The Lover’s Knot Read online

  "He wasn't a very nice person," Susanne was saying.

  "Don't speak ill of the dead." Bernie leaned into her.

  "Why not?" said Susanne, pointing to Jesse. "You know what he was like."

  Jesse nodded.

  "Are you talking about Marc?" I walked closer to them, and all heads turned me. "He was a very nice person."

  "We're aware you thought so," Susanne commented dryly.

  I knew my face had turned a bright red, but I tried to ignore it. I leaned toward Susanne as if I had some menacing comeback, but the truth was I didn't know what to say. I looked at my grandmother, who reached out and touched my arm. I stepped back from the group and stood there watching them gathered in their tight circle, just as they had been a week ago when we met. They were open and welcoming then, but I didn't feel any of that tonight. No one moved over to let me find a place in the circle. I felt as if I had walked up to the most popular girls in school and they were making it very clear I didn't belong. Despite my best efforts, tears started rolling down my cheeks.

  Jesse turned his body fully toward me, standing directly between me and the rest of the group. For a moment he studied me, then said, "You're right, you know. Marc had his good points."

  "Well, someone didn't think so, or he wouldn't be in that position, would he?" Susanne said sharply.

  "I think it had to be the husband of one of his girlfriends," said Bernie. "There was that woman over in Peekskill. What was her name?"

  "I don't think you need to go as far as Peekskill to come up with a suspect," Maggie said. "Besides, he just started this job. You would have to be from town to know he was going to be here tonight."

  "And if you intended to kill him," Eleanor jumped in, "you would have brought your own murder weapon with you. That's a pair of my good scissors."

  "But you cleared everything out of the shop. Why would your scissors be here?" Maggie asked.

  "We left a box of supplies," I interjected. "In case anyone needed something at tonight's club meeting."

  "That was so thoughtful of you dear," said Bernie. "You really have a knack for thinking of others. Just the way you've come up here to take care of your grandmother…"

  Carrie burst into tears. "Oh my God," she muttered, never looking away from Marc's body.

  Jesse cleared his throat. "Why don't you ladies go home and I'll take your statements tomorrow. We have a lot of work to do here and I need to call Marc's father and brother."

  Susanne and Bernie jumped up to help Eleanor to her feet. Maggie touched Carrie lightly, and for the first time since I had come upstairs, Carrie's eyes moved away from Marc. Instead she looked toward me. But there was no kindness there, no sadness. Just a hard stare that made me feel guilty and embarrassed, without knowing why.

  "I made lemon squares," Bernie said to Jesse. "I don't think we'll be eating them, so tell the other officers." She offered the wrapped plate to Jesse, who quickly unwrapped it and took a large bite out of one.

  "Mrs. Avallone made lemon squares," Jesse announced, and several other officers and paramedics walked over.

  "We didn't have time to make coffee," Bernie apologized to the group.

  "We'll get some later." Jesse smiled at her. "It's going to be a long night. Sugar and caffeine are exactly what we need." Then he leaned over and kissed Bernie on the cheek, leaving a little imprint of powdered sugar behind.

  Bernie blushed. "I'll stop in at your mother's and tell her you'll be here, working late into the night."

  "Thanks. She wasn't expecting to keep Allison overnight, but she'll have to now."

  "Poor little thing, she'll miss you."

  "Are you kidding? They play dress-up, eat cookies, and watch movies all night. Allie much prefers the company of her grandma to her boring old dad." His smile was broad now. The dead body behind him seemed to be forgotten amid playful conversation and lemon squares.

  Bernie just waved him off. "I've never seen a father and daughter closer. Lizzy would be proud."

  "Excuse me," I said a little more meekly than I intended. "What about Marc?"

  Jesse nodded. He finished the lemon square in two quick bites. "You're absolutely right."

  "He was working on the shop," I said. "He was here in the afternoon, but when I left he said he was going to head home for a few minutes. I don't know where he lives…"

  "A block from here," Jesse said. "He said he was coming back?"

  "Yeah. I asked him to clean the place up before everyone came tonight." My face turned white. I'd asked him to come back and clean up. If I hadn't…

  "It's not your fault, you know," Jesse said in a quiet and kind tone that finally made me see him as a police officer. He might not be the guns blazing kind you see in the movies, but anyone in trouble would be calmed by his reassuring certainty, just like I was now. "You should get out of here, take your grandmother home."

  Jesse gave me a soft smile, but as I smiled back, his faded and he leaned over Marc once more.

  By the time Susanne and I had gotten Eleanor out the door, Maggie and Bernie were standing down the street exchanging theories about who had a reason to hurt Marc. "Enough of a reason" was how Maggie put it. Carrie was on her cell phone filling someone in on the news. Natalie was gone. None of the other ladies had seen her leave or knew which way she went. Even her mother seemed surprised.

  "Let's go home," Eleanor said wearily.

  I nodded. "Just what I was thinking."

  Eleanor stared out the passenger window most of the ride home, making it clear she didn't feel like chatting. Neither did I exactly, but I did want to know what it was about Marc that made his death seem so inevitable, even to nice women like Bernie. But my curiosity was fighting it out with something else. Maybe it was better not to know, I thought. Marc had been there for me, made me feel less thrown away, less expendable. This afternoon he had even made me feel desirable. Whatever everyone else thought about him, he had been nice to me. Maybe that was all I really wanted to know.

  My grandmother's house was dark in the distance as we pulled into the driveway. I would have left on a porch light or something, but Eleanor saw such indulgences as a waste of electricity.

  "Nothing in the dark that isn't there in the light," she would tell me when I would leave lamps on. She said it with absolute certainty, but I never quite believed her. The dark, at least to me, was filled with things that dissipate at the flick of a switch.

  If a porch light had been on, I would have seen the car parked near the house, but until my headlights hit it, I saw nothing. I parked behind the car and left my grandmother sitting in the passenger seat while I got out to investigate.

  "Let me see who it is," I said, but I knew. I knew by the make of the car, by the dark silver paint color, by the scratch near the license plate. That car, or rather its owner, was the last thing either my grandmother or I needed to deal with after the evening we'd had. I looked around, but no one was there.

  Eleanor rolled her window down. "What are you doing? Help me out," she demanded.

  I walked over to the passenger side, got her crutches out of the backseat and leaned over so she could support herself on me as she got out of the car.

  "We really should leave a porch light on," I said more to myself than to Eleanor.

  "It's probably a neighbor." She nodded toward the car, but she didn't sound sure and I knew she was wrong.

  We walked up the steps to the front door and I struggled with the lock. I wanted to get inside, but for some reason the key wasn't cooperating. I looked down and saw that my hand was shaking. Eleanor saw too. She took the key. In seconds the door was open and she hobbled inside. I was almost in myself when I heard steps behind me.

  "Nell," said a soft but familiar voice.

  I turned around. Ryan was standing inches away. Suddenly the porch light went on. In the light, I saw the blood on his hands.

  CHAPTER 22

  "What are you doing here?" I said loudly, surprised by how frightened I felt.

&nb
sp; Ryan's voice was shaking. "Is he dead?" he asked.

  I almost couldn't answer. "Yes." I finally got the words out. "Yes, he's dead." I stood frozen, not wanting to ask how Ryan knew Marc was dead.

  "God," he said. "Oh my God."

  Lights were going on all over the downstairs area of the house, flooding the porch. The front door creaked open. Barney came out fast, barking and growling at Ryan. Eleanor stood at the doorway.

  "You should come inside. Both of you," she said.

  So we did.

  Eleanor and I sat at the kitchen table, silent and waiting until Ryan came down from the upstairs bathroom. He had washed the blood off and looked relieved that it was gone. He sat on one side of the table and my grandmother and I sat on the other. Barney stood guard between us. I felt like we were Ryan's jury, waiting for the evidence to convict or exonerate. But in this case, beyond a reasonable doubt wouldn't be enough. I wanted to know beyond all doubt that Ryan had nothing to do with the scene at Someday Quilts.

  "I saw you," he said to me. He glanced over at my grandmother as if he were embarrassed to have her in the room. But I wanted her there, and it was clear she wasn't going anywhere no matter what. "I was walking back toward the shop to talk to you, and I saw you and that guy kissing."

  Eleanor turned toward me, but since I couldn't bring myself to look her way I had no idea what kind of a look she was giving me.

  "I know it's stupid of me to be so jealous," he said.

  "You've never been before," I said.

  He shrugged. "You've never given me a reason." He sounded tired-more than tired. "I don't know. Lots of things have been going on lately. I came up here to tell you. Then I guess I saw that guy-and you-and I felt like the biggest fool on the planet."

  "I didn't even know him two weeks ago," I muttered, finding it hard to believe that so much had happened in such a short span of time.

  "That's true," Eleanor broke in. "She met him after you called off the engagement."

  "Postponed," Ryan corrected her, then shook his head. "Whatever, it doesn't matter."

  "What did you do?" I finally asked the question that had been hanging in the air since his arrival.

  "Nothing. I swear I didn't think I hit him that hard."

  "You hit him," Eleanor said as if she were a detective trying to take his statement.

  Ryan got up and walked over to the sink.

  "Would you like some tea?" Eleanor asked.

  "No, he wouldn't," I said. I didn't want to waste any time with hospitality. I wanted to know what had happened.

  "Yeah," Ryan said at the same time, and filled the kettle with water.

  We all stopped talking, waiting for the kettle to whistle. When it did, Eleanor, Barney and I watched Ryan put three tea bags into a teapot and fill it with hot water. He opened the refrigerator as if he had lived there all his life and poured milk into a jug. He brought the milk, tea and three mugs over to the table.

  "Do you take sugar?" he said to my grandmother, who shook her head.

  It was all very surreally civilized. When Ryan sat down again and tea was poured, the break was over. My grandmother said again, "You hit him."

  "Yeah. I walked back to the shop to find Nell." He looked down. "I saw the two of you." I felt guilty for a moment, then stupid, then just scared. Could Ryan really have killed Marc because of a few kisses?

  "What did you do?" I asked again, with an impatience in my voice that surprised even me.

  "I walked around. I went to some Irish bar on the next block and had a beer."

  "Moran's," my grandmother clarified.

  "I guess. I decided that I had to talk to you, Nell, to find out what was going on. So I walked back over to the shop. He was by himself."

  "Marc," I interrupted. "His name was Marc."

  "Okay. Marc was outside." I could hear anger rising in his voice, but just as quickly it was gone, replaced by tiredness and fear. "We started talking. He said something. I pushed him. I hit him. He hit back. I guess he fell against the building. He got a cut on his cheek. It looked bad. I just left him there." Tears welled up in his eyes. "I walked around for a while, trying to think. Then I decided I needed to know, so I went back to the shop to ask him." He paused and looked at me. "To ask him about his intentions with you."

  I saw Ryan was waiting for a reaction, and I thought about commenting,but I decided it would only delay his story. "Then what happened?" was all I could get out.

  "Well," he continued, "when I got back to the shop I saw an ambulance and police. I asked one of the cops what had happened, and he told me there was a guy inside who was hurt. He wouldn't tell me any more." Ryan sat back. "He was woozy. I should have called someone, but it didn't look bad enough to kill him."

  "It didn't," said Eleanor. "He was stabbed."

  Confusion, and then what looked like relief, moved across Ryan's face.

  "Are you sure?" he asked her.

  "Very," she said. "He must have gotten up and gone into the shop and someone came in and stabbed him."

  "Come on," I said. "I get that Marc wasn't the town favorite, but are you honestly telling me that on the very day that a jealous boyfriend knocks him around someone else stabs him?"

  Both Eleanor and Ryan looked at me like I was a stranger.

  "Do you want me to have killed that guy?" Ryan asked.

  "No," I said, and backed down. But I didn't exactly believe his story either.

  CHAPTER 23

  My grandmother excused herself ten minutes later, saying something about her tired leg. Ryan and I stayed in the kitchen and cleared up. We didn't say anything, so the only sounds were running water and the clanking of dishes. Barney, who had stayed close to Eleanor since her return from the hospital, was now glued to my side. I didn't know what to feel standing next to Ryan-safe, scared, angry or just numb.

  So while Ryan washed the mugs, I took Barney out into the night for short walk. We walked down to the river and stared out at the blackness. The rain had stopped but the weather hadn't improved. I could feel a frost around me, but despite the cold and the darkness, I didn't want to go back inside. Instead, I took Barney along the edge of the river.

  A thousand years ago I was a bride-to-be. I had a man I loved who would always love me. I had a new apartment to decorate and turn into a home. I had a lover's knot quilt I would pass on to my children. Now what did I have? I looked out at the river, listened to the quiet and waited for an answer. None came. Resigned and feeling the cold, I turned back to the house.

  Ryan and I went upstairs, with Barney following close behind. I walked past the open door to my room toward the office at the end of the hall.

  "I don't know how comfortable it is, but there's a pullout bed in that couch," I said to Ryan.

  "I'm sure it's fine." I could hear the exhaustion in his voice, and wondered if I sounded just as empty and tired.

  "I'll get you some sheets and a quilt," I said.

  Ryan grabbed my hand as I was about to walk out of the room. For a second we stood, holding hands, then I pulled away.

  Once Ryan was settled for the night, I closed the door to my room and sat on my bed. I couldn't take it all in. What I knew was bad enough-I didn't even want to consider all that I didn't know. One minute I would reassure myself by saying that I knew Ryan, I knew he wasn't capable of murder. Then the next I would be reminded of the scene at my apartment just a couple of weeks ago when he blindsided me by postponing the wedding. Did I know him? My mind kept playing the question over and over. And then a more terrifying question crept in. Is there a murderer in the house?

  Nothing would be solved, I knew, by my sitting on the bed, so I got into my pajamas, switched off the light and lay under the covers. I don't know how long I lay there staring at the ceiling, the image of Marc's lifeless body in my mind, but eventually I must have drifted off. At some point in the night I felt as if I had entered a nightmare. My room looked like my room, but a shadowy figure was moving toward the bed. I jumped up.


  "I'm sorry." I heard Ryan's voice in the darkness.

  I switched on the light. "What are you doing?" I snapped.

  Ryan stopped where he was standing, a few inches from the foot of my bed. "I couldn't sleep."

  "Ryan, it's just not a good idea…"

  "Why not? All I want to do is sleep next to you." He seemed hesitant, nervous. "Is that okay?"

  I took a deep breath and nodded. Just a few hours before I'd been wondering if Ryan was a murderer, but now I was relieved he was in the room. It didn't make sense, but nothing was making sense. One minute I wanted nothing more than to be Ryan's wife, the next I was imagining a life without him. A life that included kissing other men. In that second I realized that maybe it was unfair to be so angry at Ryan for being confused, when I was so confused myself.

  I pulled back the sheets and made room for Ryan in the bed. He climbed in and lay down with an audible sigh. "Good night," I said as I turned my back to him.

  But he was having none of it. "I have to touch you," he said. He moved his body close to mine, putting one arm under my head and the other over my waist, spooning me. I could feel his chest against my back, his legs against mine. I wanted so much to relax into his arms, but I also needed to guard myself. I stared straight ahead and tried to find no comfort from the way his fingers moved down my arm.

  He moved his head so that his breath was just above my ear. "I love you, Nell," he told me, just as he had so many times before.

  I couldn't bring myself to say anything. For a few minutes I just lay there staring at the hand that reached out from under my head, feeling his breath on my neck.

  "Did you do it?" I said almost to myself.

  "No."

  He kissed my ear. This was what I had wanted to happen from the moment he had called off the wedding. I turned around and let my lips meet his. My kisses with Marc had been schoolgirl, uncertain and strange. But Ryan's mouth, his hands, the feel of his skin, were all familiar to me. He moved on top of me without saying another word.