The Red Hat Society's Acting Their Age by Regina Hale Sutherland Page B

ways around that.” Leanne left the table and walked over to her. “When I was your age, I made most of my outfits. Sometimes I even took hand-me-downs and reworked them.” Facing Rachel, she zipped up the coat, reached around her and pulled the extra fabric together in back so that it fit her body more snugly. “A little nip here, a tuck there . . . I could make it my own design.”
    Rachel gazed up at her. “Did your mother teach you?”
    Still holding the coat in place at Rachel’s back, Leanne leaned away to take a look at her handiwork. “No, my mother died when I was eight.”
    Warmth spread through Mia as she watched them together. She saw their gazes meet briefly before Leanne averted her eyes.
    “I learned to sew in a homemaking class I took in junior high,” Leanne said. She turned Rachel around, moved her slightly so that she could see herself again in the mirror over the buffet across the room.
    Though the shoulders were still too wide, the sleeves and hem too long, Rachel smiled at her image. “I don’t have a sewing machine,” she said, running her hand across the fur lapel.
    Aggie sat forward. “I have an old one I never use. You’d be welcome to it.”
    “Who’d teach me to sew?”
    “Leanne could teach you.”
    Leanne let go of the coat and scowled at Aggie.
    Aggie seemed not to notice. “The machine’s portable. I could bring it over here tomorrow and you could give her a quick lesson, just to get her started.”
    “Would you?” Rachel blinked wide eyes at Leanne. “I want to make some halter tops for this summer. The older girls at my school? They wear them all the time when it’s hot. Not to school, though. They’re not allowed. But to movies and stuff. They look like they’d be really easy to make.”
    “I don’t know, Rachel.” Leanne returned to the table, her back to the girl. “It’ll depend on what happens tomorrow.”
    The excitement in Rachel’s face disappeared. She slipped the coat off and carried it back to the chair. “You mean, it’ll depend if you tell the sheriff about me or not.” She turned and ran from the room.
    “Rachel—” Mia pushed back her chair and stood.
    Aggie touched her arm. “Let her go. That was my fault.”
    Leaning against the table, Leanne sighed. “What were you thinking, Ag?”
    “I wasn’t. It’s just so much fun having a young girl around. I suppose I was wishing she
could
stay. She makes me think of my granddaughters.”
    A sense of helplessness swept through Mia. “So what are we going to do?”
    “Don’t look at me,” Leanne said. “I’m more confused than ever.”
    “Maybe we should just sleep on it tonight.” Aggie began gathering the teacups. “Surely the answers will be clear to us in the morning.”
    Two hours later, Aggie carried a couple of bowls of chili to the kitchen table where Roy sat reading the newspaper. Mia had the right idea at lunch, Aggie thought. It was chili weather. Cold, snowy and gray. Aggie had passed up the chili Mia made for Rachel’s lunch, since she had consumed two sweet rolls, a carton of yogurt, and an apple that morning. But now, after the close call with Cade followed by Rachel’s emotional scene, she was in dire need of some stress relief. Nothing worked better for that than a big ol’ pot of Texas comfort food.
    Besides that, chili was Roy’s favorite, and she wanted him in a good mood when she told him the idea she’d come up with on the way home from Mia’s house. When it came to convincing Roy of anything, she knew to lay her groundwork first then ease into it.
    She set Roy’s bowl in front of him, put hers at the place beside him then went to take a pan of cornbread from the oven.
    Roy folded the section of paper containing the evening television programming and tossed it aside. “We might as well just throw the set out the window,” he rumbled. “Not a damn thing worth watching these days. Nothing on but that reality crap. If eatin’ worms and runnin’ races half