“Tyler,” Piper drew out the plea to five syllables and folded her hands in prayer, complete with the puppy dog eyes that had, over the years, successfully convinced Tyler to go skydiving, be in a bachelorette auction for a hospital fundraiser, and add a set of very purple, very unfortunate highlights to her blonde hair.
Tyler scowled. “You don’t fight fair.”
“It’s the Madrigal,” Piper insisted.
“Fine. I’ll be there, but I’ll be a little late. We don’t close until six.”
“Fabulous! I’ll meet you there with your shoes and your outfit. Where are they?”
Tyler sighed. “Top shelf of my closet, in the blue box.”
Piper squealed in delight and wrapped Tyler in a rib-cracking hug. “I’ll meet you there! Bye, Norah.” Without another word, she whirled and bounced out the door.
Tyler stared after her, shaking her head.
“I need to get on too,” Norah said. “I’ve got a meeting with Sandra in half an hour.”
“Would that be a meeting with her as mayor or as your future mother-in-law for wedding planning?”
“Some of both. We’ve taken to planning at the office. When we do it at home, Cam starts looking like he wants to bolt. As if we actually expect him to have some opinion on napkins and invitation designs.”
Tyler laughed. “As long as he’s learned the valuable lesson of ‘Yes dear,’ he’ll be fine.”
Norah grinned. “Exactly.”
“If you’ll get me a number of how many businesses you expect to volunteer, I’ll swing by the site later this week, take some measurements and figure out what you’ll need to make the partitions if the Quilting Queens don’t have frames you can use.”
“I’ll let you know as soon as I do. And don’t forget, dress shopping this weekend!”
“I’ll be there, if only to make sure you don’t put me in robin’s egg blue.”
Norah waved and headed out.
Finished with the display, Tyler hauled the box to the dumpster out back. In the storeroom, she shot a wary look around before executing an experimental series of alsicones. If only they could see me now, she thought. Solid, dependable, Tyler Edison, pillar of the community. Only Piper could get me to do this again in public.
It wasn’t that she had stage fright. There was something glorious about being on stage, under the lights. Putting on someone else’s life for a few hours a week during the run of a show. Singing music from bygone days and soaking in the adulation of the crowd. She used to live for it. She used to live for a lot of things. But the days since she felt like arbitrarily bursting into song and dance were long past, put away like childish things. Her life was a good one. And if she felt, from time to time, as if something was missing, it was fleeting.
Still, as the front bell jangled again, Tyler decided it couldn’t hurt to take a walk down memory lane in the name of a good cause.
~*~
“We’re on a schedule here, guys. Now, I’m not talking about cutting any kind of corners. Quality and safety come first, but I have it on good authority that, if we can pick up the pace and knock this out before Christmas, there’s a bonus in it for all of you.”
A pleased murmur ran through the crowd.
There, thought Brody, that got their attention.
Not that he hadn’t had their attention. But for the past two days, he’d been ignoring the curious looks, the low-voiced murmurs, the unasked questions lingering in the eyes of the locals who remembered him. He was eager to distract them. Those unasked questions weren’t ones he wanted—or even knew how—to answer
“If you’ve got any questions or concerns,” he continued, “or even better, suggestions for how to make this run smoother, I’m in this for the long haul until we’re through.”
Dismissing the crew back to their labors, Brody decided he could do with an early lunch. He’d missed breakfast, and the coffee he’d grabbed on the way to the job site had long since worn off. After work today, he really had to make time to go by the grocery and get actual food to stock the kitchen. His forty-eight hours in Wishful had been full of meetings and reports, familiarizing himself with the job, the crew, and all the variables that he needed to tweak to make sure this project was completed on time. It was a strange choice of location for one of Gerald Peyton’s projects, but Brody wasn’t in the habit of questioning his boss. Project management was what he did best, why Peyton sent him all over the country to pick up the reins on jobs that weren’t meeting the company standard. The itinerant lifestyle suited his wanderlust, giving him a new skyline, new faces, new places every few months. It was downright irony that this time the job had brought him home.
And that just made him feel itchy. He’d made a great deal of effort to avoid Wishful, to cut all ties.
He told himself that the fact that he hadn’t sold his
parents’ house wasn’t a mark of any lingering attachment. After they’d died, it was easy to let the management company take care of things. The house was paid for, and the monthly income from rent had provided a tidy little boost to his bank account during those lean, first years. He hadn’t needed that boost in quite some time, but he was a busy man, and there’d been no opportunity to deal with the house from long distance. He hadn’t made an opportunity, he admitted. That the house had been empty for the last six months was convenient, really. He could save up some more money and, at the end of the job, he’d list it with a local Realtor, get the show on the road. The job would only last until the end of the year. Then he’d be off somewhere new for good this time.