The Sisters of Sugarcreek
Page 12
“You don’t like to knit?” Lydia blew into her cup.
Jessica shook her head. “But even so, I don’t want to give up on this shop. Aunt Rose was the only family Cole and I had, and this shop is a part of that family. It was my aunt’s baby, and it’s the only roots we have left. So I’ll do anything to help it survive. Even if that means learning to knit.” She smiled.
It was easy for Lydia to understand what Jessica was saying. The Cottage was like a living, breathing thing—even to her. So quickly it had become a cozy nesting place, a healing place where she was getting more accustomed to the camaraderie of women, little by little. She thanked Gott every morning for the blessing of working there.
“And do you girls want to know the best part of all this for me?” Jessica eyed Lydia and Liz. “With you two, I don’t have to pretend to like knitting or be good at quilting or anything else. Thank goodness for Aunt Rose’s Secret Stitches Society, or I never would’ve gotten to know you both so well.”
As soon as Jessica had mentioned the word baby, Lydia found herself wishing she could open up the way Jessica had. Tell the truth about all she’d really been thinking that evening. But she couldn’t. She wasn’t ready. She didn’t know if she ever would be.
“What is that? What’s the Secret Stitches Society?” Lydia picked up a napkin and dabbed at her eyes, thankful to have something else to focus on.
“We were actually going to tell you all about it during dinner at my house,” Liz spoke up. “But then after the ceiling caved in, we never got around to it.”
Lydia blinked. “I almost forgot.” She searched her apron pocket for a piece of paper. “I don’t know if you’ve found anyone to fix your ceiling yet—”
“If I want to wait a month or two, I can find a lot of people,” Liz answered.
“Well, when Jonas returned a rake he’d borrowed, I happened to mention your ceiling to him.” She took out a piece of paper and handed it to Liz. “He wrote down his uncle’s name and address to give to you. He said his uncle can fix anything. He also said to use his name if you go to see him.”
“Jonas, your neighbor? He seems like a pretty good guy.”
“Jah, from what I know he’s very hardworking.” And kind, she wanted to add but didn’t say the words out loud.
“He’s also a godsend,” Liz said. “Tell him thank you.”
“I will.”
“Have either of you tried one of these caramel bars?” Jessica asked. “They’re awesome.”
Lydia turned to her. “Can you eat and tell me about the secret society at the same time?”
“Actually . . .” Jessica paused. “Liz is the one who told me about it. She and Aunt Rose went on a few missions together. Something I never got to do with my aunt. Do you mind explaining all about it, Liz?”
“I’d be honored,” Liz said.
Lydia watched expectantly as Liz laid down her fork, folded her hands on Rose’s old, nicked oak table, and cleared her throat. “Once upon a time,” she began, “there was a wonderful woman named Rose. She was named after a flower, which was most fitting because Rose made everyone around her blossom.” Liz paused to smile, as if remembering something she and Rose had shared.
“Rose had a very special cottage where women came when they wanted to make things for people they loved,” Liz continued. “It was the right place to come, too, because Rose made things for people she loved . . . and for people she barely knew. No matter what was going on in her own life, she never forgot that there were others around her who hurt and needed hope. A stitch of hope, Rose would always say, was just the thing that could get a person through. . . .”
As Liz talked on, her sweet words about Rose filling the quiet, Lydia glanced up at Jessica, hoping to share a smile. Instead, she saw tears brimming in Jessica’s eyes, then spilling over onto her cheeks.
Lydia hesitated . . . but then she couldn’t stop herself. Before she knew what she was doing, she reached out and patted Jessica’s hand as consolingly as she could.
She felt odd at first. And awkward.
It was the first time in her life she’d ever had a friend she could do that for.
FOLLOWING LIZ’S TOUCHING explanation of Aunt Rose’s Secret Stitches Society, Jessica attempted to get her emotions in check. As she did, Liz was still talking, promising a receptive Lydia that they’d have a secret outing soon. Then the three of them grabbed their needles and settled in with their individual knitting projects.
Or at least Liz and Lydia settled in. Just not so much her.
Instead, Jessica watched helplessly as a ball of rosy pink yarn slipped from her lap, slid noiselessly off the seat of her chair, and made a pastel trail as it rolled across the dark hardwood floor of the Cottage.
She thought about reaching out and retrieving the pink ball of fuzz. But her hands were already occupied, each tightly clutching a size ten knitting needle, which felt as awkward and clumsy to her as the pair of chopsticks she’d once tried at the town’s Chinese Wok. She was afraid if she let go of the metal sticks, she might drop a stitch or lose a stitch to whatever place it is that lost stitches go.
Clearly, knitting was not her thing.
Her aunt, so artfully skilled at knitting, quilting, and most any craft, had tried to teach Jessica when she’d been a young girl, time and time again. But the rhythm of it never sunk in. She’d find herself twisting the yarn in front of the needle when the strand should go behind it. She’d take up a stitch from the right needle instead of the left and lose any number of stitches along the way while her hands grappled with the needles, trying to correct her previous mistake.
Honestly, she had always thought it was silly, spending hours being tortured that way, especially when she could go to any number of stores in town and buy the same things already made. And made better.
That is, she always thought it was silly until she inherited her aunt’s business. Until she’d been put in charge of the very thing that her aunt had given life to. Like she’d told Lydia and Liz just a little while earlier, she was going to do all she could to make the shop work. Even if it meant going through more than a few growing pains.
“Argh!” she groaned as another rebellious runaway stitch slid off her needle.
“Here, I’ll get that.” Lydia put down her needles and reached over for Jessica’s. Pro that she was, within seconds she picked up the stitch and had Jessica back on track.
“You know, maybe it would help if you sat back in your chair and tried to relax a bit,” Lydia suggested softly as she handed the needles back to Jessica. “Your shoulders look so tense hunched over like that.”
“They probably look that way because they are that way.” Jessica smiled at her mentor. “I told you, you didn’t know what you were getting yourself into with me.”
“Oh, now, you’re doing a good job, Jess. Isn’t she, Lydia?” Liz said as her needles clicked double, triple, actually quadruple time compared to Jessica’s.
“Thanks for the encouragement, Liz. But I’d hardly say this is going well,” Jessica countered. “Or even halfway well.”
She’d decided her project would be a young girl’s scarf—something simple and quick. Only nothing about knitting was simple and quick for her. It was all laborious. Even trying to remember how to cast on had taken some time for Lydia to explain and re-explain to her. Once she got started knitting, things didn’t get better. It was plain to see her tension was uneven with bumps and lumps all along the way.
After earnestly slaving over an entire row of stitches, Jessica dared to take her eyes off her own needles long enough to look up to see how everyone else was coming along. Lydia was working on some baby booties using such tiny needles Jessica couldn’t even imagine being able to hold them in her hands. The binding on Liz’s vest was coming along rapidly too. Unfathomably, it had already grown another half inch or so.
“And look at you,” she countered, dipping her head toward Liz’s hands. “You’re a speed demon with those needles.”
“But you’re going to let me help you with a new sweater pattern one day, right?” Lydia asked.
“Oh . . . I’m thinking about it,” Liz hedged.
“So right now you’re just here for moral support?” Jessica asked her.
Her friend nodded with a smile. “There’s no place else I’d rather be.”
It wasn’t so long ago that Jessica would’ve countered with a smart remark about all the other places she’d rather be, but she wasn’t thinking—or was trying not to think—like that any longer.
“Well, I need all the help I can get,” she admitted.
“Just take your time, Jessica. Find your own rhythm,” Lydia said, sounding like the true guru she was.
“Trust me, I would love to.” She sighed.
She tried to sit back and relax as Lydia had encouraged her to do. That only lasted seconds until she was hunched over the stressful mass of yarn in her lap again. She was happy for the distraction when the bell jingled over the Cottage’s front door.
“I must’ve forgotten to lock the shop.”
Liz and Lydia barely looked up as she set her knitting on the table, jumped up from the chair, stepped over the string of pink yarn on the floor, and made a beeline to the front of the shop.
And then an abrupt stop at the sight of him.
At the sight of Derek.
She’d been thinking about him ever since Marisa said he’d stopped by. She’d even wondered if he’d already left town until one of the moms at Cole’s game had mentioned seeing him that morning and gone into a lengthy dissertation about how awesome he looked. Hiding behind a carousel of pattern books and eyeing him, Jessica had to agree the mom had been right.
Even though autumn had officially arrived, he hadn’t seemed to notice or be in need of a jacket. Dressed in worn jeans and a short-sleeved olive-green T-shirt, he glowed like summer—from the sun-kissed amber tints in his light-brown hair to the golden residue of a tan on his brawny forearms. And just when had his arms gotten to look so muscular anyway?
“Anybody home?” he called out, glancing around the shop.
Eyeing him from afar was one thing. Hearing his voice was another, making his presence there seem even more real.
“I, uh, I’ll be right there,” she yelled back, stalling for time, realizing that in comparison to him, she must look a mess. She hadn’t glanced in a mirror since early in the morning and had been on the run all day, not to mention outside at Cole’s soccer game.
Because he hadn’t spied her yet, she scampered back toward her friends.
“It’s Derek,” she whispered. At the sound of his name, the ladies’ needles stilled in their laps.
“No way.” Liz grinned.
“Derek?” Lydia frowned.
“Her senior prom date,” Liz informed their new friend.
Jessica eyed Liz quizzically, wondering how she could possibly remember such a thing.
“Your aunt loved that boy like her own.” Liz shrugged. “It was one of her favorite stories.”
“Oh.”
“Well, aren’t you going to go talk to him?” Lydia got to the point as always.
“Of course I am. But how do I look? Is my hair a mess? I haven’t put on lipstick since this morning.”
“Just tuck the left side of your hair behind your ear. Lick your lips. And there’s a little mascara smudge under your right eye,” Liz pointed out.
Taking her advice, Jessica tucked, licked, and rubbed. “Any better?”
“You look very pretty as always,” Lydia said.
Jessica knew her Amish friend would never out-and-out lie, but she also knew her version of pretty and Lydia’s probably didn’t quite mesh.
Nevertheless, taking a deep breath, she tucked her white blouse into her jeans. Then she set out for the front of the shop once again, wishing Derek were standing there looking like the hyper kid she grew up with, trying to juggle balls of yarn in the air. Instead, he stood patiently with one toned arm crossed over the other as he scanned the room.
“Derek?” She pretended to be surprised. “Is it really you?”
“Jessica.” His voice was moderately deep and easygoing as always as he held out his arms to her.
She slipped into them and into a hug that took her back years, feeling just as natural as it ever had.
When they both stepped back, he eyed her appreciatively. “You look great, Jess.”
“And you’re a charmer as always.” She gave the left side of her hair an extra tuck.
“Hey, when could I ever charm you? I had to be straight with you. You were onto my ways.”
She laughed. “Someone had to be.”
“I’m glad you’re here.” He glanced around the shop. “When I first walked in, I wasn’t sure if anyone was around.”
“Oh, well, yeah.” She slipped her hands in her pockets and made a conscious effort to stand straighter, tummy pulled in the way her aunt had taught her. “The shop is actually closed, but I forgot to lock the door. I was in the back with some friends—knitting.”
“You were knitting?” His blue eyes flickered with surprise.
She shrugged. “It’s true. I’m trying to learn.”
“Hmm. I figured all you’d need to run the shop would be your marketing and social media knowledge. Last I heard, it sounded like your expertise sure helped that new dentist in town get his practice up and running, full gear.”
“Well, I . . .” She didn’t know which to be more flattered by. His compliment of the skills she’d learned from evening classes and put into practice at Pro Dental in past years or the fact that he’d remembered those details from a conversation they’d had the last time he visited Sugarcreek years earlier. “I figured knowing how to knit can’t hurt . . . much.” She smiled weakly.
He nodded as if she didn’t need to say more. “So, how are you doing? And how’s Cole? I got a glimpse of him when I stopped by the other night.”
“We’re doing okay. It’s been hard with Aunt Rose gone.” She took in a deep breath. “But we’re making it, you know?”
Taking a step closer, he raised his arm. She thought for sure he was going to reach for her hand. But instead his hand traveled all the way up to his chin. He rubbed at his day-old whiskers. “I really felt bad about not being able to make it back for the funeral. I wanted to be here, Jess. For Rose. For you.”
“Derek, there’s nothing to feel bad about,” she said as sincerely as she could. “Even if you weren’t here, I know how much you cared for Aunt Rose. You didn’t have to be present for a funeral service for me to know that. I can’t believe you came now. You didn’t have to, you know.”
“Well . . . I did, actually.”
“Really? Why?” She hoped not to hear any bad news from him. Anticipating the worst, she sank onto the shop’s bench right behind them. “Is something wrong?”
“No. More like I want to make things right, I guess. With the past.”
Looking up, she eyed him curiously. “Yeah? What do you mean? What’s going on?”
“I’ve moved back to Sugarcreek.”
Her mouth gaped open as her mind spun in a million directions. Had she heard him right? “You’ve moved back? Like—for good?”
“For as long as they’ll have me.” Derek chuckled as he sat down on the bench next to her.
“That’s incredible.” The news began to sink in, and she began to gush. “It’s awesome.”
“I’m glad you’re saying so. At first I couldn’t tell what you were thinking.”
“I’m sorry.” She closed her mouth. “I was just so surprised. You’ve been gone a long time. And it’s weird to think . . . I mean, I had no clue. But it’s good.” She reached over, giving him a friendly hug. “Really good.”
“Yeah, well . . .” He rubbed his hands together.
“Ever since my last visit here, I’ve been thinking about coming back. All along I’ve been inquiring about deputy jobs at the sheriff’s department. Obviously for a long time there haven’t been any changes. But now that Sheriff Blackwell is retiring, Sam Lane is moving up the ranks and his deputy spot is open. So . . .”
“It’s all worked out.”
“Yeah, and I’m glad because I feel like I owe something to a lot of people in Sugarcreek. A lot of people who helped me grow up and survive.”
She was touched by his sincerity. “Derek, how could they not help?” She looked into his eyes. “I mean, you’re just too likable.” She smiled as he laughed off her compliment.
“I’m not sure about that, but . . .”
“Plus, you were always grateful, never took any of it for granted,” she added. “And you were quite a survivor on your own. Who doesn’t want to be part of a story like that?”
Glancing at him, she could tell he’d come to terms with all he’d gone through, growing up the way he did. The peace of that etched a certain degree of composure and dignity into his face. Still, he lowered his lids humbly. “Rose sure was one of those people, Jess.”
“I know, and it’s really sweet of you to say so, Derek.”
“Well, it’s true. Anyway, I wanted to stop by and tell you before you heard about my move from anyone else.”
Looking at the man next to her, she was glad he still felt close enough to her that he’d want her to hear the news straight from him. But she also felt a twinge of sadness for all the years gone by that they hadn’t shared anything with one another. Back in the day, they had never made a decision without consulting each other. As she remembered, that included something even as minor as when he’d helped her decide on a basket for her bike a few lifetimes ago.
“Thanks.” She patted his knee. “I appreciate it. I really do.”
With that all said, he leaned back, placing his arms along the top of the bench. “Boy, does this bench bring back memories.”
“You stained it back in high school, didn’t you?”
“I did. Even though it didn’t need it.” He chuckled. “It was Rose’s way of keeping me busy and out of trouble. Plus, a way she could pay me and show me the benefit of a job well done.”