Knit in Comfort

by Isabel Sharpe

  “Yes.” She made herself sound as gentle as she could. “I’m sorry.”

  Vera took in a long, shuddering breath, let it out with practiced suffering. “John Foley is driving me over in the morning. Stanley asked him to. He’s heading to Greensboro anyway.”

  “Okay.”

  “David’s back, he came looking for you.” Vera lifted her soft chin with unmistakable disapproval. “I told him you were on a second honeymoon with Stanley.”

  “Ah.” She couldn’t summon excitement about David’s being back or annoyance at Vera using irony as a weapon. The part of her brain controlling emotion must have blown a fuse.

  “Is he getting back together with his wife?” Elizabeth finally spoke.

  “I didn’t ask.”

  “Okay.” She sounded disappointed.

  Megan wanted bed. Like she’d never wanted anything before.

  “I’m leaving early in the morning,” Vera said.

  “I’ll get up and see you off.”

  “I’d rather just go.” Her expression softened. “But thank you.”

  “Anything you want me to put out for you, or—”

  “I’ll be fine.” She turned to go into the house, then stopped. “I’m sorry for the pain Stanley caused you. You know that. Maybe there was something lacking for him here…”

  Megan gave a short laugh. If Vera wanted to preserve what remained of Stanley’s perfect-boy image, she was welcome. Megan had spent years married to the idea that she was somehow at fault. Now she was divorcing that, too.

  “Though…it doesn’t excuse what he did.”

  “Thanks, Vera.”

  “Well.” She stood uncertainly. “Good night.”

  Megan walked forward and gave her mother-in-law a hug that lasted longer than she intended, felt more sincere than she expected. “I’m sorry for all this.”

  “I can’t bear what you’re doing to your children. I stayed with Rocky for the sake of my son. You girls now…you want it all for yourselves.” Tears caught up with her, she shook her head and walked into the house.

  “Kaboom.” Elizabeth stepped near and slung her arm over Megan’s shoulders. “Don’t listen to her. She just wanted the perfect exit line.”

  “She found it.” Megan closed her eyes. “What if she’s right?”

  “He broke your vows, he violated your marriage. You stood it for fifteen years. That’s more than most women would do.”

  “Uh…” Megan opened her eyes. “That doesn’t sound like a compliment.”

  “Oh.” Elizabeth frowned. “Well, I meant it that way.”

  “Hey.” David’s voice out of the darkness over the fence. “I heard the car.”

  Elizabeth tightened her arm around Megan’s shoulders and leaned close. “I’ll go upstairs. Come up if you need to talk later.”

  “Good night, Elizabeth.” She hugged her back. Never in a million years could she have imagined that first day standing in the garden with this flaky, exuberant woman, that she’d come to lean on her so hard. “And thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me, thank Babcia. And Gillian.”

  Megan kissed her cheek, watched her make her way over to the garage, then headed toward the fence, head aching, limbs shaky and tight. She didn’t want to face David. Not tonight. “Welcome home.”

  “Same to you.” His features were barely visible, but his grin caught the last of the evening light. “I came back to make sure you hadn’t been torn apart by the Comfort vultures. Vera said you were with Stanley in Reidsville?”

  “I left him.”

  The grin disappeared. “Left him in Reidsville…or left him?”

  “I went to visit his other wife this morning.” She laughed wearily. “Feels like a week ago already.”

  “My God, Megan.”

  “It was Elizabeth’s idea. All these years I assumed Genevieve gave him something I couldn’t. But she turned out to be me.” She shrugged, knowing he’d understand.

  “Jesus. The guy is an egomaniac.”

  “Some of us are drawn to them.” She raised her eyebrows. “How are you getting along with yours?”

  “Ha.” He shook his head. “The answer is we’re talking, but I’m not packing up to move out west and she’s not packing to move here.”

  “So now what?”

  “I’m here in Comfort for my sabbatical year. Then I go back to Boston. As it was.” He sidled closer and nudged her with his shoulder. “Congratulations, you’re the one with the big decisions.”

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  “None of which you have to make tonight.” His voice turned tender. “Get some sleep, Megan. We’ll talk later. Whatever crap you have to go through, I’m here. Maybe I’ll learn to knit and become a Purl.”

  She giggled at the thought. “When you’re not chasing squirrels.”

  “You know.” He nudged her again, intimate in the darkness, bringing back a lot of memories of a lot of years ago. “I’ve decided to embrace my squirrels, Megan. They were driving me crazy, and I wasn’t fazing them at all.”

  Megan laughed in the darkness, astounded that she could feel at all happy. “That sounds very Zen and very smart.”

  “Get some sleep.” He put his arm around her, pulled her in to him across the fence. She rested her head briefly on his shoulder, allowing herself a minute of his strength and familiar scent before she had to face the night alone. “Maybe in time we can both allow ourselves to believe in something better, Megan. Something really big and magical and lasting so we won’t be alone. And maybe we’ll have the courage to go after it. I think we’re taking the right first steps.”

  “I hope so.” She lifted her head, stepped reluctantly away from his arm, wishing it could be as easy as the two of them picking up where they left off, but knowing it wasn’t what she wanted. Not now. She’d leave Comfort, maybe move east near Elizabeth and Sally, nearer to Genevieve and Stanley so he could see the children often. If she was meant to be with David, that would happen in its own time. “Good night.”

  “Sweet dreams, Megan.”

  Back into the dark house she climbed the stairs feeling as if she had weights on her ankles. In her room, she flicked on the lights, stared at her and Stanley’s bed for several minutes, then took her bag into Lolly and Deena’s room to sleep there. Or try to sleep.

  Most of the night she dozed fitfully, waking again and again, blinking through confusion for a second or two each time, before she remembered. She was leaving Stanley. Right or wrong, how would she support herself, what damage would the children suffer, could she really manage alone, and on and on and on.

  The slam of a car door woke her a final time, an engine started and pulled away from their driveway. Megan dragged herself out of Lolly’s bed, went to the window, pushed aside the curtain and peered out. Vera, gone already, on her way to Stanley’s side, first in Reidsville, then who knew. Maybe she’d come back to live in Comfort. Maybe she’d move in with Stanley and Genevieve.

  Megan needed to take this one hour at a time.

  She crossed into her room, showered quickly, dressed in loose jeans and a yellow cotton sweater, and thudded downstairs.

  Welcome to what was destined to be one of the hardest days of her life.

  Yawning, she stepped into the kitchen and stopped dead. Balloons, streamers, glittering confetti stars, and a posterboard with huge letters drawn with markers. CONGRATULATIONS! Love, the Purls. Signed by each.

  Megan stared, feeling sick. This was their idea of a celebration? The dissolution of her marriage? Maybe someday she’d celebrate, but not this soon, and not in this way.

  She strode forward, intending to sweep it all into the trash, then she noticed the blue ribbon, the shiny gold plaque, first prize, Comfort Craft fair, and an envelope with her name on it.

  The rainbow blanket won?

  Which of the Purls slept with Roy?

  Envelope opened, she read the contents of the letter and sank into a chair, blinking in disbelief. A check for five thousand d
ollars, made out to Megan.

  The Purls had entered the shawl she made for her vow-renewal ceremony, the one Sally would wear at her wedding.

  She’d won.

  What’s more, Addy Baker needed permission to give out her contact information because so many people who’d traveled from Hendersonville and Asheville for the fair had asked where they could get lace.

  Megan blinked some more, allowed herself a smile, then a grin and a warm swell of love for her Purls. How she’d miss them.

  This was all really hard to take in.

  Coffee. She needed coffee. Megan stared again at the check. First thing after breakfast she’d buy herself a new maker, the kind she liked, a machine that would keep her faithful company until the end.

  One step at a time, so the uncertainty ahead, bad and good, yin and yang, wouldn’t become overwhelming. She needed Elizabeth’s Babcia to guide her through this, to give her confidence that she could fly off into the murky future and find sunshine.

  She needed Gillian.

  Coffee brewed, she took her cup outside, wanting to get away from the riotous mess of the kitchen. On the stoop she paused to inhale the garden-scented morning air, benefiting from the suspended animation of having made an enormous decision she didn’t have to put into action just yet. The last peaceful sunrise of her old life. She could still pretend the kids were innocently asleep upstairs as usual, Vera in her room, Stanley away on a sales trip.

  Down the steps, she saw on the patio table a package, folded note stuck to the top with For Megan written in Vera’s careless scrawl. Megan’s shoulders slumped. End of being able to pretend nothing had changed.

  She drew out her chair but didn’t sit, set her coffee down carefully, opened the note. Megan, this came from your father the day you left. Megan ripped off the paper, rolling her eyes at the way Dad always wrapped packages with enough tape to keep Harry Houdini out. Inside a stained cardboard box. A note from Dad that simply said, From your mother. Fighting tears, she lifted the lid, pushed the rustling tissue aside.

  Lace.

  Megan lifted, unfolded, caught her breath. A wedding shawl, delicate beyond anything she’d ever be able to manage, complicated beyond anything she’d ever be able to imagine, nearly magical in its perfection. Holding it, gazing rapturously, trying to take in the extraordinary details—fans, birds, trees, diamonds, flowers, curling ocean waves—she was swept by emotion, not pain, not joy, but with elements of both added to humbling awe. This was the work of true genius, a lace-knitting Mozart.

  Breeze blew; the shawl rippled sensually as if delighted to be freed from the confines of cardboard. A slip of paper fell from its folds, cut with uneven edges from a larger sheet. Megan picked it up and read, read again to make sure she really understood, trying to take in the hope spreading through her for the first time in fifteen years.

  On the paper in her mother’s unmistakable loopy handwriting: Wedding shawl, knitted in memory of Calum Jamieson during the long summer nights of 1925 in Eshaness, Shetland, by my grandmother, Fiona Tulloch, and her too-briefly known and long-missed friend, Gillian Halcrow.

  A+ AUTHOR INSIGHTS, EXTRAS & MORE…

  FROM

  ISABEL

  SHARPE

  AND

  AVON A

  Interview with Author Isabel Sharpe

  Q: Your book has a flashback story that takes place on the Island of Shetland in the mid-1920s. Can you tell us how you did your research?

  I’m usually not big on research, to be honest. I’d much rather focus on the characters and their stories and emotions. However, this time I was hooked. I probably couldn’t have written this book without the Internet, or at least I couldn’t have finished it by my deadline! I not only found terrific sites, like the Shetland Museum website, which has archives with amazing pictures from that period, but I also came across references to very helpful books, including The Last Lighthouse, by Sharma Krauskopf, about her successful quest to purchase the Eshaness lighthouse being built on Shetland during my story, and Heirloom Knitting, by Sharon Miller, an invaluable resource for anyone wanting to knit lace. I even found a movie, The Edge of the World, which was filmed on the Shetland island of Foula in 1937, but which took place during the 1920s, and which used native Shetlanders as extras. There was even one quick shot of women knitting lace! I nearly jumped out of my seat with excitement.

  Q: Is your story historically accurate?

  I did mess with facts a little. There is an area called Eshaness on Shetland, with a lighthouse, but I couldn’t find evidence of a town with that name—that is my invention. And I might have pushed it more up, and who knows? People do cling to that kind of story. I tried to have mainly the older generation talking about the legends.

  Q: Have you ever been to the Shetland Islands?

  No, but I’d love to go! At one point I did some research on travel options, thinking it would be the chance of a lifetime, and what better way to write about a place than from firsthand experience? But at the time I checked, it would have cost three thousand U.S. dollars for one person just to get there and back, which is over my travel budget.

  Q: How did you get the ideas for the flashback characters?

  Oh you’re really testing me here, it was a long time ago. Their story came partly from the characters I was working with in the main story, and partly from who they were. Gillian arose as a contrast to Fiona and from the legends of the finmen and the selkie. There’s a movie set in Ireland, The Secret of Roan Inish, which I stumbled over while writing the book. I’d picked it out because I thought it might appeal to my sons (it didn’t, but I loved it!), and then there was all this great stuff about selkies relevant to my book! Serendipity.

  Q: Can you tell us more about the finmen?

  Fishing, then, as now, is a very dangerous way to make a living. The sea around the Shetland Islands seems to have been particularly difficult due to sudden and severe storms. In earlier, more superstitious days a lot of the losses—boats, people, nets, lines—were blamed on amphibious creatures called fins. The finmen, who resented mortals for competing on their fishing grounds, did whatever they could to cause trouble for them. I guess it was more comforting for Islanders to imagine their loved ones had been snatched by sea people than drowned. And easier to blame bad luck (or maybe carelessness) on some faceless other species.

  Finmen were obsessed with silver (“white metal”) and loathed the sign of the cross. Fishermen would cut crosses in their floats and sinkers, and toss silver coins into the water if they suspected they were being chased. The finmen would become distracted by the silver and pursue it, allowing the men to escape.

  There were also legends of finwives, who began life as mermaids, many times more beautiful than mortal women. If these mermaids were able to marry mortal men (consummation was the key), they could retain their beauty and live happily. Hence, tales of mermaids trying to entice men with their beauty and glorious singing. If they failed, they were forced to marry finmen. Gradually they’d lose their beauty until they became hideous finwives.

  The idea of finwives resembles other cultures’ ideas of witches. Unlike finmen, who avoided humans, the finwives would move onshore to live among them, though staying relatively solitary. They would knit or spin and practice healing arts—the classic suspicious single woman suspected of witchcraft. In return for healing and for selling needlework, the finwives would earn silver, which they would dutifully forward to their greedy fin-husbands.

  Q: Who are the parallel women to Fiona and Gillian?

  I didn’t want to make direct parallels. At various points in the story, various people have aspects in common with the characters in the Shetland story. Ella can be a Gillian to Megan’s Fiona as well as Genevieve, Stanley’s other wife. Elizabeth is a newcomer who shakes up Megan’s complacency, and who develops a relationship of sorts with David. Elizabeth and Megan start out as antagonists and then bond, so their relationship can be compared to Gillian and Fiona as well. I didn’t want it all t
o jibe too neatly.

  Q: Have you ever tried lace knitting?

  Yes! When I started this book. Of course I had to try. I learned to knit as a girl, and have always enjoyed it. I also loved crewel and cross-stitch embroidery, needlepoint, and made my own clothes for many years. I make a point in my regular knitting to find the most complicated patterns possible to keep me challenged and interested. So I felt entirely up to the job of taking on lace. Uh, no. No matter how carefully I counted every stitch, by the next row I was always missing one somewhere. I did stick with it long enough to develop a recognizable and very beautiful pattern, but it went too slowly for impatient me, and I never got far enough for the pattern to become instinctive. My hat is off to anyone who can make it through a project. I found pictures online of lacework that was absolutely stunning.

  Q: Where did the Shetland women get the wool for their work?

  They’d raise the sheep themselves, then in the summer, when the animals were molting naturally, they’d pluck by hand the softest hairs from the sheep’s necks and behind their ears. This was to keep the hairs as long as possible (shearing would shorten the individual strands). They’d mix the wool with seal oil, which they’d wash out for regular knitting, but leave in for strength when making the finest threads. Then they’d card the wool and spin it. The best spinners could get nine thousand yards from a single ounce of wool!

  To avoid spoiling the most delicate yarns, they did everyday knitting with thicker wool outside while they did other chores (they’d rig one needle so they could knit one-handed!), and they worked on the fine lace inside by fire and lamplight in the evenings. One source said it took up to nine months to spin the yarn for a shawl and six weeks to knit it. This they did in addition to making thicker mittens and caps and stockings for their families and to sell.

  What the women on Shetland accomplished is mind-boggling. Their lives were so hard, they had so much to take care of—house, garden, children, animals—yet, somehow they managed to create all this gorgeous and amazingly complex lace. I have no idea when they slept!