How to Knit a Heart Back Home (17 page)

This was going to be trickier than she’d thought.

She pulled into a spot next to a small red car with a license plate that read K2TOG, and Owen barely fit into the last available space.

Normally, she enjoyed the view. Cade ran sheep on the property he’d inherited from Eliza Carpenter, and they dotted the low green hills around them. Under an oak tree, a couple of pygora goats, raised for fiber, grazed. A footpath was well worn into the grass between the main house and the smaller, matching cottage, which housed Abigail’s yarn shop. Lucy had spent many a happy hour fondling the yarns, taking classes, just hanging out with other knitters. It had been too long since she’d been out here.

Owen matched her stride as they walked toward the shop. “All these cars, are they employees of the sheep ranch?”

Lucy said, “Nope.”

“This is all for the yarn.”

“You’re starting to get it now.”

“Damn.”

“Yep.” Lucy pushed open the screen door of Eliza’s.

Inside, it looked as it always did: like paradise. High bookshelves ran along the walls, filled with every colorway of yarn imaginable. Blues and reds and yellows, the softests merinos next to coarser handspun local yarn made from Jacob sheep, showing off their natural black-and-white coloring. Yarn was heaped on dark wood tables scattered throughout the large room, every shade imaginable, silk and angora, alpaca and bamboo. Baskets sat on the floor, filled with sale skeins, castoffs that knitters hungrily pawed through.

And everywhere there were women. Women chatting, moving, reaching, laughing, hugging, sitting, and knitting. Women on chairs, couches, and a few on the floor. Lucy knew a few of them by name, some by sight, but most of them she didn’t know at all. There had to be at least forty women in the room, as well as four or five men who were just as comfortable with the language of yarn as the women were.

Owen, on the other hand, looked as if he’d put his shoes on the wrong feet. Lucy wanted to laugh but then decided it would be unkind, so she touched his elbow. He jumped.

“It’s okay. None of them will hurt you. Not unless you stand in front of the cashmere, anyway.”

He turned his head to look behind him, even though it was obvious he didn’t know what he was looking to avoid. Lucy left her hand on his elbow for longer than was necessary. She liked the way his arm felt.

She liked it too much. She drew her hand back.

Mildred popped out from behind a spinner rack of patterns. “Hello, you two crazy kids! Will you settle a bet between Greta and me?” Greta followed behind her, quieter, as usual.

Owen smiled. “Hi, Greta,” he said.

Greta looked pleased to be noticed.

Mildred steamed ahead, still working on the sleeve dangling from her needles. “Did you, or did you not, date in high school? Greta says you didn’t, I say you most certainly did. And I’m always right about these kinds of things. So she’s going to owe me a milk shake at Tad’s Ice Cream.”

Lucy felt her face flush as red as the display Koigu shawl hanging over Owen’s head. Should she answer this? Or look to him to do so?

“We didn’t . . .” Lucy started.

“I kissed her once,” said Owen. “Best kiss of my young life. Never forgot it. I should have dated her. But I didn’t. So I think both of you are wrong. No one gets the milk shake, except maybe for Lucy, if she lets me buy her one.”

Both women looked pleased by his answer, and Lucy pretended interest in a row counter that she already had a million of at home.

A small, round woman wearing orange wool from head to toe tugged on Lucy’s sleeve. “Do you know this store?”

Lucy nodded, relieved. “What are you looking for?”

“I can’t find the Cascade 220. Everything here is so expensive, and I just want to make my husband a dang hat. Is that so hard?”

“Well, I can understand that; some of Abigail’s stuff is very nice . . . if you just look over here,” Lucy started to lead the woman toward a corner piled with neat skeins in a dark wooden bookcase.

“Nice is one thing,” the woman snapped. “Extortion is another.”

Lucy slowed and looked over her shoulder at the woman. Was she intending to sound that surly? It wasn’t a tone usually heard in Abigail’s shop. Maybe it was accidental.

“Well, I’m sure you’ll find what you’re looking—”

“I’m sure I won’t. I don’t even know why I came on this tour. I never thought Eliza Carpenter was that special, and now I’m certain of it.” The woman’s voice got louder. Hisses of indrawn breath could be heard around the room as the other shoppers stopped talking. “This tourist trap is probably full of moths. I bet that Abigail they talk about never even really knew Eliza like she said she did. Just married her nephew and turned this old crap cottage into a place to fleece us.” The woman barked an ugly laugh. “Get it?”

From her spot behind the register, two red spots flamed on Abigail’s cheeks.

Lucy, still standing near the woman, desperately wished for something to say. Anything.
Come on
. But all words had deserted her. Just embarrassed anger that had nowhere to go.

One small woman who had been bending over a basket stood up. “Beatrice, now stop it. You know you always overreact when—”

The woman in orange continued. “I’m outta here. I’ll be in the bus, waiting for our ride back to the hotel. At least there I have real wool to spin, not like this junk that’s got more VM than my vegetable garden.”

“Hey!” Lucy managed to squeak, but it was all she got out. Her heart was pounding too hard, and her hands were clammy. She had to defend Abigail. To say something to stand up for Eliza. But nothing came to her, the words were stuck in her throat.
Dammit.

In her ear, Owen said, “What kind of bitch was that?”

Lucy shook her head, still mute. She led him to the back of the room.

At the wooden counter, Abigail clapped her hands when she saw Lucy, the color still high in her cheeks, warring with her bruises. “Oh, hooray! You’re here! I’m so glad! And that witch is out in the bus, so all’s right with the world.” She came around the register, her belly slowing her progress. After she’d hugged Lucy, she embraced Owen. He looked startled, as if he hadn’t seen the hug coming.

“What about that . . . ?”

“Who cares about her? I get at least one like her a week. Most knitters are nice, but there’s a bad apple in every bunch. Not worth our time. Now I’ve got to take a break, and you’re the perfect excuse. Sara!” she called to a small, pretty woman with glasses who was helping a customer figure out how to Kitchener an underarm. “I’m going up to the house for a few, do you have it?”

Sara waved. “Got it. No worries.”

Expertly, Abigail wove her way through the crowd, nodding and thanking the customers that complimented her on her selection, murmuring the right things when they gasped their love of Eliza, leading Lucy and Owen out the front door and down the path to the main house.

As they followed her, Lucy wished she’d said something to that woman. Something snarky. Something smart, clever, quick. But even now, she still had no rejoinder. Gah.

In the hallway of the house, Clara the border collie padded out and lifted her head for petting. The kitchen was lit by sunlight. Lucy looked closely at her friend for damage. The side of Abigail’s face was bruised and mottled, and she still had a bandage on one arm, but other than that she looked fine. Recovered.

Abigail sank into the kitchen rocker with a huge sigh, her arms cradling her belly. “Oh, Lord. They’re wonderful. Did you see them? They have a tour bus! They’re from Michigan! They drove all the way to California to see Eliza’s ranch. Just to do this. To buy wool from her sheep. I still can’t believe it. I
never
believe this stuff. They’re amazing.” She laughed, and Lucy laughed with her.

Abigail could have died, but she hadn’t. Lucy’s heart soared.

“How are you feeling?”

Abigail smiled. “I’m fine. Thanks to you two. Don’t think that we’re going to let you forget it.” She looked down at the swell under her hand and then back up at Lucy, blinking away tears. “I didn’t want you to come see me in the hospital because I didn’t want to cry there, but . . . thank you.”

Lucy, overwhelmed by the tone of Abigail’s voice, didn’t know where to look. “We were just in the right place at the right time. And you’re welcome. You would have done the same thing.”

“But it was you. And I’m here . . . and . . .”

Lucy leaned over and kissed Abigail’s cheek. Abigail grabbed Lucy’s hand and clutched it tightly. For one long moment their eyes met. Lucy felt the gratitude and accepted it.

Then Lucy gently took her hand back. She said, “Is your hunky husband around? We need to talk to him, too.”

Abigail appeared relieved. “You’re lucky you just caught him. He’s got Lizzie upstairs, and then they’re going to town, to Tillie’s. Good timing. He’ll have heard us come in and be down in a second.”

Sure enough, boots clomped down the stairs. Cade, dressed in a rugged brown sweater and Wranglers, held his small daughter in one arm. The other arm carried a very pink backpack.

“Hello, Mama,” he said, and dropped a kiss on Abigail’s head.

Lucy melted a little.

Abigail looked sheepish but grinned.

Cade nodded at her. “Look what the cat drug in. Hey, Lucy.”

Lucy had known Cade since she was small. They’d run through the hills together while her mother knitted with Eliza in this very kitchen. Cade hadn’t settled down until Abigail had come to town. Then they’d fallen in love—the danger of proximity, he called it—and the rest was history.

Cade handed a still-sleepy Lizzie to Abigail and then, before Lucy could take a breath, he enveloped her in a hug as tight as she’d ever been in before. For several long seconds, she was pressed against the wool of Cade’s sweater. Then he let her go and took Owen’s hand, pumping it up and down, seven, eight times. Owen’s had to use his other hand to steady himself on the kitchen counter.

“You two saved my wife’s life. If she’d been driving her truck, she probably would have been dead—”

“Or fine, because I would have been going faster, so I wouldn’t have been there,” said Abigail, in an argument that had obviously been ongoing.

“But instead, she was in that little family car I made us get, and you were there to pull her out, and I owe you one.”

Lucy shook her head. She hadn’t expected any of this. She’d come to bring them a ghost of the past, not to be hailed as a hero. “You don’t owe us anything.”

Cade moved behind Abigail, taking a bite of muffin that was left on a plate next to the sink.

“Lucy needed to ask you something, cowboy. Don’t go running off just yet.”

“Oh.” Lucy watched Cade put on the brakes. “All right, Lucy. Shoot.”

Abigail shushed Lizzie, who was beginning to fuss.

“I found something.” Lucy rummaged in her bookbag. “A bunch of somethings, actually. Knitting patterns. At the store, in an old box.”

Cade and Abigail looked at her blankly.

“They’re Eliza’s.”

Abigail, visibly startled, reached for the stack. “Eliza’s? Are you sure?”

“Damn sure.”

“Unpublished patterns. Oh, my God,” said Abigail. Cade just stared.

Lucy took a deep breath. “They were in Owen’s mother’s storage unit. We just finished going through it. There are a total of four boxes.”

“But . . .” started Cade.

Lucy held up a hand. “I know. Legally, I know the rights are yours, as her heir. And you already have one knitting writer in the family. Abigail, I know you’ll want to edit the patterns.”

Abigail pulled out a piece of paper and turned it over, nodding.

Lucy smiled and dropped her eyes. “It would be the book of a lifetime, don’t you think? It’s what knitters have been waiting for. The unpublished works of Eliza Carpenter. Journal entries, too, that sound as if she’s sitting next to you, telling you stories. They’re fantastic.” Lucy’s voice broke—she couldn’t help it. Part of her heart was breaking, too.

Abigail looked at Cade. They seemed to have a conversation in front of Lucy, although neither of them said a word. Cade nodded, and so did Abigail.

“So basically, we’d be hiring you to edit the patterns, right?”

Owen’s head swiveled to look at Lucy. She dug her nails into her palms.

“No, no. I’m just bringing them to you. I bought them from Owen, but they’re not mine, they’re yours. He didn’t understand what he was selling, and I didn’t understand what I was buying. None of it was fair. We’re returning all of it to you.”

Abigail rubbed her forehead. “Why did your mother have these, Owen?”

“My mom and Eliza were friends. I’m remembering that now, and I’m starting to remember what she was like.” Owen shot a look at Lucy that made her heart flutter in her chest. “I remember a time that she gave me a bike—I’d forgotten that until just this morning, and I don’t know how I’d blocked that out. No one had ever given me anything like that before, and God knew my parents couldn’t afford anything like that. It was secondhand, a beater—I was probably eight or so. Green, with twisted-back handlebars, and it squeaked when it went up hills. But man, I loved that bike.” Owen paused. “She did nice things for my family. I’m not sure why.”

Cade had been putting milk back into the fridge, but paused, the door standing open. “Green, with an orange racing stripe? Black spokes, and a rip in the green seat?”

Owen’s eyes widened and he nodded.

Cade grinned. “She bought me a ten-speed and told me my legs were too long for that one. I’m what, three, four years older than you? So that’s where my old bike went.”

“Sneaky!” exclaimed Abigail, kissing Lizzie on the head. “Sneakiest knitter I ever knew.”

“And once,” said Owen, “when my mother sent me a Christmas gift, there was a pair of socks inside. With a card that just said ‘E. C.’ I never knew what that meant, and I only remember that because I still keep the socks, with the card still attached, in my sock drawer.”

Lucy gaped at him. “You have socks handknit by Eliza Carpenter and you don’t
wear
them?”

“They’re bright green.”

“So? They’re handknit by Eliza! How did you . . . ? Why did she . . . ?” Lucy shook her head. Then she asked what she wanted to ask. “Why you?”