Last Chance Book Club(33)
Author: Hope Ramsay

“Teach me? About what?”

“About the thing God put you here to do.”

Savannah stared down at her knitting. “Obviously it’s not to knit you a sweater.”

“Obviously,” Miriam said. “But there’s something to matching people up that’s almost like knitting a community together. You know?”

“No, I don’t, but I have this feeling I’m going to learn.”

“So what do you think, Miriam, will Bill ever realize that he and Jenny Carpenter are a match made in Heaven?” Pat asked.

Miriam pressed her hand onto Savannah’s knee before she spoke. “Well, I don’t know,” the old woman said. “You know I only get the vaguest notions of what a person should be looking for. But then again, I think that’s good. It doesn’t limit his possibilities. There are so many good cooks in Allenberg.”

Savannah stared at her aunt. Miriam was lying through her teeth and no one realized it. Miriam knew exactly who was the right person for Bill, and she’d been pulling that string for a long time.

“All I know is that Jenny isn’t happy about Bill’s car being parked in Hettie’s driveway three nights a week,” Kenzie said.

“Well,” Lola May replied, “I wouldn’t put too much in that. After all, she’s the treasurer of the Christ Church building fund, and he’s the pastor over there. And I’m sure he’s just there because of Violet’s cooking.”

“Yeah, but three nights a week?” Kenzie asked, as she furiously worked on the Fair Isle sweater vest she’d told everyone she was making for her sister in Milwaukee. Kenzie didn’t need knitting lessons. She was knitting with two colors, holding yarn in both hands, and her needles were flying as she talked. “It makes him seem like a food moocher or something. He ought to be allowing the good single cooks of Allenberg County to cook for him. Not putting so much extra work on Violet’s shoulders.”

“Of course, Hettie could always learn to cook,” Savannah said as she laboriously picked up stitches in her much-reduced project.

“Ha, that’s a laugh,” Pat said. “Miriam, you remember that time Hettie brought Toll House cookies she baked herself to the Christmas Bazaar? I swear that woman put salt in those cookies instead of sugar. It was pitiful.”

“Oh, my God, look at the theater.” Kenzie stood up. “Oh my God. Oh my God, Pat call the fire department.”

Savannah dropped her knitting, stood up, and looked through the windows.

Across Palmetto Avenue, a big, black cloud of smoke billowed up into the dark April sky from the back of the theater. She stood transfixed for the longest moment before she remembered Maverick.

The poor cat was trapped. She grabbed her keys from her purse and rushed from the yarn store, heedless of the women trying to stop her.

She tore across the street just as the sirens for the volunteer fire department sounded. She reached the door, only to find that it was unlocked.

The contractors left it unlocked?

She pulled open the doors and dashed inside calling Maverick’s name. Flames and heat came from the auditorium, but the smoke was so thick and the night so dark that she was blinded almost immediately. And the damn cat was as black as the smoke.

She screamed Maverick’s name, over and over again, but the cat was nowhere. And the fire was consuming what was left of Granddaddy’s theater.

Everything she wanted, everything she had ever dreamed of, all of her most precious memories, and her cat, were going up in smoke.

Dash sat in the bleachers of the Davis High gymnasium watching Red Canaday put Todd through a battery of fitness tests.

The boy had done surprisingly well, considering his general lack of fitness. He’d scored high on eye-hand coordination. He had quickness side-to-side, even if he wasn’t the fastest runner alive. He had great hands. Dash could see the gleam in Red’s eyes. With a good fitness program, Todd could develop into an excellent athlete.

And no one knew better than Dash how important athletics could be to a kid who needed to blow off steam. Uncle Earnest had understood that. And Dash would be forever thankful that his uncle by marriage had signed him up for Little League all those years ago.

Dash was just climbing down from his perch when the volunteer fire department siren sounded. At the same time, both Red’s and Dash’s cell phones started to beep. Dash pulled his iPhone from his pocket. He read the message as a dose of adrenaline hit his system.

“C’mon, Todd, we gotta go.”

“What is it?”

“The Kismet. It’s on fire.”

The next five minutes were a blur. Davis High wasn’t all that far from downtown Last Chance, but it was too far to run. So all three of them piled into Dash’s Caddy. They made it to the scene just about the same time as the Last Chance fire truck, the Last Chance police chief, and the Allenberg sheriff, who had probably been home with his wife and kids when the siren sounded.

Red’s wife, Pat, and her knitting class, including Aunt Mim, stood on the sidewalk across the street from the theater. Dash swept his gaze over them as he dragged Todd in their direction.

“Where’s Savannah?”

“She went into the theater to save Maverick.”

Todd made a funny strangled noise that might have broken Dash’s heart if his heart hadn’t suddenly started ricocheting around his rib cage.

“Don’t you worry. She’s going to be okay.” He ran toward the theater, heedless of the shouts from the fire chief or anyone else who was organizing the effort to fight the fire.

His only goal was to find that idiotic woman who thought—

Zeph Gibbs emerged from the building, smoke billowing around him. He had Savannah and that damned cat in his arms.

Savannah’s face was black but her eyes were open. She was hugging that stupid cat like it meant the world to her.

Zeph stopped in front of him. “Here you go, Mr. Dash. Safe and sound.” He handed Savannah off.

She felt right in his arms. His little sooty princess. She wasn’t too light or too heavy. She was conscious. She was alive. His heart could slow down now. But for some reason, his pulse continued to race.

“I’m okay,” she said in a smoke-roughened voice. “You can put me down.”

He ignored her and called over his shoulder to the Allenberg County sheriff. “Stone, I need EMTs, now!”

The sheriff replied, “Already called. They’ll be here in a minute.”

“I don’t need—” The rest of Savannah’s words were lost in a coughing fit. The cat seemed unusually subdued.

“I think we need the vet, too,” he yelled.

“I’m on it,” Sheriff Rhodes said, and Dash had every reason to believe it.

A moment later, a couple of EMTs from the Allenberg County Fire Department, which had also arrived on the scene, came running over with an oxygen tank.

“We’ll take her,” one of them said, but Dash wasn’t about to let her go.

“No, I’ve got her. Just strap on the oxygen.”

“Dash, we need to figure out if she needs to go to the hospital.”

“I’m okay,” she said, her voice sounding ragged. She had turned to look at The Kismet. The fire had engulfed most of the auditorium.

The EMT strapped on an oxygen mask just as big fat crocodile tears filled her eyes and spilled down her sooty cheeks. The tears left white tracks across her face. It broke his heart to watch her as she watched The Kismet burn.

A moment later Charlene Polk, one of the docs at the Last Chance veterinary clinic, showed up. She took Maverick.

“We’ll just take him down to the clinic for observation. Smoke is dangerous for cats, too.”

Savannah reluctantly let go of the cat. And Maverick let forth a howl when they were separated. But it was all for the best. At least that’s what the EMTs said when they forced Dash to put Savannah down on the back step of their van while they checked her over.

Todd and Aunt Mim came over.

“I’m okay,” she said again, her voice shaky as she reached out for Todd.

The boy came into her arms. “Mom, I was so scared when they said you were inside.”

“I’m okay,” she said again, as if she were trying to convince herself of it. Dash turned away.

The combined fire departments of Last Chance and Allenberg County already had the blaze under control. The Kismet’s magnificent auditorium, with its painted-sky ceiling, was a total loss. But the front part of the theater, the minaret, and the marquee might be salvageable.

One thing was certain, though: The price tag for this project had just gone right through the roof, quite literally.

Still, a building could always be replaced. People couldn’t.

He turned back toward Savannah. “Don’t you ever do anything stupid like that again, do you hear me?” His voice came out louder than he meant it to.

“Dash, calm—”

“You hear me,” he said again, as a wellspring of emotion bubbled right out of him. He didn’t even know where it came from, just that it seized him by the throat and wouldn’t let go. It hurt so bad. It was like all the bad things that had ever happened in his life all at once, starting with his mother leaving, and his grandma dying, and his daddy never being around, and Gramps being hard on him, and Uncle Earnest…

He got that far and lost it. Tears filled his eyes, and he couldn’t breathe. It was like the smoke got into his head and he couldn’t think.

He blinked away the water. “Don’t you ever do anything like that again. I couldn’t bear it if something happened to you. You hear me?”

She stared up at him utterly surprised. And he realized right then that he’d made a stupid, stupid, stupid mistake that he might never recover from. He’d just told her how he felt about her. And now she was going to leave him.

And he could take just about anything but Savannah pulling up stakes and leaving town.

He couldn’t stand here with everyone looking at him. So he turned and ran through the crowd to his Caddy. He fired it up and took off down the road.

There were bars up in Orangeburg. He could go up there where no one knew him.

He needed a drink. Bad.

Chapter 16

Savannah ripped the oxygen mask off her face and shook off the hands of the EMTs. “I’m fine.”

She stood up and gave Todd a big hug. “I gotta go get Dash before he does something even stupider than I did.”

Her son looked wide-eyed and scared. He nodded.

“Don’t worry. I’ll bring him back. He just got upset because of the theater.”

“Here, honey, you take my car.” Molly dangled a set of keys in her direction. “It’s way faster than your POS Honda.” She grinned. “Oh, and Momma sent you these.” She handed over a small package of Handi Wipes. “Your face is all black.”

“Any idea of where he went?”

“He headed off toward Route 70. You’ll have to drive like the wind to catch him, though.”

Molly pressed Savannah’s purse into her hands. “If you’re lucky, the cops will pull him over for speeding.” She dragged Savannah off to the parking lot behind The Knit & Stitch.