Free Wave Good-Bye by Lila Dare Page A

Atlanta while attending UGA, I’d lived in St. Elizabeth all my life…so far. Moving would mean saying good-bye to Vonda. I hadn’t particularly enjoyed the traffic and noise of Atlanta. I liked the fact I could get anywhere in St. Elizabeth that I needed to go in fifteen minutes. I’d heard about beltway traffic. Seen it with my own eyes a few times when I went up to visit Marty. The thought of driving in that mess made my heart pound and my mouth go dry.
    Mom was waiting for my answer.
    “What if I stay here? I mean, Marty and I have only been dating on weekends for four months. I’m not sure I want to make a commitment. I could still run the shop, right?”
    Her eyes filled with tears and her voice grew husky. “Grace Ann, hon, that’s what I’m telling you. There might not be a shop.”

Chapter Thirteen

WAS SHE REALLY PLANNING TO CLOSE THE DOORS ON Violetta’s? Or just decided to sell the house? Victorian homes like this had become increasingly fashionable, especially with young couples from Savannah, looking for a place in a small town. These houses were bringing top dollar, even in the tough economy. With business so slow, and liable to be this way for a long time, selling the house might be a good idea. We could always rent a space if she decided she wanted to stay in the beauty business.
    The question was…did Mom want to keep working? Or was she ready to call it quits?
    Suddenly, I saw everything differently, a bit like Dorothy did in The Wizard of Oz . The overstuffed shelves above Mom’s desk filled me with a new affection, as did thecrayon drawings by Owen and Logan that she’d pinned up on her bulletin board. On the thin carpet behind me was a yellow streak, leftover from a botched attempt to paint the office yellow, Mom’s favorite color next to periwinkle. I ran my hand over the seat cover on my chair, a quilted pad that a customer had created especially for Mom.
    Truth to tell, I couldn’t imagine a world without this shop. I’d grown up here listening to women talk about their lives while Mom shampooed their hair with lavender-scented suds. The hanging ferns, the cozy sitting area, the wide heart-of-pine floorboards made this seem more like a home than a salon. The array of African violets in the windowsills spoke to a time when simple pleasures like sharing a plant cutting were true signs of friendship. Even the dust motes that danced in the early morning sunshine seemed magical to me.
    As a girl, I would sweep the floor between customers, making sure to get in every nook and cranny so that no stray curls were left behind. One of our regulars, Mrs. DiSilverio, thought my industry so cute that she even bought me a child-sized broom and little dustpan to use. How I enjoyed taking the towels out of the dryer and pressing their warm, soft surface to my face! The smell of perm solution always made me cheery, because with it came the delighted cries of “Oh, I love it!” after the rods were removed and the hair was styled.
    If you took a survey, I’d bet that more than three-quarters of the women in this town had come through our doors at least once in their lives. I remember one bride who insisted on having her picture taken in her white gown standing under the figurehead from the Santa Elisabeta , a Spanish galleon that sank off the Georgia coast in the 1500s. The wooden carving provided benevolent supervision from a wall behind the counter. Since this bride’s name was Elizabeth, she believed that her name saint was responsiblefor bringing her the man she would marry. Unbeknownst to us, Elizabeth had been lighting candles at church and praying to St. Elizabeth. Maybe I should have followed her lead, because that Elizabeth was happily wed after all these years later, and my marriage to Hank had been over for three years now.
    In short, I loved everything about Violetta’s, and the thought of turning the key in the front door one final time and walking away from all this, and all these