy for lunch on Saturday at his house. Can you?”

  “Please put it on my schedule, Ms. Admin Assistant,” Linny said, a bit of her exuberance at finding the dress starting to leak away.

  Kate ended the call and looked over at her. “Has he tried to talk with his mama yet about toning down the engagement party?”

  Linny nodded. “He called her right after I got her envelope of ideas, but he didn’t make much headway. Ceecee was still in full-bore, extravaganza mode.”

  “Oh, dear,” Kate tutted. “So this is more a negotiation than a friendly lunch.”

  “Exactly.” Linny drummed her fingers on the steering wheel and glanced over at her sister. “A good relationship with the mother-in-law is a big deal, right?”

  “One of the keys to a happy marriage,” Kate said in a matter-of-fact tone.

  Linny exhaled. “How am I going to befriend a woman who keeps mooning about perfect Vera and seems to want to take over our wedding?”

  “I befriended my mother-in-law,” Kate reminded her.

  Linny winced. Jerry’s mother was a bible-thumper who drove a jacked-up PT Cruiser. “You’re a saint,” she said.

  “She shoots squirrels and fixes them for supper but thought I wasn’t classy enough for Jerry,” Kate patted her arm. “You’ll figure it out.”

  Linny gave her sister a wry smile and pointed the car home.

  * * *

  That night was the second night of her Earth and Sky class, and Linny smiled as she greeted the students filing in. They were much more relaxed this second week, calling out greetings to classmates and joking with one another.

  Jessica stopped to talk with her, bouncing on her toes with enthusiasm. “After last week’s class I asked all my front desk people to greet each client by their name as soon as they stepped in the door. ‘Good morning, Mr. Smith. Good morning, Ms. Jones.’ The clients are so impressed!” She beamed at Linny. “This stuff is exciting.”

  Denny and his band of blue shirts slouched past her, and Linny blew out a sigh of relief that they’d come back for the second class instead of figuring out a way to slip out. Dropouts affected her reputation with the bosses who’d sent students to her class, even if the reasons the students no-showed didn’t have anything to do with her being a good instructor. She called out, “Good evening, gentlemen,” but they all pretended not to have heard her.

  She’d shake it off. With a pleasant smile pasted on her face, Linny walked to the front of the room and waited for the students to quiet down. “This week we’re going to talk more about how to prevent customer service problems from coming up, and figure out how to handle them skillfully if they do. As a bonus, you’re each going to have a chance to get some advice from your classmates about how to fix a customer service problem you’re having at work.”

  Denny snorted and said in a voice just loud enough to be heard, “All my customers are problems. Pains in the butt.”

  Several people laughed nervously and glanced at her for her reaction. She knew better than to ignore the remark. Looking around the room, she said in an even tone, “Denny says his customers are pains in the butt. Any thoughts on that observation?”

  The silence spun out for a moment, but Bolo Bob spoke in a clear, quiet voice. “I know what Denny means, but being out of work for so long taught me that the only reason we get to draw a paycheck is because of the customers. If there’s a problem, we need to fix it and not blame them.” He glanced around the room at the other students, his face the color of a summer tomato though he was calm voiced. “No matter if we’re doing lawns, groceries, bank work or law, service is our real business.” He looked directly at Denny, adding, “No offense, man.”

  Denny nodded grudgingly.

  Linny nodded at the exchange and tried to look impassive while imagining hugging Bob around the neck. His disarming Denny worked so much better than her trying to do it. “Jessica tried something new at work that was smart. Jessica, would you mind sharing that story?”

  Jessica leaped to her feet and with a dazzling smile at her classmates, began, “So you all won’t believe how something so simple is working so well, but . . .” She launched into her call them-by-name story.

  Linny felt her shoulders relax. Tonight was going to be a good night.

  And it was, until the last half hour of the class, when she asked students to fill out a survey on how they thought their customers would rate them on the top ten behaviors linked to good service experiences. After a few moments she called out, “Okay, let’s talk about a few things you think they’d rate you high on and a few things they’d rate
you low.”

  One by one, the students reported out, rolling their eyes and shaking their heads as they admitted the areas they needed to improve. When it was Denny’s turn to talk, he gave her an insincere smile, his eyes like marbles. “I gave myself a perfect ten. Can’t think of a thing customers would rate me low on.”

  His two blue shirts sniggered at the other tables and other students were quiet, watching her. Linny felt the back of her neck tingle, remembering her own experience with Denny at the garage. Mr. Perfect Ten hadn’t looked up from his computer when she walked in, talked on his cell phone about getting drunk at a party the night before, and acted snippy with her when she asked how much longer her car would be. She’d have given him a minus two.

  Pausing for a long moment, she thought hard, aware that the students were shooting questioning looks at one another. Once again, her mentor Amy’s voice came to her in a snort of amusement. “Got to call ’em on the baloney, honey, but help ’em save face.”

  Linny tapped a finger to her mouth. “Denny’s raising a good point. Sometimes you think you’re doing everything right, but the customer has a beef, and most won’t tell you what’s wrong. They’ll just drop you and go to a competitor. Let’s get you to ask them directly how they’d rate your customer service.” Several students looked nervous and whispered to one another. “I’ll ask your bosses to team up with you to hand out these questionnaires, and your job over the next week is to get at least twenty customers to rate you. Let’s tally up your scores and see what they really think about you.” She hid her smile. Let Denny put that in his pipe and smoke it.

  She ended the class, and before she left the store, turned her phone back on and called Jack to let him know she was on her way. It’d be nice to see him after having to deal with snarky men. “Hey, there.”

  “Hey, Lin,” he said in his deep, warm drawl. “How’d it go?”

  “All in all pretty well,” she said. She couldn’t wait to see him to tell him about Mr. Perfect Ten.

  Jack blew out a sigh. “I hate to do this to you, but Neal just told me he has a biology paper due later in the week that he hasn’t even started.”

  “Darn,” she said softly, wilting.

  “I really wanted to see you,” he said.

  “Me too.” Linny said, trying not to feel sorry for herself.

  “But I’ll see you tomorrow at our meeting with Ms. Courtland. I’ll pick you up at four-thirty and we can go out for supper afterward. I remember what you said about wanting more . . . gooey, Lance Romance.. . .” He trailed off, coughed, and was silent for a beat. “I want to . . . work on the romance part, starting tomorrow night.”

  “Okay,” she said. A teacher’s meeting with his ex-wife to talk about Neal’s problems didn’t sound like a good start to a romantic evening, but she’d keep a good attitude. He was listening to her, and he was trying. That meant a lot.

  “Call to let me know you got home safe,” he said.

  Ending the call, Linny’s lips turned up. She picked up her briefcase and rolled her shoulders, trying to loosen them. Though she’d like to have seen him, she was tired. A little R & R at home with Roy and an early bed sounded like heaven, she told herself firmly.

  CHAPTER 11

  Road Test

  On Thursday afternoon Linny studied the three outfits laid out on the bed. Roy watched her every move from his perch on her pink slipper chair, which he wasn’t allowed to sit on. She rubbed the back of her head. Deciding what to wear was more problematic than just the one-day freezing, next-day balmy weather. She had a lot riding on this afternoon’s meeting with Ms. Courtland. What if Neal’s problems were related to her and Jack marrying? What if the problems were serious enough to shake her and Jack’s foundation? She pushed her shoulders back and made herself banish those thoughts. She and Jack were stronger than that.

  Still, this was her debut as stepmother. She’d test-driven the role at home with Jack and Neal, but this was the road test with Vera, Chaz, and Ms. Courtland critically looking on. Plus, how weird was it for Jack to have to be in such close quarters with Linny, his ex-wife, and his ex-best friend, who was now married to his ex-wife? Too California/peace, love, and understanding for her.

  Chewing at her cuticle, she peered at the choices. She wanted to look earnest and capable, but not like she was trying too hard. Outfit number one: the black pencil skirt and white stand collar blouse. She was going for serious-minded, but was the skirt tight enough to evoke a sexy librarian taking off her horn-rim glasses and shaking out her bun? Linny hung it back in the closet. Outfit number two was the houndstooth checked slacks and red cashmere turtleneck: a preppy, anti–trailer trash outfit. Grimacing, she remembered that Vera wore a lot of black, white, and red combinations. She thrust it back into the closet and gazed at the last outfit. Maybe outfit number three—the one she’d found in a thrift shop—was the winner. The eggplant-colored, marled wool sweater was richly hued and soft, and with the slim-fitting brown corduroys, the outfit looked casual and sophisticated. Inspired, she scrabbled around in her narrow closet and pulled out her distressed leather boots that had a slight biker chic vibe about them. Wearing them always made her feel like she could kick someone’s rear end if need be. She smiled. Good boots for this meeting.

  At 3:15, Linny heard a motor and glanced out the window as the shiny muscle car rumbled down the driveway. She broke into a grin. Jack must have gotten a wild hair with today’s balmy weather and pulled his baby out from its parking spot in the barn. She shook her head at her crazy husband-to-be and stepped out on the porch to wave hello.

  The windows were up and the heat blasting, but the top was down on the cherry red Camaro. He pulled up grinning and gave a cool salute of a wave. “Lance Romance here. Thought we’d go in style,” he called.

  She laughed and felt a fluttering excitement as she locked the door to the trailer and jumped in. He looked like trouble—the Johnny Depp/James Dean kind of trouble—and her heart gave a flutter. When he leaned over and kissed her, she inhaled the scent of him: clean man, laundry detergent, and Dial soap. Leaning her head back in the seat, she gazed at him. “What a perfect day. Can you believe my breath was freezing two days ago and now it’s seventy-five?”

  “Spring’s coming,” he said and gave her a meaningful glance. “We need to get the date for the wedding nailed down.”

  “We will. This weekend,” she promised. Patting the seat, she broke into a smile. “I love this car.”

  He nodded, slipped on his sunglasses, and pulled away.

  As she turned her face up to the winter sun and soaked it in, she thought about it. She hadn’t always loved that car. Her rat of a late husband had bought it for his mistress, and Linny’d inherited the payments for it when he died, along with all his other debts. She’d planned on selling it, but steady, practical Jack had flipped for it. He’d been the science club geek in high school, he explained. He’d missed the whole gearhead, cool car experience. Once she’d managed to pull the finances from the fire, she’d kept the car for him. To remove all traces of ex-girlfriend cooties, Jack had had it detailed, and her sister had smudged it with white sage to get rid of any lingering bad karma. But the sparkle in his eyes and the reverent way he touched it when he worked on it made her glad she’d sprung for it.

  She worried more about the meeting and cocked her head at Jack. “What if this car makes us look like the hoodish boys in high school out smoking in the parking lot instead of the responsible parents of a twelve-year-old?”

  “We’ll park around back,” he assured her and grinned as he gunned the engine.

  Linny laughed and pulled her coat closer around her. Closing her eyes, she sat back to enjoy the ride, the crisp air caressing her skin. Riding around in a convertible with a good-looking man made her feel young and pretty.

  * * *

  Jack and Linny held hands as they walked briskly down the hallway to the classroom. She glanced through the glass panel of the door of Room 143 to make sure they were in t
he right place. There were Vera and Chaz, seated in too-small chairs across the desk from the woman who had to be Ms. Courtland, a very young brunette with the ends of her hair flipped up and a heart-shaped face.

  As they walked into the classroom, she shot a glance at her watch. She and Jack were five minutes early. Had Vera and her brooding husband come even earlier to butter up the teacher? Beside the laptop on Ms. Courtland’s desk, Linny spied a plate of cookies. An unsmiling Chaz sat stiffly in his chair, but Vera was leaning forward in her chair, talking to the teacher in a girlfriend-to-girlfriend voice. “. . . so I brought you these gluten-free, homemade chocolate chip cookies because people don’t seem to appreciate how hard our teachers work to shape young minds.”

  Good grief. What an apple polisher. She squeezed Jack’s hand and he gave it a quick squeeze back before he let go.

  In the room they greeted Ms. Courtland and then one another. Chaz rose and stuck out his hand to Jack, but as they shook, both men only made the briefest of eye contact with each other. Vera gushed a hello and swept her eyes up and down Linny’s outfit, as if she knew she’d paid three dollars and fifty cents for the sweater and two for the pants. Why did she always feel plus-size and gauche around Vera? Linny’s eyes widened. Vera was wearing red, white, and black. Thank goodness she hadn’t worn a twin outfit. Linny pushed back her shoulders and worked at looking relaxed as she took a seat. Jack eased his comforting bulk into the chair beside her. Linny crossed her legs, giving a quick glance at her kick-butt boots for courage. She smiled pleasantly at Ms. Courtland. With her narrow shoulders and slight build, the teacher wore a fuzzy pink angora sweater that made her look delicate. Linny looked at her doubtfully. She didn’t look tough enough to break up a brawl if one broke out.

  Ms. Courtland cleared her throat and said in a high, reedy voice, “We’re here today to get all the parents involved in finding out what’s bothering Neal and get him back on track. Neal is a very bright student, and his performance in the past has been excellent. He’s worked hard and taken his studies seriously up until the last few weeks.” Ms. Courtland shook her head, her brows furrowed. “As I told you, he hasn’t been turning in key assignments and doesn’t seem to care that his grades are being affected. It’s not like him.”