Threading The Needle Part 24

Madelyn said nothing.

"Look, Madelyn, I'm not asking you to trade your virtue for a roofing job. I just enjoy your company. And I hate eating alone. Don't you?"

Madelyn nodded, but barely.

"Then let's eat together. Nothing fancy. Pizza. How about that?"

"Too many carbohydrates."

"Fine. Mexican."

She made a face. "Sus.h.i.+," she offered.

"Sus.h.i.+," Jake agreed. "But I'm not eating raw fish. I want to state that up front."

"And we go dutch. That's the deal. Take it or leave it."

He gripped her outstretched hand. "Guess I'll take it."

Jake smiled, looking like he'd just won a hand of high-stakes poker. I couldn't blame him. I doubted there was another man on the face of the earth who could have moved the Immoveable Madelyn. I shoved my hands in my pockets to keep from giving him a high five.

For a moment, Madelyn looked confused, as if she, too, was surprised that he'd gotten around her, but the bargain was sealed and Madelyn wasn't one to go back on her word. She gave a short nod and quickly changed the subject.

"The roof looks great, Jake. Really great." She took a couple of steps backward to take it all in.

"What are those?" She pointed to the flowerbeds in front of the porch and the mounds of mulch with silvery sage stalks poking out at odd angles.

I smiled. I was beginning to wonder when she'd notice. "Lavender. I had too much, so I did a little transplanting. It doesn't look like much now, but come summer the purple flowers will be pretty against the yellow."

"Oh, Tessa!" She gave me a squeeze and I knew how pleased she was. Madelyn is not a hugger. Never was.

I hugged her back. "I planted a little culinary garden in the back, too, near the kitchen. Rosemary, thyme, sage, and mint. And did you see Lee's present?"

I looked toward the street, next to the sidewalk. Her gaze followed mine and she laughed when she saw the sign Lee had made to match the house. The background was yellow and the borders and lettering were in blue.

"Beecher Cottage Inn. Established 2009. No Vacancy." She clapped her hands to her chest. "Oh, I love it! Tell Lee I said so."

"Did you see this?" I asked, walking to the sign so I could demonstrate. "He drilled a hole in the 'No' and hung it on a nail so you can remove it when you do have a vacancy."

"Never going to happen," Jake said. "Once the word gets out, everybody is going to want to stay here."

Madelyn turned to face us both and I could see she was fighting back tears, but that was all right. These were good tears, I could tell.

"Thank you. Thank you so much. I don't know what to say. It just looks like I could open for business tomorrow!"

"Not quite," Jake said. "There's plenty to do inside yet. But I did get Barry over here to install the cabinets while you were gone."

Jake's face split into a grin. "Somebody pushed a microphone into his face and started asking him about you, and Barry just about shoved it down the reporter's throat. I had to pull him off the guy. But your bathrooms are done. . . ."

Madelyn frowned and started to say something, but Jake cut her off.

He raised his hands, antic.i.p.ating her protest. "Except for tiling the floors. I thought you'd want to do those yourself."

Madelyn crossed her arms again and gave him a challenging look. "You thought right."

37.

Madelyn Jake's left eyebrow rose to a skeptical angle as I picked up my chopsticks and dipped a piece of yellowtail into a saucer of wasabi and soy sauce.

"Looks like bait to me."

"It's tuna and it's delicious. You should try it," I said with a deliberate smile before putting the fish into my mouth.

Jake shuddered in disgust. I chewed. My mouth turned to flame and my sinuses cleared from my nostrils to my toenails. My eyes poured tears like water from a spigot. I lunged for my water gla.s.s, downed the contents, and coughed.

Apparently thinking I was choking, Jake pounded my back. I waved him off.

"Wasabi," I gasped. "Too spicy."

Jake pushed his water gla.s.s toward me and then turned around to find our waitress, miming a pouring motion to indicate our gla.s.ses were empty.

"You okay?"

Blinking back tears, I nodded. "Yeah. I forgot how potent that stuff is. It really is good, though."

"Yeah, I can see that. Think I'll stick with my tempura. Thanks anyway, Maddie," he said and then stopped himself. "Oh. Sorry. I'm not supposed to call you that, am I?"

"That's all right. I don't mind."

The waitress approached with the water pitcher and refilled our gla.s.ses. I watched her in silence, mentally rehearsing my speech.

After she moved on I took a breath and plunged in. "Listen. Jake. There's something I've been meaning to say to you about that night, after the funeral. I was fairly awful to you. I'm sorry."

Jake was tentatively poking a piece of tempura with his chopstick, as if worried that it might suddenly begin moving. "That's okay. Hey, what is this anyway?"

The light in the restaurant was dim. I had to squint to see his plate. "Eggplant."

"That's what I thought." Jake pushed the offending vegetable to the side. "But this is shrimp, right? And it's cooked?" With surprising dexterity, he picked up a piece of shrimp with his chopsticks and took a bite.

"I mean it," I said earnestly. "I'm really sorry. I had no right to be so angry with you, especially since I asked for your opinion."

"It's all right. Apology accepted. Can you pa.s.s the soy sauce?"

I handed him a small ceramic carafe and watched as he poured a stream of soy sauce onto his steamed rice. It was nice of Jake to extend his pardon so readily, but his offhand manner left me feeling unsatisfied. I felt the need to explain myself.

"I wasn't quite myself that night. . . ."

Jake's mouth was full, but he interrupted me with a shake of his head. "Actually, I disagree. I thought you were entirely yourself. At least initially. Though you kind of backed off as the evening wore on. And I probably could have done without the part where you told me to go to h.e.l.l but, all in all, I thought it was a worthwhile discussion, didn't you?"

He looked up with a teasing smile, daring me to contradict him. I couldn't.

"It was, I admit it. And I'll go even further. You were right."

I quickly took a bite of my dinner, hoping that would be the end of it, but Jake looked at me with an expression that invited elaboration. Fair enough. After all the things I'd said to him that night in the van, I owed him that.

"I've done a lot of thinking about what you said about me being selfish and self-absorbed. You're right. I am. It's all about me, isn't it? It always has been. My comfort, my needs, my desperate compulsion to gather up enough, and more than enough, of anything-things, men, money, possessions. . . ."

Jake didn't contradict me, but his teasing expression was replaced by sympathy. "There were reasons for that. As a kid, you had to be selfish to just survive. n.o.body was watching out for you. Edna sure didn't. And you had no one to teach you differently."

"Not entirely," I said. "I had my dad, for a while anyway. He taught me about love, and loyalty, and selflessness. But after he died, I forgot.

"However," I said with a rueful smile, "your somewhat blunt a.s.sessment of my character made me start to think about him and wonder if he'd have thought you were right about me. I decided he probably would have. That made me feel even worse than I had before, which I honestly hadn't imagined was possible. But you know what they say about hitting rock bottom. . . ."

Jake winked. "You've got nowhere to go but up?"

"That's right. So, the long and short of it is, I decided to give your advice a try. The next morning I got up and started looking around for ways to make other people happy. You know something? It worked.

"Seeing Tessa's face light up when I embellished her quilt, or how something as simple as cooking dinner can encourage someone who has had a hard day, made me feel better than I had in a long while. And it made me think that . . . maybe I have something to offer the world."

I ducked my head, feeling a little funny about saying that out loud. "Nothing huge, you know. I know I'm no Rhodes Scholar or anything. . . ."

"So what?" he said. "Neither am I. But everybody can do something for somebody else."

"Like fixing their roof?"

Jake didn't say anything to that, just dipped his head slightly. "Or baking some m.u.f.fins. Or making a quilt. Or whatever. The point is, everybody has something to offer. Even broken-down, recovering, one-eyed hardware guys."

I dipped another piece of tuna into my soy sauce, being careful not to overdo it this time.

"You know something? I'm really excited about the inn. I mean, it's still an economic necessity for me, a way to make a living. But I'm starting to think it could also be a new beginning.

"I want to bring new people, and a new history, to that old house. Think about all the different kinds of people who might show up at my door! Honeymooners, exhausted parents, empty-nesters trying to rekindle romance, girlfriends looking for a weekend away, people who just want to sit on my front porch and do absolutely nothing-I might have an opportunity to do some real good in this town!"

"You could," Jake agreed.

Jake sorted through the rest of his tempura, kept the shrimp, carrots, and sweet potatoes, and then, after looking at me with raised brows to gauge my interest, placed the eggplant and mushrooms on my plate.

I ate a mushroom and then another piece of tuna. My eyes began to fill again and my nose started to run. I sniffled. Jake looked up and shoved his water gla.s.s toward me.

"Too much wasabi?"

I wiped my eyes with my napkin and shook my head.

"Jake, why are you so nice to me?"

He grinned and shrugged. "I'm a hardware guy. When I see something broken, I fix it. Can't help myself."

38.

Tessa The Christmas shopping season had brought an increase in business, but more the ebb and flow of an unpredictable tide than the tsunami of commerce I'd hoped for. Exactly one week before Thanksgiving, my traffic was more a dead calm than anything else, emphasis on the word "dead." So when Lee dropped by the shop unexpectedly, I was even more than usually glad to see him.

"This is a nice surprise," I said, coming out from behind the counter.

"I had to drop off Charlie's microgreen order at the Grill, so I thought I'd drop by and say h.e.l.lo." He kissed me. "h.e.l.lo."

"h.e.l.lo yourself."

"About Thanksgiving," he said as though we'd just been discussing the subject. "We should get a bigger bird than last year, enough so we'll have some leftovers. I was thinking around twenty pounds."

I stared at him, waiting for the punch line, but he seemed serious. "Twenty pounds? Unless you're planning on eating turkey soup and turkey hash every night between Thanksgiving and Christmas, that seems a bit extreme. With just the two of us, it'd really be more practical to roast a chicken instead."

Lee had been fiddling with some of the tester bottles, nodding absently while I spoke. Now he opened a jar of lemon beeswax hand balm and sniffed it before rubbing some onto his calloused hands.

"Yeah, except it's not going to be just the two of us. I saw Jake over at the hardware store and invited him to Thanksgiving dinner. And Matt too."

"Matt?"

"Yeah, Matt. Jake's clerk, you remember. He was looking a little glum. He just broke up with his girlfriend and he doesn't have any family in town. And then I saw Charlie at the Grill and invited him and Evelyn. Oh, and Evelyn's mother, too, Virginia. That's her name, right? And I was thinking you could invite Madelyn too."

He finished rubbing in the hand balm and flexed his fingers a couple of times, as if testing them out. "Huh. This is pretty good stuff."

I shook my head, not quite sure I'd heard him right. "Wait a minute. Lee? Are you telling me that we're going to have seven people over for Thanksgiving dinner?"

He looked at the ceiling, tallying the numbers in his head. "Eight if you count Madelyn. But I was thinking, why don't we invite a few more? What about that new friend of yours, Margot? And anybody else you can think of who doesn't have plans for the holiday. I mean, if we're going to invite eight we might as well invite sixteen, right?"

"Sixteen? But, Lee . . ." I spread out my hands and paused, waiting for him to draw the obvious inference.

"What?" he asked, mirroring my expression. "You've been moping around for days about your empty nest and how pathetic Thanksgiving will be with just the two of us. . . ."

"I never said that."

"You didn't have to. It was written all over your face. Look, I know how you love having family around during the holidays. So I figured, let's invite some. I mean, they're not our family but they're somebody's. Right? Why don't you invite the quilt circle? You're always saying you want me to meet them."