How to Knit a Heart Back Home (35 page)

Should he go to her house? Was that pushing it? At least the Book Spire was literally on his way home to the parsonage, and he could justify poking around.

But looking into the windows, he could see she wasn’t there. He’d blown it again.

Right now, he knew kids were studying in Tillie’s for their upcoming SATs (if they had their generator working), and he knew the local ranchers were already asleep in preparation for getting up at four in the morning, and he knew that skaters on the pier were probably illegally jumping off benches in search of the perfect height, rain notwithstanding.

And he was alone.

“Dammit
.” Owen threw the tikka masala into an open trash bin that sat between the bookstore and Whitney’s Bakery. It exploded with a loud
thunk
that made him feel worse. He was an idiot.

He should just go home and rest. He was cold and wet, and it would probably help if he were able to sleep at all, but sleep had been elusive. Even when he felt most exhausted, as soon as he closed his eyes, all he saw was her.

Lucy.

The woman of his dreams. His heart.

In the alley next to the bookstore, Whitney’s purple Phrosting-mobile was parked near the back door of her bakery. The headlights had been left on, and he waited for a moment to see if she’d just arrived, in case they were automatic and would shut off shortly. When they didn’t, he tried the car doors, but they were locked. Great.

The back door of the bakery had been propped open with a milk crate. He knocked, but no one answered.

“Hello?” he called. The door was heavier than it looked.

“Over here,” a high, flirtatious voice called.

Weaving around huge bags of flour and stacks of boxes, he navigated through the dim interior using his flashlight. He went through the door on the left, toward where he’d heard Whitney call out.

And he found her. She was mostly naked, propped up on a marble slab that was lit by flickering candles. Naked, that is, except for the frosting.

Whitney was decorated like a bachelor’s party cake. Red frosting formed a tiny bra, and pink frosting served as panties. A white frosting necklace framed her throat. She wore silver high heels, and had her ankles draped over an enormous mixing bowl. Candlelight danced across her body, flashing against the silver dragees in her belly button.

Owen could think of three health codes being violated, and he bet that was only scratching the surface.

“Jesus Christ!” Whitney screamed as she hurled herself off the worktable. “What the
hell
do you think you’re doing?”

“Expecting someone?” He tried unsuccessfully to silence his involuntary burst of laughter.

“Sure as shit not you! What do you want?” Whitney breathed hard. She held an empty paper flour bag in front of her, attempting to wrap it around her body. She had pink frosting in her hair from her mad rush off the table. She reached out her hand to steady herself on a stool. Then she gasped.

A roar came from behind him, and Owen was body-tackled before he could spin around. Twisting on the ground, he struggled to roll to his back so he could have a fighting chance at getting in a punch.

“I’ll kill you, you son of a bitch!” Silas, Lucy’s brother, saying more at one time than Owen had ever heard him say before, hit him in the face. Owen saw a flash of light behind his eyes and felt the impact snap down his spine. He shot his fist up into the air and managed to connect with what felt like a jaw.

Silas yelled again. Apparently, he thought getting Owen in a headlock would be a good idea, which was fine by Owen. He hadn’t taught fighting in the police academy for five years for nothing. Owen waited for his time, until he was in a good position. Silas took a breath and started to say something.

But before a single word left his mouth, Owen swept his left leg out and to the side. Silas’s feet were kicked out from under him. He released his hold on Owen, and crashed to the ground, where Owen pinned his arms behind him.

Leaning forward, he said to Silas, “Are you gonna try to hit me some more? Or can I let you go?”

Silas muttered something against the concrete and then went limp under his hands. Owen released his hold.

Whitney’s paper wrapper shook as she stared at them. “What’s going on, Owen?”

Silas growled something unintelligible and wiped blood from below his nose.

Owen said, “You left your damn headlights on, Whitney. I was looking for Lucy. Can you put on some damn clothes? Silas, I’m not interested in your girlfriend, so you can chill the hell
out
.”

Whitney held up a finger. “Neither of you move a muscle. I mean it. Not a hair on your head, and don’t say a word.” Her voice brooked no argument.

Whitney disappeared with a bag into a side bathroom. While she was gone, Silas and Owen stared straight ahead, both breathing hard, neither saying anything. Whitney came out three minutes later, looked perfectly composed in a pale peach dress and matching heels. Not even a trace of frosting gave her away.

“Well, all right boys. Silas, it appears as if this date is over, although I’d love a rain check. Owen, Lucy rushed in just before I closed and she picked up a box of brownies, said she was taking it—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Owen interrupted her, “to the fire brigade meeting. But she didn’t go.”

Whitney frowned. “No. She said she was volunteering her time teaching knitting at an old folks’ home. And she asked if I wanted to be part of it with her, to provide the treats if she provided the books. She wants to get Abigail in on it, too, to bring the yarn. And I thought it was the oddest thing, since we’d had a fight earlier in the day, and I thought she’d never talk to me again.”

Owen narrowed his eyes at her. Could he trust her? Jesus Christ, she’d been covered with powdered sugar a few minutes ago. But hell, he would head to Willow Rock, on the off chance Lucy was there, as fast as the old Mustang would get him there.

Silas picked his red earflap cap up from where it had fallen under an industrial-sized mixing bowl, pulled it tight down onto his head, and then stuck out his hand. “Sorry, man. Mix-up.”

“ ’S okay.” Owen shook Silas’s hand. “Could happen to anyone.”

Chapter Thirty-four

Knitting lessons aren’t for the faint of heart.

—
E. C.

T
he first thing Lucy thought when she saw Owen stride into the lobby of Willow Rock was,
Finally.

Then she thought,
Too damn late.
Her legs, which had been shaking for the last ninety minutes, threatened to go out, but she rushed to the front door and folded her arms in front of her chest.

“Where the hell have you been? Why haven’t you answered your cell phone? We’ve been trying you for an hour and a half.”

Her fingers hit the silence button on her pager, which had been beeping nonstop for the last fifteen minutes as it called in the volunteers for the search. She should probably just take the batteries out and save herself the trouble.

Owen gave her a wild-eyed look, and she didn’t blame him. Two police officers spoke quietly to Miss Verna and Janie, who were filling out paperwork behind the desk. Everyone in the lobby, including herself, was soaked. The power had just been restored, and under the fluorescent lighting, they all looked like drowned rats. Lucy knew she was freezing, but she couldn’t feel it. Not yet.

“Tell me what happened.” Owen pushed past her, his gaze already fixed on the staff.

Lucy grabbed his arm. She’d be damned if they took the heat for this. It wasn’t their fault. That was the worst part.

“It’s nobody’s fault but mine. They had nothing to do with it.”

“Where
is
she?”

“Everyone’s already out looking. We’ll go back out, too.”

“The house? Have they been to her house?” Owen pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and flipped it open. “
Shit
. I turned it on silent when I was here earlier. I always do. I forgot to turn it back on.”

“The cops have been to her house, and I went, too. I searched every room, and the garden, too. She’s not there, Owen. Or anywhere in between here and there.”

Owen covered his face with his hands and scrubbed, hard. “I don’t get it. How did she get out?”

One of the officers approached him. “Owen Bancroft?”

He nodded.

“Officer John Moss. We’ve got six officers searching and our K9 tracking now. The dog’s scented toward the river, but with the rain we’re not sure about the trail. You have any idea about where she might have gone?”

“No.” Owen’s voice was strangled. “If she’s not at her old house, I have no idea where she might be. How did she get
out
?”

Lucy threaded her fingers through a hole in the left front of her sweater. She felt it ripping, the yarn running even more than it already had, and she didn’t care. “We’d been knitting together. She was doing great. Not talking much, but just knitting along. This was my second time coming to see her.” Oh, God, she didn’t want to tell him. She’d lost his mother. It was the worst thing she’d ever done. Lost a person.
His
person.

“And then?” Owen’s eyes burned into hers.

“I went to the bathroom down the hall—I didn’t want to use hers. It seemed to upset her when I opened that door. So I just went down there for a minute, but when I was gone, the power went out, and Janie called out for me to come get a flashlight, and when I got back to her room with the light, she was gone.”

“In the rain.”

“Miss Verna said they put an alarm on the side door since the last time she got away, but with the power being out, it didn’t sound. And the backup battery failed.”

Owen dropped his head back, staring at the ceiling. “She got out.”

Pressing her lips together, Lucy nodded.

Miss Verna came around the lobby counter and stood in front of Owen. “Mr. Bancroft,” she started.

“Don’t call me that,” he said.

Lucy started. Was he going to scream? Yell? How bad was this going to be? She bit back tears for the hundredth time since this all started.

“But . . . I’m so . . .” Miss Verna held out her hand and Owen caught it in both of his.

“I’m just Owen, you know that. I’ve never been Mr. Bancroft to you. My mother is sick. Very sick.” Owen’s voice was professional, firm and direct, and Lucy got the feeling that this must have been how he’d sounded when he’d been on the job. “You can only do the best you can. You can’t control when the power goes out, and you can’t be everywhere at once. She doesn’t wear a tracking device. We’ll go out and find her, don’t you worry. Just stay by the phone for when we call you, and take care of Janie and the other residents, can you do that for me?”

Tears were streaming down Miss Verna’s face by the time he finished speaking. She nodded, and then she pulled him into her arms, pressing her cheek against his. “Go find her. I love her, and I’m sorry.”

Lucy bit the inside of her lip and took a deep breath. Then she said, “I’m coming with you.”

Owen looked at her, and she couldn’t read what was in his turbulent sea-dark eyes. He didn’t say anything, just nodded.

The inside of his car smelled of wet leather—the windows steamed almost instantly. Owen cranked the defrost without saying a word.

Was he too furious to talk? Could she blame him?

“Do you have any idea where to go first?” she asked.

“Not a clue,” he said. He rolled his window down and shined his flashlight with its surprisingly strong beam into the bushes they passed. “Just driving.”

He still didn’t sound angry, though. Lucy didn’t get it. She didn’t get
him.

“Owen, I can’t tell you how sorry I am.” It was all her fault. Miss Verna hadn’t been actively watching Irene because she’d known Irene had been with Lucy. Safe with Lucy.

Owen shrugged. “Shit happens.”

“You can’t just say that. It’s not that easy.”

“You know what?” He looked at her for a moment, and Lucy’s breathing quickened in the darkness of the car. “Sometime it is. Sometimes life just goes wrong, and there isn’t anything anyone can do. You had to go to the bathroom. Not a crime. The power went out because of the storm, no one’s fault. Mom got out. Now we find her.”

How could he be so calm about this? Lucy wanted to scream. She wanted to cry. And she wanted, more than anything, for him to pull over, turn off the car, and take her in his arms and kiss her senseless, but she knew that was the most stupid thing she could want—there was no time for that, and worse, she knew the divide between them was too broad. He’d made that perfectly clear at the bookstore.

She sat straighter and held tightly to the seat belt, looking out her own window into the rain.

“Why were you there, and not at the brigade orientation? I saw that captain, and he didn’t know where you were.”

Lucy turned in surprise. “You went there? I’m always at those meetings. I’m good at those, good at motivating recruits. But I figured it was my turn to take a break. I left Jake a message at his office, and I guess he didn’t get it. But doing something like teaching knitting, doing something in combination with Whitney, working on my business at the same time . . .” She fiddled with the fraying edge of the seat. “I suck at that. And I’m working on things I suck at.”

“You could get hurt.”

Her head swiveled so fast her neck hurt. “Teaching knitting?”

“Trying to save lives. In this podunk town where the closest trauma center is a thirty-minute helo flight away.”

“So you’re telling me I can’t?” Words were coming to her now. She had to get them right. And no one, not even Owen, would tell her she couldn’t do something.

Not even if it meant losing him.

“Shouldn’t, I said.” Owen’s voice was still calm. Strangely so. As if he knew something that she didn’t. “I don’t want you to do something that I can’t. Especially if I can’t follow you. I never said that you couldn’t. Of course you can. I know you’re great at it.”