Kate Jacobs (5 page)

Georgia headed to the back of the shop as
though being sent to the principal's office. "
Aaaaagh
!"
She screamed as loudly as she could. Well, inside her head, anyway. On the
outside, she was just as competent and disheveled as ever. Georgia stuck her
tongue out at her desk, then plopped down in her seat. There, on top of the
month's bills, lay a large, too-brown cookie, a yellow Post-it stuck to the
top. "My first batch!!!!!" The "
i
"
was dotted with a smiley face. Georgia felt the ball of tension in her heart
begin to release; she peeled off the sticky note and broke off a piece of the
cookie to nibble. Not bad. Then she moved the cookie off the bills, rolled her
eyes at the big, greasy patch left on the papers, and sighed. She touched the
phone but hesitated. Then she swirled her chair around to face her PC. She'd need
to check her e-mail anyway, she told herself. Why not now? Then I'll call that
woman. She popped open a window on her screen and got ready to do her daily
airfare watch, plugging information into a flight search on the Internet. Then
she opened another window, scanning her messages. "Can this really be my
life?" read one subject line, sent from one of her closer friends in the
city. Tell me about it, she thought. She clicked open the message.
What a waste of time. Got yet another pep talk: We love you, but the
economy sucks. We had to lay off so many people last fall,
yadda
yadda
yadda
. When does it
get easier, kiddo? You were the smart one, to get out when you did. I'll see
you tonight; tell Dakota to make a double batch of anything. Absolutely
ANYTHING.
K.C.
p.s. Did you hire a publicist? I saw another bit about the store!
Something in the
Daily News
about celebs frequenting an
unnamed Upper West Side craft shop. Sweetheart: Are you holding out on me???
Nine years older and half a foot shorter, K.C. Silverman had been the newly
minted senior editor when Georgia was hardly more than a kid. Far from being
aloof, or adding yet another coffee to her list of daily duties, the always
energetic K.C. had shown Georgia the ropes when she started in book publishing,
even taking her to lunch when her pregnancy had started to show. Gradually
their professional roles had morphed into a kind of easy friendship that made
few demands of the other; certainly working in entirely different worlds made
it simpler. K.C. could talk about jobs she wanted, coworkers she hated, and
have both the satisfaction of knowing Georgia understood where she was coming
from and the relief that she wasn't going to tell on her. Not to mention the
value of having a friend who'd been around during the early days of James; K.C.
knew from Georgia's pain, having survived two short-lived marriages that
sputtered more than they failed. ("I did starter marriages before the
world knew from starter marriages," she insisted.)
In return for their friendship, K.C. had been buying wool and starting a new
sweater with regularity. That she never seemed to quite finish her projects,
well, Georgia sometimes offered to put it all together for her. What she did
with the rest of her half-knitted creations was anyone's guess. It was a
comfortable arrangement: they saw each other at the shop, talked easily,
e-mailed, but never really got together. They'd never been in each other's
homes even though they had known each other for fourteen years. Still, to be
fair, Georgia reminded herself, that wasn't really all that unusual in the
city. They had hardly even chatted on the phone. It was what it was—a very New
York kind of friendship—and yet each felt, in the city of strangers, that they
had a good friend in the other. But it wasn't like having a very best friend
whom she could call at all hours. With K.C. it was more a…relationship than a
friendship. K.C. was no kindred spirit. Just a nice enough person whose life
choices had meant her path intersected with Georgia's. And that was okay,
right? It had been a long, long time since Georgia had had the type of friend
who knew what you wanted to say even before you said it. Who was always in your
corner. Who actually enjoyed talking to you every day. And Georgia noticed the difference.
The Web results blipped onto the screen: two tickets to Edinburgh by way of
Heathrow. $1,473. Maybe we'll see you next year, Granny, she thought. I'll
bring Dakota when I win the lottery.
It had been years since she'd seen her grandmother Walker, and Georgia longed
to go, wanted to step back into an old ritual and sit under soft blankets
before a coal fire, knitting and talking. Georgia's father was a cheery man, a
hardworking Scottish emigrant in love with the size and possibility of his Pennsylvania
farm, but taciturn; his wife was the talker and the taskmaster. From her
earliest days, Georgia remembered disagreeing with her mother, a trend that
continued even now. Hers was the type of mother who was all empathy and caring
to just about everyone—the other members at her church thought Bess Walker was
simply precious—but to her own family, it was all about bucking up and being
ready for life's disasters. Not bad training for life, Georgia thought
privately sometimes, but not exactly the warm cuddles and apple pie an
All-American (and part Scottish) kid hopes for, either. Without a doubt, it was
the dread of the "I told you so" that really spurred her to take up
Anita's offer that day in the park. What amazed her most about her mother—always
distant, often preoccupied—was just how much she could
yabber
.
Georgia took after her father in that regard, ever so slightly suspicious of
idle chatter. But her mother seemed to possess endless energy to make her
irrefutable—within the family, at least—pronouncements. Such as "People
who tell their children they love them every day are just phonies."
(Georgia made it a point to tuck in her daughter, even now that she was twelve,
with words of love and cheeks covered with kisses.) Or "Boys who give you
expensive presents are just hoping to get you into bed." (Well, James had
always been a big one for flowers; maybe Bess was on to something with that
one.) Still, there was a reason why Georgia hardly ever saw the woman. The
trouble was, she didn't see her dad too often because of it.
Her parents' marriage was one of those strange matches that left friends and
neighbors curious about the connection, whispering on the way home. "What
do you think he sees in her?" the farm friends might ask. "What do
you think she sees in him?" the prim church ladies would say to their
husbands after coming by for a Sunday tea. Georgia suspected her mother fell
for a lilting accent before she realized the man and his deep voice came with a
newly acquired farm. With chickens and cows and crops. Or maybe she thought it
would be easy to convince her stocky, dark-haired boy to give up on the land
and head to a big city, not realizing the earth was Tom Walker's first love. As
for her father, maybe he had fallen for Bess's attractive figure or perhaps,
ever practical, suspected the brisk efficiency hiding within.
Tom had been Georgia's touchstone growing up, a quiet man sitting in the corner
after supper, sneaking her a gentle smile over the corner of his newspaper even
as her mother went on about her little girl's misdeeds and all the lessons she
needed to be taught. Still, he never interfered. Just about the only thing her
father had insisted on when she was a girl was that the family go over to
Scotland every three years or so. The trip, to his mother's farm near
Thornhill
, not far from the small city of Dumfries, was a
great expense for them at the time. Her mother would harp, all the while, on
the new washing machine or sofa she couldn't afford to get as they squirreled
away the funds for the journey. Then, more often than not, he was unable to
accompany them, asked by a neighbor to help with a late harvest or struggling
with equipment in need of serious repair. For Georgia, those fall days, after
the crops were done, were glorious—pulled out of school for two (or sometimes
three) weeks to tramp about in the fields with her granny, her feet toasty in
her rubber boots and her hand held tightly by the older woman. In the
afternoon, they'd rake up the coals and get the heat going in the small stove,
sitting in just their socks on the two-seater sofa. Those were the times when
her
gran
would take out her big bag of knitting—a
holdall
she'd sewn herself of sturdy canvas, and closed by
means of several snaps—and pull out the small needles that were Georgia's and
Georgia's alone. Their first lesson was all about the garter stitch, sliding
the right needle behind the left, Georgia's six-year-old fingers fumbling, her
eyes rolling as she forgot which hand was which. And then when Gran tried to
switch it up with purling, putting the right needle in front of the left! One
way, then another way—ridiculous. She clearly remembered throwing the needles
across the room in frustration, stitches falling off and the yarn unraveling,
the cats—Gran always had several kitties around the house—chasing the wool in
delight. And she hadn't forgotten
Gran's
quick hand
on her bottom—just enough to get her attention—and the long talk about taking
things as they come and the virtue of keeping at a lesson without giving up.
They agreed, over hugs and tears, to leave that crazy knit-a-row-purl-a-row
stockinette
stitch until the next time they saw each other.
Which came earlier than predicted, as her grandmother made a rare visit to see
the unexpected (and much hoped-for) arrival of Georgia's only sibling, her
little brother, Donny. She brought presents, certainly, and an assignment for
little Georgia: do ten scarves between now and the next trip to Scotland and
the two of them would make a sweater.
Her mother hated those trips. Hated the rain and the lingering damp and the
long, boring days playing cards until a rare sunny break meant a chance to tend
the garden or sit outside. Bess didn't knit, didn't want to learn from her
mother-in-law, and wasn't so keen on Georgia spending all her free time
learning an old-fashioned skill. But Georgia loved her Scottish adventures,
loved how her
gran
could be so delighted about
everything she did, how a simple "very good" from her lips could mean
more than a paragraph of praise. And that left her with an intense attachment
to her memories of childhood vacations and the skilled master knitter who had
introduced her to the craft that had saved her life.
Dakota had never met her
gran
, a fact that rested
heavily on Georgia as the years went on and her grandmother struggled with
bouts of flu that lasted longer than normal or slipped and, while not breaking
a bone, managed to bang herself up. It was always there, the fear of death that
hovered.
If only she didn't have so much going on. If only life wasn't so complicated.

* * *

Georgia closed her eyes and leaned forward,
resting her head on her hands. Her mind swirled.
She wanted to keep crazy kids out of her store, wanted Anita to fall in love again
so she wasn't so lonely, wanted
Peri
to land a big
account at Barneys and have her bags featured on
Oprah
, wanted to hire
people to make her a wardrobe instead of the other way around, wanted her heart
not to hurt with so much pride and love for her beautiful, ambitious
almost-teen who spent more time plotting a takeover of Martha Stewart's empire
or Rachael Ray's show than she did anything else, wanted some cute
fortysomething
version of Marty—a phantom Marty Jr.—to take
her out for oysters and whisper sweet nothings over the table, wanted him to
make love to her for hours and bring her cups of soup in the middle of the
night while they snuggled and laughed.
"Knock
knock
." She heard the deep voice as
though it was far away. "Hey, you okay over there?"
Her stomach fell to her knees. Georgia looked up, her forehead streaked with
red marks from where she'd been pressing, and saw James, impeccable in his navy
peacoat
and camel leather gloves. It figured. She
didn't smile.
"Every other Sunday, that's the deal, James." She was calm. Calm.
Breathe in, she told herself, breathe out.
"I know, I was just meeting with a client and thought I'd stop by, see if
I could maybe take Dakota out for a quick bite."
"What day is it again? Did I get mixed up on the calendar?" Her voice
was icy. Where was that calm? It just slipped out the door when she wasn't
looking, leaving its familiar neighbor, rage, in its place.
"It's Friday, Georgia, I know. But I didn't figure it was a big
deal." He leaned on the edge of the desk, grinned, ignoring her obvious
anger. He was as handsome as ever. More handsome. Could dropping by unannounced
qualify as trespassing? she wondered. Just what type of violence was allowable
when throwing out your baby's father? She scanned the desk, clutched the
computer mouse.
"What's the problem? You always said I was welcome to drop by
anytime."
"Well, I didn't mean it!" Georgia jumped up, slamming her hands on
the desk. It stung. "That's just something people say—especially to
someone who hasn't been around for the previous decade!"
"It's a little hard to find the time to pop over for tea when you're
living in France," said James dryly. "That job made my career and you
didn't return the money I sent, did you? Well, now I'm back in the city and I'd
like the chance to get to know my daughter. I don't see how that should be such
an inconvenience."
"Every other Sunday,
goddammit
." Georgia's
face was pinched. "It's not Sunday. It's not Sunday. It's not
Sunday!" She began rearranging her desk, picking up the stapler, setting
it down, the tape, the paper clips, the pens. Inhale, she told herself, exhale.
"It's not Sunday and you know it." The smell of warm peanut butter
drifted into the room. No, God, no, Georgia pleaded.
"Daddy!" Dakota stood in the doorway, holding a plate of cookies. She
ran over to James, spilling cookies on the floor, launched herself into his
arms. "I baked these cookies just for you!" Georgia shot her a sharp
look. Don't tell lies, it said.
"And for the women in the knitting club, too." Dakota was all
giggles. "Want one?"
"I sure do, darling! I smelled those cookies all the way out on the
street!"
Georgia watched James charm his daughter, sent him a telepathic message. Don't
tell lies, it said. Don't tell lies.