“What’s so wrong with Patrick Shellenberger now, Ellen?”
Grudgingly, her sister said, “Well, I guess he has improved some. He seems pretty stable, at least compared to how he always was. But, Abby, he’s still Patrick, and he’ll always be Patrick.” Shrewdly, she asked, “What does Rex think of this?”
“Rex doesn’t know,” Abby admitted.
“Aha. And if he knew…”
“He’d kill me.”
“No, more likely he’d kill Patrick, but it amounts to the same thing. His own brother doesn’t want you to marry him.”
“Yeah, well, it’s easy for all of you to say! It’s not like I have any choices! This town is not exactly crawling with other men I can date.”
“There are some perfectly nice men here! You just won’t look at them.”
Abby shot her sister an evil glare.
“Well, you won’t! You never have, not since…”
Abby glared at her again, daring her to say the name.
The sisters’ argument was interrupted by another woman’s voice.
“Mayor! Abby! Good morning!”
Both of them looked up in the direction of the chirping voice. It was the middle-aged owner of a local fabric store, and she was beaming down on them as if she had invented sunshine. “Isn’t this the most beautiful day?”
“I guess,” Abby said sourly, as she punched a petunia down into the dirt.
“Hi, Terianne,” Ellen said, with a quick smile. “you get through the storm okay?”
“I got through it just great,” the woman said. “Pretty flowers.”
Ellen gave her a closer look. “What’s up?” The fabric store owner was not normally known for having a bubbling personality. “You look as if you just inherited a million dollars. Did you win the lottery?”
The woman looked startled, and blushed. “Me? No, no.”
“Come on, you can tell us.” Ellen rested her wrists on the edge of the big flowerpot and squatted back on her cowboy boots, squinting up into the other woman’s round, happy face. “You won it, right?”
The woman laughed and looked even more flustered. But then she burst forth in an excited whisper. “Can you girls keep a secret?”
“Of course!” Ellen promised her, crossing her heart over her cowboy shirt.
“I just have to tell somebody, but I swore I wouldn’t, so you both have to promise you won’t.” She looked around, checking for eavesdroppers, and then sidled closer to them. “You really won’t tell?”
“Come on, Terianne, give,” Ellen urged.
“After the storm?” the woman said in a dramatic near-whisper. “You know how my front window got busted? And there was glass all over my front displays? I swear, Ellen, it was the last straw, it really was. I just wanted to give up. I thought I’d just sit down on the floor and cry.”
Ellen murmured something sympathetic, which Abby echoed.
The woman’s fabric store had been for sale for months now.
“Well, I was feeling so bad,” Terianne told them, “and I had a broom in my hand, and I was just standing there, sweeping up a little bit, and not feeling like doing even that much, when this man walks in the front door! He just walked in and volunteered to help me clean up! It was the nicest thing. A total stranger like that, just walking in and picking up a broom and offering to help. How often does that happen?”
“Uh huh,” the mayor encouraged her. “And then what happened?”
“Well, we got to talking while we worked, and I told him I was going to give up, just close the door, and lock it, and never come back. And do you know what he said, Ellen? He said, ‘Don’t do that. I’ll buy it.’”
Abby exclaimed, “He said what?”
“He said he’d buy my store!”
Abby’s mouth dropped open, but her sister’s eyes narrowed a bit.
The shop owner’s eyes gleamed with tears.
“And that’s what he did! I told him the sale price, and I warned him that it’s ‘As Is,’ because I can’t afford to fix anything, and he said that was fine, and he wrote me a check on the spot!”
Abby’s mouth dropped open a little more.
“My God, Terianne, that’s wonderful,” she said.
Ellen’s eyes only narrowed even more. She pursed her lips and said nothing.
“Ellen, didn’t you hear what I said? I sold my store! Somebody bought my store! Now I can start over!”
“Who?” Ellen demanded. “Who bought it, Terianne?”
That simple question produced the deepest blush yet in the other woman. “Well, I don’t exactly know his name.”
“You don’t know his name?” Using the big flowerpot, Ellen pushed and pulled herself to a standing position until she was eye to eye with the shop owner. “He bought your store and you don’t know his name? What’s the name on his check?”
Abby stared up at her sister, whose tone was uncharacteristically sharp. Ellen spoke bluntly to her own family, as Abby well knew, but when it came to the voters, she was usually as tactful as a politician had to be.
“It’s for a corporation, and I can’t read his signature.”
“Didn’t he introduce himself? Didn’t you ask?”
The other woman appeared embarrassed, but defensive.
“You don’t understand, it all happened so fast! The storm came and my store got damaged and I was just ready to give up. And then a miracle happened! A man walked in my door with a miracle. You just don’t question miracles, Ellen. He even bought my fixtures and everything in the store! All I have to do is sign over the title and then I can cash the check.”
“You don’t even know if his check is any good!”
“It will be, Ellen. I’m telling you, he’s a really nice man. I know it will be.”
“What does this guy look like?” Abby asked, suddenly very curious herself.
“Oh, he’s handsome! Tall, dark blond hair. And really nice eyes.”
A nauseating feeling of unease, a low dull feeling of dread, hit Abby’s chest when she realized the woman might have accurately described Mitch Newquist, the adult, all-grown-up Mitch Newquist.
Her own mouth clamped shut, but her sister snapped, “How old is this hero?”
“Maybe thirty-five, maybe forty.”
Abby forced herself to say something. “Do you remember what he was wearing?”
“Remember! I’ll never forget. He’s so good-looking.” The former fabric store owner smiled happily. “Or maybe he just seemed beautiful because he saved me.”
“What was he wearing, Terianne?” This time it was Abby who snapped at her and Ellen who glanced over at her sister.
“Wearing? He had on jeans, I think, and a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up.”
Mitch.
“You know why this has happened, don’t you?” the woman asked them.
“Because you hung on until it could?” Ellen replied sensibly.
“No.” The triumphant whisper turned reverential. “I was out at the grave over the weekend. I told the Virgin I was desperate for money. I told her I couldn’t survive if somebody didn’t buy my store. I asked her to help me. She brought that man to me. It’s a miracle.”
The sisters, one standing and the other still kneeling, on either side of the pot, went silent.
Finally, Ellen said, “Why is all this a secret, Terianne?”
“Because! He told me he wants to buy a lot of properties, Ellen! Isn’t that great? For the town, I mean. He said if word got around the prices would go up and he didn’t want other people to get more money for their property than I got for mine. Isn’t that wonderful of him? It’s going to be a miracle for the whole town, I can feel it, can’t you?”
“Yeah,” Ellen said in the same dark tone in which she had earlier referred to Patrick Shellenberger. “It’s unbelievable, all right.”