How to Knit a Heart Back Home (3 page)

“I’m coming!” Lucy unlocked the door from the inside and swung it open. “Jeesh, Elbert. You’re early today.”

“I couldn’t sleep. I’ve been at Tillie’s since six this morning. And you know that I . . .”

“You hate their bathroom.”

“They don’t clean it. Not so it smells clean. Not like yours . . .”

Elbert had already pushed past her, and his voice trailed off as he bolted into the bathroom. Lucy didn’t hear him lock it. Why would he? Elbert was one of a group of customers who treated her store as if it were their home. Elbert wouldn’t lock his bathroom door at home—why should he do it here?

Lucy turned on the stereo. It was a Chopin kind of day. Most Saturdays were.

Elbert came out a few moments later, smiling beatifically, still tucking in his shirt. “That’s better. Man, that was a lot of coffee today.”

He went and poured himself yet another cup from her first pot, which had just finished brewing. At eighty-four, Elbert was no spring chicken, but he still had some of his hearing and all his own teeth. He reminded Lucy of a seed catalog, colorful, cheerful, simple. His eyesight, he was happy to tell anyone who would listen, was just fine, and he trained that vision on any lady pretty enough to grab it.

But he was sweet. He hummed sometimes, without knowing it, and he brought her little presents for the store: a bouquet of local flowers that he’d pilfered out of gardens along the way, or a box of crumbled cookies for her to put out with the coffee.

Lucy flipped the sign to Open, and rolled the postcard rack out. She’d keep an eye on the skies and rush it back inside if it started to rain, but she wouldn’t roll the clearance cart out at all. She didn’t want to risk ruining a whole cart full of books, even on sale, in a spring shower if she could help it.

As she put out the postcards, she saw Greta Doss and Mildred Elkins turn the corner and head in her direction. They smiled. Mildred shook a white bag in the air.

Lucy sighed in happiness. She never let herself buy donuts, but if someone else wanted to get her one, well, who was she to stand in the way of their joy? Mildred knew her special weakness was the thick, gooey bear claw. Happy Donuts stuffed theirs with almond paste and raisins, just the way Lucy liked them.

As much as an octogenarian could, Mildred scampered up to Lucy, thrusting the bag at her.

“See? No calories if someone else buys it for you!” Mildred was always pleased when she made this joke, like she’d never made it before. Lucy laughed as hard as always. Small price to pay for a bear claw.

“Come on in, ladies. Elbert’s already here.”

Both Greta and Mildred groaned. They made fun of Elbert Romo behind his back, calling him Elbert Oh-No, and to his face they mocked that he ate every meal at Tillie’s. But Elbert was the oldest surviving single man in town, and the three of them spent enough time together at the Book Spire to qualify them as actual friends, even if none of them ever admitted it out loud.

Elbert stood as Lucy ushered Mildred and Greta inside. He always stood when a lady entered or exited, or when they sat down or stood up at the reading table. His knees creaked and popped ominously when he did, and Lucy told him not to do it, but he said, “That would be like not breathing air, my dear.”

Mildred took a serving plate out from the cabinet below the coffeepots. She ripped open her other white bag and placed four donuts on it, a glazed, two chocolate crullers, and an old-fashioned. Greta took the mugs they always used off their hooks and filled them with coffee, adding cream to Mildred’s and nothing to her own.

Both women moved then to the table and sat with contented sighs.

Greta, the younger of the two women, had been a schoolteacher for many years, and had never married. She’d taken care of her mother until she died, thirty years ago. Right around the same time, Mildred’s husband had dropped dead of a stroke, and after finding out about some bad investments he’d made, she’d had to sell the house to pay things off. She’d moved in with Greta then, and the pair had been inseparable ever since.

Greta was the quiet one. In Lucy’s mind, she was like an Edwardian novel: leather bound, tiny print. It might be difficult to turn the fragile pages, but the color plates made it worth it.

Mildred, on the other hand, was a child’s picture book: colorful, and loud. She never wore anything that wasn’t bright, and she said that if she wore a pink blouse, she didn’t want to hurt red’s feelings. So she wore red pants with a purple sweater, an orange scarf at her neck, topped with a green jacket and blue hat.

“Lucy!” Mildred called imperiously.

Darn. Lucy had thought she might get the new magazines out. Oh, well, it would have to wait. She’d never hurt their feelings by ignoring them.

“What’s on your mind, Mildred?” Lucy asked.

“Were you there last night?” Her fingers flashed as she held her knitting in her lap. She was doing something with two strands, knitting with both hands.

Would it help to play dumb? Lucy wasn’t sure. “Is that Noro? What are you making?”

“Does this look like Noro? You’re not stupid, child. Jamieson’s. Sleeve. And don’t give me that. At the bar. Did you see the crash? Did you really get stuck inside? And did Abigail really lose three fingers and a toe?”

“God!” Lucy lost her breath. “No! Where did you hear that?”

“On the news.”

“You
didn’t
.”

Mildred shrugged. “Okay. No, we heard it from Phyllis Gill, who was there.”

“She’s legally blind,” said Lucy. “And she must have had a few too many. Because in no way, shape, or form did that happen. There was a crash. Abigail was trapped. But she got out, and then the car burst into flames.”

Mildred and Greta both looked disappointed.

Lucy shook her head. “Don’t you think that’s exciting enough? Just the way it is?”

“Well, at least you were there,” Mildred said. The most tech savvy of the eighty-plus set, she pulled out an iPhone and started tapping notes out on it. “What were her injuries? I may talk about it in my podcast later, and I want the details. And was Irene Bancroft’s son there, too? Back from the City?”

Elbert said, “Never liked Irene’s husband, that Hugh Bancroft.”

“Well, no one minded when he died,” said Mildred.

Greta gasped. “You can’t
say
that.”

Mildred keyed something into her cell phone with extra force and looked up. “I can. Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say.”

Elbert nodded. “And if the son is back in town . . . You know what they say about apples and trees, after all.”

Greta said, “But he became a police officer, didn’t he? In San Francisco. And I think Phyllis said he helped get Abigail out of the car, too.”

Mildred raised her eyebrows and kept staring into her phone. “You really think that being a cop makes him trustworthy? In a big, corrupt city like that?” Then she hit a button on the phone twice and looked up at Lucy. “So. What was Owen really doing there last night?”

Lucy reached for a pen but it slipped from her fingers, falling to the slate floor with a small clatter. “Mildred, I have
so
many things I need to do. I’m going to let you three catch up this morning, and we’ll call the hospital later, how about that?”

She rolled the dolly stacked with magazine bundles to the periodicals area. Now was not the time to think about Owen. Lucy knelt on the floor and reached down to grab some extra Interweave Knits that had slipped to the very back of the rack. As she hauled them out, she took a moment to survey her store. The lower-than-usual viewpoint made everything look different. It pleased her, but it took her a minute to realize why.

When she’d first started coming here regularly to help her grandmother, she’d probably been as tall as she was now, seated on the floor. The two huge front doors seemed even bigger than usual and the stacks of books looked so much taller and more impressive and exciting. This was what she’d fallen in love with.

She’d spent so much time as a child at the bookstore with her grandmother, curled up in various corners reading or scribbling story ideas on scraps of spare paper, that it had been a natural transition into working here through high school. She’d been the one to talk her grandmother Ruby into carrying new books, as well as the used books she specialized in. Lucy had ordered the microfiche from Ingram, and opened an account with Baker and Taylor. Ruby let Lucy make the decisions, and Lucy would carefully order one bestseller and watch, thrilled, as it was paid for and carried out of the store. So she’d order a few more authors, until she had a good sense of what her customers wanted.

The Book Spire might be mostly used books, but Lucy took pride in being able to order almost anything for anyone. When internet selling had hit the book trade, she’d seen the magic in it from the start. Now, even out-of-print books were available, at a price, leaving little she couldn’t track down for her customers.

There. That was the last of the magazines. She looked over at the table. The three of them were still fine. Elbert was trying to talk to Greta about fly-fishing, and Greta was staring at a spot on the ceiling just over his right shoulder.

Lucy stayed sitting on the floor.

A spot of sun had broken through the overcast sky, and she was sitting directly in its beam, like a cat warming itself. Her grandmother, had she been here, would have come over and stood in the sunlight with her. Her feet had always been cold, and Lucy had loved watching her follow the stained-glass-colored sun puddles all over the store.

The left door creaked, letting someone in. Lucy didn’t move from her spot. She was half hidden by the second magazine shelf, and she’d be able to spy on whoever it was. For a moment, she felt six years old.

Then Owen Bancroft entered the store carrying a box, and she felt sixteen.

Damn. That thick brown hair that stuck out as if he’d rumpled it when he arose and hadn’t touched it since—men in magazines paid a lot of money to have their hair look like that. She hadn’t noticed last night how broad his shoulders were. Could they have been that wide in high school?

And he was still limping, like he had been last night. As he moved forward, his motions were smooth, but there was a distinct hitch to his gait. So she hadn’t imagined it, then.

And his eyes . . .

When they landed on her in the corner, his dark blue gaze burned into her.

Chapter Three

When you start a project, have respect for the fact that it may turn out to be something completely different than the item you originally intended it to be. It may be prettier, longer, shorter, or stranger altogether. It will certainly be better.

—
E. C.

T
he Book Spire smelled like books and paper and something sweeter. Owen’s eyes scanned the room as he struggled to hold the heavy box while still retaining his balance. It didn’t help that the three people sitting at the central table turned and stared as he opened the door. But the staring had been happening all over town, and he supposed it would get worse before it got better. He hadn’t been a local in a long time, and even when he had been, this town hadn’t trusted him.

Owen knew the moment he stepped inside the store that there was a person hiding in the corner, felt it with a vestige of his old profession, but he reminded himself that he wasn’t a cop anymore. A female, from the size of the person. Crouched low. Armed? His hand moved to his side, where he still carried his gun.

Shit. He was off duty. For good. Goddamn, that still hurt like a punch to the gut.

He had to remember that a girl staring at him from behind those magazines wasn’t the enemy. Owen didn’t need to worry. Except possibly about her well-being.

Maybe she was a special-needs resident of town; maybe the people at the table took care of her.

On second glance, he revised his opinion. He recognized her with a jolt—she was the woman from last night, the one who had helped him pop the seat back just before the car was engulfed.

Holy hell, she was a looker, with long dark hair that fell forward over her shoulder, and dark brown startled-looking eyes. All he’d really noticed about her last night was that she was small, just the right size for forcing her way into the car where he couldn’t.

Crazy that he hadn’t noticed how pretty she was. Even in that weird outfit—ratty yellow sweater over overalls, with purple and blue sneakers—she was a knockout. He should ask her about last night, see how the woman was . . .

But the old man who sat at the big wooden table in the middle of the room pushed back his chair and teetered to the front of the store to stand in front of him.

“Elbert Romo. You’re Irene’s boy, ain’t you?”

“Owen Bancroft. Yes.” He had to put this box down, soon. His hip was killing him and his knee kept locking.

“You played football for two years.”

Owen winced. Just because he’d had wide shoulders, even back in high school, didn’t mean that he was a great athlete.

Elbert said, “I do seem to remember hearing you spent more time under the bleachers smoking than on the field.”

“Hey, I gotta put this box down. The counter?”

“Come over here and meet the ladies. Mildred, Greta, this is Owen Bancroft, Irene’s boy.”

The woman named Greta gave him a half smile and looked into her coffee cup as if she were reading tea leaves.

But the one Elbert had called Mildred also stood. She met him, lifted the box out of his hands like it was full of tissue paper and set it on the table. Then she pumped his hand so firmly that he reached out to balance himself against the table.

“I’m sorry about your mother. How is she doing?”

Whoomp
. The suddenness of the question rocked him. He knew his mom was bad, but to hear this, to see the concern written all over this perfect stranger’s face . . .

“She’s okay.”

“At Willow Rock now, isn’t she?” She was the type of woman who knew everything in town. He’d never liked this particular type, and he was remembering why.