Pleating for Mercy (25 page)

Will leaned against the banister, his attention firmly on me. He had to have seen Ruthann below—she was impossible to miss—but he didn’t seem fazed by her ethereal beauty.

I tucked a wayward strand of hair behind my ear. A wish that contact lenses didn’t feel like boulders in my eyes came and went. There was no point in worrying over things you can’t change. Glasses, contacts, or twentytwenty vision, I was no Ruthann.

“Why’d you ask about Nate?” Will said.

“Just curious,” I answered him, and left it at that.

A few minutes later, I made my escape from the event, rounding up Madelyn and hightailing it back home to the familiarity of my butter yellow appliances, hand-stitched quilts, Meemaw’s settee, and my sewing machines. This was my cocoon. The scent of lavender enveloped me as soon as I walked in the door. This was home.

Calling in the cavalry was nothing short of essential if I was going to finish the bridal dresses. I’d called Miriam to make sure that she was really going to be in the wedding, confirmed her appointment, then stayed up past two in the morning sketching designs for her dress. With no time to shop, I’d dragged bins of Meemaw’s fabric down from the attic, riffled through them, and resketched so the design and the fabric would work together. To keep myself going, whenever I grew tired I flipped to the last page of my sketchbook and worked on a list of suspects and scenarios for Nell’s murder. Josie, Nate, Karen, and Ted each had possible motives for wanting Nell out of their lives.

I’d slept on it, but in the morning I was no closer to any answers. I had to figure out a way to find out who Nell had been seeing and who had put the bun in her oven. Otherwise I was going to be too distracted to complete these dresses for the wedding.

With the wedding just days away, Nell’s funeral at two o’clock, and Miriam already fifteen minutes late, I was running on pure adrenaline. There were a million and one tasks that needed to be done on the garments, but thankfully, the troops had been deployed.

Mama hunched over Meemaw’s old Singer, finishing the French seams on the skirt of Josie’s gown. Gracie bounded into the shop. “We’re here!”

I’d been expecting her, but not her father. Will came in after her, a soft black tool bag in one hand, a little white paper bag and a disposable coffee cup in the other.

“Morning,” he said.

Mama whipped her head around the second she heard a man’s voice. “Will Flores,” she cooed. “It’s been a coon’s age.”

A coon’s age? Had Mama gone hillbilly?

Will set his tool bag down next to the shelves, smiling. “Yes, ma’am, it sure has.”

“I guess introductions aren’t necessary,” I said.

“Will and I go way back. Now when was that problem you had with, what was her name, Maggie Sue?” Mama looked to the ceiling like she was trying to remember.

“Mama!”

She looked at me like I was off my rocker. “What?”

Will chuckled, a smooth, silky sound. “Maggie Sue is my neighbor’s goat. She got through the fence onto my property and was harassing my horses.”

He had horses. So he wasn’t all hat and no cattle.

“That rascally doe wouldn’t budge,” Mama said. “Was that a year ago already?”

He nodded. “I tried everything, but she just laid down and stayed put. I’d heard stories about your grandmother. Cesar Millan is to dogs what Coleta Cassidy is to goats.”

Mama flapped her hand at him. “Stop,” she said, as if the praise was hers and not her mother’s.

“I didn’t believe it, but it’s true,” he said, admiration in his voice.

“Never doubt a Cassidy,” I said. “Have you seen Nana with her herd? They follow her everywhere.”

“Does she bewitch them?” Gracie asked.

Mama looked aghast. “Good heavens, no! She just happens to have a connection with them.”

“That’s an understatement,” Will said. “She came right over, sat down next to Maggie Sue and had a conversation about God knows what, and would you believe that goat just popped right up and toddled back through the fence to her own yard.”

“Goats are funny animals,” Mama remarked. “My mama says most of us just don’t appreciate them, but they’ve got so much personality and spunk, if they could speak English, we’d all be rolling with laughter. She says they respond to her because she listens to them, that’s all.”

Gracie’s brow pulled into a V. I could tell she didn’t understand how you listened to a goat. Honestly, I didn’t either.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, patting her on the shoulder. “It’s like the creaky pipes. You’ll get used to it.”

Will leaned against the doorjamb, watching as I set his daughter up with a needle and thread in front of a dress form. His scrutiny unnerved me and brought up the same anxiety I used to feel before a test. If I handled Gracie the wrong way, I’d fail and he would abruptly yank her from my presence. My hands shook. The story of her mother leaving her had gotten to me. Loretta Mae might get what she wanted, but that didn’t mean Will couldn’t change his mind and call off the sewing lessons. Gracie had started to work her way into my heart and I didn’t want to let go.

After a mini lesson on invisible stitching, she set to work hemming the skirt of Karen’s flirty little dress and I turned to her father. “I’m going to Nell Gellen’s funeral. If you want to come back for Gracie in a few hours—”

He shook his head. “I have some time. Thought I’d tackle a few more things on your repair list.”

Now was not the best time, but I couldn’t turn him away. The number one reason was Gracie, but the repair list was getting longer and longer. I’d added “fix loose floorboard in bedroom” and “leaky faucet in upstairs bathroom” to it, and I knew there would be more. A turn-of-the-century house was kind of like the Golden Gate Bridge. By the time the bridge was painted, it was time to go back to the beginning and start over. There’d always be something to fix in Meemaw’s house.

“Those bricks have been bugging me,” he said, angling his head at the short stack holding up the corner of the shelves in the workroom. “I’m going to fix that leg.”

Great. Not only was he going to stick around the house, he was going to be right here where we were working.

It had taken me a while to identify another layer of emotions I’d been experiencing around him. Pinging nerves. Flirtatious urges. Anger mixed with excitement. All that good conflict.

Attraction, pure and simple. All things I hadn’t felt since I was eighteen. It was like a light switch that had been turned off and no matter who I dated, it couldn’t be switched back on. But Will had flipped it on without even trying and now I didn’t know how to handle the flurry of emotions inside me.

And I certainly didn’t have time to think about it.

So I did nothing but nod and help him take the jars off the shelves. “Why does one woman need so many buttons?” he asked after we’d carried the last of the thirty or so jars to the coffee table.

We walked back to the workroom. “This isn’t even all of them. Meemaw has old tins full of buttons up in the attic. When I was little, she’d pull out a tin and dump it out so I could sort them by color or size. They’d keep me busy for hours and hours. Every now and then, I’d find a treasure and hold it up for her to see. She’d instantly remember where that particular button had come from and tell me the story.”

“She has the buttons of one of your great-great-great-granddaddy’s shirts somewhere,” Mama called from her sewing table. “Those are worth some money, let me tell you.”

Will looked skeptical. “Buttons can be worth money?”

“No—” I started to say.

“Yes!” The steady sound of the Singer stopped as Mama turned her head. “Because they belonged to Butch Cassidy.”

“Mama, that’s crazy. They’re just buttons.”

“Who’s Butch Cassidy?” Gracie asked from her stool.

Mama gasped. “You don’t know who Butch Cassidy is? Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?”

“N-no.”

“They lived a long time ago, Mama—”

“They were famous bank robbers,” she said.

“Infamous,” I corrected. Their lives were glamorized by Paul Newman and Robert Redford, but they’d been thieves and the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang had killed plenty of people in their day.

Mama rolled her eyes. “Butch Cassidy is legendary, and he’s my great-great-granddaddy, which makes him Harlow’s great-great-great-granddaddy.”

“Wow,” Gracie said, looking mightily impressed.

“It’s our family’s claim to fame,” I said, leaving out the part about Butch’s wish at the ancient Argentinean fountain and the charms bestowed on his descendants. Will and Gracie didn’t seem to know about the Cassidy magic, though I wasn’t sure how that was possible. It seemed to be the talk of the town.

“Now, if only we could find where Meemaw hid the treasure Butch sent Cressida,” Mama muttered so only I could hear.

I shushed her with a finger to my lips and turned to help Will with the shelf. I held one end of the broken piece of furniture, helping lower it to its side.

It suddenly dawned on me that having Miriam and Will in the same room might not be a good thing, but there was nothing to be done about it now. I sat at my machine, working on the pleating on Josie’s bodice. Sewing the bodice to the skirt would feel like a victory, one I hoped to reach by tonight.

Just as we all settled into a groove, the kitchen door banged against the wall as someone flung it open. “Just me and the chickens!”

Nana, come to join the fun.

Gracie looked up from her hemming, leaning to the right to see beyond the French doors. “The chickens?”

I laughed. “We only have to worry if she says, ‘It’s me and the goats’!”

Nana had ditched her boots at the kitchen door and padded into the workroom in her blindingly white socks. Her ability to keep them looking brand-new was one of her many mysterious talents. “I put some cheese in the fridge. Crackers are out on the table,” she said.

“What’d you bring?” Mama asked. “Not more of that papaya chèvre, I hope.”

Nana sniffed indignantly. “That papaya chèvre won an award at the Festival of Cheese in Austin last year.”

Mama draped one arm over the back of her chair. “Yes, I’m aware of that, but you know I’d rather eat dirt than that particular cheese.”

Nana blew a raspberry through her lips. “You’re not the only one here, Tessa Cassidy, and not everyone likes the cayenne and nuts in the spicy pecan—”

She noticed Will crouched in front of the sideways shelf and jabbed her finger at him. “You. I helped you with a stubborn doe.” It sounded like an accusation.

I could see him working hard not to laugh. “Yes, ma’am, you did.”

“Good. Right. I never forget a goat. Maggie Sue.”

“Yes, ma’am. She’s my neighbor’s goat.”

“Maggie Sue took a vacation from her life that day. We humans like to go on vacation. A nice trip to Corpus Christi or Padre Island? You bet. For a goat? A little R and R and some nibbling on someone else’s grass is all they need.”

“Wow,” Gracie whispered, gazing at Nana like she was a rock star.

My mother leveled a stare at Nana, still harboring some vexation over the goat cheese selection. “You don’t have to bring spicy pecan. The sesame thyme or the fresh herb is fine. Anything but that papaya chèvre,” she said.

Nana wagged her finger. “Tessa Cassidy, if you don’t want the cheese I brought, don’t eat it, girl.”

I swallowed a laugh. For a split second, I could see Mama, fifty years younger, a skinny little girl, being scolded by a twenty-five-year-old Coleta Cassidy. Some things never changed. Bickering was sport to them.

Mama huffed, turning back to her seams. “Don’t you fret. I won’t eat it,” she muttered under her breath.

“What kind did you bring, Nana?” I whispered.

She winked, a wicked little smile playing on her lips. “Spicy pecan,” she said so only I could hear, “but I’m gonna let her stew there for a spell. She wouldn’t know exceptional cheese if she sat on it.”

As she poked around the room, looking at the dresses, a wisp of a warm breeze blew over me. I felt Meemaw’s familiar presence. It rustled the skirt of Josie’s gown, then swirled around me, ruffling my hair, wrapping me up like a blanket. Meemaw, Mama, Nana, and I were all here together in the yellow house off the square. It was comforting to be surrounded by family. There was no place I’d rather be, I realized.

The weight of someone’s stare made me look around the workroom. The Singer purred along as Mama finished the seams, her attention utterly focused. Nana stood at the cutting table flipping through my sketchbook, absently oohing and ahhing. Will had a screwdriver plunged into a hole in the bottom of the shelf, wiggling it around like he was digging something out.

That left Gracie . . . I turned and saw her looking around the room, as if she was searching for something, her needle between her thumb and index finger, frozen in midair.

“Gracie?”

She didn’t budge.

I moved toward her, snapping my fingers. “Gracie.”

This time she blinked, back to reality like she’d come out of a trance.

Instantly, Will was by her side.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” she said, but her body twitched with a slight shiver. She looked at the heating vent in the wall. “Did the heater go on?”

My heart stopped, all the breath leaving my body. Had she felt the warmth of Meemaw’s presence? Slowly, I shook my head. “N-no.”

“Huh. I must have imagined it . . .” she said, trailing off. She turned back to the dress form, lifted the hem of the dress, and slid the needle into the fabric.

I watched Gracie, baffled, wondering exactly what she’d felt—and why.

The bells on the front door jingled. I tucked my bewilderment away to think about later as Miriam Kincaid finally walked in, a teenage girl on her heels.

“I don’t have much time,” Miriam announced before they’d even closed the front door. “This is my daughter. My mother said you’re making her a dress—”