How to Knit a Heart Back Home (15 page)

Especially Lucy. She didn’t even mind very much that Toots had usually been too preoccupied to ever pay much attention to her only daughter. That was just her mother, just her way. Toots was always busy, usually making a difference in someone’s life in a meaningful way. Lucy wouldn’t have changed a thing about her.

As Toots raced past again, going in the other direction, she said over her shoulder, “How are you, my little parsnip?” She wore a long gray cabled sweater with a belt and a red velvet floor-length skirt. A black snood-like hat perched on her gray curls.

“Hi, Mom. Where’s the séance?”

“Have to get the lamb out of the oven, sweets. Will you go light the fire in the living room, please?”

Lucy wandered into the living room. Good, no one here. Lucy wasn’t that great at building fires. While her brothers had been Boy Scouting, she’d been busy knitting. Fire scared her. She usually preferred to play it safe, make someone else do it.

But not tonight. She’d build a great fire. Two big sips of wine, and then she started.

Grabbing the newspapers from their pile, she balled up some pages, placing them under the grate. She piled kindling, the small twigs and branches that her mother gathered on her long, rambling walks. A few more pieces of driftwood on top of these—they’d flash blue and green flames later.

From behind her, Lucy heard Molly’s voice say, “You have too much paper in there.”

“Hey! I didn’t know you were coming tonight!”

Molly leaned down and gave Lucy’s shoulder a brief squeeze, and then said, “Your mother hasn’t fed me in a while. And if I didn’t get a break, I was going to go stark raving crazy. Between the translation, with the phone ringing off the hook—you have no idea what it’s like to translate for a teenager screaming that her brother just overdosed while you have the worst PMS of your life—and at the same time you’re online, watching the comps for the house you’re selling change before your very eyes. And meanwhile, Theo is in my bed, telling me he loves me.”

Striking a match, Lucy held it to the newspaper. Her father said a fire was well laid if it caught at just one point. No moving the match around, no lighting more than one place. Just one match, one spot, and if the fire started, he’d been successful.

“That just sounds like a normal day for you.”

“The love part? No love. I don’t do love. You know that. I do need and I do now, but not love.”

Nothing. Just a little flickering of the paper. It lit, briefly, and caught the edge of another sheet, and then died.

“Dammit,” Lucy muttered. So much for her dad’s method. Lucy lit the paper in three places, then struck one more match, and lit two more areas.

With a surprisingly loud
whoomp
the fire caught. It blazed so fast and so hard that Lucy scuttled backward in fright.

“I told you there was too much paper!” said Molly.

“It looked right to me!”

The fire wasn’t settling down. The small kindling and the larger pieces of driftwood were flaring into flame. Smoke poured out of the fire and started to fill the living room. Flames leaped higher in the grate.

Molly said, “You opened the flue, right?”

The flue?

Shit
.

“I can’t remember which side the handle’s on.” Lucy ran to the doorway and yelled up the stairs, “Dad? Dad! We need you! Now!”

The smoke thickened.

“Can’t you put it out?” Molly said through coughs.

“
Dad!
”

Lucy’s father raced into the room. “Is the house on fire? Call the fire department!”

“I
am
the fire department, Dad. It’s just the wood in the fireplace. But I can’t remember where the flue handle is. . . .”

“You forgot to open the flue?” He sounded incredulous.

“I guess so.”

“Good God.”

Grabbing a plaid wool jacket from the coatrack, he zipped it up and pulled one sleeve down over his hand. Then he plunged through the white smoke, and sticking his arm into the fireplace, he leaned into and over the flames.

“Be careful!”

He yanked something hard, and then drew his arm back, leaping away from the fireplace.

“Dad? Are you okay?” Lucy coughed.

Toots came in the room. “Bart! Are you
on fire
?”

Bart slapped at the jacket, which smoked in several areas, and he checked the arm that had opened the flue. He held up the blackened sleeve triumphantly.

“It’s dirty in there, but I got the job done.”

Toots patted his arms. “Thank God for wool.”

“Naturally fire retardant,” Bart said, smiling at her. “You always say that. So I grabbed it.”

“You remembered!” said Toots, and kissed him. Then she turned to face Lucy. “What did you
do
?”

It was more like what she hadn’t done. “I forgot the flue.”

“How many times have I told you to check it?”

“Really, Mom, too many times to count. That’s why I normally don’t light the fires around here. I’m sorry.”

Lucy drank from her wineglass while Toots waved her hands around and pushed open two windows. “All’s well that ends well. Bart, go get the fan from our bedroom. We’ll blow this smoke out, and that nice smell will linger for days. We’ll pretend we’re at a beach bonfire.”

Molly patted Lucy on the shoulder and said, “There. And you call yourself a firefighter.”

“Stop it.” But for one moment, Lucy imagined what it would have looked like had they not been so lucky, had Bart not been able to open the flue, had the fire escaped the safety of the fireplace. What if the house had gone up in flames? What if Lucy had lost the very meaning of home? And it would have been her fault. The thought made her stomach heave.

She
did
sometimes call herself a firefighter. Four times a month, when she carried the department pager, she did. And for the love of fiber, she must be the worst firefighter in the world. Lucy bit the inside of her cheek.

Toots yelled up the stairs for Jonas and Silas to come down for dinner and shooed the rest of them to the table.

Once they were gathered around the table, Toots looked at Lucy and said, “Thank you for not quite burning down the house, my firefighting daughter. Now pass me the pepper and tell me how your new tenant is doing.”

Lucy sent the pepper to her mother via Molly. “Fine, I guess. I haven’t seen him much, actually. He’s pretty busy with his mother, I think. Out of the house a lot . . .”

Toots nodded. “Because I met him at the bar and I think we should set him up with Whitney.”

Lucy felt the heat of the wine hit her veins. Whitney?
Whitney?
“Yeah, Mom, I
think
he’s fine, if you don’t mind that kind of mama’s boy. He’s back in town to be near her, you know? Cute enough, I guess, if you like that kind of thing. But remember when I tutored him in high school? Anyone who dated him would have to help him pay the check just to get the change right.”

Molly gaped through the thin remaining haze.

Lucy went on, “And who knows where he got that limp? Maybe he tripped walking out of the doughnut shop when he was still on duty.” The sharp words felt unfamiliar, acrid, in her mouth.

Lucy’s father stopped serving the mashed potatoes. Silas stared at her. Even Jonas’s eyebrows went up in surprise.

“I thought you were a fan of his, darling,” said Toots lightly.

Jonas said, “I
told
you she shouldn’t have let him move in.”

Lucy said, “I just don’t think he’s right for Whitney.” She curled her toes into balls at the ends of her canvas shoes.

“He was shot by his best friend,” said Toots. “While on duty. It ended his career. Your tone is unkind and I don’t like it at my table. Would anyone like some fried Indian okra to go with the lamb?”

Lucy stared at her mother. “How do you know that?”

“He told me.” Toots smiled at her daughter.

“He
told
you?”

“I asked. I met him at the Rite Spot the other day. Jonas and I had a lovely time with him and his mother. Eliza and I used to knit with his mother, and Irene and I had a nice little catch up. She doesn’t look well, poor old thing.”

Lucy just shook her head.

“And I think it’s just the saddest thing, a man who loses his career like that, even a job that involves potential violence and the need to carry a deadly weapon, as his did. Must be like losing his whole identity. I think Whitney, such a bright, sweet thing, would be good for him. Or Molly!” Toots sat up straight, as if seeing Molly for the first time all night. “What about you, sweetheart? Are you seeing anyone right now?”

Molly gaped for a moment. “Well, no. Yes. Kind of?”

“Oh, that’s fine. I’ll set my sights on Whitney.”

“What about Lucy?” asked Molly, with a giggle in her voice. “You won’t set them up?”

Toots looked startled for a moment. “My Lucy?”

Lucy said, “Molly!”

“Why not?” asked Molly. “They already have the advantage of proximity, with the bookstore and the parsonage—you already like him, and Lucy’s single. What’s wrong with that?”

“Oh, but . . .”

Lucy’s father frowned. “I don’t think anyone should be setting anyone up with anyone. Let people make up their own minds.”

Jonas said, “Dad’s right.”

Toots winked at Lucy. “Lucy’s looking for a different kind of man, anyway.”

“I am?” Lucy still felt awful about what she’d said about the doughnut shop. She’d been kidding. How could she have known he’d been shot on duty? Of course her mother
would
get the lowdown before anyone else.

Toots nodded. “Lucy needs someone gentle. Someone sweet, like her. Someone who can understand her quiet moods, her peaceful nature. Someone . . .” Toots held up her hands and let them sway. “Someone who is like the ocean on a gentle summer’s day.”

“Someone like Gary,” said Jonas around a mouthful of potato.

“Come on, I didn’t
know
he was gay. And for the record, he says he didn’t, either. He was finding himself,” snapped Lucy. “And I loved him. He was sweet.”

“As a lamb,” agreed Molly, but her cheeks were pink, a dead giveaway she was about to burst into giggles.

It wasn’t fair. Lucy used to date more often than she did now, and she even fell in love sometimes. She hadn’t always been this scared. But every single time she’d fallen in love, she’d been left. There’d never been a time that she’d been the person causing the breakup. She’d never been the one doing the leaving. Tim had left her for a taller, thinner version of herself who owned a chain bookstore in the city. Gary had left her (lovingly) for a man. Randy had just left. One morning, he was gone, leaving only a note that said, “I’m sorry,” and a dirty pair of jeans next to the washing machine.

After Lincoln broke up with her, saying he was moving to Alaska to work in the canneries, Lucy had adopted a cat. After six months, Mr. Pickles had moved next door, into Mrs. Zaimo’s house. Lucy suspected a tuna lure, but couldn’t ever prove it, and now just satisfied herself with rubbing Mr. Pickles’s head whenever she saw him sunning himself outside.

It was just safer to be alone. It hurt so much less.

“I found a bunch of unpublished patterns.” Her voice came out too loudly.

Lucy’s father said, “Well, that’s nice, honey. Hey, Jonas, did you ever . . .”

“They’re Eliza Carpenter’s.”

Toots all but came out of her chair. “Eliza Carpenter?
Our
Eliza Carpenter?”

Lucy picked up her knitted bag that she’d set next to her chair. “Look, patterns that the world has never seen. And some journal entries, too.”

Toots’s voice was low. “Let me see those.” As she reached out to take a page from Lucy, her hand was shaking.

Molly said, “Are you kidding?”

Toots, after a moment, said, “This is her work. This is her handwriting.” She looked up at Lucy, her eyes shining. “How amazing, Lucy. Where did you find them?”

“Old boxes I bought from Owen, actually. They were his mother’s. And look.” She fished clumsily through the papers and gave one to her mother.

“Look at the title of it.”

Toots peered at the page and her eyes filled with tears. “Ruby’s Book Spire Sweater.”

“It’s a cardigan. It’s
my
cardigan. The yellow one of hers I wear all the time, the one that’s shredded into tatters. She wrote this one for Grandma, who was always chilly at the store. . . . Look at the scalloped edges. Now I can re-knit it, if I find the other page, the page with the sleeves.” Lucy’s voice was passionate.

Toots sighed and touched her lips with two fingers. “She wrote it for Mom.” She turned the paper over. “But where’s the rest of the pattern?”

“I haven’t gone through everything yet. I hope I find it. But no matter what, there are enough patterns for a whole book. I’ll take it to Abigail and she can edit a whole new Eliza Carpenter book.”

“People would
kill
for that,” said Molly, her voice cracking with excitement.

Toots inclined her head. “They would, yes. Sure. But Abigail has two of her own pattern books coming out this year, and what with Lizzie and the new baby coming . . . And now she’s recovering from the accident . . . She’s swamped. And Cade, well, he’s not much for writing. Maybe they’ll let you do it!”

Lucy laughed and felt the wine swim to her head. “Me? No.”

Toots said, “Why not?”

“Because I’m not a writer, Mom.”

“But it would be editing, not writing. And besides, you’re the writer in the family. It’s what you always wanted to do, isn’t it? And your name, on a book of Eliza Carpenter’s work. You and Eliza. Like a collaboration?” Toots’s voice was so warm, so proud. Lucy hadn’t heard that tone directed at her, not in years, not since she won the lead in the school play when she was nine and played the Thanksgiving turkey.

Lucy let herself bask in the warmth of her mother’s smile for a moment and then exhaled. There was no way she could do it. She sold books. She didn’t write or even edit them.

The standoff between herself and Owen, which was probably imagined on her part, she knew that, had gone on long enough. Almost a week since the lightning. And he’d said for her to come by anytime and they’d go to the storage unit . . .