Just in Time Read online

  “Well, I think she did,” I said, and patted the dog on the head. Nan looked up with a brilliant smile, her face glowing like a proud mother whose child has just received an enormous compliment.

  “Would you two like to come over to my house for a cup of tea?” she asked, then quickly added, “I know, I know. It’s sudden. And I’m a stranger. I could be crazy, a complete nut job. But trust me, I’m not. Not very.” She smiled. “I just thought that . . . well, you’re looking for somebody to talk to. I’m a good listener. You don’t fit in with this bunch,” she said, tilting her head toward illuminated windows of the big community room, where the white-haired circle was still in session. “But I have a feeling you might have a tough time finding a place where you do belong. Neither of you quite fits the mold, do you?

  “I’m running a little short of human companionship myself these days. Blixen has many fine qualities, but she’s not the world’s best conversationalist. Maybe we can be our own support group?”

  I didn’t know what to say. Yes, she seemed nice, a caring, insightful, and possibly quite wise woman who liked to help, but how did I know? Denials aside, Nan could have been crazy. And if she wasn’t, maybe Monica was. The signs certainly pointed in that direction.

  “Gee . . .” I said slowly. “That’s nice of you. But—”

  “I have peach turnovers,” Nan said. “And homemade vanilla ice cream.”

  Monica’s hand shot up. “Yes, please.” She turned to me. “You in?”

  I knew I should say no. Even if they weren’t crazy, they were definitely weird, not like anybody I knew back home. But I wasn’t back home. I didn’t have any friends in Portland, not one.

  “The turnovers are homemade too,” Nan said, adding an extra incentive. “Fresh-baked this morning.”

  My stomach growled, making up my mind for me, as it so often does.

  “Is it far? I don’t know my way around very well yet.”

  “Even if you did, you’d never find it,” Nan laughed. “But you can follow me. I’ll drive slow.”

  And I did. I got in my car and followed Nan home, which is so unlike me. But that night I forgot to be cautious, sensible, or shy. And it saved me.

  I mean it. It saved me. They saved me.

  Who could have imagined? Not me. Not then.

  But the thing is, sometimes you don’t know you’re going down for the third time until somebody pulls you into the boat.

  Chapter 2

  Grace

  When I was seven, my grammy taught me to sew. She’d grown up on a farm and never liked to waste anything, so every winter she’d gather up the family’s worn-out clothes to make quilts. Every fall, she’d enter a quilt in the country fair and win a prize.

  My mother, who wouldn’t shop the sale rack because she didn’t want to buy something that everybody else had passed over, made fun of Grammy’s quilts, saying it was just one more way for her mother to be cheap. “As if making me wear a dress handed down through three sisters wasn’t enough, now she expects me to sleep under it too.”

  I thought Grammy’s quilts were wonderful. Always “the quiet one” and often overlooked in a family of boisterous brothers, I reveled in the attention and praise she lavished upon me during our sewing sessions.

  I also loved the stories she’d tell about each block, “Now this pale blue was from the shirt your grampy wore when he came over to my house to propose. My dad knew why Ted was there. He stood on the porch and said I wasn’t home, but I hollered from upstairs, ‘Oh, yes, I am!’ then ran downstairs, took the bouquet Ted brought for me, and said I’d marry him. That’s why I picked the Lily corner block for this one, because that’s the kind of flowers he brought me.”

  When I was nine, Grammy helped me make a log cabin quilt. I entered it in the fair and won ten dollars and a ribbon, the only prize I’d ever won in my life. Grammy died the following year, but the things she taught me stuck with me. I was always making something—doll clothes, pincushions, crocheted potholders. My mother never thought much of my crafty inclinations, or my tendency to hide inside of books; making things made me feel like there was at least one thing I knew how to do that other people couldn’t.

  In high school I started sewing my own clothes—dark, shapeless outfits that were designed to make me blend into the background, because nothing in the juniors department fit me. Even after I lost weight, I still had plenty of curves, so I continued to make my own “fit-and-flare” fashions, dresses with fitted waists and full skirts, partly because they flattered my figure, but mostly because it finally gave me a chance to indulge my love of color. Most every dress I sewed was made from material I found on the discount rack of the fabric store—the brighter the better.

  My twirly skirts, Jamie called them, because the minute I put one on, I couldn’t help but spin around in a circle, making the hem flutter around my thighs, feeling pretty, and feminine, and incandescently happy.

  I haven’t been doing a lot of twirling recently.

  Portland’s housing market is tight. If you find something you can afford in the location you want, you have to be ready to go. We put our stuff in storage and rented a tiny studio for three months before we finally closed on the condo, purchased after looking at pictures the Realtor e-mailed to us. A year and a half later, the place still looked a lot like it did when we moved in, with boxes of books shoved in the corner and unhung paintings piled against the wall. It wasn’t important. By then I had bigger problems to worry about than decorating. But I wished I’d paid more attention to closet space before buying; there was only one.

  Initially, I hung up Jamie’s clothes along with my own. I considered it an act of faith. But after a few months, I accepted reality—Jamie was not ever going to live here. I boxed up his things to make space for my work clothes and stacked them with the books. They sat there for weeks. After tripping over one and breaking a toe during a middle-of-the-night trip to the bathroom, I realized I had to do something.

  I started sorting through Jamie’s things and cutting up the special items to make into quilt blocks, sewing them by hand. It’s slow work, but it keeps me busy and gave me a chance to think or, depending on the day, not to think.

  The longer I was at Hewlett and Hanson, where I worked as an administrative assistant for four commercial Realtors and where the atmosphere was as gray as the dress code, the less space there was for my twirly skirts. Sometimes it felt like the gray was trying to swallow up the bright colors of my old life. But the job had benefits and paid the bills, so I wasn’t complaining.

  And that night, for the first time in forever, I had a reason to dress up.

  After trying on and rejecting half a dozen dresses, I settled on a vintage-style swing dress with a pink bolero sweater that matched the pink flamingo print. It had a kind of 1950s, rockabilly, Florida trailer park vibe, but who cared? I wasn’t trying to impress anybody. I was only the third wheel in this ménage, as I explained to Nan when the phone rang.

  “You’re tagging along on Monica’s date? Monica is what—forty-two? Isn’t she a little old for a chaperone?”

  “She’s nervous,” I said, foraging through the bathroom drawer for an eyebrow pencil. “She hasn’t been on a date in years. I’m only going along for moral support. And the food. We’re going to The Fish House!” I exclaimed, unable to disguise my enthusiasm.

  “Well, la-di-da! Who is he? Tech entrepreneur? Stockbroker? Think he’d like to make a donation to the pet rescue?”

  “Doubtful. He’s some kind of carpenter, makes tables. And Monica is paying for dinner. Well, not paying exactly.” I leaned closer to the bathroom mirror and filled in my brows. “Monica knows the manager at The Fish House, and he gave her gift cards—some kind of industry courtesy—but she has to use them right away.”

  “But why would this . . .”

  “Luke,” I said, filling the blank for her. “Luke . . . Pauling? Patterson? Something with a p. I can’t remember.”

  “But why would this Luke want to
go on a date with two women?”

  “Well, I don’t think he thinks it’s a date—more like a sales call. Monica wants new tables and banquettes for the restaurant, and Luke came over to bid on the job. I was only there because Monica asked if I could pick Alex up from cross-country practice and then drop him off at the restaurant. When I got there, Monica said she’d like to see Luke’s portfolio, then suddenly ‘remembered’ about the gift cards she needed to use and suggested the three of us get together over dinner to discuss the project.”

  “Oh. Doesn’t that seem a little devious?”

  “Well, yes. But I almost can’t blame her. He’s really handsome. And it’s time Monica started getting out there. I think she’d be a lot happier if she had a boyfriend.”

  “Okay, but why did she have to involve you? It’s bound to be awkward.”

  “It’s all right. I’m used to Monica roping me into things. Last week she talked me into coming to Alex’s school for a program on the college application process.”

  “Already?” Nan clucked. “Alex is only fifteen. They put too much pressure on kids. But why did you have to go to a meeting about helping Alex get into college?”

  “Because,” I said, exchanging the eye pencil for a lip pencil, “the forecast was calling for rain, which meant that the barometer was going to drop, which meant that Monica would be getting a migraine just as the meeting was set to start. She begged me to come along and take notes so she wouldn’t miss anything. She’s panicked about Alex not getting into college, staying in Portland, and making her life even more miserable than it already is.”

  “You don’t get a headache because it rains,” Nan said. “If that was true, the entire population of Portland, Oregon, would have a headache nine months out of twelve.”

  “I know,” I said, twisting a lipstick tube open. “I wish Monica would stay off WebMD. In the last six months, she’s diagnosed herself with shingles, gallstones, plantar fasciitis, anemia, psoriasis, and Lyme disease. But, really, I think she just wanted me to come along to serve as a buffer between her and Alex.”

  Monica does that sometimes, uses me as a human shield between herself and her step-kids, Alex and Zoe. Alex is pretty rotten to her no matter what, but he isn’t quite as rotten when I’m around.

  “The whole dinner for three thing does feel weird,” I admitted after blotting my lipstick on a tissue, “even for Monica. Luke seemed pretty surprised by the invitation. But he’s just getting his business off the ground, so maybe he’s just anxious to land a client. Or maybe he totally has Monica’s number, realizes she’s nervous about dating and being the one to ask him out first, and is going along with it just so she won’t feel embarrassed. My money’s on that—he seemed too smart to fall for Monica’s ruse. Or maybe he’s like me, in it for the food. I’m not going to turn down free oysters.”

  “This Luke, he’s Italian?”

  “I don’t know what he is, but definitely not Italian,” I said, recalling Luke’s handsome face, tanned but not swarthy, his wavy, sand-colored hair, and beautiful brown-gold eyes.

  Huh. Weird that I couldn’t remember his last name but recalled his face in such detail. Those eyes. But what struck me most was not the unusual color of his eyes, but the intensity of his gaze. When Monica spoke, he really listened. Not too many men know how to do that. I’d only ever known one.

  “Not Italian? But I thought Monica was only—”

  A dog started to whine in the background. The noise was too high-pitched for Blixen. And Blixen never whines.

  “New resident?” I asked.

  “He just came yesterday. Misses his mommy terribly, poor boy. I know, Nelson. I know,” Nan said in a low, soothing voice. “It’s all right to be sad, baby.”

  In addition to her many other good works, Nan volunteers with Rainbow Gate, a pet rescue providing foster care to dogs whose owners have died.

  Nan may be the kindest person I’ve ever met. She raised seven kids—four biological and three adopted, all grown now—and is the reason the term “earth mother” exists.

  Nan knits, crochets, tats, and sews. Like me, she loves anything involving fiber. That alone would have drawn me to her, but she also grows things—tomatoes, flowers, and herbs. She bakes. She cans things. She makes chairs out of bent branches. She raises chickens—for eggs, not meat. Nan’s a vegetarian.

  She lives simply but deeply and values people above possessions. That’s why she refuses to carry a cell phone, because she says that being available to everyone at every moment makes it impossible to truly be there for the people who count when they really need you.

  Nan isn’t like anyone I’ve ever known—she’s part hip and part homespun, motherly and mysterious all at once, and beautiful. Not just “for her age,” but beautiful, with that glorious crown of curls and eyes that have seen everything—good and bad—and still keep smiling, enthused about whatever comes next. She’s an old soul with a young heart and might be the only real grown-up I’ve ever met.

  “Nelson is a beautiful little schnauzer,” she said. “Three years old, perfectly behaved, handsome as they come. He’d make a wonderful brother for Maisie.”

  “No,” I said firmly, because when it came to Nan and dogs you have to.

  Nan has found the “perfect” dog for me about once a month since we met. Though I would never have pictured myself with a Chihuahua, in Maisie’s case she was right. Nelson might have been perfect, too, but my building only allowed one dog per condo, as I explained to Nan yet again.

  “But Maisie is so tiny,” she protested.

  “No, there’s no room in my life for an emotionally needy schnauzer,” I said as Nelson began whining again. “Listen to him. He’d be miserable left alone all day.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Nan sighed. Nelson’s pathetic whine became even more pathetic—the canine equivalent of keening. “Oh, dear. Oh, this poor baby. Grace, I have to go. I’ll see you Monday.”

  I said goodbye and finished putting on my makeup, my mouth watering as I thought about dinner. I planned to dive face-first into a platter of just-shucked oysters, then follow it up with crab cakes, then lobster claws, then start all over with oysters again. Just thinking about it made me dizzy. But the fact that I hadn’t eaten anything all day might have had something to do with it. I was saving room. Tonight, for once, I didn’t want to feel guilty, about calories or anything else.

  I slipped my feet into a pair of heels and checked the time, momentarily forgetting that my watch was broken. Seeing the hands, frozen at two and eighteen minutes past, I felt a catch in my throat.

  Stop. It’s too late to back out. You’re going to have a good time tonight. You are. It’s not like you’re doing anything wrong.

  I took a deep breath to collect myself, swallowing back the wave of guilt, and then reached for my earrings. As I did, I heard a ping, the sound of something dropping onto the counter. I looked at my left hand and saw an empty setting where a diamond should have been.

  My ring! Jamie sold his motorcycle to buy that diamond!

  Panicked, I dropped to my hands and knees. After five heart-pounding minutes of frantic searching, I found the stone hiding in the threads of my fuzzy white bathmat. It must have bounced off the counter.

  I sat back, legs crossed underneath my skirt, and took a deep breath, trying to collect myself and swallow the wave of guilt and doubt. Maybe it was a sign. Maybe I shouldn’t go. But I couldn’t back out on Monica, not at the last minute.

  I climbed to my feet, smoothed out my skirt, then put my ring and the loose diamond in my jewelry box before running out the door. I was so late and so frazzled. And I couldn’t remember Luke’s last name. What would I say when the hostess asked for the name of my party?

  Stop. Seriously, stop. You’re getting worked up over nothing. If you have to, you can go into the dining room and look for him. You’ll remember Luke once you see him. And even if you don’t, Monica will be there already so you can just look for her.

 
Say what you want about Monica, at least she’s never late.

  Chapter 3

  Monica

  When Luke Pascal showed up at my restaurant to give me a bid for new tables and banquettes, I got so flustered that I asked what kind of wood he worked with twice, only realizing I’d done it when he tipped his head to one side and slowly said, “Well, as I said before—”

  “Sorry,” I replied, “My stepson plays his music so loud—I think I must be going a little deaf.” I laughed self-consciously and forced myself to quit staring. But, really, it was hard not to.

  His eyes were the same rich, golden brown as the beef-and-bone broth I make by the gallon for the restaurant. His physique caught my attention as well—tall and lean, athletic looking but not muscle-bound, which I now consider a plus.

  Vince used to spend hours at the gym—at least, that’s where he said he was. It’s just as possible he was out bench-pressing blondes. But he was definitely a Muscle Beach type—big biceps, thick neck, even thicker skull. I’ve sworn off gym rats for life.

  Luke was absolutely nothing like my late, hideous husband, not in manner, temperament, or looks. My first impression of him was that he was polite, capable, and smart—and undeniably attractive. But he wasn’t my type.

  I don’t know why, but the men who melt my butter are always Italian. Always. Which is weird because my maiden name is Schiller and my roots are German/Polish and Lutheran. Yet, the men who make my heart go pitter-pat have names that end with vowels and marinara sauce running through their veins. It makes no sense, but it is what it is. And I have to tell you my track record is not good.

  In high school, Johnny Zeffirelli cheated on me with my best friend and stood me up on prom night. In chef school, Anthony Esposito broke my heart, stole my recipe for bucatini alla Sorrentina, and became valedictorian because of it. Then there was Rob Russo, Joe Ricci, Matt Costa . . . And, of course, the infamous Vincente Romano.

  You get the idea.

  After Vince and his bimbo du jour downed four bottles of Borolo and rammed our boat into a piling (she survived: her most obvious attributes turned out to be excellent flotation devices), I decided to swear off Italian men forever, which was essentially saying I was swearing off men forever. All men. Forever.