Home Sweet Home
To Paul.
You took me to the lake fifteen years ago,
and I fell in love.
First and foremost, I couldn’t have written this book without the support of my awesome husband and kids! To my agent, Jessica, thank you for the endless hours of brainstorming and reading and then more brainstorming and more reading. The past seven years we’ve been working together have been a blast. To my editor, Michele, and everyone at Grand Central Publishing and Forever, it’s a huge thrill to be working with you on my Emerald Lake series. I’ve wanted to write these books for a very long time, and I’m glad our vision matches so well! To all of my friends for our lunches, the endless laughter and support, the constant phone calls and texting, you know who you are…and that I adore each and every one of you.
And last but in no way least, thank you to each and every person who reads romance! I have read (more like devoured) romance novels my entire life, and I am constantly stuffing my bookshelf and e-reader with new ones. Romance readers are the best!
H
ome.
Andi Powell couldn’t believe she was back home.
During the five-hour drive to Emerald Lake from New York City, Andi had felt her stomach tighten down more and more with each mile she covered, each county line she crossed. She’d pulled up in front of Lake Yarns on Main Street five minutes ago, but she hadn’t yet been able to get out of the car. Instead, she sat with her hands still tightly clenched on the steering wheel as she watched people on Main Street. Mothers pushed strollers, shoppers moved in and out of stores, and happy tourists walked hand in hand.
Through her car window, Andi could see that the warm days of summer had already given way to a crisp, cool fall. She would have had to be blind not to notice that the thick green trees around the waterline were transformed into a dazzling display of reds and oranges and yellows.
No wonder why everyone on Main Street looked so happy. Utterly content. Emerald Lake was picture-perfect: the sky was blue, the lake sparkled in the sunlight, and the white paint on the gazebo in the waterfront park looked new.
But Andi wasn’t here to become a part of
picture-perfect
. She had a job to do. Which meant it was time to unclench her chest, to untangle the knots in her stomach, and to get down to business.
The sooner she dealt with Emerald Lake, the sooner she could head back to the city.
Pushing open her car door, she grabbed her briefcase and headed toward her family’s store. The Lake Yarns awning was bright and welcoming, and the Adirondack chairs out front welcomed knitters to sit for as long as they had time to spare.
She smiled her first real smile of the day, thinking of how much love and care her grandmother and mother had put into this store over the years.
The shiny gold knob on the front door was cool beneath her palm, and she paused to take a deep breath and pull herself together. Entering a building that had practically been her second home as a little girl shouldn’t have her heart racing.
But it did.
Opening the door, the smell of yarn was what hit her first. Wool and alpaca, bamboo and silk, cotton and acrylic all had a specific scent. Although Andi hadn’t touched yarn in almost two decades, somehow the essence of the skeins lining the walls, in baskets on the floor, knitted up into samples throughout Lake Yarns had remained imprinted in her brain.
She hadn’t come back to Emerald Lake to play with yarn, but as Andi instinctively ran her hands over a soft silk-wool blend, thoughts of business momentarily receded. The beautiful blue-green, with hints of reds and oranges wound deep into the fibers, reminded her of the lake and mountains on a fall day like today.
From out of nowhere, Andi was struck by a vision of a lacy shawl draped across a woman’s shoulders. Strangely, the woman looked like her.
“Andi, honey, what a lovely surprise!”
Andi jumped at her grandmother’s sudden greeting, dropping the yarn like she was a thief who’d been about to stuff it into her bag and dash out the door.
What on earth had she been doing thinking about shawls? This creative world where women sat around and chatted and made things with their hands had never been hers.
She let herself be enveloped by her grandmother’s arms. At barely five feet, Evelyn was eight inches smaller than Andi. And yet it never ceased to surprise her how strong her grandmother’s arms were. Warm, too. They were always warm.
“Your father’s commemoration isn’t until next weekend. We didn’t expect you to come home a week early.” Her grandmother scanned her face for clues as to why she was back in Emerald Lake.
Andi forced a smile she didn’t even come close to feeling. Lord knew, she certainly had practice pretending. In the year since her father’s sudden death, she’d been going into the office every day with that same smile on her face, working double-time to make sure her work didn’t suffer in the wake of her grief.
But it had. Which was how she’d found herself about to lose her biggest client ever in a meeting a week ago.
The Klein Group wanted to build beautiful vacation condominiums in the perfect vacation town. They’d shot down every single one of her proposals—Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, Cape Cod. Her boss, Craig, had been frowning at her the same way for three months, like he didn’t think she could hack it anymore, and as panic shook her, Andi’s mind had actually gone completely blank. That was when her phone had jumped on the table in front of her, a picture of Emerald Lake popping up along with a message from her mother.
It’s beautiful here today. Makes me think of you.
Before she knew it, Andi was saying, “I have the perfect spot.”
Just that quickly, the old energy, the excitement she used to feel during pitches, rushed through her as she pulled up one beautiful picture after another of Emerald Lake on her computer in the middle of the meeting.
No pitch had ever been easier: The condos would have a spectacular view. There was an excellent golf course close by. And best of all, their clients would be only hours away from New York City, close enough to take a break from the stress of their real lives but far enough removed to get away from it all.
Andi would never leave the city, but that didn’t mean she didn’t see how magical Emerald Lake could be for the right kind of people. The Klein Group had agreed.
The previous Wednesday, she’d been ecstatic, but now that she was back in her hometown, all she could think was,
What have I done?
In lieu of going into a detailed explanation about her sudden appearance, Andi asked, “Where’s Mom? I was expecting her to be in the store with you.”
“Carol had some errands to run in Saratoga Springs and won’t be back until late tonight. Will you be able to spend the night before heading back to the city? I know how much your mother would love to see you.”
What a huge understatement that was. Andi’s mother would be heartbroken if her daughter came and went without seeing her, but Evelyn had never believed in guilt. She had never once pressured Andi into coming home more often or sticking around for longer on the rare occasions when she did visit. When Andi heard her coworkers talk about how their families were forever pressuring them to move back to their hometowns, she was glad her own family was so hands-off with her. They would never try to convince her to come back to the small town she’d grown up in. They respected her goals and plans too much to ever bombard her with hints that they missed her.
Wasn’t she lucky to be so free?
“I’ll probably be here a week. Maybe two.” And then she would leave again, returning back to the city life she’d chosen as soon as she’d graduated from Emerald Lake’s small high school. “It’s a bit of a working vacation actually.”
Fortunately, her grandmother had never been interested in talking business—yet another way they were different.
“Two weeks?” Evelyn looked like she’d won the lottery. “What a treat to have you here, especially when we’re having such a beautiful fall.”
As a sharp pang of guilt at not seeing more of her family settled in beneath Andi’s breastbone, she followed her grandmother’s gaze out the store’s large front windows to the lake beyond the Adirondack chairs on the porch.
“Fall was always my favorite time of year at the lake,” she admitted softly.
Andi’s career as a management consultant in New York City meant she’d barely been back to Emerald Lake for more than a weekend, even over holidays. Growing up watching her father do such great things for so many people as senator had fueled her to want to follow in his footsteps. Not as a politician, but as someone who worked hard, cared deeply, and felt joy at a job well done. After graduating from Cornell University with both an undergraduate degree in economics and then an MBA, she’d chosen Marks & Banks carefully based on their commitment to the environment and the fact that they did more probono work than any other consulting company out there.
Her father had always encouraged her to “go for the brass ring,” and even if some nights she fell onto her bed fully clothed and woke up the next morning with mascara smudged around her eyes and her stomach empty and grumbling, that was exactly what she’d done for the past ten years far away from her teeny, tiny hometown. Emerald Lake was barely a speck on the map, a blue stretch of water surrounded by rolling mountains.
Andi pulled her gaze away from the sparkling lake. “The store looks great, Grandma.”
Evelyn frowned as she scanned the shelves. For such a tiny woman with a sweet, pretty face, her grandmother could be one of the most blunt people Andi had ever come across. The polar opposite of Andi’s mother Carol, actually, who simply didn’t believe in confrontation. But they were both small and gently rounded. Andi had always felt like a giant around the tiny women in her family.
“I just don’t know about the changes your mother made.”
Seeing the way her grandmother hated to move even a couple of skeins of yarn from one side of the store to the other, had Andi second-guessing her project for the Klein Group again.
Why couldn’t she have blurted out any other Adirondack town than Emerald Lake? Still, she was glad for her grandmother’s unintended warning to tread carefully. The condos were bound to be more change than this town had seen in fifty years at least.
Taking the time to notice the changes in the store, Andi said, “Actually, I think the changes help liven up the place.” And then, more gently, “It’s still your shop, Grandma. Just a bit shinier now for the new generation of knitters.”
“That’s exactly what your mother said. Two against one.”
Andi didn’t want her grandmother to think they were ganging up on her. Just as she would have approached a potentially disgruntled client, she took another tack. “What have your customers said?”
“They love it.”
Andi had to laugh at the grudging words. “Good.”
“Well, since you’re going to be home for so long, I’ll be expecting you to finally pick up the needles again,” her grandmother shot back.
Barely holding back an eye roll, Andi said, “We both know that isn’t going to happen, Grandma.”
“You used to love to knit when you were a little girl. I’m telling you, it’s not natural to quit knitting one day and not miss it.”
“Are you calling me a freak of nature, Grandma?” Andi teased. Only way down deep inside, joking about not belonging didn’t really feel like a joke.
Instead, it felt like a reality that she’d tried to pretend hadn’t hurt all her life.
Evelyn picked up a few balls of yarn that were in the wrong basket. “I’m saying I think you must miss it.” She looked thoughtful. “Perhaps it’s simply that you haven’t found the right reason to start knitting in earnest yet.”
“I just don’t like knitting, Grandma. Not like you and Mom do.” Andi hadn’t thought about knitting, hadn’t been into another yarn or craft store for nearly two decades. Clearly, the yarn addiction hadn’t passed through to the third generation.
“You know, my mother tried to get me to knit for years before I really fell in love with it.”
“You’re kidding me?” Andi assumed her grandmother had been born with knitting needles in her hand. “What changed?”
Evelyn sat down on one of the soft couches in the middle of the room. “I met a man.”
“Grandpa?”
“No. Not Grandpa.”
Andi’s eyes went wide with surprise as she sank down beside her grandmother.
Evelyn reached into a basket beside her seat and pulled out a half-finished work in progress. As if she was hardly aware of the movements of her hands, she began a new row.
“Everyone was doing their part for World War II. I wanted to help the soldiers, and I was always good with knitting needles. I knew our socks and sweaters were giving joy and comfort to men, strangers I’d never meet, but who desperately needed a reminder of softness. Of warmth.”
Andi thought about the tiny caps and booties her grandmother had always made for the new babies at the hospital. Andi had made them, too, when she was a little girl. She’d loved seeing a little baby at the park wearing something she’d made. But her grandmother was right. That hadn’t been enough to keep her knitting.
“So it wasn’t just one man who made you love knitting,” Andi said, trying to keep up with her grandmother, “but many?”
“I knit for the cause, but that’s all it was. A cause. It wasn’t personal. Not until
him
. Not until I made his sweater.” Evelyn’s eyes rose to meet Andi’s. “Every skein tells a story. As soon as a person puts it in their two hands, the mystery of the story is slowly revealed.”
Andi’s breath caught in her throat as her grandmother said, “Hold this, honey.” Since she didn’t know how to knit anymore, Andi laid the needles down awkwardly on her lap.
“Those fibers you’re holding can become anything from a baby blanket to a bride’s wedding veil,” Evelyn said softly. “But I’ve always thought knitting is about so much more than the things we make.”
Andi looked at her grandmother’s face and saw that Evelyn was a million miles away.
“Sometimes yarn is the best way to hold onto memories. But sometimes, it’s the only way to forget.”
Andi found herself blinking back tears.
This was exactly why she never came back to the lake. There were too many memories here for her. Memories of people that had meant so much to her.
The walls of the store suddenly felt too close, the room too small. She needed to leave, needed to go someplace where she could focus on work. And nothing else.
“Grandma,” she said as she stood up, “I need to go.” The needles and yarn fell from her lap to the floor.
Frowning, her grandmother bent to pick them up, but suddenly she was racked with coughs. Fear lancing her heart, Andi automatically put an arm around Evelyn and gently rubbed her back as if that could make the coughing stop.
Her grandmother tried to say, “I’m fine,” but each word was punctuated by more coughs.
Evelyn Thomas was a small-boned eighty-eight-year-old woman, but Andi had never thought of her grandmother as frail or fragile. Until now.