The Sweetgum Knit Lit Society (22 page)

“Here.” Hannah thrust the paper at her. Camille unfolded it, smoothed out the wrinkles, and studied the design for a simple bag. Two identical squares, which were sewn together, and then a long strap for the handle. Well within Hannah’s capabilities as a beginner.

“Looks good. Are you going to keep it or give it away? Knowing who it’s for can help with picking colors.”

Again the girl shrugged.

“Look, Hannah, you’ve got to cooperate a little here.” Camille tried to keep the impatience from her voice. Besides Sunday, Monday was her one day off. In her fantasies, she would be getting a manicure at Mademoiselle Salon or a facial at the new day spa on the outskirts of town. In reality, she
needed to catch up on the laundry or the grocery shopping that never seemed to end.

“Whatever.” The girl snagged a few skeins of dark brown yarn from the nearest rack. She whirled around toward the front of the store, but Camille put a hand on her arm to stop her.

“Wait a second. That won’t felt. It’s acrylic, not wool.” If Camille was going to give up her time off, then Hannah was at least going to have to pick the right yarn.

The teenager stuffed the brown hanks back where she’d found them. “Then you pick,” she said with a scowl.

“Fine.” Camille pulled out several skeins of Pepto-Bismol pink wool. “Here you go.” She bit back a smile when she saw Hannah’s look of revulsion.

“But—”

“You said you didn’t care.” Even as Hannah frustrated her, Camille understood where she was coming from. A caged animal has only a limited number of ways to maintain the illusion of control.

“I don’t care,” Hannah repeated for emphasis.

“But you wouldn’t tell me even if you did.”

Their eyes locked, a silent battle of wills right there in the back of Munden’s Five-and-Dime.

“Come on,” Camille said finally, breaking the deadlock.

“There’s someone I think you should meet.”

Camille had never been a selfless person by nature. She
wasn’t vicious like some of the girls she’d gone to high school with. It just simply didn’t occur to her most of the time to look out for other people. She had enough to handle looking out for her mom and herself. But the sight of that run-down trailer and Hannah’s palpable fear at being left there had made an indelible impression. Maybe it was just the common theme of abandonment running through both of their lives. Or maybe Camille was trying to salve a guilty conscience by doing a good deed. But at that moment, she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she needed to take Hannah home and introduce the girl to her mother.

The unflappable Maria Munden didn’t bat an eyelash when Camille St. Clair bought three skeins of hot pink yarn for Hannah Simmons. Hannah said a begrudging thank-you but held the brown paper sack containing the yarn as if it were a dead skunk. They walked to the car in silence, the same way they drove from the town square to the little bungalow on Carruthers Street. Camille turned off the engine and then swiveled in her seat to face Hannah.

“Just one thing before we go inside,” she said.

“What?”

“Be nice to my mother, or I’ll make your mom look like a pushover.”

Hannah blanched, but Camille could also see a light of respect in the girl’s eyes.

“Come on.” Camille climbed from the car and headed for
the house, Hannah right behind her. She wasn’t sure she was doing the right thing, but her mother always enjoyed visitors now that she was bedridden. Camille would get Hannah started on the felting project, let the girl visit with her mom for a while, and then take her home.

And then her good deed for the day would be done and she could get back to wallowing in her own misery.

The surgical waiting room at St. Thomas Hospital in Nashville contained the usual assortment of exhausted relatives, fast-food wrappers, and desperation. Frank had been admitted to the hospital the night before. Ruthie and Esther had arrived very early that morning after spending the night in the upscale Loews Vanderbilt Hotel. Ruthie had wanted to stay at the more economical Hampton Inn, but Esther insisted. And since Esther was footing the bill, Ruthie complied just as she usually did. Still, she resented both the enforced luxury and the reminder that no matter what Frank might believe, Esther was still calling the shots.

“Do you want more coffee?” Ruthie clutched her empty cup. “I can go get some.” The Starbucks cart was conveniently located just outside the waiting room so that anxious friends and family could further caffeinate their agitation even as they told one another how soothing they found it.

“No. I’m fine.” Esther reached into the designer bag beside
her and pulled out her confounded knitting. The whole charade struck Ruthie like a punch to the midsection, leaving her breathless and aching. Her sister might think that merely by willing something to be fact she could make it so, that by passing off someone else’s work as her own, she could be a bona fide member of the Knit Lit Society. Maybe that approach worked for Esther much of the time. But knitting, unlike so many other things in life, couldn’t be faked.

“I can go to the cafeteria if you’re hungry.” Ruthie would rather not sit in the waiting room, there amongst the soothing teals and sea foam greens. Every time the phone at the information desk rang, she jumped as if a shot had rung out.

“I’m not hungry.” Esther was as calm and poised as always. You’d never know to look at her that her estranged husband was upstairs being cracked open and his chest splayed out. Ruthie both resented and envied Esther’s calm, but then she’d felt like that about her sister most of her life, so today was nothing unusual.

“The new minister said he’d come by today.” Esther had a habit of sticking her tongue out the tiniest bit when she was concentrating on something difficult, like trying to knit. Ruthie’s nerve endings felt raw and exposed. How could she possibly sit here for hours on end, acting as if nothing was wrong? Frank didn’t even know that Esther was there, for heaven’s sake. He’d made Ruthie promise she wouldn’t let her come, but how on earth was Ruthie supposed to do that? So
she lied to Frank the night before, telling him she was off to spend the night alone at the hotel when she knew full well that Esther was there waiting to have dinner with her. They’d gone downstairs to the confusingly named Ruth’s Chris Steak House. In other circumstances, Ruthie would have enjoyed a nice meal out. But under these conditions, she could only choke down a few bites of filet mignon before setting her fork aside.

Esther had eaten her entire steak and then asked to look at the dessert menu.

Unable to come up with a good excuse to leave the waiting room, Ruthie sat down in the chair next to her sister. Although they’d arrived very early, they had to settle for plain chairs instead of the more luxurious reclining ones. But they were near the information desk and could easily hear when the volunteer called for “the Jackson family.”

Esther continued to stab away at her knitting. Ruthie finally gave in to the inevitable and took her own yarn and needles out of the bag. She’d finished
Heidi
the night before in the hotel room, leaving the book on the nightstand for Esther in case she wanted to read it later, although Ruthie was pretty sure Esther hadn’t read any of the books that had been assigned since Eugenie changed the reading list.

Ruthie picked up her needles, threaded the yarn through her left hand, and began to stitch, but she could hardly concentrate she was so distracted by Esther’s stabbing motions.
The would-be piece had more holes than Swiss cheese. Did Esther not know that anybody who was any sort of knitter could tell what a tangled mess she was making? Yet she sat there, calm as you please, as if she were the most capable knitter anyone would ever run across. Finally, Ruthie couldn’t take it anymore.

“If you’d thread the yarn through your left hand, you could get enough tension so it wouldn’t be so lumpy.” She couldn’t help it. The words jumped from her mouth of their own accord.

Esther looked up from her knitting and frowned.

“I know you don’t want my help,” Ruthie continued before Esther could say anything. “But maybe you want to do this right more than you hate having to ask me for something.” Ruthie bit her lip. She should have been more diplomatic, and for heaven’s sake, now was certainly not the time to try and change the way she and her sister had interacted for the last fifty years.

Esther looked at her, then down at her knitting. Ruthie could almost see her weighing her decision, like a butcher piling meat onto his scales. “All right,” she said after several long moments. “Show me then.”

Ruthie looked at her in surprise. “It’s really not so difficult. You just need to—” Ruthie sighed. It was too hard to explain and much easier to demonstrate. “Here.” She reached toward Esther and took the yarn that hung from near the tip
of the needle. “Lift up your forefinger and pinkie.” Esther did as suggested. “Okay, then slide your middle finger and ring finger underneath.” Esther followed her instructions. “Now when you turn your hand up like this,” she rotated her sister’s wrist so that her thumb pointed to the ceiling, “you have better tension on the yarn. Almost like threading a sewing machine.” Although Ruthie doubted Esther had ever threaded a sewing machine in her life.

Ruthie watched as her sister started to knit, slowly at first and then gradually beginning to get the hang of running the yarn through the fingers of her left hand. Most people knitted what was called English style, with the loose yarn trailing off to the right, but that required a large wrapping motion for each stitch. If Esther could manage with the thread through her left hand, she would be knitting Continental style. Not so common, but faster and often with better results.

Esther continued haltingly for the rest of the row, the yarn slipping off her fingers several times and Ruthie patiently helping her to thread it again.

“I think that’s working,” Ruthie said, a strange feeling of triumph welling in her chest. When was the last time Esther had ever let her be the expert on anything? True they were in a mess right now with Esther’s machinations to get Frank to have the surgery. But perhaps this could be a turning point. Ruthie didn’t want to leave without—

“Oh, honestly, this is ridiculous.” Esther’s fingers tangled
in the yarn and she threw the needles in her lap in disgust. “Your method’s supposed to be easier?” She shot Ruthie a dark look. “Or are you just trying to sabotage me?” Ruthie bit her tongue. What use was there in pointing out that Esther’s approach hadn’t been working to begin with?

“Why on earth would I want to sabotage your knitting?”

The moment Ruthie asked the question, she wished she hadn’t.

“Because—” And then Esther stopped. Suddenly, she looked defeated and far older than her years.

The phone at the information desk rang. “Will the Jackson family please come to the desk?” the volunteer in the pink jacket called out. Ruthie’s pulse skyrocketed. She scooped up her own knitting, shoved it back in her bag, and wasn’t more than a step behind Esther when she made it to the information desk.

“The doctor’s on his way down,” the volunteer said. Ruthie had meant to spend the morning praying, not trying to teach her sister to knit. Esther reached over and gripped Ruthie’s hand. Hard.

“It’ll be okay,” Ruthie heard herself say. Not because she believed it, but because she thought it needed to be said.

“Of course it will,” Esther snapped, but Ruthie knew her sister’s bravado for exactly what it was.

Fear. Fear that her whole life might collapse. Fear that her plan hadn’t worked, that it had been too late to save Frank.

Ruthie knew what Esther was feeling because she felt exactly the same.

Because even with everything that had happened, they were still sisters.

Since the moment Merry hung up the phone with the middle school principal, she’d been dreading the inevitable confrontation with Courtney. Now, hours later, they sat on opposite sides of the dining room table, Merry rubbing her belly and Courtney with her arms crossed over her chest. The table felt as wide as the Mississippi.

She’d been rehearsing her speech all afternoon. She hadn’t even mentioned the phone call until after she’d dropped off Heather and Lindsey. She’d kept her silence until they’d arrived home and she’d installed Sarah in front of the television set with an hour’s worth of
The Wiggles
playing on TiVo.