The Sweetgum Knit Lit Society (19 page)

“Do you really have to sleep outside?” Ruthie finally managed to say to Hannah and immediately realized it was probably the wrong thing to ask. The girl scooped up her knitting from the tabletop and shoved it in her backpack. She jumped out of her chair and made for the door before any of the others could stop her.

“Hannah, wait!” Ruthie was only a few steps behind her when the girl hit the stairwell, but Hannah was far faster—and younger—than Ruthie. By the time Ruthie made it to the outside door of the church, the only thing she could see beyond the small circle of illumination cast by the church’s exterior lighting was Hannah’s retreating back.

“Wait! It’s too cold for you to walk home.” She dashed after the girl, but she hadn’t gone twenty yards when she realized she would never catch her. She stood on the sidewalk, panting, and was still trying to get her breathing under control when Camille appeared at her side.

“She’s gone?”

“I couldn’t stop her.”

Camille had her car keys in hand and her purse slung over one shoulder. Her coat was buttoned up tight against the cold. “I’ll find her and make sure she gets home safe.”

“Thank you.” Ruthie had always had a low tolerance for Camille. She thought the girl’s mother had indulged her far too much over the years. But tonight she was grateful for her presence and her willingness to help.

“Any idea where she likes to hang out?” Camille asked. “No. None.” Ruthie paused. “I guess I don’t really know her all that well.”

“I think that’s what we all figured out tonight.” Camille stepped toward her small silver convertible, bought for her on her sixteenth birthday and now beginning to show its age. “Don’t worry. I’ll find her.”

“Okay.”

Camille hopped behind the wheel and took off after Hannah. Ruthie could only envy her that youthful energy. She hadn’t moved like that in at least a decade, maybe more. And yet inside she still felt no older than Camille.

Was she glad or sorry that her youth was gone? The thought nipped at her heels as she reentered the church and climbed the stairs back to the Sunday school classroom. Pollyanna might always be able to see the silver lining, but Ruthie had been wrapped in a cocoon for so long that she wasn’t sure what was lining and what was the outer layer anymore.

Camille spotted Hannah two blocks from the church. Her headlights caught the girl’s neon lime green jacket, which was much too thin for the wintry weather. She swerved to the curb and came to an abrupt halt. Throwing open the passenger side door, she barked at Hannah. “Get in.” Camille wasn’t feeling particularly pleasant at the moment, but she’d taken the excuse of going after the girl to get away from the meeting.

“I can walk.”

Camille was young enough to remember how it felt to be thirteen but old enough to be impatient with it. Besides, it was freezing. “Of course you can,” she snapped. “But why would you want to when I’m willing to drive you home?”

Hannah stopped. After a long moment, she turned toward the car. “All right.” She said the words as if she were doing Camille a huge favor. Maybe she was. Camille had revealed far more than she meant to back in that meeting. She’d learned long ago, when she wasn’t much older than Hannah, how important it was to keep your private life close to the vest.

Hannah slid into the car, slumped down in the seat, and scowled.

“Put on your seat belt,” Camille said as she shifted the car into gear.

“Yes, Mrs. McGavin.”

Camille ignored her sarcasm. Merry had clearly gotten under the girl’s skin, and Camille knew from experience that when something got up next to someone like that, it meant a nerve had been struck. Maybe hammered. Or, as it appeared in Hannah’s case, blasted to smithereens.

“Which way?” Camille would have felt more indignant at the girl’s lack of gratitude, but she was just too tired. Her mother hadn’t slept well the night before, and then Camille had spent the day waiting, yet again, for her cell phone to ring. For weeks now her phone had been silent. Alex had moved back home for the holidays. Just for the children, or so he’d told her, and she’d chosen to believe him. She had called him last Saturday night, and they’d had a whispered conversation. Well, she hadn’t whispered, but he’d been at a party, standing in the walk-in closet of his host’s master bedroom, so he kept his voice low. He and his wife were attending a Christmas party at the senior partner’s home. The place was crawling with people from his firm, he’d said. He’d call her soon when he could really talk. It had been almost a week since that conversation.

“I’m sorry about your mother.” Hannah blurted out the
words, as close as she was going to come to an act of contrition. Camille could feel Hannah’s eyes on her. “What’s she sick with?”

Camille thought about the question for a good long while. The answer wasn’t as easy as most people might think. In the end, she answered Hannah’s question with a question. “Does it matter?”

The teenager shrugged and turned back to stare out the front windshield. “Guess not.”

“I’m sorry about
your
mother,” Camille said in return. She knew better than to reach over and pat Hannah’s hand or use some other lame gesture to try and comfort her. And despite her own pain, she could still feel for the girl. People thought abuse meant hitting a kid or screaming at her. But neglect could do just as much damage. Camille’s mother had never done anything but indulge her. Still, that had never made up for her father’s departure. He was out there somewhere, and he didn’t care enough to check to see if she and her mother were alive or dead. And pretty soon there would be a permanent answer to that question. Pretty soon it would be too late.

“Turn up there.” Hannah pointed toward a dirt road that connected with the main highway. Camille followed her directions, wincing at the potholes as her convertible shimmied and bumped on the gravel surface. Out here beyond the town lights, the pitch-black night closed in with a vengeance.

In the distance, Camille saw a solitary light. As she drove
closer, she could make out the outline of a dilapidated mobile home. The only car in front of the house was a battered old Ford Escort.

“Will you be okay?” Camille asked. The sight of that trailer in the cold, dark night scared her. It was so different from her mother’s neat little bungalow, tucked in its row of similar houses on a quiet, tree-lined street.

Hannah shrugged in response.

“Is he here? Is that his car?” Camille had been pursued by enough creeps to understand the girl’s fear of her mother’s boyfriend.

Hannah froze.

“What is it?” Camille could feel the anxiety radiating from the girl. “Is something wrong?”

“He’s not here.” But there was no relief in Hannah’s voice.

“Do you want to come home with me?” The moment Camille asked the question, she wished she could take it back. Only a few people, mostly the nurses from the hospice and the chaplain, came into their home these days. Why had she invited Hannah?

“Nah. I’ll be okay.”

“What about yarn for the
Heidi
project? Do you have what you need?” Eugenie had assigned them to make a felted lunch bag for Peter, the goatherd.

Again the girl shrugged, her matted hair falling across her face to shield her expression.

Camille started to reach out to lay a hand on Hannah’s arm, but she stopped herself. “I’ll pick you up one day after school if you want and take you to Munden’s to look for yarn. You’ll probably need help with the felting part of the project. We can do that at my house if you don’t have a washing machine.”

This time Hannah’s shoulders slumped instead of her spine. The curvature of a teenager’s body could express a huge difference in emotion, depending on where the bend occurred. Camille had used her own spine and shoulders in a similar way not so long ago.

“Why do you want to help me?” Hannah looked her in the eye again, and Camille had to steel herself not to flinch.

“Because I can’t help myself right now, so I might as well be of use to somebody,” Camille answered honestly.

Hannah nodded, solemn as a judge. “Okay. I get out of school at three.”

“I remember.” Eleven years ago she’d been Hannah’s age. It seemed more like a hundred. “I’ll see you soon.”

Hannah bolted out of the car, slammed the door shut, and took off for the trailer. Camille watched as she paused by the rickety deck that did duty as the front porch. Then she was in motion again, scrambling up the steps and disappearing inside.

Camille put her car in reverse, turned around, and headed for home, both grateful for and tormented by the prospect of what waited for her there.

Christmas had, thankfully, come and gone.

Ruthie walked home from her job at the church more quickly now that it was January. Head down to protect her from the icy sting of the wind and longing for a hot cup of tea, she made a beeline from the church to her own front door. Only today instead of pausing at the mailbox on the street to retrieve the daily deposit of circulars and unwanted solicitations, she stopped suddenly in the middle of the sidewalk. Stopped and stared at the familiar figure once again seated on her porch swing.

She hurried toward the house, fumbling in her bag for her keys. Since the last time he’d appeared, she’d been locking her front door. “Frank—”

“Don’t scold me, Ruthie. Just let me inside. I’m close enough to frostbite as it is.”

She complied with his request, her heart in her throat. Other than at the Knit Lit Society meeting, Esther hadn’t spoken to Ruthie since the day she’d come to the church office. Well, perhaps that wasn’t quite true. Esther had spoken to her at Christmas lunch, when Alex and his family came to town and they’d all gone to the buffet at the country club. Esther had greeted Ruthie the times she’d come to speak with the new pastor and Ruthie had been behind her desk, hard at work. But as to any meaningful conversation between sisters, well … No. Radio silence had ruled. Ruthie knew full well what her sister wanted her to do, but she couldn’t. Not like this.

“Get in here before you catch your death,” she said to Frank. She unlocked the door and shooed him inside like a naughty child, but her palms were sweating and she almost tripped over the welcome mat. Since she turned her thermostat way back when she left for work each day, the small living room wasn’t much warmer than the outdoors.

“Keep your coat on for a minute,” she instructed him.

She dropped her bag on the coffee table and moved to the fireplace to light the gas logs. “It’ll warm up pretty quickly.”

“Ruthie.” His voice was low and serious. “Stop.”

She paused, kneeling there on the hearth with her back to him. He came toward her, and she straightened so abruptly that she hit her head on the corner of the mantel.

“Ow!” Tears filled her eyes, and she clasped her hand to her head. “Shoot.”

“Are you okay?”

He was next to her then, one hand on her shoulder and the other gently moving her fingers away to assess the damage. “No blood,” he said, his voice as soothing as his presence was unnerving. “Do you want some ice?”

“No. I’ll be okay.” The tears receded and she stepped away from him. “Clumsy of me.” The fire had begun to warm the room, and she reached to unbutton her coat. “Do you want some tea? Or soup?” Sitting out in the cold couldn’t be good for his heart.

“I don’t want tea or anything else. I just want to talk to you. Sit down. Please.”

She did as he asked, perching on one end of the couch while he took the other end. With a start, she realized that she was still wearing her coat, but her hands shook too badly to take it off.

“Frank—”

“No, Ruthie. I’m going to do the talking now.”

She nodded. How many more times would she have to do this? Escape was still weeks away. The thick registration packet had arrived yesterday, and she’d worked late into the night filling out all the necessary forms that she could. Others, like a health screening from her doctor, would require a little more time.

“You said you couldn’t find your own happiness at Esther’s expense, and I admire that about you.” He inched
closer on the sofa and reached for her hand. She let him take it and bit her lip against the sorrow rising in her chest. “But things are different now. You know that,” he said. “Esther’s the one who kicked me to the curb.” He squeezed her fingers. “I’m a free man, Ruthie. No encumbrances. No guilt. And now the holidays are past—Esther and I didn’t want to upset the grandchildren—but now that’s over and you and I can be together.”