The Lover’s Knot Read online

  "Thanks," I said, and held up the flowers. He smiled and I smiled back, then closed the door. I don't know why I'd reacted so strongly to Marc. He hadn't really done anything but remind me that I was easily spooked, and even more easily embarrassed.

  I grabbed the flowers and brought them inside. I couldn't put them in a vase. If my grandmother saw that someone was picking through her flowers, she wouldn't be happy about it. But I didn't want to throw them out either. I took them into my bedroom and put them on the nightstand. I lay on the bed and stared at them for a while, then I turned my attention to the ceiling.

  Tomorrow was Sunday, and that meant going home. If I took the 4:40 train back tomorrow afternoon, I'd be in Manhattan around 6:30 p.m. and at my apartment no later than seven. I would have survived a whole weekend without talking to Ryan.

  But going back meant going to work and either seeing him, or spending the day only a few floors away and not seeing him. Neither option exactly thrilled me.

  I had to come up with some kind of game plan for what I would say if I saw him. I had to figure out my response to any messages he might have left on my voice mail. If he left messages on my voice mail.

  And it also meant finding a place to live. I couldn't afford the place Ryan and I had planned to move into together, and my apartment had already been re-rented.

  It was too much to think about, so I did the only thing I could think of-I went to sleep.

  CHAPTER 10

  I was standing in my wedding dress, looking down the aisle at the church. It seemed like the aisle went on for miles. I looked around, but none of my bridesmaids were with me, and that was a bit annoying. Why couldn't they be on time for my wedding? I didn't know whether I should just go ahead and walk down the aisle by myself or wait for everyone else.

  I took a few steps and stopped. I couldn't make out who was at the end of the aisle. Was it Ryan? It looked like Ryan, but not completely. The man at the end of the aisle had lighter hair. Maybe. It was hard to tell. Should I walk down the aisle or not? I walked back to my starting point. I didn't know what to do. Hopefully someone would get here soon and tell me.

  I heard a phone ring. My parents, maybe, or my maid of honor. I looked around, but I couldn't find a phone, and when I looked up the aisle to the altar, there was no one there. If I could find the phone maybe someone could explain to me why no one was taking my wedding day seriously.

  The phone stopped. I was alone in the church in my wedding dress, and now my flowers were a mess. The beautifully arranged bouquet had become a freshly picked group of flowers tied together with twine. The phone started ringing again. Off in the distance Barney barked. His barking got closer and closer.

  I opened my eyes slowly. It was dark outside, I was on the bed and my grandmother's phone was ringing incessantly. I got up, feeling heavy and groggy. There was a phone in the kitchen, so I headed in that direction.

  "Hello," I mumbled.

  "Nell, dear, it's Nancy. There's been an accident."

  I wasn't sure I was awake yet.

  "Nell," Nancy said again. The fear in her voice snapped me out of my fog.

  "An accident. What happened? Is it my grandmother?"

  "She was going downstairs to get needles and she slipped on some fabric on the third stair from the bottom. I called the paramedics."

  "I'll be there in a second." I hung up the phone and searched the kitchen for my grandmother's car keys. They weren't here. They had to be here. She hadn't driven to the shop. Okay, I needed to get hold of myself. I could walk to the shop by the time I found the stupid keys.

  "Grandma's hurt." I tapped Barney on the head and he jumped up. We both ran out the front door into a rainy night, and into Marc, who was still cleaning up.

  "Hey there," he said casually.

  "My grandmother fell, at the shop. And I can't find the stupid car keys."

  "Hop in." He jumped into the driver's seat of his truck as Barney and I climbed in, sharing the passenger side. "What happened?"

  "She slipped on the stairs."

  "Those are dangerous stairs."

  "I know," I said, more worried than ever.

  "How is she?"

  "I don't know," I said. In my rush, I hadn't even asked. I took a deep breath and told myself she was fine. She had to be fine.

  We were at the shop in less than five minutes. An ambulance, its lights blinking, was parked out front. I jumped out and ran, but Barney passed me by and headed straight into the shop, leaving Marc behind to park.

  When I got into the shop, I saw Nancy talking to Maggie, but I couldn't see my grandmother.

  "Where is she?" I was frantic.

  "She's downstairs," said Maggie calmly. "She's okay. She may have broken her hip, but they aren't sure."

  I nodded and took my first deep breath since I'd gotten the call. She's okay. I rushed to the stairs.

  At the bottom, my grandmother was being lifted onto a stretcher. Barney was hovering around her. He was getting in the way, but I knew he wasn't going anywhere.

  "This is ridiculous," Eleanor told the paramedics as they strapped her onto the stretcher. "You'll never get me up the stairs this way. You'll kill us all."

  "Ma'am, we're very experienced."

  "You're twenty-three years old, George. When you were five you ran away from home to this store."

  "Mrs. Cassidy, I really do know what I'm doing," the paramedic said confidently. "You've broken your leg. We don't know about your hip."

  "I can walk."

  "Well, you're not going to," he said, rather strongly.

  Once I got a good look at him, I had to admit he did look young. And neither he nor the guy with him looked particularly strong. My grandmother might have a better chance walking. But I took their side anyway.

  "Let them do what they need to do," I called down.

  "Nell," she called, craning her neck to see me. "I'm fine, dear. Tell Nancy to close up the store without me."

  "I think she has that covered," I said. I wanted to add, you insane woman. Screw the store. You could be dead at the bottom of these stairs.

  The paramedics slowly moved up the steps, one at a time. Each step they pulled her up and the stretcher seemed to sway slightly. Don't drop her, I nearly said out loud, but I didn't.

  "Need help, guys?" Marc was suddenly behind me.

  "Yeah," said George, straining.

  My grandmother wasn't a big woman, but the stairs were steep and Barney was nipping at everyone's heels. Marc walked down and grabbed part of the stretcher.

  "Bad day, Eleanor?" he asked with a smile.

  "I've had worse."

  "That's the spirit, Mrs. Cassidy," George said, smiling.

  "Concentrate on getting me up these stairs," she scolded.

  In a few minutes they were upstairs and headed out of the shop. Nancy, Maggie and I followed as they put her in the ambulance, while she complained about the fuss. Barney tried to climb in after her, but Marc stopped him.

  "Barney, come here," I called out. He couldn't hear me, but when the ambulance pulled away, he came walking over anyway, distraught and confused. I leaned down and wrapped my arms around him.

  "She'll be okay," I whispered in his deaf ear.

  CHAPTER 11

  Marc drove me to the hospital. Nancy and Maggie brought Barney home and then came to join us. Within twenty minutes the other members of the Friday Night Quilt Club had assembled. Susanne and Natalie brought Bernie. Carrie arrived alone but with a thermos of coffee.

  "Better than hospital stuff," she said.

  Bernie brought cookies, and Susanne had egg salad sandwiches. It was exactly what my grandmother would have done in their shoes-circle the wagons around whoever was in need, and provide whatever comfort could be provided. I wanted to cry at the kindness of it, but instead I ate a sandwich and three cookies.

  For the next hour we all waited, with most of the quilt club talking about how annoyed Eleanor must be and how she would be furious to know that there were
so many people waiting in the lobby. Marc, though, was silent. He couldn't have been that upset about Grandma. He was only her handyman. I thought about telling him he didn't have to wait, but when I looked toward him, I realized he wasn't waiting for news. He was slouched in his chair staring angrily at Natalie, Maggie, and Susanne, who sat across from him.

  A nurse, who had ignored every question I'd asked when we first arrived, finally came over to me. "Your grandmother would like to see you."

  "Don't tell her we're here," advised Bernie. "She'll have a fit."

  My grandmother was in a nice private room, but she wasn't enjoying it. "Tell him I can go home," she ordered me.

  A tall, thin doctor looked toward me with an exasperated smile. "I'd love nothing more, Mrs. Cassidy. But I'm keeping you here for a couple of days."

  She had broken her leg near her ankle and done some damage to her kneecap, but her hip was merely bruised, and after six to eight weeks of recuperation she would be just fine. I was relieved. She was furious.

  "I can't sit around doing nothing for six weeks. I have a business to run. Doesn't he understand that?"

  "Grandma, the doctor didn't push you down the stairs, so stop being mad at him."

  "Thank you." The doctor smiled, then caught an angry look from my grandmother and fled the room.

  "I can't believe I was so stupid." She was straining to get comfortable, and frustrated by the large cast that made that impossible.

  "How did it happen? I cleared the stairs."

  "You did? I don't know. I think I may have missed a step." She was shaking her head in disbelief, as if she were discovering for the first time that she wasn't infallible.

  "I'll call Mom and Uncle Henry and let them know…"

  "Don't you dare. I'm fine."

  "I'll let them know you're fine."

  "Nell. I know you're trying to do the right thing, but I don't want everyone getting on a plane to see me hop around in a cast." Her voice was losing energy and she suddenly looked as if she needed me.

  I had to smile. "Okay. I'm going to let you rest."

  She touched my hand lightly and seemed unwilling to let it go. "I'm sorry, Nell. You didn't need this. And on top of it, you've been waiting out there alone all night."

  "I haven't been alone." It was out before I remembered Bernie's advice and did my best to cover. "The nurses, the doctors, patients all over the place. It's more crowded than Manhattan."

  She smiled weakly and let go of my hand. I hesitated, but it was time to go. She did need her rest.

  In the hallway outside her room, everyone was waiting.

  "She's fine. She's tired," I told them.

  "Of course she's tired," said Maggie. "We all need some rest."

  Maggie wrapped her arms around me and I found myself hugging her tightly. Then each woman hugged me, and hugged each other, until we made a sloppy, relieved mess of tangled huggers. Twenty-four hours ago these women were strangers to me, and now we were reassuring one another like old friends. We walked out together into the parking lot and stayed talking for another twenty minutes. Nancy would open the shop tomorrow. I'd spend the morning at the hospital and call Natalie to let her know how Eleanor was doing and when she'd be released. Natalie would initiate the phone chain they had in place for quilting emergencies. I didn't ask for the definition of a quilting emergency.

  All I could think about was spending the night in that big house without my grandmother.

  CHAPTER 12

  The ride back home with Marc was silent, and that was fine with me. When we got to the house I started to hop out with barely a good-bye, but Marc grabbed my hand.

  "Are you going to be okay in there alone?" The friendly smile was back.

  "I have Barney."

  He laughed. "Yeah, great watchdog." He reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a business card. "Take my number and call me if you need anything."

  I nodded and watched him drive away before I went inside.

  Barney was waiting by the door, sitting at attention. When he saw me he wagged his tail, but his heart wasn't in it. He kept looking past me to the front door.

  I went into the kitchen and put on the kettle. After a few minutes Barney came in, looked around, and walked over to me. His head was up, but his tail was hanging low between his legs.

  "I know, love." I patted his head. "Believe me, she wants to come home just as much as you want her here."

  I made some tea, cut myself a piece of cake, and sat at the table, then realized I was too tired to eat. I offered Barney a dog biscuit, but he just sniffed at it and lay at my feet.

  My eyes were starting to close, and the effort to open them again seemed pointless. I left the tea half-finished, the cake untouched, and headed up to bed. The stairs creaked as I walked up, and the entire second floor was dark. There were no streetlights by my grandmother's house, so without a full moon, there was no light outside. And it was quiet. Not even crickets were doing whatever crickets do to make that noise.

  Barney settled on the floor and I crawled in underneath the pin-wheel quilt that covered the bed. I reached my hand out, turned off the light on the bedside table, and lay back. I stared off into space for a while, waiting to go to sleep. Then… something. It sounded like someone at the front door. The sleepiness of just a minute before was gone. I sat up and listened. Quiet. I looked over at a sleeping Barney and was comforted for a moment that he hadn't been alarmed, until I remembered he couldn't have heard anything. I lay down again, but I made sure to face the bedroom door. Just in case. Minutes passed. I started to close my eyes when there was a definite noise, like a door flying open, but it seemed to be coming from the kitchen this time. I had locked the doors, hadn't I? I couldn't remember if I had locked up. Every muscle tensed and I froze.

  I turned on the bedroom light. If someone was in the house, he'd know that he'd been heard. I threw a pillow at Barney, who raised a sleepy head in my direction.

  "Get up," I whispered. "Go downstairs."

  Barney got up and started wagging his tail. He lay his head on the bed next to me because he clearly believed that I had woken him up to pet him. You had to admire his optimism.

  I got up slowly, shaking with each step, and walked to the door of the bedroom. I couldn't hear anything but wind and rain.

  Now I really missed my cell phone. I could walk to my grandmother's bedroom, where I thought she had a phone, but if I called the police and it was nothing, then everyone in town would be telling the hilarious story tomorrow.

  But I couldn't just stand there shaking all night. My grandmother wouldn't. I grabbed Barney's collar and we headed to the top of the stairs. If someone was going to kill me, he was going to kill me standing up. I wasn't going to be found cowering by my bed so everyone could say "poor thing, first she gets dumped and then she dies alone and scared." No, they were going to say "poor thing, first she gets dumped and then she dies stupidly fighting off an intruder."

  Barney walked beside me as we slowly descended the stairs. He couldn't hear what I was listening for, but he knew I was scared, and that was enough for him to stick close. Together we made it into the downstairs hall, turning on every light I could find. My grandmother didn't have much in the way of weapons, so I grabbed an umbrella out of the stand and walked into the kitchen.

  I turned on the light. The back door was open.

  The room was empty. Barney walked lazily over to his bowl and started picking at the last of his dinner. Even a deaf dog would sense danger, right?

  I grabbed a knife from the counter to replace my pathetic umbrella weapon and slammed the kitchen door shut, locking it tight.

  Walking back out into the hallway and toward the living room, I saw no one. I opened all the closets, checked all the doors and windows, turned on all the lights.

  Had it just been the wind?

  Barney found me standing by the front door and looked at me with sleepy eyes. I knew what he was thinking, and he was right, probably. I had forgotten to
lock the kitchen door and a strong wind blew it open. Still, I left the lights on downstairs while Barney and I headed back up.

  CHAPTER 13

  The next morning, a loud car horn woke me before the alarm or Mother Nature had a chance to. I walked over to the window ready to scream at whoever was making that racket. A red-haired woman in jeans and a bright blue sweater stood in the driveway next to a truck with a medicine bottle logo on the side.

  "Bernie?" I yelled. "What are you doing?"

  "Hey there, sweetie," she yelled back. "I brought you breakfast."

  As annoyed as I was by the early morning intrusion, she had brought food, so I lumbered downstairs, followed by an equally sleepy Barney, and let her in.

  "You didn't have to do that," I said as I took the plate of Danishes off her hands.

  "Oh, I just did it as an excuse to check on you, dear," she said, smiling. "Did you sleep okay or did this spooky old house get to you?"

  As we sat in the kitchen with Danishes and coffee, I told her about the creepy noises and the total darkness that kept me from getting a good night's sleep. I did not mention that I had hoped to sleep in a little-a plan she had spoiled.

  "I think Eleanor's crazy to keep this place all by herself, but crazy in a good way, you know?" Bernie laughed heartily. "After my first husband died, I moved into a small apartment with the kids. And after my divorce, I moved in with a friend. Couldn't live alone in a place like this."

  "How many husbands have you had?" I asked, probably impolitely.

  "Three, so far," she laughed again. "Three husbands, two fiances that didn't make the cut, and more lovers than I can remember. Which is a shame, since they would be very good memories."

  "I guess I have some catching up to do."

  "Best way over a broken heart is a romance," she said as she leaned back in her chair. "But guessing by the interest you've generated, you may already have figured that out for yourself."