The Sweetgum Ladies Knit for Love - By Beth Pattillo Page 0,74

room and also changing the subject. “Still no offers?”

She shook her head. “I waited too long to put it on the market. This is the worst time of year to try to sell.”

“I thought my friend James would make an offer.” He shrugged. “Maybe he still will.”

“You haven’t spoken to him?”

“He usually spends the holidays skiing. But I thought, from what he said after Thanksgiving, that he wanted to be settled in Sweetgum by the first of the year.”

“Why Sweetgum? He doesn’t seem the small-town type.”

Brody paused. He knew exactly why James Delevan wanted to relocate to Sweetgum. Esther could see it in his eyes, but she could also see he wasn’t going to tell her. He would protect his friend’s privacy. His discretion made her like him even more.

“It’s okay,” she said. “You don’t have to tell me.” What was it about Brody McCullough that made her want to be a different person? Kinder, more relaxed. Esther had never in her life wanted to be kind. Nor had she worried about being relaxed.

Her feelings toward Brody weren’t wholly romantic in nature, either. At least, she didn’t think they were. It had been so long since she’d had any experience with that kind of thing that she couldn’t tell. She liked his company, in spite of her discomfort at some of his insights and observations, and he seemed to feel the same way. Drawn to her, yet wary. And, in an odd way, friends.

They had finished eating, so she rose from her chair and picked up their plates. He started to stand as well, but she waved him back to his seat. “Stay put. I’ll get dessert and coffee.”

He did as instructed, which gave her a moment to collect herself. As she used her kitchen torch to crystallize the tops of the crème brûlées she’d pulled from the oven, Esther thought of the book Eugenie had assigned them to read, Gone with the Wind.

Left to her own devices, she’d never have picked it up, but with so much time on her hands, and finding herself alone for most of it, she was making good progress through its pages. To her surprise, she’d found herself captivated by the story. Not so much by the tumultuous love between Rhett and Scarlett but by the blindness and stupidity of the heroine. Over and over again, she’d thrown away the love she could have had for the love she thought she wanted. Standing in her kitchen, with Brody and Ranger in the next room, Esther knew she wasn’t much different from Scarlett O’Hara.

Was it too late? Were her life and choices so set in stone that she couldn’t go back and change things? Not with Frank, of course. That part of her life was gone forever. But perhaps losing her husband and her home was more than twin tragedies. Perhaps those very losses held the seeds of some new beginning.

The idea both thrilled and terrified her, so she pushed it aside and attacked the crème brûlées with the torch until their tops were almost black and the smell of butane permeated the air.

“How could you forget the sage?” Althea Munden rolled her eyes at her daughter Maria in exasperation.

Maria took yet another deep breath. She’d taken a lot of them since they’d gotten out of bed that morning. So much for the joy of Christmas Day.

“I’m sorry, Mom. I’m sure if I run over to Vanderpool’s—”

“You think the grocery store is going to be open on Christmas?” Her mother’s pencil-thin eyebrows darted toward her hairline.

“I can’t be the only cook in Sweetgum who’s forgotten something. And I’m sure Mr. Vanderpool wouldn’t mind. It would just take a minute.”

As soon as she made this last statement, she realized her error. Mr. Vanderpool lived above his grocery store across the street from Munden’s Five-and-Dime. Now that Maria and her mother and sisters lived in the rooms above their store, too, they were in the same class as Mr. Vanderpool.

“Why don’t you just open the window and call across the street?” her mother said with a sniff. “Now that we live above the store, we might as well act like it.”

Maria grabbed her wallet from the kitchen counter and a jacket from the hook by the door. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“C’mon, Mom.” Daphne intervened. “We can start on the pecan pie while Maria’s gone.”

Stephanie, as usual, was still asleep in the other room with her comforter pulled over her head to drown out the