The Lover's Knot

by Clare O'Donohue

  CHAPTER 7

  Archers Rest, like a lot of towns on New York’s Hudson River, was first established in the 1600s by Dutch settlers. The head of the group was man named James Archer, who died the first winter. He was buried in a small field on the edge of a town that in the nearly four hundred years since grew into a large a cemetery, with almost seven thousand graves. Since Archers Rest had only five thousand living residents, there were more dead than alive in the little town.

  I thought it was a delightfully morbid fact about the town, but my grandmother dismissed me. “It’s big enough that you don’t know everyone but small enough that even strangers have friends in common,” she had told me once. And everyone had friends in the cemetery.

  Archers Rest runs along the river, so we followed the river’s edge from my grandmother’s house to Main Street. We turned down the street past the hardware store, a pharmacy, and the post office.

  As we got to the end of the street I saw Someday Quilts just ahead. Inside lights were on and Nancy was in the doorway changing the sign from CLOSED to OPEN.

  “Why doesn’t Nancy come to your quilt club?” I asked.

  “She does when she can,” Eleanor said tiredly, as though this were old territory for her. “Her husband isn’t well and it’s difficult for her.” She seemed to be choosing her words carefully. “Sometimesshe likes to leave a little early on Friday. She closed the shop an hour early yesterday.”

  “She just wanted to get home?” I asked.

  “Perhaps.” Eleanor looked at me. “I believe you said you were hungry. So I expect you to eat plenty.”

  My stomach was making quiet rumbling sounds that were about to get a whole lot louder. But in a typical bit of grandmother irony, we arrived at the one restaurant in town that made me nearly lose my appetite—the diner next to her shop.

  The place seemed old and tired. At the front were four small Formica tables with two chairs each, and every one was taken. Past them were booths on either side. The seats were reddish-brown leatherette, but small rips at the seams revealed hints of the bright red they must have been thirty years before. There was a sign on the wall that announced the special of the day, meatloaf. It looked as if that had been the special since the diner’s opening. There was no decoration anywhere, unless you counted what was obviously a thin layer of dust covering everything. I didn’t care, though. I just wanted food.

  “I can’t believe this place still exists,” I said. “Has the food improved?”

  “It’s not about the food. It’s about the people,” my grandmother said as we walked in. “The owner was good to me when I opened the shop, and I like to support her.”

  Natalie and Susanne were at a table near the back, with Natalie’s ten-month-old son, Jeremy, in a high chair. They waved us over and handed us menus, which I immediately began studying.

  “It’s a shame this place is closing,” my grandmother said.

  “Carrie was talking about opening up a coffee shop. This would be a good space,” Natalie offered.

  “Oh, she’s just talking,” Susanne disagreed, and then as if explaining to me, she continued. “Carrie sometimes misses being a high-powered businesswoman.”

  “Who wouldn’t?” interrupted Natalie. “It must be so exciting to live in New York City and have a cool job and go out to fancy restaurants all the time.”

  “Yeah, it must be,” I laughed. “Most of the time I eat a salad in my cubicle.”

  “What are you talking about? Eleanor said you work at a news magazine. I don’t read it, but it sounds glamorous. My husband and I are pretty simple high school graduates.” She laughed. “A hairdresser and a mechanic. Nothing glamorous, like your life.”

  “That’s nonsense. There’s nothing simple about either of you,” her mother interrupted. “Anyway, where does glamour get you? Carrie gets ideas in her head all the time about opening a business. Last year it was an antique shop, this year it’s a coffee shop.”

  “Last year it was a child care business. The antique shop was the year before,” Natalie corrected her.

  “Regardless,” said Susanne, “she never follows through.”

  It was like being at a tennis match, going back and forth between mother and daughter while my grandmother silently drank her coffee.

  “She doesn’t go through with it,” Susanne continued, looking just at me, “because as your own grandmother can tell you, owning your own business is a twenty-four-seven job.”

  Then they switched topics, talking about a favorite quilt show they all watched. My food had arrived, so I kept busy wolfing down pancakes and bacon. Only baby Jeremy had less concern for etiquette.

  “How do you stay so thin?” marveled Natalie, watching me.

  “Depression eating.” I laughed, but I put down my fork.

  “You’re allowed,” Susanne reassured me.

  Both Susanne and Natalie gave me that “poor thing” look that I had seen last night at the shop.

  “Yes. This weekend.” My grandmother suddenly sounded stern. “After this weekend you have to get on with your life. He made a big mistake, and gaining twenty pounds won’t change that.”

  She was right, of course, but rather than admit it, I changed the subject. “What will happen to this place if Carrie doesn’t buy it?”

  “She won’t,” said Susanne, a little too sure. “Probably someone from New York will take it. Someone coming up in search of a nice quiet life.”

  “Turn it into a hip little restaurant like they must have in your neighborhood,” said a suddenly excited Natalie. “Put in WiFi and serve chai tea.”

  “Are you speaking English?” Susanne looked at her completely perplexed.

  Natalie just rolled her eyes. “They’ll make it like a city place, is what I’m saying.”

  I looked around. It wasn’t impressive. Even though it was a diner, it would still have to be stripped to the joists to turn it into the kind of trendy place the women thought it would become. I had a better idea.

  “Why don’t you take it?” I asked my grandmother.

  “Me? What do I need with a diner?”

  “Expand the shop.” I looked around again. Since it needed a major remodeling, it could be anything. “You could knock down the wall between your place and this and double your selling space.”

  “Someday is packed to the rafters, El,” agreed Susanne. “You could put in a classroom. You’ve always wanted a classroom.”

  Eleanor looked around the diner. “Needs work,” she said.

  We all nodded. It was impossible to ignore that it was a big job. “Well, maybe it is too much for you,” I started to agree.

  She looked at me. Even Natalie and Susanne recognized that I had challenged my grandmother, and she would find it irresistible.

  “Could be done,” Eleanor finally admitted. “Where’s the bill? I need to go to work.”

  Susanne, Natalie, and Jeremy had already said good-bye and left, and I walked to the door, but my grandmother hesitated. I could see that she was quietly examining the diner. I knew what I saw— torn leatherette booths and soda machines—but I could tell by the look in her eyes that in her mind the place was already filled floor to ceiling with fabric.

  CHAPTER 8

  We walked next door to the shop my grandmother had owned for more than thirty years. And looking at it, it might seem as if she hadn’t gotten rid of anything the entire time.

  The quilt shop had a treasure hunt quality to it. While there were organized shelves with bolts of fabric lined up by color, there were just as many bolts leaning up against the wall. Fabrics of colorful flowers, cute baby animals, and Christmas prints were piled on top of one another near the cash register at the front.

  To get to the rest of the shop, you had to make a semicircle around a dangerously overloaded rack of books and down an aisle that was one person deep.

  If you did, you would be rewarded with a dazzling display of quilts. Eleanor had made the large, wildly colorful ones with abstract patterns
that appeared to follow no rules. Nancy, on the other hand, was clearly the creator of the small, carefully constructed and elaborately quilted pieces. In the center was one of Eleanor’s favorites—a small, bright log cabin quilt that Grace, the woman who taught her to quilt, had made. Each was enough to inspire even me to take up quilting.

  Nancy caught me staring at the quilts. “Are you ready to make one of your own?”

  “At some point,” I admitted.

  “Well, I’d be happy to help you learn, if you like.” She reached her hand out and touched one of her wall hangings. “Making a quilt can be the answer to so many problems.”

  Then she sighed, grabbed a ruler from a nearby basket, and headed back to the front of the shop. I’d liked Nancy from the moment she came to work at my grandmother’s shop more than ten years ago. She seemed rooted to Archers Rest. I don’t think she’d been more than fifty miles from it for years, but she’d made sure her sons had the chance to go off to bigger things if they wanted. One was in medical school and the other, Nancy proudly told me, was planning to spend his junior year of college in Italy.

  “What are you doing?” My grandmother’s voice snapped me to attention. “Are you caught in a trance over there?”

  I turned quickly, knocking over a display of scissors and rotary cutters.

  “You could definitely use more space,” I said to justify my clumsiness. “If you knocked a wall down you could put up more shelves and get some of this stuff off the floor.”

  “Knock a wall down?” Nancy asked as she moved back in our direction.

  “I was telling my grandmother that she should lease the diner space and expand the shop.”

  “What a nice idea. Eleanor, do you think you will?”

  “For heaven’s sake, Nancy, I have enough on my hands with this space, let alone taking on more expense and trouble.” My grandmother walked away from us to help a woman pulling bolt after bolt of fabric off a shelf.

  “I think she’s worried that she’s getting too old for so much work,” Nancy said in a low whisper.

  “Really?” was all I could say. To me, my grandmother had always been old and always ageless. When I was born she was almost fifty, and now she was in her midseventies. Even now she seemed to have more energy than I did. Or maybe it was just that she used her energy in more focused ways.

  “I think it would be exciting to expand the shop.” Nancy looked around. “Give it a little face-lift.”

  “If you want a face-lift . . . ,” Eleanor started as she finished up with her customer.

  “Too late to do me any good,” Nancy laughed. “I just think it would be fun.”

  It would be, I thought. I considered writing down some ideas, making myself useful.

  “I know we have more six-inch rulers.” My grandmother was done dreaming and had returned to the business at hand. “But I can’t find any.”

  “Downstairs,” said Nancy. “I’ll get them.”

  As she said that, two more women came into the shop. And behind them Carrie entered with two small kids in tow.

  “I’ll get it,” I volunteered. “You guys are getting busy.”

  “Will you know what they are?” my grandmother asked, concerned.

  “Six-inch rulers are rulers that measure six inches, right? Or is that some clever quilting code to fool nonbelievers?”

  My grandmother was not a fan of sarcasm. Well, that’s not true. She wasn’t a fan of my sarcasm. She was perfectly fond of her own.

  “They’re in a box by the back corner,” said Nancy. “I think they’re under a pile of other boxes. Just bring up three or four. We haven’t room for more.”

  “Just be careful,” Eleanor said.

  “What’s the worst that could happen? I’m in a quilt shop,” I threw back at her as I headed toward the stairs.

  At the very back of the shop stood a long, narrow staircase that led down to a small storage room and office. With space at a premium, even the stairs were piled with boxes. A small chain with an EMPLOYEES ONLY sign was supposed to keep out the customers, but the regulars always ignored it, as there was a bathroom downstairs.

  The stairs were not only narrow but also steep. I slowly went down, with one hand on the wall for safety. This was not something I wanted my grandmother to see—my being careful—but these were not stairs for the faint of heart.

  At the bottom, I stood amazed at the sea of boxes. Both Nancy and Eleanor were fans of keeping the latest new tools and fabric in stock, but with the shop already crowded, it meant that only one or two of each design made it upstairs and the rest waited in the basement. As something like six-inch rulers sold out, they had to make a trip downstairs for more. With the shop as busy as it was, that could mean as many as a dozen trips a day.

  It took me several minutes to find the box of rulers in the back corner and several more to find the six-inch ones. I had the brief idea of bringing up a twelve-inch ruler as a joke, but decided it would amuse only me. Instead I grabbed what I had been sent for and started back upstairs. But before I’d reached the third step, I’d almost tripped over a bolt of fabric. I put the rulers down and cleared the steps, moving everything to the corner of the basement.

  “Nell,” I heard my grandmother call.

  “Coming.”

  With that task done, I perched on a chair behind the register for the next hour and watched Eleanor wait on person after person. Everyone that came in gravitated toward her, and she seemed to have exactly what each person wanted. I liked my job most days, but I didn’t excel at it like this. I didn’t love it. One more way my life wasn’t working. Could I be any more self-pitying? My name-sake would have been proud.

  When I saw her stop to talk with Carrie, I made my way over. Carrie’s children were having quite a time tossing books from the low shelves of the book rack, but neither of the women seemed to notice.

  “It was something my granddaughter thought up,” Eleanor was saying. “It seems like a lot of trouble.”

  “What’s that?” I interrupted. If the word on the street was that I thought up something that was a lot of trouble, it was enough of an invitation to join the conversation.

  “The diner,” said Carrie. “Susanne mentioned to me that Eleanor might take it over.”

  “Just talk,” Eleanor said. I got the feeling she was reassuring the woman. “It’s just that we are getting crowded in here.”

  “Well, you could use the space,” admitted Carrie. “But, of course, we could also use a good coffee shop in town.” She turned to me. “The only place to get espresso in Archers Rest is at the pizza parlor. And it’s instant.”

  “I think a coffee shop is a great idea, too,” I responded, trying to be nice. No sense in stepping on anyone’s dream.

  “Well, it’s a lot of work,” Carrie said, seeming to back off the idea. Carrie’s daughter was tugging at her leg, and Carrie was ignoring her. “My husband thinks it would be a waste of money since I don’t really have the time.”

  “Nor do I,” agreed Eleanor. And then my grandmother reached down without looking and caught a bolt of fabric that Carrie’s son was about to pull down on his head.

  Since I was doing little but stir up small-town controversy, I slowly headed toward the door. The shop was getting busy. People were coming in alone and in groups. Mostly women but some men. Some of them had fabric swatches or books to reference. Some seemed focused, heading right toward a section or a color. Others wandered around, pulling fabrics here and there, waiting to fall in love with something. Everyone seemed filled with anticipation and creativity, and rather than sit on the sidelines, I decided to leave.

  “I’m heading to the house,” I called back to my grandmother.

  “Barney will want a walk,” she called back.

  Carrie’s little boy beat me to the front door, with a frustrated Carrie, her daughter in her arms, following closely behind. I grabbed the little boy before he could make it into the street.

  “I used to be a vice president.” Carri
e shook her head. “On Wall Street. I thought I could handle anything.” She nodded toward her children, running in circles around her.

  “They’re lively. Kids are supposed to be lively,” I said as her son jumped up into the backseat of Carrie’s car, stepping over her daughter to do it.

  “I guess,” she sighed, and opened her car for the kids to climb in. I turned to leave. “It’s a good idea, your idea to expand the shop,” Carrie said almost shyly.

  “She could use the space.” I hesitated. “But I feel bad if you had plans for the diner yourself.”

  “No, not plans. I just was talking about it with someone . . . Marc . . . you know Marc.”

  “Yes. He’s helping my grandmother.”

  “He’s great, isn’t he? Just so many ideas,” she practically gushed. “He’s really very talented . . . in so many areas.”

  “Like your kids.” I pointed to the two children climbing over the backseat into the driver’s seat.

  “Oh, God,” she said as she reached into the back of her car, doing her best to restore order.

  I crossed the street and found myself in front of the town bakery. A familiar-looking man with glasses and a serious expression was holding the hand of a small girl. The child, maybe five years old, was happily struggling to fit a giant chocolate chip cookie into her small mouth. Several times he leaned down and patiently wiped the chocolate chip stains from her face.

  I was almost on top of them before I recognized him.

  “Officer . . . ,” I started.

  “Jesse . . . Dewalt.” He stood up and smiled a little, but just a little. “This is my daughter, Allison.”

  For just a second it seemed strange that he was a father. But I reminded myself that I didn’t know anything about this man, except that Barney liked him. The fact that he was quiet and sullen didn’t mean some woman couldn’t have fallen head over heels for him.