Bluegrass Hero

“No, not that kind of serious. It’s more like somethin’ hard. Or you may think it’s hard. But a good kind of hard, I’d say.”

Emily planted her hands on the table. “Sandy, out with it.”

“They were asking for names for the Character Day speech up at the high school. I told them I’d ask you.”

“Me? Give a speech at Character Day? That’s hero stuff. Not my kind of thing. Why on earth did you tell them you’d ask me?”

Sandy leaned in and took one of Emily’s hands. “Because the topic is ‘Standing Up for What’s Right.’ And the quote they’re using is the one about how the only thing evil needs to prevail is for good men to do nothin.’ And that, sugar, is your kind of thing.”

Emily pulled back. “No. I’m not ready to do that.”

“I wish you wouldn’t turn it down so quickly. I think it’s time for you to raise your voice. It’s not like everybody don’t already know what happened to Ash. Most everyone would know why you were there. How many other people have had something tragic like that happen because the one person around to stop it wouldn’t? There ain’t nobody in Middleburg with a more powerful story on that subject than you.”

“That’s just it. Everybody already does know—they don’t need to hear it from me.”

“Maybe not, but I think you need to say it. How long has it been now, four years? You’ve never spoken up. You hardly ever talk about Ash’s murder and how it affected you. You think we don’t see how it hurt you? When they stopped looking for that one witness, don’t you think we felt it alongside you? There’s a whole town waiting to let you back into life, Emily. But you gotta come out when we open the door.”

“Sandy, no.” Emily pushed away her lunch, her appetite gone.

“Look, I know it’ll be hard. I know what I’m askin’. But I think you’d give such a powerful talk that none of those kids would ever forget it. And maybe, just maybe, one of ’em will find themselves in a situation of having to take a stand like that, and they’ll step up because they remember you.” Sandy blinked back a gathering tear. “You know, I can think of no finer tribute to Ash. He’d’ve done it if it were him.”

“He’s not here.” Emily fought the lump in her throat.

“So be here for him. And for you.” She grabbed both of Emily’s hands. “Just tell me you’ll think about. Don’t say no till you’ve thought about it and prayed about it. Okay?”

Emily gave in. Refusing Sandy Burnside just wasn’t something the average person could do.

Chapter Four

Monday night, Emily spread her two problems out before her on the living-room floor.

On the one side was the stack of three scrapbooks that held clippings from all of Ash’s memorial services, obituary notices, newspaper articles and the dozens of cards that had been sent to her after his passing. All the paper accounts made it sound so clean, so clinical. “Search for Known Witness Continues.” “Montague Case Closed.” “Scholarship Fund Established at Middleburg High.” She could scan those with an odd detachment. Keep them contained like the clippings held in place by those little black photo corners. It was the real-life details—the taxi receipt he had in his pocket that night, the box of tuning equipment that she kept in her garage, his shirts that hung in the back of her closet, the wedding ring the funeral director insisted she keep even though she wanted to bury it with Ash—it was those things that always did her in. They wouldn’t contain themselves neatly in her scrapbooks. Instead, they spilled out, reminding her how messy her life had felt since Ash’s loss. While she’d taken a strange comfort in compiling and organizing the scrapbooks, she couldn’t seem to cope with those details. They remained loose ends she couldn’t tie off.

Othello, Emily’s enormous orange cat, wandered in to inspect the scrapbooks, padding at the corner of one page with a round butterscotch paw. “Do you miss him, Othello?” Emily ran her hand down the cat’s smooth back. Othello had been a gift from Ash on their first Valentine’s Day as a married couple. She was expecting something big—Ash was an incurable romantic, and she was the envy of many women when he went his usual all-out for Valentine’s Day. When he arrived at the house with a single basket, she wasn’t sure what to think.

Until the basket said, “Meow.”

Ash was a dog person to Emily’s cat person. They’d gone round a few times about whether or not they could ever agree on a pet and come to no good compromise. “Otto,” as his ratty old collar had identified him, had wandered into the orchestra hall over the weekend while Ash was in the city, and somehow formed an attachment to Ash. No owner could be found during the week Ash was working on the orchestra pianos and the cat persisted in hanging around. The cat just plain wore him down, as Ash always put it. When it came time to head back to Middleburg, it was clear that Otto was coming along. And so it was that Otto became the most loving Valentine Ash had ever given her. It seemed such a grand and romantic gesture that Emily felt Otto deserved a name with more distinction, and Otto became Othello.

He’d wandered the house restlessly for days when Ash died. He’d never done that when Ash was away on trips, but somehow the cat had known Ash was gone for good. It broke Emily’s heart to watch Othello sit on the back of the couch and look for Ash’s truck to come up the street.

“I miss him, too, boy. I think he’d know what to do about all this.”

On the other side of the living-room rug lay problem number two: all of the Edmundson’s soaps. It was easier to look at the soaps. They’d stirred up a lot of mess for something that was supposed to clean. The bars weren’t even that attractive—unwrapped, they were lumpy, inconsistent rectangles Emily doubted she’d have even noticed on a shop counter if it weren’t for their intriguing scents.

Love. Joy. Peace. Patience. Goodness. Gentleness. Faithfulness. Kindness. And self-control. They were all here, all with distinct scents that matched their labels with surprising accuracy. How had the Edmundsons created the scent of patience? She had no idea, but they had. It was the Patience Soap that had caught her eye at the craft expo. Not only because of the scent, but because “patience” was such a curious thing to name a soap.

The other thing about the Edmundsons that drew Emily in was their exuberant faith. No one before that unusual couple could have convinced her that faith could be linked to soap. They were living examples of the Bible verse that talked about doing whatever you do as unto the Lord. To them, it made perfect sense to put their faith into their soap business. Which made it easier for her to embrace putting her faith into her bath-shop business. To Emily, they weren’t just vendors, they were inspirations—purple turtle soaps aside, of course.

Emily had jumped at this chance to display her faith in the shop, buying the entire line. It was brilliant that each soap had its own Bible verse printed on the inside of the label. She’d have bought twice as many boxes if she could have afforded it.

But she’d not bought the Pirate Soap. No, the Edmundsons had thrown that box in as a bonus for her big order.

Some gift. That soap was more bother than bonus.

She picked up a bar of Pirate Soap and tried again to figure out its distinctive smell. Citrus, with spice and something botanical like sage or thyme. They had a bit of texture in them, and they were too rough for a woman to use. But to a woman, they smelled very…compelling.

Compelling? This from a very articulate woman in the field of scent? Emily was accustomed to identifying and recommending scents easily. To knowing what scent to use where. It bugged her that this Pirate Soap wouldn’t sort itself out in her brain, that she couldn’t pick out exactly what she smelled and why she liked it. She used scents all the time in her home and at the shop, and she’d been sensitive to them her whole life. Her father had been a real estate broker, and she remembered him putting vanilla extract on the light bulbs in a home for sale, because it gave off the faint aroma of baking. And baking always smelled like home. Scents could calm or enliven. Scents could trigger memory or emotion as easily—perhaps more easily—as words.

But scent did not answer prayers or build character or make Ethan Travers instantly attractive.

So why did someone like Gil Sorrent get all hyped up about it? He forbade her to sell the soap to his employees. She found that highly irritating, even if she did somewhat understand his motives. His guys were young, granted, but they were adults capable of making their own decisions. Even if Gil felt them to be poor ones. These men were eager to be her customers, and unconventional as they were, she didn’t think she could afford to refuse their business.

Lord, I need a way to know if I can give that speech. I’ve also got to find a way sell the soaps but not tick off Gil Sorrent. She sat cross-legged in pajamas on her living-room rug and pondered. She made lists, charts, pro and con tables and generally paced around until at least one of the solutions came to her.

Sell, don’t scalp. Of course.

That was the solution: Sell Lord Edmund’s Pirate Soap, but don’t scalp it. Sell for the same price as all the other Edmundson soaps. If men were rushing into her shop to buy soap, then they would get a fair deal, and the clear explanation that they would get nothing from the transaction except clean. It was, after all, the easiest antidote to the uproar: Soap that did nothing would kill the rumors about its wonder-working properties. Men liked hard evidence, Ash had always said. Well, she had thirteen bars of hard evidence, and they were going to do their job. Even Barbie Jean Blabbermouth couldn’t override good, hard evidence.

Then maybe, she mused, I can get a few of them to go home with a second bar of some other soap. Herbal hand cleaner, I’ll call it. Emily grabbed her notebook, drew up a plan and packed everything up before going to bed. The soap matter, at least, felt sufficiently resolved.

As for the speech, well, that would have to wait until another day.

Tuesday morning, Emily remembered her pledge to have a second cup of coffee, ensuring she was wide awake before she began her morning tradition of praying over her to-do list. She and God walked through her schedule and her task list, and she asked for help with the challenges of the day. It was an especially nice day for January, clear and crisp with invigorating morning sunshine. Emily opened up a bar of Edmundson’s Joy Soap for her own personal use. It had a pleasant, lemony scent cut with verbena and another floral essence she couldn’t identify. True to its name, it was a happy soap. A high-quality soap, too. The Edmundsons had achieved a lush, silky soap at a price that suited her shop and her clientele.

“With more sales like that I can save enough to take out an ad next month,” she told Othello as she scratched him behind the ears at breakfast. “I bet I can even draw up an annual marketing plan. Love soaps for Valentine’s Day. Faithfulness for anniversaries. Kindness soap as a thank you gift. Peace for Christmas. I could put a card in the gift wrap with the verse from Galatians.” Othello blinked. “Then, if it works out, I could give a special price for the eight-bar set—it’d make a great confirmation or baptism gift, wouldn’t it?” The possibilities spread themselves out before her.

Othello wound his way around her legs and stared up at her with his round yellow eyes. Sounds brilliant to me, he seemed to say.

“I’ll let you know how my plan works out at dinner, Othello. Maybe we’ll have to celebrate a successful day.”

This plan really seems brilliant, she thought as she walked to work, enjoying the beautiful day.

And then she turned the corner onto Ballad Road and saw the line. A dozen or so men stood waiting outside West of Paris. Emily’s beady-eyed top customer defending his spot at the very front of the bunch.

The Homestretch Farm workers: her newest, unlikeliest patrons. Those young men looked every bit the hard cases she’d heard they were. Some people said every one of them had had a criminal record before his sixteenth birthday. Every spring when the new hands came onto the farm, the town quietly held its breath because they looked like such a crop of miscreants. They seemed to look tougher and meaner every year. Emily was afraid of half of them, quite honestly, even though she felt bad for feeling that way.

She’d been against the farm when it had first opened three years ago. It seemed like far too big a risk for so small a town. However, Sorrent’s farm hadn’t given Middleburg much trouble. He’d kept it under tight control and even joined the town council. There had been very few complaints.

But that was before this morning. Emily wasn’t sure she was ready to get so friendly with Homestretch’s questionable residents. Still, she told herself as she walked up the street to her shop, they look no meaner than a banker would look foreclosing on your loan. Smile, and remember how long it’s been since you made a dozen sales before eleven.

She clutched the plan in her basket of work papers and reminded herself she’d come up with a brilliant solution. If she could just stick to it and hold her ground with these men, her problem would be solved before noon and the whole absurd episode of Lord Edmund’s Pirate Soap would be over by day’s end with nothing but clean men to show for it.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” she said as the bodies split into a human hedge leading up to her door.

The Latin-looking one—the one with the silky voice who had winked at her the other day—winked again. “Morning, Miss Montague,” he said.

“No work today?” She turned the key in the lock and heard their feet behind her. She wanted to ask, “Does Mr. Sorrent know you’re here?” but couldn’t bring herself to do it. Of course Sorrent knew they were here. He knew where they were every second of every day.