The Lover's Knot (2 page)

CHAPTER 1

“I’m fine,” I said between sobs.

“I know you are, dear.” My mother’s worried voice on the other end of the phone made it clear she knew just the opposite. “Call Grandma. You can go up and stay with her for a few days.”

“I will.”

“And try to get a good night’s sleep.”

That was out of the question. I’d scheduled crying for the next few hours, followed by fits of anger, loneliness, despair and denial. An intense desire to call Ryan would likely keep me occupied from midnight to three. Then, if all went according to plan, I’d fall into an unsatisfying sleep and wake up with a splitting headache and a bed full of tissues.

I pushed the wedding invitations off the bed and watched them fan out over the floor. The envelopes bent and the response cards landed in dust. What did it matter? They were headed to the garbage anyway.

How had this happened? This morning I was happy. I had everything—almost everything. And the one thing that was missing had arrived in the afternoon.

Six months ago when I announced my engagement, my grandmother Eleanor Cassidy, the formidable matriarch on my mother’s side of the family, called me with a question.

“What colors do you want?”

I immediately knew she was speaking of my wedding quilt. My grandmother owns a small quilt shop in upstate New York. She has made me a quilt for all special occasions, from my first day at school to my college graduation to my first apartment. Some are large enough for a bed, but most are wall hangings—intricate, modern, and usually in her preferred bold, bright colors.

So when she asked me to choose the colors, I knew exactly how she’d react.

“Neutrals,” I replied. I had already decorated the bedroom in my mind and decided it would be a soothing, restful place full of neutral colors.

“Neutrals?” I could hear the annoyance in her voice.

I laughed. “Yeah, you know tans, beiges, whites, creams. Can you do it? If not . . .”

“I can do anything.” And with that she hung up. My grandmother is not a woman to waste time.

When she called me and told me she was sending the quilt, I was so excited that I took a vacation day just to stay home and wait for it. Not an easy conversation to have with the boss, but I didn’t care. The quilt was not only going to be beautiful, I was sure, but it was tangible proof that the wedding was approaching.

At about one o’clock, my doorbell rang.

“Good afternoon, Nell Fitzgerald. That’s a huge box you’re getting, ” the deliveryman said.

“It’s from my grandmother,” I told him as if he had been dying to know. “It’s my wedding quilt.”

Before the deliveryman had even left, I ripped open the box. At first all I saw was one large piece of fabric with an embroidered label: “Machine sewn with love by Grandma. Hand quilted by the Friday Night Quilt Club.”

I pulled it out and flipped it over to the front. It was the most beautiful quilt I had ever seen: a lover’s knot pattern, little strips of fabric sewn together to form interlocking diamonds. The background strips were in fabrics of soft whites and ivory, the others in subtle shades of tan and beige. It was as if the quilt were already a hundred years old—its quiet, seemingly faded colors whispering a tale of a long and happy love.

I cleared my fading comforter off the bed and spread the quilt over it. I carefully straightened and smoothed it, running my fingers over the patches and the tiny handmade stitches. My grandmother often would say that when several people work on a quilt, you could see the differences in their stitches. If you looked hard enough, she told me, you could count how many people contributed to a quilt. But as I stared, I could only see perfect stitches, one just like the next. It seemed impossible to me that five different women, the members of my grandmother’s Friday Night Quilt Club, each could have worked on it.

My bed, a futon really, was only a double, so the quilt draped onto the floor, but it was beautiful enough to make even my crappy furniture look dressed up. I lay on it and closed my eyes, feeling the soft fabric with my fingers. I knew that the only thing that would make this more perfect would be the moment when my fiancé, Ryan, and I made love under this quilt for the first time.

But that was eight hours ago. Before Ryan stopped by, before he looked guilty and scared and unsure. Before he told me what he had been waiting to say for, apparently, weeks. Before the life I’d planned turned to dust.

CHAPTER 2

The train left at 12:05 p.m. Even though I had gone to Grand Central, bought a ticket and boarded the train, I still had no idea what I was doing running away to Archers Rest, and to my grandmother. What was it going to solve?

I could have stayed home, pulled the covers over my head and pretended it was a nightmare. My face was red, with the remnants of yesterday’s makeup still visible. My eyes were so puffy they could barely open. My long hair, which yesterday had been neatly pulled back, was now ratty. I hadn’t showered, washed my face or brushed my teeth. I looked like the sort of woman that any man with the slightest amount of common sense would leave. And yet, even looking the way I did, I knew I had to get on the train and go to the prickly comfort of my straight-talking grandmother.

As the train moved north, I tried to hide by slouching down in my seat and staring out the window, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t see the streets of Harlem passing by outside my window. Instead there was a horrible movie playing in my head, over and over, and I couldn’t make it stop.

Ryan and I met two years ago, on my first day at Garvey Publishing. We waited for the elevator together in the lobby of the building.I noticed him immediately. He was tall with neatly cut brown hair and deep brown eyes. He seemed sure of himself, without being cocky. When the elevator arrived, he waved me on first and we smiled politely to each other. He had a lovely smile, wide and sincere and welcoming. I was attracted to him the minute I saw him, but I played it cool. I stared at the elevator buttons and tried to think of something to say. But he talked first.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“Thirty-fifth floor . . . doing layouts.”

“Do you work with Amanda?”

“Yes. I guess. I don’t know anyone up there. It’s my first day.”

At that moment the door opened to his floor, but instead of getting out, Ryan smiled and waited for the doors to close. “She’s great. I’ll introduce you.”

We went up the additional five floors and into the layout department, where I met Amanda, a beautiful twentysomething woman who smiled quickly when she saw Ryan. I was about to be jealous until I saw a framed photo of Amanda and a
GQ
-looking man displayed on her desk. Ryan left me in her care with a wink and a softly spoken good-bye.

“I’ll see you around.”

When? I wanted to ask, but instead I muttered, “Sure.”

From that day on he pursued me relentlessly. He called me his girlfriend on our third date, said “I love you” by the fifth, brought up the subject of marriage long before I’d even thought of him as marriage material, and proposed six months ago without so much as a hint from me.

All along I felt slightly undeserving, as if I’d won a twenty-million-dollar lottery on the only ticket I’d ever bought. But Ryan had always seemed so sure. Of me. Of us. Of everything.

But last night when he came over, he didn’t seem sure of anything. He didn’t really kiss me when he walked in the door, just grazed my lips absentmindedly. He walked around the place as if he had been invited for the first time, unsure of where to go.

“You’re almost completely packed,” he kept saying.

“We’re moving into the new place soon,” I reminded him.

He nodded, lightly touched a few of the boxes, and did everything to avoid my eyes. It was clear there was more than the new apartment on his mind. Not that he was talking.

So I talked. “I picked up the invitations,” I said. “And I was thinking that we could spend Saturday addressing envelopes and have Sunday to do something non-wedding-related.”

He nodded again. Lately he seemed to zone out every time I mentioned the wedding. “Typical cold feet” was what everyone told me. And I guessed that was true, except . . . it kept nagging at me. Something was different, more polite, more formal. But I couldn’t bring myself to ask him, and he didn’t seem willing to tell me. So I ignored it the best I could and kept talking.

“I was thinking that if we did invite Carla and James from work, we really don’t have to invite Diane. I know they work in the same department but . . .” I knew I was rambling, but a part of me was afraid to stop talking.

He was staring at the quilt. Sitting on my bed, he had looked down and noticed that the still-draped quilt was covering the bed and half the floor.

“Isn’t it great ? My grandmother’s wedding gift. My grandmother made the top. I told her I wanted neutrals, you know, beiges and tans and stuff, and she told me it would take months and months to get the right ones. I guess it’s really hard to get neutral fabrics, even if you do own a quilt shop.”

I was talking really fast, the way people do when they’re nervous. First date nervous—with a man you like who may, or may not, like you. I had forgotten that feeling, and let me tell you, it did not feel good.

Ryan seemed equally ill at ease, which was actually starting to frighten me. He just kept staring at the bed. I couldn’t tell if he was hearing me. He looked like he was on the verge of tears. I was hoping, just for a second, that he was overcome with love and excitement, but that seemed unlikely. He was almost panicky. I could have asked him what was wrong, pointed out the obvious, but why do that? That might lead to an open, frank discussion about our future, and who wants that with a man you’re about to marry?

So I just kept talking. “It’s all hand quilted by these women who come to her shop on Friday nights. They just sit around and have coffee and talk and sew. And they pitched in with the quilting so it would be done in time for the wedding. It’s hand quilted. Did I tell you that?”

Now he was staring at me. And there were definitely tears in his eyes. My heart was pounding. I felt like saying “I don’t want to know.” But I couldn’t say anything.

So he spoke first. “I’m not ready.”

“Not ready for what?”

“This,” he said, pointing to the quilt.

I chose deliberate stupidity, the only defense I could muster.

“It’s just something to sleep under.”

He made a face. I was making this hard for him. Good, I thought. I’ll keep making it hard.

“What it means.”

“What does it mean?” I knew he meant marriage. He knew I knew, but I couldn’t let him off the hook without saying it.

“I’m not ready for marriage.”

And now he had said it. I had made him say it, and now I wished more than anything I hadn’t.

We both stared in silence. To an outside observer it might look as if our eyes were locked. But we were looking just past each other. I guess I was supposed to talk next, so I asked the question. The question that if you have to ask means things are not going your way.

“Is there someone else?”

“No. God no,” he said quickly. “I want to be with you.”

Confusing but hopeful answer. “As what?”

“I just want to wait. Get married later, when I’m ready.”

He looked up at me. If he was looking for agreement, he wasn’t going to find it.

“What are you asking me to do?” I asked. “Date you?”

“For a little while longer,” he said, a small amount of relief in his voice.

“I feel like you’re asking me to interview for a job I’ve already been offered.”

He shook his head. But he didn’t look at me, didn’t say he loved me, didn’t offer any further explanation. He just sat in silence. And I stood watching his silence. There was a soap opera scene in there somewhere, but I was damned if I was going to play it out.

“I think you should go,” I said quietly.

He looked at me for all of a second, and then, without protest, he got up and left. And that, more than anything, broke my heart.

Sitting on the train on my way to my grandmother’s the next day, I knew if I kept replaying that scene I would cry again. So I took a deep breath, listened to the rhythm of the train, and concentrated on the view outside my window instead of the pictures in my head. Just as I did, the clutter of city buildings gave way to the Hudson River, wide and blue and peaceful.

The trees near the river were just beginning to turn from green to deep shades of orange, red, and purple. The whole scene was postcard lovely, and it made me feel alone.

Archers Rest was a long way from my tiny home, and there would be nothing to do except wander through my grandmother’s quilt shop. I wasn’t sure it would have anything to distract me or entertain me, but that didn’t matter. The town had one thing that all of New York City didn’t. It was Ryan-free, and that was what I needed most right then. When I left my apartment I’d grabbed my purse, a few clothes, and some makeup—but no cell phone. If Ryan called, I wouldn’t be able to pick up the phone. And if he didn’t, I wouldn’t be there to hear the silence.

“Next stop, Archers Rest,” a computerized voice came over the speaker.

I got out of my seat and waited for the train to stop, the doors to open, and my weekend of tough love to begin.

“Nell. Over here.” My grandmother was waving at me as if we were still in crowded Grand Central and she had to struggle to be seen. I was the only one getting off at this stop. She was the only one waiting on the platform. I could have seen her if she stood behind a tree.

“Hi, Grandma,” I said tiredly.

“You look like hell.”

“Don’t sugarcoat it.”

She dismissed me with a wave. It was always a source of amusement to me that I had been named after her. Eleanor. It’s a strong, grown-up name, and it suited my grandmother perfectly. It was how I thought of her—not cuddly, kind Grandma, but unbreakable force Eleanor. Despite sharing the name, I was not an unbreakable force. Someone must have realized that early on, since I was nicknamed Nell almost from the time I was born.

“You’re supposed to say something comforting, like ‘You look gorgeous,’ ” I teased her.