Blackbird Knitting in a Bunny's Lair (30 page)

The applause died down—eventually!—and Jeremy and Ariadne were stuck up on stage while Ben talked about them to the crowd some more.

“Now Jeremy, folks are here because they love pretty much every one of you who works at Craw’s mill. You want to tell us a little bit about how we came to be here, winning pretty knitting and free oil changes while munching on Junior’s best food?”

Jeremy smiled a little and took the microphone Ben was shoving at him. Then he pulled his best shtick out of his left ear and did his best to charm these people, his friends, his neighbors, the folks who had rallied together to help Ariadne and her precious baby bird.

“Hi all,” he said, remembering to project. “It’s really nice of you to come out here this evening. Now some of you may remember me when I first came to Granby.” He smiled greenly at Aiden, and then even more greenly in the direction of Aiden’s father and his oldest three siblings, who were sitting at the table nearest the stage. Wonderful. “Anyway, I was a mess. I’d spent most of my life learning how to con people, and suddenly I wanted nothing more than to be honest. Well, Rance Crawford taught me hard work, and Aiden taught me joy, and Miss Ari—well, she mothered me more than I’d ever been mothered in my life. So when she was becoming a real mother, not just the mom to all of us, I figured it was time for me to give back.” He’d had more to say, actually, but suddenly he couldn’t even talk.

The roar of applause was so loud he had to cover the microphone because of the feedback loop. He looked helplessly at Ari, who shrugged, then cupped her hand and shouted, “I don’t even have to speak!” in his ear, and he rolled his eyes at her.

“Lazy,” he mouthed through the screaming, and she grinned.

The crowd calmed down after a few minutes, and Jeremy thrust the microphone at her anyway. She stuck her tongue out at him, shook her head, and spoke.

“It’s no hardship to love my boys,” she said, smiling softly over to where Craw and Rory were standing next to Aiden at the computer nook. They all waved, slightly embarrassed, and she grabbed Jeremy’s hand and continued. “And there are no thank-yous, none, big enough to measure what Jeremy and the mill and all of you have done for me and Rory tonight.” Her voice grew thick and unwieldy, and she shoved the microphone back to Ben with a shaking hand.

The applause this time was a little more subdued, with quite a few “awws” in it, and Ben smiled and waited for it to quiet down.

“Well, folks, I think that’s about all we’re going to get from them.” He looked up to the back of the room then and grinned. “Now if Aiden and Rory can come up here?”

“Oh hell,” Aiden snapped, and even from the back of the crowded pub, Jeremy could see the two of them giving each other panicked glances for support. But they left the booth to Craw and walked anyway.

“Okay, Craw—you loaded that thing up on the TV yet?”

Craw nodded.

Ben smiled, and Jeremy tried to crane his neck to see what had just popped up that he had not been aware of.

“Folks, there is this song that keeps popping up whenever we look at Miss Ari’s pretty little girl.” There was a collective “aww” then, and Jeremy assumed it was a picture of Ari and Persephone, which, as far as he figured, was fine.

“Rory, I’m going to kill you,” Ariadne whispered furiously as the men drew near.

Rory grimaced. “It’s a good picture, Ari—I promise.”

She closed her eyes and shook her head.

“No,” Jeremy said softly, realizing what Ben and Craw had done. “It’s good. These folks have given something huge to us—this is our way of showing them what they paid for.”

She looked up and grimaced. “Okay,” she muttered, and Rory smiled, obviously relieved at being let off the hook.

Aiden stood next to Jeremy and scowled. Jeremy could smell a sort of fear sweat all over him, and he stared at his boy.

“What’s wrong with you?” he hissed under Ben’s patter.

“You’ll see in a minute.”

Ben stopped showing off the slide show of mom-and-baby pictures that had been playing above them, and said, “And we’re not done yet. But we asked Aiden here to sort of give us some musical accompaniment to this next part. He
was
gonna do it a cappella, but Eli agreed to give him a hand.”

Eli appeared behind them, his acoustic guitar in his arms, and he and Aiden made grudging eye contact.

The first delicate notes sent shivers down Jeremy’s spine.

Aiden shook his head again. “Only for you,” he mouthed over the microphone, scowling like Jeremy was holding a gun to his head.

“Blackbird singing in the dead of night….”

Both Jeremy and Ariadne gasped, and Aiden’s voice, growly and warm and completely on key, rolled through the little pub.

Up on the screen flashed pictures, stupid snapshots taken throughout the past three years, of all of them at the mill. Happy ones, of course, because nobody took a snapshot when the world was falling apart, and a whole lot of them were of the stock, because alpacas, bunnies, and sheep were cute, but there was still one of Ariadne, tired and sweaty, holding the baby. And one of Jeremy, swathed in bandages still, with Aiden at his side, posing reluctantly for a Christmas photo in the hospital.

The final one had probably been taken right that afternoon, seeing that Aiden’s mother was the one holding the baby, and she was the person at home at that moment, babysitting.

A pretty baby, really smiling now at six weeks. Flawed and perfect, their baby bird.

Aiden finished singing and the final notes rang through the pub.

Jeremy grabbed the microphone from Aiden as the applause died down, and said, “Thank you all so very much,” and then thrust the mic back at Ben.

Then he and Ariadne walked as slowly as they possibly could back to the little booth.

Where they proceeded to cry on each other for a good ten minutes while Rory and Aiden tried to calm them the hell down.

And Craw ran the damned raffle because, as he kept growling, he was the only one there who had the sense God gave a fucking goat.

T
HEY
’
D
SEEN
the pub unlit and unlovely when they’d come in that afternoon to decorate, but when it was dark outside and the house lights were on inside, it seemed tackier.

They pulled the bunting down and helped the bussers get the last of the glassware off the tables. Aiden swept up and Rory mopped after him, and Craw wielded the vacuum.

Jeremy and Ariadne were about dead on their feet. All they were allowed to do was sit at the table and drink. Orange juice, because Ariadne couldn’t have beer when she was nursing, and for all Jeremy could have used a beer, he wouldn’t do that to her when she probably wanted one herself.

They were waiting for Ben and Junior in the office.

At around eleven, right when they brought up the house lights, Stanley had called, trilling and excited, because he and Alice had done the tallies from the event in Boulder, which had taken place in Alice’s considerably larger yarn store and had involved cappuccinos and poetry readings.

“The poetry was about lady parts,” Stanley said, and Jeremy heard his shudder of horror over the phone. “
Lady parts
, Jeremy—and… and…
childbirth
.” He sounded almost tearful for a moment, and then he perked right up and started talking about money.

Jeremy cut him off midramble. “Man, we love you
so much
for doing this, but you’re going to have to send the tallies to Ben. I don’t touch the money.”

For a moment Stanley went quiet, and then: “You are an honest man,” he said gently.

Jeremy swallowed. “That’s kind of you, Stanley,” he said, meaning it. “But just the same, I’d rather trust Ben and Craw to do the numbers. They both run their own businesses. There’s stuff there I do not know.”

“Fair enough,” Stanley said, sounding resigned. “Okay, so, I put everything in an e-mail to Ben—have him check his mail and he can add in the accounts, okay?”

“You’re awesome, Stanley, thank you!”

“You and Aiden gonna start running deliveries again?” Stanley asked plaintively. “That Rich guy you got from the Marshall’s office doesn’t even stop to chat for the length of a cup of coffee. How am I supposed to get my Granby gossip on?”

Jeremy smiled, thinking they had a delivery to run in a week, and that he would love to break out of the little valley and look around at the big wide world again. For a day, maybe two. Ben seemed to have taken a shine to Bluebell—he probably wouldn’t mind watching her for a day.

“I think we can do that,” he said. “I’ll ask Aiden if he’s up for it.”

“Whee!” Stanley cackled, and Jeremy laughed a little. Stanley was high energy, that was for sure, but now that there were no hospitals involved, Jeremy thought he and Aiden might be able to take him with better grace.

Jeremy rang off, promising to visit and to give Ben a heads-up on the numbers. At that moment, Ben stuck his head out of the manager’s office, hollering, “Whoo-hoo! We got the tallies from Boulder, guys—they’re good. Give me another twenty minutes, okay?”

Ariadne, who had followed Jeremy’s conversation with Stanley third-person, laughed a little. “I guess he got the figures,” she said, and Jeremy grinned tiredly at her.

“How’s your OJ, Miss Ari?”

“I wish it was beer, Mr. Jeremy,” she replied with a wicked smile, and he winked.

“Well, someday it will be. Think Aiden’s mom is remembering why she stopped at six yet?”

Ariadne giggled then like a little girl. “I think anyone crazy enough to have six is probably pissed she stopped at all.”

Jeremy giggled too and turned his head slightly to where Aiden was pushing the broom, the light work making his young, hale body flex under his good suit.

“God, those slacks are tight,” Ariadne breathed in appreciation, and Jeremy laughed, smacking playfully at her arm.

“
You
are not supposed to notice that!”

“I gave birth, I didn’t
die
,” she retorted, and he rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, well, still. You don’t see me ogling your man.”

“You don’t have to,” Ariadne said primly. “I have enough appreciation for both of us.” She glanced up to where Rory was picking some extra bunting off of a light fixture, looking handsome and awkward and inexpressibly dear.

Rory caught her expression and smiled, and then suddenly they both sat up straight like they’d remembered something.

“Oh damn—Ari, did you remember—”

“Yeah, it’s in the car. I thought you would have brought it out when you and Aiden were humiliating the shit out of us!”

“Hush,” Rory said gently. “We love you.”

Ariadne’s sharp angles softened when she smiled at her husband, and the extra roundness that motherhood had given her sat well and warm around her eyes. “Yeah. Yeah, you do.”

She stood up and offered Jeremy her hand. “C’mon, Jer—I’ll show it to you outside and we can put it in your car.”

That night, they’d driven Aiden’s car, but then, the two vehicles were so old and battered, it wasn’t like anyone could tell the difference anyway.

Jeremy took her hand and waved to Aiden, who nodded. “Not too long outside,” he cautioned, and Jeremy crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue. And then turned his back on that bit of nonsense, doing everything but kicking his legs.

“Don’t shake that fluffy tail at me, Jeremy, or I’ll smack it!” Aiden called.

Jeremy shook his tush for good measure.

Ariadne kept hold of his hand and laughed as they ventured into the night.

Sweater weather persisted in Granby pretty much all year—there was no balmy summer air before July. But the air
smelled
warm and earthy, even if the edge of snow that sat in the Rockies never truly dulled. Jeremy turned his face up to the sky and squinted at the stars beyond the glare of the parking lot light outside of Junior’s. Ah, there they were! He smiled lazily, thinking they were beautiful and now that the benefit was over, there was not much else to think about.

He stood patiently while Ari got into the trunk of her car. What she pulled out wasn’t a surprise, not really, because Jeremy’s people liked to do for each other, and this was the sort of gift that Ariadne and Rory would give.

It was a picture, just big enough to look good on their wall. It had taken cues from the big landscape that had been raffled off at the finale, but it was smaller in scale. (To Jeremy’s disgust, Ray Bamford, head of the Elks lodge that had rejected his damned benefit, had won the big one. Well, Jeremy hoped the picture lightened that man up a little, because dammit, something should.)

Jeremy’s picture, though, was a little more personal. Yeah, there were glimpses of sky, and you still knew you were in the Rockies, but the focus here was very much on a brownish wolf trotting through the forest with an easy grace in his limbs. His tongue was out, in the way of wolves, and he looked relaxed and happy and like he’d given chase just minutes ago and maybe let his prey go, just from the joy.

At his side, in midhop, was a lean, wary rabbit—a survivor with some healed tears in his ears and a little bit of shagginess in his fur.

Yeah, he was soft, and he probably startled easily, but Jeremy thought this bunny could take on the dangers of the forest and live.

“Thank you,” Ariadne said, and maybe they’d cried themselves out after the presentation, because all either of them had in their voices, in their eyes, was joy.

“Thank
you
,” Jeremy said, looking happily at his picture. This one was personal, he thought, his smile widening so that even his dimple would have disappeared. This picture was him and his boy in the place they loved best.

He tore his gaze away and grinned at her. “I wanted that picture so bad,” he confessed. “
So
bad. Your husband sure does have an eye for the beautiful, Miss Ari. I really, really love this.”

At that moment Aiden thrust his head out the door of the pub. “You guys stop making out and get in here—Ben’s got the totals!”

The picture was boxed with Styrofoam at the corners of the simple wood frame and a layer of plastic wrapped around it to keep it safe, so all they had to do was stow it in the back of the car before they hustled in.