How to Knit a Love Song (6 page)

“Maybe it is a little extreme.”

What was he saying? He didn’t want her here.

“No, I think it’s good. I’ll go shower, and then, let’s see,” her hand fluttered up to her hair and back down again. “It’s only nine thirty, so I think that’s my time in the house, but I’m happy to be up in my room.”

He should correct her choice of words. Her room.

He could let that go, right?

“No, I’m out of here. I’m going to go up to the north end and check a fence line.”

She nodded again, at him, and left the room silently.

Cade took a deep breath and leaned against the sink, looking out the window at the cottage. This was going to be something, all right. He just didn’t know what.

Chapter Seven

Knit a sleeve as long as you want, not to the specifications of any silly pattern, even one of mine. If you always roll your sleeves, knit a sleeve four inches shorter. Remember, there are no sleeve police.

-
E.C.

A
bigail was getting good at acting like she was strong.

She wasn’t sure how her bravado held up under his gaze. Those clear, green eyes seemed to look inside her and see way too much. Maybe he wasn’t buying her strength act. But she was going to try to keep selling it to him. Besides, she was sick of being scared.

First things first. She told herself her temporary room was going to be fine. She could write for a while sitting in bed with her laptop, but to really think, she needed to spread out. The tiny desk would only work for so long.

It would be hard, leaving her fiber in their plastic bins, but she supposed she could just wait until she was in the cottage. Once her work space was organized, her yarn and fiber up on the shelves in plain view, she’d feel like herself.

Wouldn’t she?

The bedroom Cade had given her was small but sweet. A narrow twin bed was covered in a green knitted afghan. The sheets smelled a little musty, but looked clean. She’d wash them later today. Last night, she hadn’t felt like looking for the washer and dryer, hadn’t felt like putting herself again in Cade’s path.

She quickly repositioned the furniture in the room, moving the bed so that it was under the window. She wanted to look up at the sky at night. She moved the small writing desk to the other window on the far wall, so when she was writing she’d be able to look out at the trees and sheep.

She tugged at the afghan, squaring it up on the bed. She recognized Eliza’s hand in the pattern of it. She felt silly for doing it, but she leaned down and sniffed. There it was, the slightest scent of the lavender-lanolin hand lotion that Eliza always wore—the smell permanently embedded in the fibers. Abigail felt buoyed.

The house was too deep into the hills to have a view of the ocean, but she could feel the sea. While she unpacked her few belongings, moving clothes into the old dresser, she moved back and forth, to the window and away, taking it all in.

She also kept an eye out for Cade.

Oh, there were too many questions, and each one problematic. Each question would require a conversation with Cade, and she planned on avoiding him as much as possible.

She looked again out the window.

Abigail could barely believe that she wouldn’t see her ex-boyfriend Samuel’s black SUV idling on a nearby corner under a streetlight, that she wouldn’t see his face turned in the direction of her window. She was used to the fear, and had even become good at marshalling it, corralling the trepidation.

But there was nothing out there but the slow dust trailing down the main road where an old beat-up truck had just been. A squirrel raced out from under an oak tree and then did a U-turn and raced back the way it had come.

It wasn’t even lunchtime on her first real day, and she wanted, what? Not out, surely, but she didn’t want this, this familiar feeling of being cooped up. She was done being kept inside.

She walked resolutely to the door and outside, across the yard back to the cottage. She unlocked the door, hoping that she wouldn’t be interrupted this time. She wasn’t done with this cottage yet.

A new beginning.

She would start the clean-out today. The faster it was done, the faster she was out of Cade’s house, and away from that strange tension.

The box on top of the first pile. That’s where she would start. She pulled up a piece of the yellowed newspaper. Was there anything else in there?

Her hand hit a piece of wood. And then another one.

Abigail pulled one out.

It couldn’t be. It looked like…

It was.

Abigail held up the flyer for a spinning wheel. A gorgeous, dark, wooden flyer that looked antique, or was a very good replica.

She went in the box farther. More flyers.

She carried the box out onto the porch into the sun and brought out the next box.

Bobbins. Scads of them. Made of matching wood.

Abigail smiled.

She opened boxes on the porch until she had found all the various pieces that she needed.

Then she ran to her truck and pulled out her small toolbox. Cade would mock it mercilessly, she was sure, for being small and useless, but she knew it held what she needed.

Less than thirty minutes later, she had a fully assembled spinning wheel in front of her.

It was like a strange, good dream.

And it was beautiful. The wheel itself was hand carved and decorated with carved flowers and vines. The treadle had the same design, and Abigail could hardly imagine putting a foot on such an intricate thing.

All the pieces were there.

And she had a feeling.

Abigail went back in the house and went farther into the front room, over near the stairs. She lifted boxes and shook them, until she found the right heft, the weight she was looking for.

She carried this box out onto the porch and opened it, not surprised to see the newspaper on top. Underneath, wrapped in muslin and smelling of cedar, was a carded batt of wool, a deep heathered green, beautifully prepared, ready for spinning.

“I knew it. You crafty thing, Eliza. You’re guaranteeing I don’t go anywhere, huh?” Abigail laughed out loud.

She pulled off a hank of the wool, attached a leader to the flyer, and sat on the dusty red chair on the porch. She started spinning. Oh, this was joy. This was right. This was what Eliza had taught her: this was what Eliza had found in Abigail’s fingers—this ability to draw the fiber out into just the right kind of yarn.

She stopped and went back into the house. It only took a few minutes of peering into the boxes to realize there were probably a hundred wheels, and hundreds of pounds of wool.

“It’s my store, my classroom, my tools,” she whispered. Tears came to her eyes. “My dream. Oh, Eliza.”

Chapter Eight

If you don’t like how your knitting is going, change it. Never be a slave to a pattern, especially one of mine. Make the pattern conform to your will, or burn it cheerfully in the grate and write a new one, a better one.

—
E.C.

W
hat was she doing to him? He was behind in a ton of office work, and he had some females that hadn’t been acting right. He had to get down to their paddock this morning and try to figure out if they were sick or not. He didn’t want to call the vet. He was doing okay financially, but that was because he cut corners, didn’t waste anything.

The opposite of how Eliza had been, Eliza who wouldn’t kill an animal even if it was making the others sick. That is, when she’d noticed they were sick at all.

The office. He hadn’t seen Tom this morning, but he was probably in by now, too. Cade’s band of sheep was a good size and required both of them, working hard, all the time.

The smell of coffee greeted him when he opened the door at the back of the barn.

“Tom?”

“Hey, boss. Have a coffee. On the house.”

“Generous of you. Your coffee’s crap.”

“You’ll drink it anyway.”

“True.”

Tom grabbed Cade’s cup from the top of a filing cabinet and filled it. “Fix what ails you.”

“My coffee would. Yours burns my tongue.”

“Don’t drink it then.”

“You seen the ewes in the third paddock?” Cade asked.

“They look better today. I’ve been keeping an eye on them. I really think that it was just a cold. They all seem fine, except for that older girl we looked at yesterday. I brought her in.”

“Thanks.”

“Yup.”

Cade didn’t know what he’d do without Tom. Of course, he’d never tell him that, not outright. If he did, if he had ever expressed how grateful he was to Tom, Tom would have laughed his ass off. They didn’t talk like that. Didn’t work that way.

But they didn’t have to.

“So the girl’s in.”

“She is.”

“What did Eliza actually leave her?”

“The cottage.”

“You got the land it’s on?”

“She got that too.”

Tom whistled. “Hot damn. You got screwed.”

“Yep. It’s punishment, I think. For that fight we had.”

“About how you date too much?”

“It wasn’t the dating she minded.”

“What did she call it again? Catting around?” Tom grinned.

“I don’t cat around. That was crap.”

“If you say so. So that girl over at the house, what’s her name?”

“Abigail Durant.”

“Sounds fancy.”

“City girl.”

“I saw the truck. Silly little thing.”

Cade nodded. “That’s what I said! She didn’t like it much.”

Tom sat in the brown fabric armchair that had seen perhaps a little too much use and kicked up his feet on the desk.

“She’s pretty, though,” said Tom. “If I can trust what I saw at a distance this morning.”

“Not my type.”

“Since when is pretty not your type?”

“Since pretty moved into my house,” said Cade.

“I can see the problem.”

“Yeah.”

“She didn’t move into
my
house,” Tom said with a lecherous grin.

“You stay out of it. Do not flirt with her. You’re too old. I’ll have to shoot you to put you out of your misery.”

“I’m only four years older than you. Jealous? You know she’d want me.”

“You’d have to shower more than twice a year, probably.”

“With the water shortage and global warming? Not a chance. She’d have to take me as I am.”

“Forget it. No, she’s going to stay in the house with me until the cottage is fixed up and livable.”

“You better get to work on the cottage then, boy.”

“Not my job, it’s hers,” said Cade.

“You have any idea what’s in all those boxes yet?”

“Old newspapers.”

“I smell a bonfire in our future.”

The thought of it cheered Cade a little. “A big bonfire,” he agreed. “With food.”

“And whiskey.” Tom leaned back in the chair and nodded. Then he said, “What I don’t get is why it’s happening like this. Eliza worshipped you. This doesn’t sound like her. Are we sure that gal isn’t playing you? Are we sure she really knew Eliza?”

“I wondered that, originally, but I remember Aunt Eliza talking about an Abigail that was helping take care of her, who knitted with her. I guess I assumed that Abigail was about ninety and toothless. I never figured she’d have a young friend like that, even though if anyone would, it would be Eliza.”

“She was something.”

Cade nodded. “She always had that knitting in her hands, always with the spinning wheel somewhere nearby.”

“Or that thing, what did she call it? The dropping thing?”

“Her drop spindle.” Cade raised his pant leg to display blue-green socks sticking up over his boot top. “These are the warmest, softest socks I ever had. I saw her spinning the yarn for it on that spindle while she read a knitting magazine and cooked chili all at the same time.” Cade picked up a pencil and put it down again. “We never got into that whole yarn thing. That’s why she left, I think. To get closer to the knitters.”

“But we raised her sheep.”

“I know, and she got first pick of the fleece before we sold the rest.”

Tom said, “She was crazy about the fleece.”

“Even though it sold for just about nothing.” Cade paused. “But she took me in when I wanted to make a real go of it. She let me figure out my ass from my elbow.” He cleared his throat. “She believed in me.”

“So did I,” said Tom. “Don’t I get a medal for it, too?”

“You get a kick in the ass.”

“You gonna buy the property back from her?”

Cade tapped the bottom of the rusty filing cabinet with his boot. “I was in here until midnight last night, going over and over it. With what the land is worth now, I couldn’t ever afford to make an offer. Not that she’d accept it anyway.”

He sucked back the rest of the bitter coffee and took his hat off the rack. “Aren’t we going up to work on the north fence today?”

“If you say so, boss.”

“I hate it when you call me that.”

“That’s why I do it,” said Tom.

Chapter Nine

When the sleeve measures the right length, put it aside and cast on immediately for the second. Don’t move from that spot; don’t even get another glass of wine before you do. Trust me on this one.

—
E.C.

A
n hour later—three other wheels set up on the porch, fiber all around her—Abigail heard her cell phone ring. She reached in her pocket.

“Hello?”

“Are you here?”

“I am.”

“
Finally
. I can’t believe you moved fifteen miles away from me. Meet me for lunch.” Her best friend and ex-boss, Janet, never wasted time.

“I don’t know, I’m kind of in the middle of something.”

“No, you’re not. Nothing that can’t wait a bit longer. Twenty minutes, drive into town, left on Main, Bramblewood Cafe will be on the right.”