How to Knit a Heart Back Home (13 page)

It didn’t hurt. It was more of an electrical feeling. Owen felt as if it was plugged into something, a tiny current. It didn’t feel bad, just kind of twitchy.

Jonas laughed. “You look funny.”

Toots said, “Quiet, or you’re next.” She turned back to Owen. “Now, just sit here with your mother for ten minutes. I’ll come back then and take them all out. You just relax.”

“Can I still drink my beer?”

“Of course, if you think that helps.”

Toots and Jonas retreated to the bar. Owen could hear Jonas chastising his mother again in low tones, but from the sound of her giggles, she didn’t seem to be taking him very seriously.

Owen stared at his mother. Her cheeks were still wet, but her eyes were closed, and she looked content to rest the back of her head against the red leather seat.

He closed his own eyes. The beer was hitting him hard, and he hadn’t even had half his pint.

Beer never made him feel like this.

It couldn’t be the needle, could it?

Nah.

Owen rested, enjoying hearing his mother breathing in and out. Less sniffles, more oxygen.

It didn’t feel like it had been even ten minutes when Toots came back, but when he looked at his watch, he was shocked to find it had been more than twenty.

“Time! Here we are, honey,” said Toots as she unceremoniously pulled the three needles out of Irene’s head and hands. She plucked his out. Again, he felt that tiny jolt but no pain.

“That felt weird,” said Owen.

“Looked weird, too,” said Jonas.

“I’d like to see Mrs. Luby’s roses,” said Owen’s mother.

All three of them went silent as they stared at Irene.

Irene wasn’t crying anymore. The tears had dried. There were streaks down her cheeks that showed where she’d been crying and the bottom of her chin still looked damp, but she wasn’t crying. Her eyes met and held Owen’s eyes, and she looked like his mother.

Bullshit. He wasn’t going to let
his
eyes fill up. One crier in the family was enough.

“Okay, Mama. We can go see the roses.” Owen looked up at Toots. She appeared completely satisfied, standing there in her purple sweater, jingling every time she moved. He wondered if Lucy ever favored clothes that had bells attached. “How did you do that?”

“It’s just a really good point.” She put her head to the side as if evaluating him. “You’re the one living in Lucy’s parsonage.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Do you like it?”

“I do.”

“Do you see her much?”

“No, ma’am. We both seem to be pretty busy.”

“Jonas said you used to ride a motorcycle when you lived here.”

“I did.”

“And that you were a troublemaker and you were either a criminal or a cop. Or maybe both.”

Owen didn’t say anything.

“Do you still?” Toots asked.

Owen shook his head, confused. “Still what?”

“Ride a motorcycle.”

“No, ma’am. Not for a long time.”

“Too bad. I’d ask you to take me out on it sometime. Always wanted to feel one of those rumbling between my legs, and my kids are too conservative.”

Owen laughed in surprise.

Owen’s mother smiled and dropped her eyes to the table. “Slip the first stitch of every row.”

“Mom. Come on.”

But Toots looked pleased by Irene’s random statement. “That’s exactly right, my dear. Once a knitter, always a knitter, isn’t that right?” She slid into the booth next to Irene and pulled out a different set of needles and started knitting something bright orange.

Owen said, “I guess we’ll have another round.”

Chapter Ten

Wool is magic—even wet, it retains heat.

—
E. C.

L
ucy gasped as she threw herself down the walkway between the store and the parsonage. Just that short distance had been enough to soak her to the bone and the sound of thunder reverberated inside her chest. The spring storm had come up fast, black clouds scudding up from the west, heading inland with furious haste. Thank God for Grandma Ruby’s bookstore sweater—the rest of her was freezing, but at least her torso was warm.

Lucy huddled under the small eave and knocked.

No response.

Oh, God, she was nervous. Seeing him again was making her heart beat double time.

Chicken.

She knocked again.

Still nothing. The lights were on, and his car was on the street.

Lucy tried the door handle. It was unlocked.

She fought with her baser self as she jiggled up and down, rain water sluicing off her hair and down her back.

Her baser self won. He might be hurt inside, for all she knew. Shouldn’t she check?

The door gave the telltale creak it always had, the sound that had always alerted her grandmother that Lucy was visiting after school, or coming over for the night. But Owen didn’t call out.

“Owen? Hello?” She hoped she didn’t startle him. Was he armed right now?

But Lord, it smelled good in here. Like garlic and steak. Like Owen was cooking. His back was to her as she entered the kitchen.

“Owen? There was no answer at the door.”

He didn’t turn around.

“Hey, Owen.” Her heart now beating so fast she could hear the blood pumping in her ears, she tried to keep her voice even. “What are you cooking?”

He just began to shake his hips.

That’s
what he was cooking?

Then, while he continued to lean over the sink and peel potatoes, Lucy watched Owen proceed to get his groove on. White cords trailed out of his ears, and Owen danced to music she couldn’t hear. She could see from the side that he was mouthing words to go along with his motion. His hip shaking got bigger, more exaggerated. He was better at moving one side than the other, but he was still working it.

Did he really just do a
Saturday Night Fever
move? He put the potato peeler down for a second and used his right hand to do a little pointing dance move. He shuffled his feet to the right. Then he scooted toward the left again.

He looked exactly like Lucy felt when she was having her own little dance parties. Only she’d always suspected she looked pretty dumb and wouldn’t have ever wanted to be caught.

He just looked relaxed. Like he was having a ball.

Like he had
no
idea he was being watched.

On a twist move, bent knees with slight pelvic thrust, he burst out singing in a falsetto: “Oooh! Got to give it up!” As his twist turned toward her, Lucy tried to duck out of the way to remain unseen, but it was too late.

His eyes met hers as his voice sailed up to another “Oooh!”

He came to a complete stop and his voice cracked.

Holding up the potato peeler, he gave it a little wave. He tugged the iPod headphones out of his ears. He jerked his chin in a manly way and said in a deep voice, “ ’S’up?”

Lucy grinned and raised her hand in greeting.

“How long you been standing there?” he asked.

“Long enough . . .” She giggled.

“Man . . .” Owen said in disgust. “It’s Marvin Gaye. What are you doing in here?” He turned back to his potatoes.

“I’m sorry I startled you. It’s pouring. You didn’t hear the door.”

He looked over his shoulder at her and raised an eyebrow. “You know you just broke the law, right? You have to give me twenty-four hours notice before you enter my rental.”

Lucy took a step back, the smile falling from her face. She hunched her shoulders. “I’m—I’m sorry. I didn’t think. I’ve never . . .” She turned to bolt. Dammit. He was right. She was such an
idiot
. She should have thought it through before barging in.

“It’s fine.”

She paused at the edge of the kitchen where the linoleum met the old rug. The rug was lifting, she noticed. She’d have to get that fixed. He could trip and hurt his other hip.

Owen spoke without turning away from his peeling. “What’s up, anyway?”

In a halting voice, she said, “I had something to talk to you about. Those boxes you sold me.”

“You hungry?”

Lucy wondered if she’d missed something. “Excuse me?”

“Steak in garlic and onions. And I’m making garlic mashed potatoes, too. Lots of garlic.” He glanced at her from the sink. “Want some?”

Lucy held up her hand. “Oh, no. I’m fine.”

“I didn’t ask that, I asked if you were hungry.”

She paused. “Really?”

“I’ve got plenty. I’d be glad if you stayed.”

And just like that, Lucy heard it in his voice. He’d be glad, honestly pleased if she stayed.

And she would be, too.

“You want to chop some more garlic for me? I forgot I wanted to make garlic bread, too.”

Lucy nodded and picked up a knife. This certainly wasn’t the way she’d seen her evening going. But she’d give it a shot.

He sure was going all out for this meal. Did he do this often? Or was this just something he did once in a blue moon? And how often did he dance like that?

Lucy suddenly felt impetuous—a stirring that matched the feeling she’d had on the porch when she’d kissed him. She pointed to the speaker dock sitting on the kitchen table. “Does your iPod plug in to that?”

He glanced back at her, obviously surprised. “You want to hear?”

“Yeah. Looked like you were having fun.”

Owen dried his hands on a paper towel and plugged in his iPod. The dance strains of “Give It Up” filled the room. Owen walked deliberately back to the sink to finish rinsing the last of his potatoes.

She mentally shook herself. He wasn’t going to sit next to her at the table over his math textbook and ask her again to solve the equation for him while he watched so he could “get the gist” of it, and he wasn’t going to ask to borrow her pencil and forget to give it back yet again. He wasn’t going to pass her in the hallway the next day, a different girl on his arm, never noticing her once.

There might be no more dancing from him tonight, she thought. But that was okay. It was enough that the music filled the room. Enough that she could rest her eyes on his broad shoulders while he turned the faucet off.

When she was done with the garlic he asked her to mash the potatoes as he worked on doing something to the steak. He handed her a beer, and she drank it out of the bottle, like he did.

Owen put heavy plates on the table and turned on the light outside so they could see the rain sheeting down through the sliding glass doors.

But as Lucy reached to take her first bite, the rain slowed. It eased so quickly that the resultant silence from the roof was unnerving.

Lucy chewed, conscious of every move she made. Then she said, “So. Those boxes.”

Owen took a bite and then leaned back in his chair, the front legs lifting off the floor a few inches. He looked comfortable, and a half smile played at the corner of his mouth. “Big boxes o’crap.”

“Yeah. Not so much. They’re full of treasure.”

Owen raised an eyebrow.

“A knitter’s treasure,” said Lucy.

“There was yarn in there? I really thought there was only paper.”

Lucy moved the mashed potato into a peak with her fork. “There were a couple of really valuable books. . . .”

“Lucky you. Looks like my loss, your gain.”

She looked up at him quickly. “It’s way more than that. There were papers in the box. Undiscovered patterns of a really famous knitter.”

“Knitters are famous?”

“A few of them are legendary. Elizabeth Zimmerman. Barbara Walker. And Eliza Carpenter. And these are Eliza Carpenter’s papers. The most important knitter of all.”

Lucy scooted to the edge of her chair and tugged on the hem of her old bookstore sweater. She had to explain to him her favorite find of all in the boxes. “See this? This was my grandmother’s sweater. She made it from Eliza’s pattern. I found half the pattern for this, the body part. But not the sleeves. I have to know if the sleeves exist.”

Owen looked bemused. “I can see that the sleeves
do
exist. Full of holes, but they’re there.”

“No, in her words. Her pattern.” How to explain it for the non-knitter? Lucy didn’t know how to make it clear how important it was.

“Can’t you do something like un-knit it? Figure it out backward.”

“Reverse engineering. You’re good.” Lucy was impressed. “But it wouldn’t be half as exciting as finding her real, original pattern—what Eliza Carpenter really intended.”

Owen shifted his weight on his chair, obviously redistributing his weight off his hip, and Lucy was aware of the smallness of her grandmother’s old kitchen.

“Will you make money from me?”

“No! I can’t keep them. I have to give them back to you.”

“What if I don’t want them?”

Lucy paused and then said, “Well, I think you might actually have to give them back to Cade and Abigail MacArthur anyway, since they’re unpublished, and depending on laws that I probably don’t understand fully, they’ll revert to her heirs.”

Without warning, Owen leaned forward, putting his mouth next to her ear. “What if we don’t tell anyone?”

Lucy felt his warm breath against her cheek as he spoke. She focused on the corded muscles on the back of his hand resting on the tabletop.

She froze in place. If she turned her head to the left, her mouth would brush his.

No way was she doing that again.

Leaning to the right, she reached for the salt her steak didn’t need. “Cat’s already out of the bag. Some of the knitters already know, and Mildred tweeted it, so now the whole blogosphere knows, I’m sure of it.”

Owen leaned back, easily. Was he even dimly aware of what he did to her? “So what now?”

“Are there . . . more? Of the boxes?”

Owen shrugged. “The storage unit is packed like an insane person filled it.”

“Who packed her stuff up?”

“I did. But I was in such a hurry back then, when we were moving her out of her house, that if things were already in boxes, I just shoved them in. I couldn’t tell you if there were more of those or not.” He gave Lucy a searching look. “Maybe you could help me.”