Page 27 of The Wrong Track

“No, I meant that you’re just going to trust me to make things for you? To give me this expensive material?” I rubbed a velvet jacquard between my fingers as I said it. I bet it went for several hundred dollars a yard and there were at least ten on this bolt.

“I saw samples of your work when I visited Tobin. The pattern-matching was perfect and your seams just disappear! And I’ve never seen someone set a zipper quite like that, but I’m going to ask for it from everyone now.”

“Really? Thank you,” I said. “I just threw those together because his couch looked so bare. I’ve been wanting to do other things for Tobin’s house.”

“Oh, me too! Tell me your ideas.” We ended up sitting back down to discuss and were only interrupted by twenty or so texts and calls from her kids and two from the babysitter who had temporarily lost one of her charges. And then Annie did insist on carrying everything to the car for me and hugged me goodbye like we were old friends.

“What is all that? Put it down,” Tobin ordered when I carried the fabric into his house.

“This is from Annie, your cousin.” I gratefully set everything on the table. “She has a ton for me to do.”

“You seem happy about that,” he said, and smiled at me.

“It will keep me occupied until I leave,” I answered. “But Annie needs more help than just pillows and cushions. She needs an assistant. Don’t you have another cousin to take that on?”

“I’m sure she’s asking around.” He stretched. “I’ve been organizing files all morning.” And he looked absolutely mournful about that, enough that I half-smiled at him. “Let’s go do something this afternoon.”

I glanced through the kitchen window at the hard, blue sky. I’d been thinking I would start some of these sewing projects and stay in, out of the cold. “What did you want to do?”

“Do you have any plans?”

Yes, well, I was supposed to and I looked at him suspiciously. I had another doctor’s appointment scheduled for today but I’d already decided that I would skip it. I’d tried to ignore it, actually, but Hazel had been calling a lot and I knew it was to give me reminders. I was sure she would pop by this afternoon to check on how things had gone, and she must have told him about it, too. Was this a trick to get me to go?

But Tobin’s face looked totally open, innocent. “What?” he asked me when I only stared at him. “Are you doing something secret?”

“No. I have an appointment.”

“Where?”

I gave him the address, not the name of the office, and he nodded. “That’s right by the logging museum. I haven’t been there in years.”

“The…excuse me?”

“The timber industry was huge in northern Michigan. That’s how my family got its start,” he explained. “It’s really interesting.”

I thought I would take his word for it.

“After we go to your appointment, we can go to the museum and I’ll show you,” Tobin continued.

“What?”

“I really need to get out of this house for a while,” he said. “You don’t mind, right?”

Well, I was living for free here to help him, so was I allowed to mind? “You’ll have to stay outside. I mean, you can’t come into the appointment with me,” I warned.

“Yeah, sure,” he answered, unconcerned. “What time do we have to leave?”

It was better to drive Tobin’s car. It was easier for him to get into since it was lower and it was a lot less stressful for me because it was old and I was less worried about hurting it. And also, he hated the car that Hazel’s boyfriend had loaned to me. He didn’t even like to look at it, so riding in it was out of the question.

As we headed to the medical building, he told me stories about his first accident while driving, how he’d thought he was in reverse but…no. “I slammed into my mom’s car. Hard.” He winced. “Really hard. I didn’t quite get the idea of easing into acceleration.”

“Was she mad?”

“She made me work off the damage. I didn’t have money of my own for about two years. Very, very sad,” he told me. “Go on, feign some sympathy.”

“Poor you.”

“That just didn’t have the ring of truth,” he commented. “Did you ever get into an accident?”