Little Matchmakers

Plain Vanilla had been the straw that broke the camel’s back.

It had almost broken hers.

Four customers were parked below the shop—not bad, for midday on a Thursday. Nothing about Plain Vanilla was fancy. The building had shake-shingle siding, with a long overhang for a traditional country-style porch. Unless a serious storm threatened, the double screen doors were kept open and welcoming. Pots of herbs and flowers added color.

The parking lot was known to get a little weedy, but she could already inhale the scents emanating from the shop. Basil and chives. Lavender and vanilla. Scents hung low in this tuck of valley. So, of course, did the heat.

Her bungalow was invisible from here, behind the shop, but to the right stretched open ground—the hodgepodge of raised beds and climate-controlled greenhouses where she grew her own herbs and spices. Two years ago, she—and the bank—had added horizontal blinds that could be opened or closed, to protect the plants from too much sun.

Except for the fancy blinds, she’d made everything herself. There’d never been money for professionals … but she’d had two staff from the start, primarily because she couldn’t work 24-hour days and handle Petie, especially when he’d been little.

And from inside the shop, she suddenly heard two women’s voices … and suspected her son had tattled about her being hurt, because two bodies hightailed down the porch steps faster than she could run for cover.

Mary Lou was somewhere between fifty-five and ninety-five, tougher than beef jerky, and looked it. Her health was precarious, not that she’d admit it. Garnet had “discovered her” five years ago, when Mary Lou had shown up at the back door, fixed her with a scissor-sharp scowl, said her husband was dead, she was bored out of her skull, and she needed to work, no wages needed, just a job.

Garnet had hired her and never looked back. If a thief ever came around, Mary Lou would probably scare him to death, and heaven knew she was a worker.

“Garnet! Peter said you were hurt! Who did what to you, you tell me right now!”

“It was just a couple of bumps, absolutely nothing.”

Mary Lou frowned, but then immediately went off on her own bumps that day. “Well, this morning was a blinger. First off, the postman forgot to leave me stamps and I was going to pay bills. Then Georgia Cunningham, she came in, bought fifty dollars’ worth of all kinds of things, put two twenties on the counter and left. Just like that. I was going to call the police, but then I thought I’d wait until you got home. But I think she should spend the night in jail, myself. Ten dollars! She cheated us of ten dollars! I never …”

Then it was Sally, striding right behind her. “Peter said there was a man who knocked you down—”

“It was a complete accident. No biggie. What’s wrong?”

Sally had dark caramel skin, hair done in dreads and a perpetual frown that did a great job of concealing a gorgeous face. She had two kids and a no-good husband. She worked like a fiend, loved the plants as much as Garnet did and could stand up for herself anywhere she needed to—except at home.

Garnet could tell when her jerk-water husband had done something because Sally’s hands would start jittering; she couldn’t stand still.

“I got a rash on the lavender.”

“Which one?”

“The French blue. They’re just speckles on the leaves, but they weren’t there yesterday. I’ve been trying to look it up. We don’t want it spreading. But you know me and reading those stupid manuals—”

“I know. It’s okay. We’ll go check it out.”

And that was how it went, one crisis after another all afternoon. Early on, she hustled home to talk to Pete—and to make sure he’d had lunch. But of course, being Petie, he’d made himself a sandwich, cleaned up and naturally parked in front of his computer … a water-cooled system that he’d put together himself last Christmas.

She ruffled his mop of brown hair—hair so luxuriously thick she was jealous of it. He was scrunched up in his computer chair, imitating a human pretzel. “Hey. I didn’t get a chance to tell you what Mrs. Riddle had to say.”

“Not now, Mom. I’m at level four.”

“Okay. We can talk about it later, I guess.” She hesitated. “Mr. MacKinnon’s coming over for a little while after dinner.”

“You mean Will’s dad? That Mr. MacKinnon?”

“Yes.”

“Is Will coming over, too?”

“I don’t know. He might.”

Okay. Whatever.”

No “why” or “what for?” He didn’t care. He pushed his glasses higher on his nose, then bent his head to the game again. She couldn’t resist giving him a fast smooch on his forehead. Now that he was ten, she had to steal kisses, kidnap hugs.

“Mom. I’m creating an alternate universe right now. It’s really hard.”

“Okay, okay.” She smiled … but the smile faded in seconds. This was exactly what Mrs. Riddle had implied. Petie was all too happy alone. Everything he loved had always been inside. He’d just never been the kind of kid to play outside, getting into scrapes and mud with playmates.

So, she told herself there was no reason to get nervous about Tucker stopping by. It was a good idea. Single parents had problems that two-parent families just didn’t have. As different as their sons were, it’d be nice to talk to someone else who lived with a ten-year-old. It wasn’t like a personal meeting. Or a date. Or anything remotely like that.

She couldn’t imagine Tucker looking at her that way.

The women in her family were bred to be hothouse Southern belles, Charleston style, women who could do the debutante thing and have dinner for forty—with fresh flowers and crystal—prepared in an hour’s notice. Garnet wasn’t adopted, although when she was eleven, she’d checked to make sure. Something had gone wrong, anyway. Her sisters and mom—even her grandmother—had gracious beauty and poise without even trying.

She’d been born plain vanilla. Always had been, always would be.

The point, though, was that she never got back in the house until nearly six. She’d wanted a shower and clean clothes and a major spiff-up before Tucker got there. Instead, life just kept interfering. Sally needed help with updating Plain Vanilla’s website and Facebook page, which Garnet loved on a par with triple taxes and bee stings. And then Mary Lou cornered her in the backroom, where new herb and spice recipes needed a taste test and review.

By the time Garnet finally charged back home, Petie had made dinner—peanut butter and banana sandwiches, one of his specialties, followed by fresh brownies. Brownies were one of Petie’s favorite creations. This time he’d added raspberries, blueberries and marshmallows. She never knew what he was going to put in next.

“Hey, I’d have made you dinner,” she told him.

“Yeah, well, you were busy and I was starving for peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Mom …”

“What?”

“You know that crazy-looking cat that’s been around for the last week or so?”

“The black-and-orange-and-white one?”

“Yeah. I think she’s pregnant, because I saw her on the window sill about an hour ago, and her stomach was, like, huge.”

“No,” Garnet said.

“I never asked you anything.”

“You were going to.”

Petie shot her a look, one of his most endearing. “I understand why you said no. You have to feel like you’re the one in charge. We’ll talk about it later.”

She chased after him with a dish towel. “Sometimes you sound older than Methuselah.”

“Just because I’m smarter than you?”