She turned the pages, looking at the smiling face of Joshua, Eliza’s husband, leaning against the railing of the house Cade and Abigail now lived in, wearing a rugged Aran that looked so thick it seemed like it had been knitted right off the sheep, barely spun at all. Lucy touched the page. When she was a kid, Eliza had always taken the most interest in her knitting. Lucy’s mother and grandmother taught her to knit, of course, but Eliza was the one who came to stand behind her, moved her arms so she held the yarn in her left hand, “Like me, so you don’t flap like a chicken. There, isn’t that nicer this way? Now you can read at the same time.”
And once, Eliza had given Lucy a hand-tooled leather-bound journal from Italy. “To record your dreams. I noticed you write. Keep writing, and you’ll remember your life. If you don’t write things down, it’s like they never happened.”
A sudden film of hot tears sprang to Lucy eyes. Where was that old journal of hers? Up in the attic at home? She should find that. In honor of Eliza.
Words and knitting had always been her favorite things. They still were.
Whitney pointed at the stack of loose papers. “So that’s good?”
Lucy snapped back into the present. “Oh, hell, yes.” She looked again at the two pages. The reality of it began to sink in.
This was more than good. This was huge.
She sat on her high stool behind the counter.
If this was really Eliza’s work . . .
She pulled out more of the sheets. More patterns, all in the same delicate hand. She shuffled pages. There had to be at least twenty, maybe thirty patterns here, as well as pages that appeared to be journal entries or letters. None of them, at first glance, looked anything like Eliza’s other published patterns, although they shared a similar voice. Lucy didn’t recognize any, and she practically knew Eliza Carpenter’s patterns by heart.
The bell on the door jingled. Mildred Elkins and Greta Doss entered.
“What did you forget this morning?” Lucy called.
Mildred waved both hands over her head. “My umbrella! My purple umbrella!”
“Is it raining?” Lucy hadn’t even noticed that it was overcast.
“No! But it might someday! And I love that umbrella. Do you have it? Oh, hello, Whitney. How are you?”
Before Whitney could even open her mouth, Mildred said, “Greta, go look under the table, I’ll check the bathroom.”
Greta, quiet as usual, nodded and checked the table. Mildred came out of the bathroom, satisfied.
“Got it. Thank goodness. What are you two up to?”
Lucy had a flash of brilliance. “You’d recognize Eliza Carpenter’s handwriting, right?”
Greta smiled at Mildred, who shot a look back at her. “One of our favorite people,” said Greta in a soft voice.
Mildred used her umbrella, striking it on the floor for emphasis. “She certainly was. What do you have there? Move, young lady.” Mildred pushed a startled-looking Whitney out of the way.
Mildred took the loose pages out of Lucy’s hands. She only glanced at the first page before laughing.
“Oh, Greta, look. This is Eliza.” She held the page up, first to Whitney and then to Lucy. “This is Eliza.”
“How certain are you?” Lucy tried not to get excited, but it was almost impossible.
“Two hundred percent. I have letters from her at home that we can compare, but I know with all my heart that these are Eliza’s.” Mildred riffled through them and then handed them to Greta. Shaking her head, she said, “I’ve never seen these.”
Lucy clapped her hands and jumped off her stool. “I knew it! I knew it! This is the most exciting thing ever!”
Whitney laughed.
Lucy blushed. “Okay, it’s not your kind of exciting, I’m sure.” Coming around the counter, she stood next to Mildred, looking over her shoulder.
“Unbelievable,” breathed Greta, as she examined several sheets.
“And look,” said Lucy. “Silk Road.”
Their jaws dropped.
“Where did you get all this?” Mildred demanded.
Hell.
In the space of a second, Lucy thought it through. She couldn’t keep the boxes. It wasn’t right to keep it, to profit on such a treasure, when she hadn’t fully looked through them before buying them from him.
And everyone in the whole world would want these papers. There would be a run on them. Knitters from all over the globe would descend, wanting to study them, to examine them, to parse their contents and take them away from her. Lucy wouldn’t be the right person to keep them.
No one would let Lucy keep these. Nor should they.
Lucy swallowed her disappointment. It had been lovely to own them for even a moment.
“I bought them from Owen Bancroft. Boxes from his mother’s storage unit.”
“Oh, the luck of you!” Mildred banged her umbrella against the tile floor. “This is unbelievable. Are there any more?”
Dumbly, Lucy shrugged. Oh, if Irene had more treasures from Eliza stashed away . . .
Mildred jabbed her forefinger into Lucy’s arm. “You ask him,” she hissed. “You ask him as soon as you can. And then you put them in a safe-deposit box until you decide what to do with them.” Mildred pulled her iPhone out of her crocheted purse. “I have to Twitter this.”
Whitney smoothed the skirt of her dress. “So those looseleaf papers? They’re knitting patterns?”
Lucy nodded.
With a butter-couldn’t-melt voice, Whitney said, “So if they’re unpublished, wouldn’t they revert back to her estate? You said she was local?”
Mildred gave Lucy a stricken glance. “Don’t tell Cade,” she hissed. “We can hide them.”
Lucy sank into a chair at the table. She’d have to tell Cade and Abigail. Soon. Of course she would. But she wanted just a moment more with them—to hold them, to read them, to pretend they were hers.
But even though the words galled her, she said them anyway. “Whitney’s right. And I’ll talk to Owen. We’ll tell them.”
Waving her hands modestly, Whitney fluttered toward the front door. “I just do what I can to help. Now I have to get back to the shop. I’m sure Thomasina’s overwhelmed, with a line a mile long. Please, ladies, have a cupcake, won’t you? Lucy, we’ll plan our little party soon. We’ll combine our business savvy soon enough, won’t we? We can take over Cypress Hollow together!”
Cold day in hell, thought Lucy, but she nodded.
Then she lowered her head to the papers, letting Eliza’s quiet voice sing in her ear.
Chapter Nine
A mother’s needles, in particular, are the strongest needles of all.
—E. C.
At Willow Rock, Owen’s mother was crying.
Miss Verna whispered, “She’s been like this for about fourteen hours. Nothing is stopping it.”
“What’s she upset about?”
“No one knows. She doesn’t seem to want anything, she’s not even angry. She’s just crying.”
It was awful. Owen looked at his tiny mother, lying curled up on top of the narrow twin bed, weeping into her pillow. She didn’t heave with sobs, she just cried quietly and shook.
He sat on the bed next to her. She didn’t seem to notice.
“Mom. It’s me.”
Nothing but more tears.
Somehow, somewhere, this was probably his fault. He took a deep breath. He was here now. That was the point.
For one second Owen allowed himself a dangerous fantasy—that a woman was here next to him, and that she loved his mother, also. That she could lean over and say something, do something, and ease whatever pain his mother was in, just by saying the right womanly thing. And if, in that brief daydream, that woman happened to look a lot like Lucy, well, it was just a damn fantasy, right?
But dreams didn’t come true, Owen knew that for sure. Especially his. And he needed to stay the hell away from Lucy Harrison—he could feel it. Bancrofts didn’t deserve much in this town—he neede
d to remember it, and get out fast, as soon as he knew his mother would be all right.
He took a deep breath and shook off the thoughts that had gone in a direction he hadn’t wanted. “Mama. What’s wrong? Is there anything I can do?”
“Will you drink something, Mrs. Bancroft? You’re gonna dehydrate yourself with that crying.” Miss Verna held out something that looked like an adult version of a sippy cup. Owen hated it, but he supposed it was necessary.
Irene just turned her head farther into the pillow and cried.
Owen looked up at Miss Verna. “Really? Hours?”
“Without even falling asleep once. Just crying. I didn’t sleep much myself, too worried about her.”
“Does the date mean anything today?”
“Honey, she don’t know what the date is today. Or any other day.”
That was true. It was a stupid question.
“Can I take her out?”
“You could . . . But . . .”
“What if I took her out for a ride? We could go get a drink.” Owen put air quotes around the word for Miss Verna’s benefit, but his mother, who couldn’t see him, seemed to pay attention. Her crying grew quieter.
Miss Verna said, “Well, I don’t think she seems in any mood to go. But you could ask her.”
“Mama, do you want to go for a ride?”
Irene turned her head on the pillow and nodded.
Miss Verna helped him change Irene from her nightdress and robe into jeans and a sweatshirt. It was exactly the kind of sweatshirt she would have hated when she was younger, but his mother had changed drastically over the years. Instead of mocking clothing covered in animal appliqués, she was drawn to the puffed fabric, running her fingers constantly over the design, speaking to the animals as if they were real.
The sweatshirt today was one that he’d bought in Florida for her: it had dolphins leaping over a glittery moon. As she sat in the passenger seat, one finger stroked the top of a dolphin’s head.
He’d transported lots of prisoners over the years. Some had been chatty, some sullen. But even the drunk ones hadn’t been like this. Owen began to doubt the wisdom of what he was doing.
He hadn’t taken his mother out of Willow Rock since the time he lost her in the mall last Christmas when he’d been visiting. It had been his own damn fault: he’d sent her into the women’s room while he used the men’s room as fast as he could. But when he’d sent another woman in to look for her, his mother had vanished. A half hour’s worth of searching with every security guard on duty had turned her up, tucked into a display bed in Macy’s, a box of half-eaten powdered doughnuts under the covers.
Now, even though small sobs wracked her body every fifteen seconds or so, and the tears streamed down her cheeks, Irene’s face was relaxed, and she watched out the car window as if pleased to be moving. Her fingers played over the door handle.
“Anytime you want to tell me what’s wrong, you just let me know.”
She looked at him blankly, wetly, and then turned back to the window.
So what if he was seen leading his crying mother into a bar at two o’clock on a Monday? Oh, God, what if the bar wasn’t even open on a Monday afternoon? It was possible. Probable, even. What the hell would he do then?
It wasn’t even like his mother had been a big drinker when she was younger. That had been his father.
But every night at Willow Rock they offered the residents a drink, fixing them a glass of bubbly water with a splash of grenadine. Owen supposed it calmed the ones who remembered the evening tradition. Sometimes Miss Verna added a little drink umbrella that she provided herself. This pleased Irene and made her tractable enough to tuck into bed for the night.
They were smart there.
Smarter than he was, bringing her out in public crying like this. People would think he was beating her.
Best to move quickly, then.
He parked. Of course there was a spot in front—normal people didn’t go to the bar at two in the afternoon. Just lushes and sons with crazy mothers. Come to think of it, there was probably a good amount of overlap between the two groups. He was dying for a beer.
He unlocked the doors and got out. Opening her door, he said, “Here we are, Mom. Dry your face. You don’t want people to see you crying, do you?” Owen said, and then felt immediately ashamed.
She had Alzheimer’s. Who cared if she cried, if she wanted to? He straightened his shoulders as he helped her out of the car.
This was his mother. Who cared if anyone stared?
But he sure as hell wished she would stop crying. His mother looked up at him with a puzzled frown, tears still streaming.
“We’re getting a drink. You want a drink, Mom?”
She nodded.
“Here, hold this handkerchief, all right?” Owen handed her a white one that Miss Verna had given him as they left. Maybe if she had it in her hand, she’d use it. “Can you dry your face a little before we go in?”
Irene patted her face with the handkerchief. The tears didn’t stop rolling, but now at least her chin wasn’t dripping like it had been. There were already big wet spots on her blue sweatshirt. It looked as though the dolphins really were leaping through the seas.
“Come on, Mama. In here.”
Quickly, into the bar, before anyone suspected elder abuse.
The high windows let the afternoon light stream in over the polished bar down to the dark wood floor. The large room was empty. Not even Lucy’s brother was visible, which was a relief.
Owen led his weeping mother across the room to a booth. Irene, still holding the handkerchief, dabbed it under her dripping chin. It was eerie, really, how placid she looked. No emotion crossed her face, which was unlike her. Usually her irritation showed. Sometimes, when listening to him talk about her house and her roses, she looked happy. But this calm face with tears still flowing as if she’d sprung a leak, this was something he’d never seen before.
Jonas came out from the back room, whistling. He stopped, pitching forward, his lips still pursed, when he spotted them in their booth.
“I didn’t hear anyone come in,” he said coldly.
Owen took a deep breath. Maybe he should have gone to Tillie’s, or the ice-cream shop, but those places were so crowded, so loud and confusing for someone like his mother. If it had to be game on with Jonas, then so be it.
“Just here for a drink.”
“Fine,” Jonas said without meeting Owen’s eyes. “Get something for you?”
“A beer for me. Whatever you have on tap. And for Mom, she’d like a virgin old-fashioned, I think.”
Jonas looked surprised. Irene gazed past him into the room, tears rolling down her cheeks.
“Is that possible?” Owen tried to sound nonchalant, tried to keep the desperation out of his voice. He slung his arm up onto the back of the booth and hung his head to the side.
“Everything all right?”
“We’re working on it.”
Thank God for beer. In a couple of minutes, Jonas delivered their drinks. “The lady’s old-fashioned.” Under his breath and speaking rapidly, he muttered to Owen, “It’s iced decaf coffee with a little sugar and a cherry.”
Feeling a gratefulness he didn’t want to betray, Owen said, “Good. Thank you.”
Jonas jerked his chin. “We all have keys to the parsonage, you know. We drop by. To check on things. A lot. All the time. We don’t call first.”
He had to say it, Owen knew. He was the older brother. If he’d had a sister like Lucy, he’d damn-straight be protective, too.
“I’m not the same punk I was in high school.”
Jonas looked at him like he was sizing him up, as if he was trying to see if there were a visible way to tell if this was true or not. “You can say that all you want, but you’re still the guy living in my sister’s rental, and I don’t have to trust you farther than I can throw you.”
Owen felt his gut clench, the same way it always did right before a foot pursuit, or before a
perp tried to twist out of his grasp. It took everything he had to still his breath and remain seated, his hands quiet, open. “What’s your problem with me? Are you like this with all the people she rents to?”
“Only the men.”
But Jonas looked away when he said it, and Owen knew that it wasn’t the men that Jonas felt this way about. It was him, in particular. He wondered if Jonas’s father had known his dad. God help him if he had. Hugh Bancroft hadn’t left Owen a legacy to be proud of, but if he had to make up for the sins of his father, there wasn’t enough time in the world.
“Fine,” said Owen. “I gave your sister a list of references. I can give the same list to you.” The words burned like liquid nitrogen in his throat.
Slowly, Jonas shook his head. “I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt. But you only get that once.”
Irene finished her drink and burped. Her shoulders still shook with sobs.
“Seriously, guy,” said Jonas. “Is she okay? Do you want me to call someone?”
“Could we have another one of those drinks for her? Maybe even more watered down? I’m worried she’s crying out all her hydration.”
“Yeah, sure. I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Thanks.” Owen felt relief he wasn’t going to have to fight Jonas. Not that he would have, not in front of his mother, of course. It wouldn’t have come to that. But the relief he felt was palpable.
The front door opened. A middle-aged woman dressed in a purple sweater with snowflakes on it entered. She seemed to bring noise and light. Were those bells attached to her shoes?
Irene noticed her as well. Her face, so still and unmoving, lit up as she looked across the room.
The woman waved both arms at Jonas. “You have to help me! I think one of my tires is going to go flat! It looks funny. I touched it and it doesn’t feel like the other ones—it feels like it’s just not really confident about wanting to be a tire.”
How to Knit a Heart Back Home Page 9
