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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781682999066 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Abingdon Fiction |
| Publication date: | 09/17/2013 |
| Series: | Quilts of Love Series |
| Sold by: | SIMON & SCHUSTER |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 256 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Raw Edges
Quilts of Love Series
By Sandra D. Bricker
Abingdon Press
Copyright © 2013 Sandra D. BrickerAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4267-5275-9
CHAPTER 1
Gray glanced at the dashboard clock before he pulled the key from the ignition and pressed the button to lower the garage door.
"Ten twenty-six," he said aloud, punctuating the time with a weary sigh.
Sadie would likely be fast asleep by now, probably floating over angry strains of resentment toward her careless father who had missed their Friday pizza night together for the first time in years. He tried to justify it with the fact he had a good reason, but he knew it was one Sadie's nine-year-old mind couldn't understand.
He closed the door behind him and walked softly through the kitchen into the family room where Essie Lambright sat reading.
"Oh, good evening, Grayson," she said in her barely-there trace of Florida twang.
Essie smoothed her silver hair and removed her reading glasses, placing a ribbon to mark where she left off before closing the book on her lap.
"Hi, Miss Essie. How were things tonight?" he asked. "I didn't notice any torches or pitchforks when I came in. Am I safe?"
"I'm sorry to say you are not," she replied. "I think you're going to have to earn your forgiveness, and she's a pretty tough customer."
"She certainly can be," Gray said with a chuckle. "Can I give you a lift home?"
"No," she chided. "It's a beautiful Tampa night. I can walk the two blocks and enjoy the breeze off the bay."
Gray hadn't even noticed the weather on his drive home. He'd been lost in the maze of his thoughts and, looking back on it now, he couldn't remember a thing about the commute.
"There's chili in the slow cooker," she told him on her way toward the kitchen, "and fresh cornbread wrapped in foil on the counter."
"She didn't go with pizza?" he asked, surprised.
"Apparently, it's not Friday pizza night if you're not here. So we decided to enter into the realm of the unknown with turkey chili."
Gray grinned. "Well, thank you."
"Oh," she said, placing a finger to the side of her face and stopping in her tracks. "She is considering the merits of going vegan, by the way. But she's still on the fence."
"Vegan," he repeated. "Where does she come up with these things?"
"It seems Steffi Leary is going that direction, and they share a table in the lunchroom."
Gray shook his head and followed Essie through the kitchen toward the back door. "Thanks again."
He flipped on the light and watched after her as the older woman followed the sidewalk around the curve of the house. When she disappeared from sight, he turned it off and bolted the lock on the door.
The spicy scent of the chili caused a rumble to erupt deep within his stomach, and Gray pulled a bowl from behind the glass cabinet door, scraping the silverware drawer open and plucking a large spoon from inside before gliding it shut again. Just about the time he sat down on one of the stools at the island and took his first bite, the familiar rub of sock-against-ceramic-tile drew his attention to the doorway.
"What are you doing awake?" he asked, and Sadie groan-sighed, as Jenna used to call it.
"It's her anniversary, you know," she sort of spat out at him. "And you missed it."
Gray's heart pounded hard before flopping over and sinking. He'd convinced himself that she wouldn't remember.
"I'm sorry."
Sadie scuffed toward the refrigerator and removed a small carton of sour cream and a plastic container of grated cheddar cheese. She slid it across the marble counter toward him and climbed up on the closest stool.
"Miss Essie says her chili cries for these. I tried it, and I think she's right."
The corner of his mouth twitched as he allowed her to sprinkle cheese into his bowl, followed by a dollop of sour cream. As he took a delightful bite, Sadie unwrapped the cornbread and grabbed a hunk for herself before pushing the foil mound toward him.
"We had warm honey butter," she said over a full mouth.
"You woulda had some, too, if you'd come home at a decent hour."
Gray arched one eyebrow and gazed at his daughter.
Nine, going on twenty-nine, he thought.
"Today is one year since Mommy left," she announced. "Did you even remember?"
Gray took another bite of chili before he replied, "I remembered."
"Then why didn't you come home?" she asked, narrowing her eyes at him. "You didn't want to be with me and remember her?"
He pushed the spoon into the chili and left it draped over the side of the bowl as he leaned against the stool's wooden back. He couldn't imagine a response sufficient for that particular question, so he sighed and answered, "I'm sorry, Sadie."
"Especially because it's Friday, Daddy. We always spend Fridays together."
"I know."
"Well then? What do you have to say for yourself?"
Gray couldn't help it, and he blurted out one puff of a laugh. "Miss Essie is right about you. You're one tough customer."
"When it's called for," she said, and Gray's heart constricted. Jenna used to use exactly those words and tone when he'd irritated her. "I think you owe me an apology—"
"Which I have already delivered," he pointed out.
"Right. And a present."
"A present!" he repeated with a chuckle.
"Yes. It's Mommy's anniversary of when she got to be with Gramma and leave behind her pain. And we always give presents on anniversaries and birthdays and stuff, right? I think we should really have a cake too, but Miss Essie made cornbread that's really more like cake than bread anyway, so that's okay, I think."
Gray smiled as she took another big bite of the cornbread. When she tried to talk right through it, he raised his hand and shook his head. "Uh-uh. Chew and swallow first."
After a few dramatized chews and a noisy gulp, she pulled a folded piece of cardboard from the pocket of her red pajama bottoms with a giant tan puppy screened across one leg. After first ironing it out against the counter, she pushed the large postcard toward him and said, "Here's what I want for my present."
Several things crossed Gray's mind in those couple of seconds.
I want a Great Dane.
I'd like a trip to Africa to see the giraffes, please.
Can we get a swimming pool? Steffi Leary has one.
But what he saw on that card was the most remote and unexpected thing he ever might have imagined his nine-year-old daughter asking of him.
Ovacome Support Group Meeting. Tuesday night. St. Joseph's Hospital in Tampa.
"Where did you get this?" he inquired, trying to remain casual as he set it down on the counter and turned his attention back to the chili before him.
"It came in the mail today, and I think we should go."
"We?"
"Yes. I called them, and—"
"You did what? You called them? Sadie!"
"—they said I could come, as long as you come with me. So can we go?"
"No," he replied without looking up from the ceramic bowl.
"Why not? That's what I want as my present."
"Is it your birthday again?" he asked her seriously. "Because I'm pretty sure we just celebrated that last month. And it's too warm for Christmas. Those are the times when I'm even marginally okay with you assuming you're owed something."
He knew how ridiculous it sounded. He only owed his daughter something special twice a year? Jenna might have rolled over in her grave at the sound of it. He owed her something each and every day of the year, and twice on holidays!
When Sadie didn't reply, he looked back at her again and waited. Before he could apologize for such an outlandish statement, she smiled at him.
"The thing is, Daddy," she said softly, "I know you didn't mean that. And I know you didn't mean to miss our Friday pizza night either, because you can't help it, I think. You miss Mommy so much you can hardly stand it. And I guess I might make you think about her, too, don't I? Is that why you didn't want to eat pizza and read to me out of her journal, like always?"
Gray groaned. Closing his eyes for a moment, he rubbed his throbbing temples. With a sigh, he smacked his leg twice. "Come here."
She hopped down and rounded the island before lifting her arms and letting him pick her up and plant her on his leg. He wrapped both arms around her tightly, pulling her into him.
"I'm sorry, Sadie," he whispered. "I'm so sorry."
After a full minute of silence, she pushed out a gravelly reply. "It's okay, Daddy. Don't worry. We'll nabigate it together, that's what you said, right? So we will. We'll nabigate it."
Gray blinked back the tears standing in his eyes. "Navigate. And how old are you again?"
Sadie's giggles sounded like music. "I'm nine now, Daddy. You know that!"
* * *
"Annabelle, line two for you."
"This is Annabelle Curtis."
"Hi. It's Carole Martinez."
"Ah, Carole. How are you?" Annabelle flopped down on the yellow leather sofa at the far side of her crowded office and pushed a section of blondish curls behind one ear as she held the phone up to the other. "Are you calling about tonight?" "Yes, just checking to make sure you're coming."
"I wouldn't miss it. My friend Paula gave me her employee discount at Honeybaked Ham. I've got box dinners for fifteen," she said. "I think that will be enough, don't you?"
"Plenty. I don't really expect more than ten or twelve of us.
Tonight will mostly be a planning session for the quilt project.
I'll see you at around six-thirty then?"
"See you then."
Annabelle smiled as she disconnected the call. Carole and the Ovacome support group had become a fixture in her life since The Dark Days—a term she used to describe the five months and six days between the initial diagnosis at the young age of thirty-four and the day that her oncologist broke out the long-awaited "cancer-free" stamp of approval. Annabelle had thought ovarian cancer was an older woman's disease; but then, as her brother had reminded her, she'd always been one to step out ahead of the pack.
"If everyone else is getting it at age fifty, leave it to my big sis to rush in there at thirty-four," Nathan had said when he flew in from Oregon just in time to see her before they rolled her in for surgery.
A complete hysterectomy.
The words were daunting back then. And not much less so now that she'd come through the chemo and the radiation and the seed implant surgery—radioactive seeds implanted for several days in hopes of a more up-close-and-personal treatment.
The hysterectomy had stolen so much more than her uterus and ovaries! The surgery had also taken all of her latent maternal dreams, mashing them up in a blender already chock full of pain, fear, anger, and regret. Adding insult to her incisions, fiancé Peter had been the perky rubber spatula that wiped out any final remnant of hope about children when he'd peeled out of her driveway after a short fifteen-minute discussion about their future. Annabelle chuckled bitterly at the irony. Peter had made his escape in his brand new pretty, green Ford Escape.
"I just can't do cancer," he'd told her from the other side of the kitchen table, two mugs of untouched lukewarm coffee between them. "I saw what it did to my aunt and her family, and I'm just not prepared for it, Belle." She hated it when he called her that. "Look, I've read the statistics. You're almost guaranteed to get it back again."
"Thanks for the pep talk," she'd interjected.
"I'm sorry, but it's true. Only half of the women who get it make it through another five years before it comes back with a vengeance. And I just can't see doing it again."
"That's funny. I sort of thought I was the one who did the cancer, Peter."
The sad truth: He'd been little more than a bystander in the tragedy that had consumed her life. And now, there he sat with his too-white teeth and his perfect wavy hair, telling her she was going to get it again? Never mind the fact she hadn't even completed her full course of treatment yet. Never mind the wounds from the hysterectomy hadn't even healed completely. Never mind—
"And the thing is, Belle, I really do want kids. You know I saw that as part of the picture for my life."
Annabelle had always envisioned having children in her life picture, too. But between the hysterectomy and the quick glance she caught of Peter streaking from her life in his ironic choice of vehicle, the idea dove directly into the blender with the rest of her emotions and hopes. She could almost hear it now, grinding again, so many years later.
Looking around her cramped office, Annabelle grinned. She wondered what Peter would think if he saw her now. She'd quit her lucrative—yet unfulfilling—job managing public relations for an upscale Central Florida restaurant chain to become an underpaid, overworked—but extremely enthusiastic—employee of her beloved Florida Aquarium. Her lawyer ex-fiancé would likely have left her anyhow once she'd morphed her volunteer hours into a full-time job where she sometimes wore no makeup at all, donned mostly jeans and tennis shoes, and often went home smelling just a little bit like one of the aquarium's promenading penguins.
"I have box lunches in three brown bags in the fridge with my name on them," she told young Jeremy as she passed him, one arm clamped around a small bundle of folded clothes, and the other struggling to force the strap of her large leather tote up to her shoulder. "Would you mind schlepping them out to my car for me?"
"Sure thing."
Annabelle piled the clothes on the floor of her Volkswagen, leaving the passenger door open for Jeremy while she rounded the small yellow car and climbed behind the wheel. Jeremy jogged toward her and slid the bags to the passenger seat.
"What is all this?" he asked her, leaning down into the car. "Support group meeting tonight?"
"Yep. We're combining our regular meeting with the memory quilt project," she explained with a nod toward the floor. "I'm donating the blouse I was wearing the day I was diagnosed, and the ducky jammies I practically lived in until the incision healed."
Jeremy chuckled. "You don't strike me as the quilting type, Annabelle."
"What I don't know about quilting could fill the shark tank," she teased. "But they needed someone to work on it with Carole, and I was the lucky one."
She couldn't bring herself to add the reason they needed someone new this year. Carole and Sharon Chaulk always handled the project together, but that third and final return of Sharon's cancer had just been too much for her. At the tooyoung age of fifty-seven, Sharon had lost her battle. Annabelle's stomach did a little flop as Jeremy slammed shut the door and waved.
"See you tomorrow."
Annabelle took Channelside Drive over to Kennedy, and headed down to Martin Luther King Boulevard. While she waited at the stoplight, she noticed Kim Snyder as she turned in front of her and sped through the entrance to St. Joseph's Hospital. The green arrow pointed the way, and Annabelle followed Kim and parked right next to her.
"Excellent!" she sang, tossing her door open. "I was wondering how I would manage to carry all of this inside."
"Glad to help," Kim returned, and she rounded the VW bug and tugged on the passenger door.
The two of them shared the load and hiked to the double glass doors and inside toward their regular meeting space. By the time they had the room set up and the boxed meals set out on the table adjacent to the door, there were ten women gathered in small groups.
"Annabelle has brought us ham and turkey sandwiches from Honeybaked," Kim announced. "And there are bottles of water in the ice bucket next to the coffee. Help yourselves and let's get started."
Annabelle had just found a chair next to Carole Martinez and twisted open the top on a bottle of water when the door burst open.
"Are we too late? I told you, Daddy. We're late."
Standing in the doorway, a wild-haired little girl clutched the hand of her father, her eyes open wide and dancing with excitement.
"Don't be silly," Kim said as she approached them. "We're just getting started. Come on in."
Annabelle watched as Kim exchanged greetings and a few words with the pair and led them toward the food table. The little girl made an immediate beeline to the coffee, pouring a cup and handing it to the tall, lean man behind her.
"We have some new visitors with us tonight," Kim proclaimed. "This is Gray McDonough, and his daughter, Sadie. Some of you might remember Gray's wife, Jenna."
Carole leaned over toward Annabelle. "Jenna McDonough's family. I talked to the little girl last week. I didn't think for one minute she'd be able to get her dad here."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Raw Edges by Sandra D. Bricker. Copyright © 2013 Sandra D. Bricker. Excerpted by permission of Abingdon Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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