Free Miss Scarlet's School of Patternless Sewing by KATHY CANO-MURILLO

pay you a rental fee. Oh my gosh, I’m so happy—Marco, I’m indebted forever!”
    He shook his head no. “Don’t worry about renting it. We’ll work it out.”
    Scarlet scratched the big red hair-sprayed curl that sprouted from the top of her head. “Why are you doing all this?”
    “Because I can tell you know exactly what you want,” he said. “And I know what it’s like to be the underdog of the family. This is your life, not theirs. Don’t ever lose sight of that.”
    Scarlet meant to thank him with a polite hug, but because she was so short, and he so tall, her face landed in the center of his chest. He didn’t know what to do with his hands, so he patted her shoulders.
    As she felt the fabric of his shirt against her cheek, she wondered if perhaps… maybe… they had more in common than either of them thought.

5
     

     
    T he Monday after Thanksgiving arrived. Hadley and Mary Theresa still hadn’t gotten past the trauma of the record-breaking incident.
    All this grief over music,
she thought.
How immature of her husband.
Sure they had a list of conflicts to resolve, but acting like a selfish teen wouldn’t help. The worst part was that the holiday season was in full swing, which meant family events at every turn. Mary Theresa refused to let on about their marital mishaps and therefore would pretend her home life was as endearing as the Cosbys’.
    She had never been more grateful for her office job—a haven from the emotional carnage of home. The thirty-minute commute allowed her to peacefully separate her personal business from professional. She knew that people who mixed the two were in for a world of migraines.
    Maybe Hadley didn’t appreciate her qualities, but her superiors at Deltran Computronics Corporation did. Once her Easy Spirit pumps hit the carpet in her corner office, she ruled. No one dared to question or doubt her reasoning and experience. As a team leader, she squeezed the maximum amount of energy out of her staff, and to date had set the highest productivity rate in the company’s history.
    Her current challenge involved informing her crew that December did not translate into party month. Mary Theresa grew up as a God-fearing Catholic. She embraced the true essence of Christmas and blocked herself from insipid cover songs and tacky, dollar-store garlands like the kind that hung about the office. What really irked her were the heart-clogging snacks. She wondered who in the name of Baby Jesus thought of the idea of stuffing a Hershey’s Kiss inside a peanut butter cookie? Pure gluttony.
    Every day her team paraded in with green-cellophane-covered paper plates and set them at the corner of their desks. And every hour, her staff strolled from cubicle to cubicle to nibble. They knew full well it was against policy to commune outside the designated nondenominational company Holiday Hoopla, which was the third Friday of December. From her assistant to her lead programmer, they gnawed on candy canes at what seemed like every opportunity.
    The disrespect appalled her. So the previous week, she kept track of who left their desks to eat holiday goodies—and then she wrote them up. Each employee who broke the rule would be greeted with a yellow insubordination slip. “Discipline is a means to an end” is what her parents always told her.
    However, that morning, Mary Theresa had broken her own rule and spent her brainpower on Hadley, not work. Her conclusion was, as usual, to be the bigger person and apologize. Crediting the debit would be as simple as buying him a new record album—so she thought. After a bit of research, she learned that the Coltrane record was only available on CD. The album version had become a collectable. No wonder he stormed out that night. Frantic about the crack in her plan, she spent the morning on the phone until she hunted down an authentic copy at a small Glendale record shop.
    Her lunch hour turned into a game of Beat the Clock as she weaved in and out of