A Tangle of Knots

by Lisa Graff

  “What kind of cake are you making today?” Mrs. Asher asked.

  Cady shifted the groceries to her hip and twirled the small bunch of yellow wildflowers in her left hand, watching the petals spin in dizzy circles. They were nothing like the dazzling purple petunias and multicolored pansies Miss Mallory cared for at the Home for Lost Girls, but they made Cady ache just the slightest for the place all the same. She looked up at Mrs. Asher. “Did you know you’re a honey cake?” she said. “Rich with dark sweetness, and a surprising kick of spices.”

  Mrs. Asher helped V to her feet. “That is just remarkable,” she said, shaking her head. “You’re right, that does sound like exactly the perfect cake.”

  Cady looked down at her feet. “I’ll have to make it for you sometime.”

  She felt the warm hand on her shoulder before she saw it. “Sweetheart?” Mrs. Asher said. “Everything okay?”

  Cady bit her bottom lip. “I just want Toby to be happy with me, is all.” What if the reason he was so reserved was that Cady wasn’t the daughter he’d always dreamed of? What if, tonight at the bakeoff, he told Miss Mallory to go ahead and take Cady back?

  Mrs. Asher opened her mouth to reply, but just at that moment, the wordless woman—V—made a noise like a startled horse. She dropped her duffel bag, right in the dirt, and when Cady looked up, she saw that the woman was staring at her.

  V bolted for the Emporium door.

  “Oh dear,” Mrs. Asher said, rescuing the duffel. Her gaze followed V to the door. Wha-pop! went the wood against the frame. “She’s had a difficult week,” she told Cady.

  Cady nodded.

  “Before I forget . . .” Mrs. Asher hoisted the duffel to her shoulder and drew the red whatever-it-might-be from underneath her arm. With quick fingers she worked the needles through the yarn, finishing off the last row of loops, then snipped the loose end with a pair of scissors she pulled from who knew where. She traded the object to Cady for the bag of groceries. “This is for you.”

  It was a knitted red apron, perfect for cake-baking. Cady ran her fingers over the knotty red flowers stitched into it. It was the first piece of clothing that anyone had ever made her. “Thank you,” she said.

  Mrs. Asher squeezed her hand. “Of course. And Cady?” Cady looked up from the apron. “All a parent really wants from his child is her happiness. So if you’re happy, Toby will be, too.”

  * * *

  Cady was bending down to pick a particularly beautiful wildflower when she saw the plume of dirt curling down Argyle Road. At the far end of the drive, Cady could just make out a man on a bicycle, kicking up more and more dust as he headed ever closer. The man was huge, towering, even on a bicycle (although he rode it well). He was wearing a gray suit. And no matter how hard Cady squinted, she couldn’t determine the man’s age. He might have been forty, he might have been older.

  There was a single powder blue suitcase strapped to the back of his bicycle.

  The man rode right up to the front door. He swung a leg easily over the center bar of his bike and leaned the contraption against a dying hedge. “Good morning,” he greeted Cady, unhooking the suitcase from the back.

  “Morning,” Cady replied.

  The man bent down and picked up the flowers Cady hadn’t realized she’d dropped. He handed them to her, a sideways sort of grin on his face. It was a grin that suggested he knew more about the world than he was letting on.

  From the bottom of his suit jacket, she could make out several bits of knotted rope.

  “Thanks,” Cady said, taking the flowers.

  “It’s a funny thing, Fate.”

  Cady looked up from her flowers.

  “There’s no controlling what Fate hands you,” the man went on, pulling the suitcase to his side. It was a very old suitcase, boxy and large as a small child, with worn corners and three small dimples near the left clasp. “And in my experience, it rarely seems to give you exactly what you need at the exact moment that you need it.”

  Cady wrinkled her eyebrows. “Sir?” she said. Maybe he thought she was someone else.

  “Just remember this,” he said. “It’s the way we deal with what Fate hands us that defines who we are.”

  “Uh, sure,” Cady said, turning her attention back to her wildflowers. Maybe she’d find some more blossoms in the backyard. “I’ll keep that in mi—”

  But when she looked up again, the man in the gray suit was no longer there.

  11

  V

  IT HAPPENED, NOW AND AGAIN, THAT V THOUGHT SHE SAW HER. Caroline. It was a common phenomenon, she’d been told, among parents who had lost their children. A photo in a magazine might remind her of Caroline’s high school graduation, the way she’d mugged for the camera like she just knew this was the beginning of a fabulous adventure. A woman she passed in the grocery store might make V recall the last night she ever saw her—the way Caroline’s secret smile should have hinted that she was about to run off to elope with a man her mother had never met (a “real charmer,” that’s about as much as Caroline would ever divulge about him). But no matter how many times it happened, the sting never lessened. When V had set eyes on the crow-haired girl with the flowers . . . it was too much.

  Wha-pop! The door slammed shut against its frame as V stepped inside what she had surmised would be her new home. She took a slow look around. Racks of clothes, shelves of books, shoes, tennis rackets. This certainly wasn’t a peanut butter factory anymore.

  V had recognized the property immediately, as soon as it had appeared through the trees at the end of the long dirt road. The large white two-story building with the turrets on either side was a little worse for wear, maybe, but it was, without a doubt, the very same building from the old pictures on the jars. The Darlington Peanut Butter Factory. The roof of V’s mouth watered even now with the memories.

  There had never been anything like a jar of Darlington peanut butter. As soon as a dollop hit your tongue, your entire body melted into happiness. As a young girl, V hadn’t been able to get enough of the stuff. Her parents hadn’t, either. The whole town was nuts for it. The whole state. The factory could hardly churn out jars quickly enough, people bought so many. But the most amazing part of the whole operation—V remembered the stories distinctly—was that the factory’s owner, the maker of every jar of peanut butter the place produced, had been Fair. She had not even a wisp of Talent, that’s what they said, and yet somehow she had managed to stumble upon the world’s most perfect peanut butter recipe. Thousands had tried to replicate it, but no one ever could. The Darlingtons kept the secret carefully guarded.

  And then, suddenly, when V had been just a little girl, the factory had shut down. There was outrage throughout the town. Schoolchildren went on hunger strikes, refusing to eat their lunches. But it didn’t make any difference.

  There was no more peanut butter.

  Rumor had it that the peanut butter maker’s husband—a stodgy, surly type—shut down the factory after his wife’s death, purely out of spite. Others swore that the woman’s good-for-nothing son had gambled away the family’s entire fortune.

  V sighed, touching two fingers to her locket. Whatever the reason the factory had shut down all those years ago, it was a shame. She could very much use a taste of happiness at the moment.

  The smell of vanilla and butter (a cake, perhaps?) guided V past the front door, and a soft melody, broken and stilted but beautiful all the same (an oboe?), led her farther into the room. There was a man not much older than she was, with salt-and-pepper hair, floating behind the large circular countertop in the center of the room. V might have supposed he was the owner of the establishment, except that he didn’t seem to care at all about her presence. He was picking at his teeth with an enormous toothpick, and his nose was deep in a book V was quite familiar with. She recognized it by the color and contours of the wo
rds traipsing down the spine. But the words themselves? They might as well have been Spanish. Greek. Smashed ants on the page.

  V sighed and drifted aimlessly up the stairs.

  12

  The Owner

  THE ENORMOUS TOOTHPICK THE OWNER HAD FOUND THAT morning turned out to be perfect for dislodging that stubborn bit of sausage in his back molar, even if it did look a peculiar thing—beige and cracked and knobby, as wide as a rib of celery and as long as a pencil. He continued to chivy the sausage, his face deep in his book, as the front door let out a loud wha-pop! It wasn’t long before it wha-pop!ed again, and then—wha-pop!—a third time. The Owner tapped his foot more quickly against the air. He’d told Toby all these new tenants would be nothing but a nuisance.

  “Hello?” called a man’s voice from the door. “Anyone here?”

  The Owner flicked his eyes from his novel only long enough to notice that the voice did not belong to a tenant, but (perhaps even more dreadfully) a customer. “Store’s open,” the Owner replied, still picking at his teeth. “Skis and prescription eyewear half off today.”

  The store had been sold out of skis and prescription eyewear for three years.

  “Oh, I’m not looking to purchase anything,” the man replied. His steps drew closer to the counter. “Actually, I was hoping I might sell you something.”

  The Owner hitched up his head. There, standing ten feet from the register, was a large man—towering, really—in a gray suit. He might have been forty, he might have been older.

  He was carrying a powder blue suitcase.

  The toothpick froze in the Owner’s mouth. “Where did you find that?”

  The man in the gray suit followed the Owner’s gaze to the suitcase in his hand. It was sturdy but well-loved, boxy and large as a small child. “The St. Anthony’s?” he asked. “It found me, actually, about eight years ago. Been around the world a couple times before we met, I believe.” He chortled, while the Owner tapped a silent rat-a-tat-tat against the air.

  Thirty-six. This was number thirty-six.

  When Toby had returned from his luggage run last week, with the thirty-fifth St. Anthony’s suitcase sitting on that malnourished orphan girl’s lap, the Owner had thought that was a miracle (even if what he’d been searching for hadn’t been inside). But now the thirty-sixth suitcase had just walked right up and found him, after all this time. It had taken the Owner over half a century, but at last every St. Anthony’s suitcase ever made was inside the walls of his store.

  “How much are you asking for it?” the Owner demanded.

  “Oh, the suitcase isn’t for sale. I’m in the business of utensils.”

  “Utensils?”

  “And knickknacks, yes.” The man in the gray suit grinned a sideways sort of grin. It was a grin that suggested he knew more about the world than he was letting on. “Small kitchen objects of all sorts, really.”

  The Owner noticed something peeking out from the bottom hem of the man’s gray jacket. Several, were they . . . knots? Yes, knots of rope.

  A gear clicked to life in the Owner’s old rusty brain. He slipped the large toothpick into the pocket of his slacks (it let out a soft clunk! as it hit the jar beside it, but the man in the gray suit did not seem to notice). Then he lifted up the hinged section of the countertop and floated closer to the curious man. Slowly. Purposefully. He inspected him bottom to tip-tip-top.

  “Have we met before?” the Owner asked.

  The man in the gray suit laughed a guffaw of a laugh. “I think I’d remember a fellow like you,” he said, pointing down at the Owner’s feet, two inches off the ground. “It’s not every day you come across someone with such a Talent.”

  The Owner scratched his cheek. The click in his brain dulled to a low buzzing.

  “So,” the salesman continued, “might I interest you in any knickknacks, then? I’ve got mashers, peelers, dicers, whatever you like. You’re my last stop before I head to the shop to pick up my hot air balloon.” He drummed his large fingers on the suitcase, just beside the three small dimples. “I had quite an accident last week, lucky to be alive, really. But the thing’s almost fixed. Which utensil did you say you were interested in?”

  The Owner’s old rusty brain shook itself back into action. He leaned across the countertop to clang open the register. “I’ll take the whole lot,” he told the salesman, “provided you sell me that suitcase as well.” And, with an agility he hadn’t been able to muster in years, the Owner swept his hands through the register drawers, plucking out every last bill. “That ought to be enough, don’t you think?” He handed the salesman the money—all of it—without even bothering to count.

  The man in the gray suit kept the sideways grin on his face as he handed over the suitcase. “Pleasure doing business with you,” he said.

  The Owner allowed himself a tiny breath of contentment as he took hold of the suitcase. Number thirty-six. “The pleasure was all mine,” he said. And then he reached his right hand into his pants pocket for the jar, squeezing the icy chill out of his palm.

  Plunk!

  His feet firmly on the ground, the Owner stretched out his hand to shake.

  13

  Marigold

  PLAYING THE OBOE ALWAYS MADE MARIGOLD’S MOUTH DRY AS cotton. She licked her lips and darted her eyes to the clock on the dresser.

  Nine more minutes before her hour of practice was over. She sighed and began the song again. But no matter how hard she tried to position her tongue and her lips and her fingers the way Maestro Messina instructed, the notes still came out sour. She shot an anxious look at the freckled patch of skin on her wrist, where her red Talent bracelet with the shiny silver beads usually sat. Last night she’d slipped the bracelet over her bedpost before she went to sleep, the way she did every evening, but when she’d woken up this morning it had vanished. She couldn’t find it anywhere. Marigold felt almost naked without it.

  A soft creak in the floorboards compelled Marigold to look up from her music book.

  Standing there, seeming lost and a little bewildered, was a woman of about sixty. She was thin, wiry, with short gray hair. Marigold could just make out the locket around her neck, the silver oval with the single letter engraved on it.

  “You must be V,” Marigold said, even though she knew the woman wouldn’t reply. It was only polite, in any case. She set the oboe in her lap. “I’m Marigold.”

  The woman continued to stare at her.

  No, she wasn’t staring at Marigold. She was staring at the oboe.

  “You want to see it?” Marigold asked, inviting the woman into the room with a wave of her arm.

  Seeming to understand the offer, V picked her way over to the bed and sat down gingerly. Marigold handed her the oboe, wondering if perhaps this mysterious woman was a Talented oboist. Wouldn’t that be something? If Marigold discovered her Talent in less than a minute?

  The woman held the oboe like it was a popsicle about to melt through her fingers.

  “Like this,” Marigold said, motioning with her hands. “And your lips go . . .” She rolled her top lip, just the way Maestro Messina had showed her so many times. “Yes! Just like that. Then your fingers go on the keys like”—she helped V place them—“and you blow.”

  V had never played an oboe before, that was clear from her first weak note. And she certainly wasn’t Talented, that was clear from the second one. But she had . . . something. Something that Marigold couldn’t put her finger on.

  “You’re starting out better than I did,” Marigold told her with a smile. “Here, breathe from down here.” She placed a hand on her own stomach, right in the gut. “That’s where your power comes from.” And although Marigold knew that V couldn’t understand the words she was saying, somehow she deciphered the meaning. V began to sit up a little straighter, breathe a little deeper. “Wonde
rful!” Marigold cried when the next note came out clearer.

  “I see you’ve met our newest housemate.” Marigold looked up to see her mother in the door frame. “Is she bothering you while you practice?”

  Marigold shook her head. “Nah,” she said, turning her attention back to V, who was experimenting with her fingers on different keys. “She’s not bad, actually.”

  Mrs. Asher glanced at her watch. “Goodness, it’s later than I thought. I have to get to the yarn shop. Can you do me a favor, Mari?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I meant to put together a care package for your father this morning, but I’ve run clear out of time. Will you pack it up for me? Everything’s in a pile on my bed, but it needs a box. Or maybe the Owner will let you use one of those old suitcases downstairs, if you ask nicely.”

  Marigold’s lips turned into a pout. “Aw, Mom, can’t Zane do it? Cady said she’d help me Talent-hunt before the bakeoff.”

  Her mother’s cheeks went taut. “Zane is watching Will at the moment, so, no, young lady, he can’t do it.”

  Marigold had no idea what her brother was up to at that moment, but it certainly wasn’t watching Will. Up to no good, more likely. Just like always. Marigold knew, from the letter she’d shamefully steamed open before secretly resealing and returning it to her mother’s car, that Zane was in it up to his neck this time. Talking back, ditching class, spitting (of course). Apparently he had even been accused of stealing valuables from his classmates and teachers to sell at Louie’s Pawn Shop in town.

  “You’re my responsible one, Marigold,” her mother went on, “and I would like you to do this simple favor for your father. You’ll have plenty of time for Talent-fishing later.”

  “Talent-hunting,” Marigold grumbled, but she knew her arguing was over.