Knit Two Together. Connie Lane

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СКАЧАТЬ “We just got here. And it’s not like I want to stay or anything but, gee, it’s only a bear and it’s nothing to get all nuts about.”

      No sooner was Meghan out on the porch than Libby closed the front door and locked it. It wasn’t until she pocketed the key and turned to walk down the stairs that she realized there were tears in Meghan’s eyes.

      Libby’s heart broke. She reached for her daughter’s hand. “I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t mean to snap at you. Maybe you were right and I was wrong. Maybe it was a mistake to come here after all.” She took a deep breath. “I thought…”

      “I know.” Meghan gave her hand a squeeze. “I mean, I think I get it. Sort of. You thought you wouldn’t care.”

      As insights went Libby wondered why she’d never thought of something so obvious herself. “I just didn’t expect—”

      “The bear, yeah. So what’s the story?”

      Libby had never lied to Meghan about her past. Oh, she didn’t know the whole truth—that would be too much of a burden for any child her age. But when Meghan asked questions about Libby’s childhood and about why Libby had been raised by the Palmers, her father’s parents, Libby had never hesitated to give Meghan as much of the story as would satisfy her. As much as she could handle.

      Libby wasn’t about to start playing with the truth now.

      “I’m not sure about the bear,” Libby told her. “Not exactly, anyway. But there’s something about him that makes me feel as if I’ve seen him before.” A touch that felt like cold fingers skittered over her shoulders and Libby shivered. “I don’t know,” she said. “I know it sounds weird, but I think he used to be mine.”

      CHAPTER 3

      They spent the night at an Embassy Suites, far from the dust they’d kicked up at the shop and the forgotten teddy bear that had created an avalanche of emotions that had both surprised and confounded Libby. She wasn’t naive; she knew from the start that going to Cleveland might stir memories of her relationship with her mother. It was, after all, one of the reasons Libby had chosen to come in the first place. But after spending years repressing Barb’s memory and all her energy fighting her emotional response to it, she simply hadn’t expected to be knocked for a loop.

      But then, she hadn’t expected to run into the tattered teddy bear either.

      Libby dealt with it. If there was one thing she’d learned in the months since Rick confessed to his relationship with Belinda, it was that she couldn’t let her personal pain get in the way of what she needed to accomplish. If she was going to make a new start—and a new life—for Meghan and herself, she had to swallow her misgivings and get on with her plans. Number one on the list was to make Barb’s Knits a viable business and the apartment upstairs a home.

      With that in mind, she and Meghan stopped at a grocery store on the way in from the hotel the next morning and loaded up on paper towels and cleaning supplies. They bought a cooler, too, a bag of ice and a twelve-pack of soda. Not so good for Meghan’s teeth but plenty good for parental PR, and after all Meghan had been through lately, it was the least Libby could do.

      Back at the shop, she unlocked the front door and pushed it open.

      “It smells better than it did yesterday.”

      It didn’t; Meghan was only trying to make her feel better. After Libby propped the porch chair against the door to air out the store, she hugged her daughter just to let her know how much she appreciated the moral support.

      Though it was early, the sky was gray and the clouds were heavy. As soon as she stepped inside, Libby hoisted the plastic bags of cleaning supplies onto the front counter and reached for the switch to flick on the lights.

      Not a single one of them worked.

      “And am I surprised?” she mumbled.

      Meghan was apparently feeling braver than she had the day before. She headed off to explore. “Are you?” she called over her shoulder from a room off the middle showroom where a round wooden table was surrounded by chairs—and everything was coated in dust. “Surprised, that is?”

      “Not even a little.” Firmly ignoring the bear who was lying where he’d been dropped, Libby looked at the dust that covered the counters, the dirt that sat on the windowsills and the faded yarn that was everywhere. It was piled on tables and heaped in baskets. It was mounded on an old mahogany buffet and jammed onto the shelves of a bookcase that took up most of one wall in the former dining room. There was even yarn displayed in what used to be the kitchen. Every cupboard door had been removed and each shelf was filled with wool. Some of it still looked usable. Most of it looked old and sad. None of it looked clean. “Grandma Palmer always said Barb wasn’t much of a housekeeper.”

      “Doesn’t that seem bizarre?” Meghan had been looking through an old steamer trunk open on the floor and filled with yarn. The top layer of yarn had once been pastel colors and was now a uniform and dull shade of gray, but without sunlight to fade it and no coating of dust, the yarn beneath it had fared better. When Meghan stood, there was pink fuzz on her nose. She brushed it away with one finger. “That would be like me calling you Libby. No way you’d ever let me get away with it. Don’t you feel weird calling your mom Barb?”

      It was better to concentrate on the facts than it was to editorialize, so that’s exactly what Libby did. “She wasn’t much of a mom,” she said. “You know all that, honey.”

      “Because she left you, and you were raised by your dad’s parents, Grandma and Grandpa P. I get it.” Meghan nodded solemnly. As if she understood. As if, as a child who had spent her life with two parents who—in spite of their own personal differences—adored her, she possibly could. “Your mom… Barb…you told me had problems. Drug problems.”

      “It was the sixties and I guess things were different then. At least that’s what people say. Anyway, I think Barb had her reasons. Remember, my dad was killed in a war.”

      Meghan nodded. “Vietnam. We talked about it in history class.”

      “Barb couldn’t handle his death. She was depressed. Lonely. Probably scared, too.” And before Rick walked out on her, Libby had never quite understood any of that. She’d spent years desperate to come to some understanding about her mother. She’d never thought it might come thanks to her own divorce.

      It used to be that Barb and everything associated with her—their life together before she abandoned Libby, and the intriguing possibility of how things might have worked out differently—were the hardest things to think about. Back then, Libby thanked her lucky stars for Rick and the life they’d established together.

      Funny, these days she thought about Barb when she wanted to forget about Rick.

      “Things worked out best for me,” she told Meghan, talking about her childhood, not about her divorce. As far as Libby was concerned, that story didn’t have an ending. At least not yet. “Instead of being raised by a woman who probably didn’t have the skills or the patience to be much of a mother, I got to live with Grandma and Grandpa P. And Grandma and Grandpa P…well, I think the only person they love more than me in the whole wide world is you.”

      Meghan took that much for granted, but that didn’t keep her from smiling. Before the Palmers had retired to Arizona, she’d spent a great deal of time with them, and even though thousands СКАЧАТЬ