CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The following night, Sarah wasn’t exactly sure what she was doing walking in the door of Lakeside Stitch & Knit, only that she couldn’t stand the thought of another second alone in her bedroom with nothing but her computer for company.
“Sarah, you came!” A dozen smiling faces turned toward her. Everyone from last week, except for Rosa, was there. “I knew you’d be back,” Dorothy continued. “Didn’t I say that, Helen?”
Helen poured her a glass of wine. “Here you go, my dear.”
And suddenly, Sarah knew exactly why she’d come here.
Calvin’s arms around her as she cried on the carousel at the Fall Festival had comforted—and confused—her more than ever. She’d known deep inside that there would be laughter here. Not only softness from the yarn, but the true warmth of other women who’d surely loved and lost before, just like her.
“It’s nice to see you again,” Christie said, then reached into her bag and held out the shawl Sarah had been working on the week before. “I must have accidentally grabbed it last week when I was packing up my things.”
“I didn’t know you were working on a shawl.” Denise looked simultaneously pleased and maybe a little bit hurt that her daughter hadn’t mentioned knitting something at any point during the week.
Sarah’s grandmother patted the seat next to her. “Come sit next to me. Just like you used to.”
Sarah did as she was told, taking a deep breath and trying to get comfortable. She was just about to make her first knit stitch when her grandmother said, “I was telling everyone about how we’re going to save the carousel.”
Her heart skipped a beat or two before it went down like a heavy rock. She hadn’t wanted to take the wind out of her grandmother’s sails with the bad news, but not telling her now would feel like lying. “I talked to my client about that, and they didn’t think they would be able to incorporate it into the project.”
“Of course they’re not going to save it.” Olive patted Sarah’s knee. “I never thought they would. Not when there isn’t a dime to be made from it.”
“Actually,” Sarah made herself say, “I was hoping to talk with all of you about the details of my project tonight. That is, if you don’t know already.” She could feel Catherine’s eyes on her. Not angry. Not cold. But watchful. Knowing her old friend worked as Calvin’s part-time assistant at city hall, Sarah chose her words extra carefully. “I’m working with a builder to put up several beautiful residences on the waterfront.” She knew the women who had been at the knitting group last week, but tonight there were several faces she didn’t recognize. “In addition to bringing in additional revenue to the town and the store owners, they are also planning to add in some wonderful extras.”
“Like what?” one of the women asked.
“A new boat launch.” When no one looked particularly excited about that, she was glad she had something else to give them. “And a new football field—lights, locker room, bleachers—the whole nine yards.”
The woman who had looked so unimpressed before suddenly smiled. “That’s wonderful. My sons are both on the team.” She turned to the woman next to her and said, “Isn’t that great news?”
Sarah silently breathed a sigh of relief as the conversation blew off course for a few minutes while several women started talking about the team’s chances at a championship this year. No one was freaking out. In fact, it was abundantly clear that the football field might end up being the tiebreaker.
Catherine leaned across the coffee table. “Can we talk in the back?”
Sarah put down her knitting and made an excuse about getting another bottle of wine before following Catherine into the back room.
“I’ve been trying to keep my mouth shut, but I can’t anymore.” The other woman’s voice was quiet but determined.
“If you’re upset about my project, I’d be happy to meet with you tomorrow morning to discuss it.”
“I don’t care about your project. I want to know what you’re doing with Calvin.”
Sarah felt the remaining color leave her cheeks. “I understand that you care about him, but my relationship with him is private.”
Catherine crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t know what happened between the two of you last week, but I know something is wrong. He’s not himself.” Catherine pointed a finger at Sarah’s breastbone, right where pain was flaring. “I know your type.”
“My type?”
“I was married to one of you.”
Sarah couldn’t keep her eyebrows from going up, her arms from adopting the mirror image of Catherine’s defensive position.
“Are you comparing me to your ‘rat bastard’ ex-husband?”
Catherine’s eyes narrowed. “You think you’re too big, too important for a place like this, don’t you?”
“I grew up here, Catherine,” Sarah reminded her, the same way she’d been reminding pretty much everyone recently. She’d expected to take some flak tonight at the knitting group, but about the project, not this personal attack. “We used to be friends. Why are you so angry with me?”
“The fact that you don’t know why says it all.”
“Are you in love with Calvin?” Sarah guessed, even though the pieces didn’t quite add up.
Catherine laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Don’t you think I wish I could have fallen in love with him instead of—” Her mouth wobbled slightly around the corners.
“I’m sorry,” Sarah said softly, and despite the way Catherine had just attacked her, she was.
But the other woman wasn’t interested in her apologies. “Do you have any idea how hard it was for Calvin after his father killed himself? All of us were there for him, babysitting, bringing over food, cleaning up that dank trailer the best we could, teaching him how to deal with a sick kid. But not you. The one person who should have been there wasn’t.”
“I was wrong.” Sarah knew that now. “If I could make it up to him, I would. I care about him. More than you know.” More than he knew.
“If you care so much, then you should stay this time.”
“Here?” It wasn’t until the word had left her mouth that she realized just how incredulous she sounded.
“Yes, here.” Irritation flashed again on the other woman’s face.
“No,” Sarah said, shaking her head. “I couldn’t stay here.”
Catherine raised an eyebrow. “Why not?”
“My job, my apartment, they’re in the city.”
“So get a new job and sell the apartment.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“Sure it is.”
“Why can’t you see that I’m not trying to hurt anyone? I’m just trying to be true to who I am.”
“I’ll tell you exactly who you are,” Catherine said. “You are a woman who was damned lucky to be loved by one of the best men I’ve ever known. You are a woman who’s about to throw it all away again for a bunch of flashing city lights. You are a woman who’s too damn scared to even give love a chance.” Her gaze was stony. “Whatever you’ve been telling yourself all these years, that’s who you really are.”
Sarah could feel how hot, how red her face must be, and she only just barely stopped herself from covering her cheeks with her hands. She wanted to deny everything Catherine was saying. But how could she when the truth was that the glamorous life her father had lived, the very life she’d aspired to, hadn’t really been all it was cracked up to be? Long nights in the office. Friends she never really got close to because she didn’t have enough free time to form strong bonds.
And yet, it was those very truths that had her fighting what she was feeling. Because realizing that her feelings for Calvin hadn’t gone away, realizing that her life in the city wasn’t as fulfilling as she’d thought it would be, made her feel weak. As though she wasn’t as strong as her father. As though she was somehow letting him—and herself—down by allowing herself to get too comfortable here.
Sarah opened her mouth a couple of times to respond to what Catherine had said, but the words wouldn’t come. She didn’t know what to say. Because she didn’t know what to feel.
A moment later, her mother screamed.
* * *
They rushed back into the main part of the store to find Olive lying on the floor in her mother’s arms. Sarah was barely aware of dropping to her knees and putting two fingers on her grandmother’s pulse, finding a faint heartbeat, while Christie called 911 and explained that Olive had started coughing, then had passed out.
She heard someone say, “Please, God. Not her. Not yet,” and only barely realized that she was the one begging.
She didn’t know how much time passed as they knelt on the floor, just that every second felt like an eternity until they heard the sirens of the local volunteer ambulance crew. And then like magic, Calvin was there with another volunteer paramedic, both totally focused on her grandmother, getting her up on the gurney and taking her vitals.
Sarah held on to her mother as they watched them roll her grandmother into the back of the ambulance. Then Calvin was saying, “Olive needs both of you right now,” and leading them into the back as well.
It was a tight fit, but Sarah had never been so glad to be squeezed in. She held on to one of her grandmother’s hands while her mother held the other.
In a calm but not at all detached voice, Calvin asked them for whatever details they had about Olive’s health.
Sarah looked at her mother, saw that she couldn’t possibly speak with the tears rolling down her cheeks one after the other. “She’s been coughing a lot. I sent her over to Dr. Morris. She said he told her to rest.” She was fighting back her own tears. “I should have gone and talked with him myself to make sure she wasn’t just hearing what she wanted to.”
Calvin’s hand was warm on her shoulder. “Even good doctors like Dr. Morris sometimes miss things.” Obviously sensing she was desperate for reassurance, he said, “Syracuse General isn’t a big hospital, but it’s a great one, with doctors who have trained at all of the best schools.”
Olive’s chest moved up and down as she took in the oxygen through the mask they’d put over her mouth and nose, and Sarah couldn’t stop asking herself, when was the last time she’d sat with her grandmother? With her mother? Just talking or eating or knitting rather than dropping in for a few minutes before flitting away to take care of her “important” career? Even this week, she had been hiding from them. Afraid that they would look too deeply into her soul and see everything that was wrong with it.
It shouldn’t have taken her grandmother’s collapse to pull them together. Sarah was sorry, so sorry that she hadn’t been there more. And she would never forgive herself if the last real conversation she’d ever have with her grandmother had been last week in the cottage about the carousel, when Sarah had been impatient to get going, to send e-mails, to convince Calvin that she was right about everything she wanted to be right about.
* * *
Calvin stayed with them as the doctors saw Olive. Denise still hadn’t spoken, but she took the cup of coffee he handed her. When Sarah shook her head, he gave her water instead and watched to make sure she drank it all down.
Denise’s suffering, her fear, was written all over her face, in the slump of her shoulders, in the shadows under her eyes. Sarah was clearly hurting too, but she’d obviously assigned herself the role of holding it together.
He wanted to pull her aside and tell her he’d hold it together for her.
He couldn’t take the burden of strength off Sarah’s shoulders—he’d been there, knew just how heavy it was—but he could bring her food, he could sit with her, he could watch over her.
And he could pray right alongside her for Olive to come through this.