The Lover's Knot

by Clare O'Donohue

  “Where do you want to go,” I asked, “to the house or back to the bar?”

  “I guess I should head back to New York,” Amanda said quietly. “I wish I could stay longer, but we can’t all abandon the office.” She stopped. “When are you guys coming back, by the way?”

  “I’m not sure. A few days, maybe. When things are settled here,” Ryan said. “I just wouldn’t feel good leaving right now.”

  “And you?” Amanda turned toward me.

  “Me? Maybe when my grandmother’s feeling better,” I shrugged. “I haven’t exactly decided what I’m going to do next.”

  “What does that mean?” Ryan narrowed his eyes at me. “You can’t stay here forever. You have to go back to New York. You have to go back to your life.”

  I didn’t want to be told what my future should be, so I ignored him and turned toward the train station. Amanda and Ryan stayed several steps behind the rest of the way. We walked up the steps to the platform and sat on a bench to wait for the train. Ryan was quiet and I wasn’t feeling very chatty either, so Amanda filled the silence with office gossip.

  It had only been a week since I left and yet all of these people had faded from my mind. I no longer cared about the crazy last-minute demands of my boss, or the ongoing affair between the office manager and the vice president of sales. I didn’t even care when she told me that our favorite Chinese takeout place had stopped the five-dollar lunch special that sustained us. A couple of weeks ago news like that would have required a long phone call with Amanda and strategic planning to find a replacement. And I would have enjoyed every minute of it. Now it just felt trivial. As Amanda talked, I realized I liked being here in Archers Rest. And it didn’t feel like I was running away from my life. It felt a little like I was building a life here.

  When the train came, I hugged Amanda a long time and promised to call and let her know how the “cute sheriff” was doing with Marc’s murder.

  “I’m going to miss you,” I said and hugged her.

  “I’ll visit really soon,” Amanda said. “You’ll get sick of me.”

  “Never,” I said. “I miss you already.”

  After the train pulled out of the station, Ryan and I silently walked back to Eleanor’s. But it didn’t feel as strange between us as it had the last couple of days. Amanda’s presence had made Ryan feel more familiar to me, and somehow reminded me that the change in our relationship hadn’t killed me. And by the way Ryan looked at me as we walked along the river, it also seemed that he respected me more, even liked me more, because I wasn’t so desperate for his approval. Maybe I was imagining it, but it felt good.

  As we walked up the driveway, we saw there were cars parked by the house.

  “The quilt shop is open for business, I see,” I said.

  “Guess so.” Ryan stopped. “Do you mind if we don’t go in right now? It’s not my scene.”

  “Do you think it’s mine?”

  “I don’t know.” He smiled. “I wouldn’t have thought so, but you’re different up here. And you’re pretty artistic. Remember those paintings you used to do when we met? They were cool.”

  “You liked those? You never told me that.”

  He blushed. “That’s because I’m an idiot.”

  “I’m aware of that.” I smiled.

  He grabbed my hand and held it. It felt safe, and I found myself letting go a little of my hurt and just enjoying the moment. “Let’s not go inside yet,” he said.

  We went around the house and headed for the river. Trees were dropping their red and orange leaves into the water, and they drifted downstream slowly as sunlight bounced on the river. We walked as close to the edge as we could and sat on a small patch of grass to watch. Ryan absentmindedly played with some small stones, then began tossing them into the river.

  “See that leaf?” he asked, pointing toward a mass of leaves in the water.

  “The reddish orange one, or the greenish brown one?”

  “The red one, in the center.” Then he tossed a stone that hit the red leaf and sent it plummeting into the depths of the water. Ryan looked over at me with a goofy grin. “That was good, huh. Did you see how I nailed that leaf?”

  “It was great.” I smiled. He threw a few more and each time looked back at me for approval. I knew he was trying to impress me. Sure, it wasn’t flowers or plane tickets to Paris, but it was something. I put my head on his shoulder.

  “If I start saying I’m sorry now, how long will it take until you forgive me?” Ryan said quietly.

  “Fifty years.”

  “Just in time for our golden anniversary.”

  I had to stop and rewind the moment in my head. He had just said golden anniversary, as in wedding anniversary, as in wedding, hadn’t he? I didn’t know what to say.

  “Nell?”

  “I thought you needed time.”

  “I did. But I don’t need it anymore. Maybe with everything that’s happened, with your coming up here, then that guy dying . . . I don’t know. It made me think how I could lose you so easily.”

  “A lot has changed,” I reminded him.

  “Not us. We haven’t changed.” He leaned over so his eyes met mine. “It’s only been a couple of weeks. Can you really say you don’t want to marry me?”

  I looked away from him and stared at the water. “No,” I finally said. “I can’t say I don’t want to get married. I just can’t say . . .”

  “Then don’t say anything.”

  Ryan leaned over and rested his head on my lap. I stroked his head and watched the water. I had just gotten used to the idea that we wouldn’t get our happy ending. A little part of me was even beginning to enjoy the open, unplanned landscape of my future. And now things had spun 180 degrees again. So how did it feel to be here? I asked myself.

  I looked down at Ryan and decided. It felt good.

  CHAPTER 35

  The sun was beginning to go down and as it faded, the wind picked up. Romantic as it was to sit together and stare at the river, it wasn’t worth pneumonia. We headed back to the house, holding hands.

  “So when should we get married now?” he asked.

  “Ryan,” I started, but he looked so happy that I just smiled and kept walking.

  “Did you cancel the reception hall and everything?”

  “No,” I admitted. “I kept planning to, but I just couldn’t do it.”

  Ryan smiled. “Then everything is exactly the way it was. This was just a bump in the road.” He leaned down and kissed me, as if everything was now right with the world.

  I smiled back at Ryan. “We don’t have to talk about any of this with my grandmother.”

  “She’ll be thrilled,” he said. “I know it.”

  I reached out to open the front door to the house just as Carrie came out with a small box overloaded with fabric.

  “My assignment,” she said, nodding to the box. “We all have to make blocks for the quilt by Friday. I don’t know how I’m going to get it all done.”

  “I’m sure someone will help if you get behind,” I said, to be helpful.

  “They’ll have to,” she laughed. “Do you know your grandmother has been wondering what happened to you?”

  “We went for a walk,” Ryan volunteered.

  Carrie looked from Ryan to me and back again. Then she smiled. “I hope it was a productive one.”

  She shifted the box to one side to reach into her pocket, and as she did, the box tumbled to the ground. Ryan knelt down to gather up the mess and Carrie stood there, looking a little helpless.

  “I was trying to get my keys,” she said, and took a large set out of her pocket. It was tangled up with a small set of keys that also fell, hitting Ryan on the head. “I’m so sorry.” Carrie leaned over to grab the errant set, but I grabbed them first and handed them back. There were just two keys held by a worn black leather key chain.

  “You should put these on the same key chain as the others,” I said.

  “These,” Carrie quickly stuff
ed them back in her pocket, “they’re to my husband’s office. I really don’t even need to carry them.”

  Ryan handed back her box.

  “Marc had a key chain . . . ,” I started, suddenly remembering where I’d seen that black leather before.

  “I really need to get home and start dinner,” she said quickly and headed for her car. “Ryan, thanks for picking everything up.”

  “No problem.” He smiled and waved as she drove away. “She’s a nice lady.”

  I nodded. “A little frazzled, don’t you think?”

  Ryan gave me the “you’re crazy” look I’d seen a hundred times before, and we headed inside.

  “Nell,” I heard Eleanor calling me from the moment I opened the door.

  “We’re back,” I said. “Sorry we were gone all day.” I rushed to the living room, expecting to see her alone and feeling helpless. Instead Nancy, Bernie, and Susanne were with her eating lasagna.

  “There’s plenty,” Bernie said, gesturing to their plates. “Have some.”

  “How did your meeting go?” I asked.

  “There’s lots of work for everyone to do, including you,” Nancy said.

  “I thought I was supervising at the shop.”

  “You disappeared, so you got drafted.” Eleanor laughed. “Ryan here is lucky we didn’t drag him into the cause.”

  “I have enough on my plate,” he said and winked at me. If it was meant to be subtle, it wasn’t. All the women looked at us, with the hopeful expectation that gossip was soon to follow. Instead I sat with Nancy to find out what part of the quilt I was going to screw up.

  “You ladies enjoy taking over the world. I’m going to heat up a slice of lasagna,” Ryan said as he headed out of the room.

  He was gone exactly three seconds before Bernie broke the silence. “So, are you going to fill us in?”

  “Leave her alone.” Eleanor, surprisingly, came to my defense.

  But for once I didn’t need her help. “He wants to get back together, to get married as planned. He seems to have been really shaken by everything that’s happened, and he doesn’t want to wait anymore.”

  “What do you want?” Eleanor asked sharply.

  “I want . . . I want what we were . . . what we were supposed to be.” I shrugged. “A part of me wants to forget everything that happened and just be what we were, what I thought we were.”

  “And the other part?” Maggie asked softly.

  I sighed. “The other part doesn’t think it’s possible, or even a good idea.”

  “Well, whatever happens, you know you can stand on your own two feet, and that’s important,” Bernie offered.

  Had I been standing on my own two feet? I didn’t bother to ask. “It’s all going to be okay,” I said. “It is okay. We just have to get through this whole Marc thing.”

  “Jesse doesn’t think Ryan had anything to do with it, does he?” asked Susanne.

  “No,” I said empathically, but I wasn’t sure what Jesse thought.

  “I think it was a lover, anyway. It seems like a crime of passion,” offered Bernie.

  “Jealousy is passion,” Susanne pointed out.

  “Maybe it was someone who was jealous that Marc had taken to Nell,” Bernie said. “Maybe Marc had a girlfriend hidden away somewhere.”

  “Several girlfriends, I’d bet,” Susanne sniffed. “God knows what the women saw in him, but he was never short of company.”

  I could feel Eleanor staring at the back of my head, but I didn’t turn around. I ignored the dissection of Marc’s character going on around me and sat with Nancy while she explained how I would be responsible for cutting out two dozen fabric flowers using a pattern she had drawn. Seemed simple enough.

  “Whoever it was,” Eleanor stated as if to end the discussion, “they must have felt very desperate. Whatever anyone thought of Marc, murder is a terrible thing.”

  Bernie nodded, and looked toward Susanne, who looked toward me. I just was grateful that Nancy was focused on the quilt project.

  After I got my instructions on my part of the quilt, I headed to the kitchen in search of Ryan and food. He wasn’t there, but the lasagna was on the kitchen table. Susanne appeared as I took the food out of the microwave.

  “I’m heating up the lasagna,” I said. “It looks good. Who brought it?”

  “Bernie. She left you the recipe.” Sure enough, on the table was a beautifully handwritten lasagna recipe on pale pink paper.

  “That was sweet of her, but I’ll never make lasagna. It’s too much trouble.” I put our plates on the table.

  “We all do things we once said we’d never do,” Susanne murmured as she made herself a cup of tea.

  I grabbed a fork and started eating without looking at her.

  An hour later, the women were all out of gossip and food, so they started heading home. I walked Nancy to the door first, promising to be at the shop to keep an eye on “the new one” as she called Jesse’s brother-in-law. Then I walked Bernie out, and she gave me a tight hug.

  “We’re all getting very fond of you, dear,” she said.

  “It’s mutual.”

  As Bernie walked to her car Susanne said good-bye to my grandmother and came up behind me.

  “I think I warned you that if you stuck around, you’d get drafted into the quilt club.” She smiled.

  “You guys may come to regret that decision.”

  “No.” Susanne reached up and touched my hair lightly, sweeping a loose strand behind my ear. “We love having you here, almost as much as Eleanor does.” She stepped through the door into the darkness. “It’s nice to see someone coming into her own.”

  “You mean someone getting into trouble.”

  “You can’t get into too much trouble making a quilt. It’s too bad you didn’t start making one the moment you arrived.”

  “Is that your way of saying that I wouldn’t have gotten involved with Marc?”

  She shook her head. “You dodged a bullet with that one.”

  I decided to go for broke and ask what had bothered me since I saw Jesse talking to Natalie. “What did Marc do to Natalie?”

  “Leave it alone,” Susanne almost whispered. “Be grateful that he didn’t stick around to destroy what you have.”

  “But he didn’t destroy Natalie either. I keep hearing about her wonderful husband and baby,” I protested.

  “You’re right. I’m very grateful he didn’t have his chance.”

  I hesitated for a second, but I had to say what I was thinking. “Did he get killed before he did?”

  Susanne tilted her head slightly, as if wondering whether to answer. “I suppose he did. My guess is that whoever killed him was just trying to protect someone they loved. And can you really find anything wrong in that?”

  She looked up at the house as the light in my bedroom went on. I looked up too and saw the shadow of Ryan moving around the room.

  CHAPTER 36

  The next morning I got up early and took Barney for his walk. Only this time I didn’t take him toward the river. I walked into town and let the confused dog follow me.

  I stopped in front of the shop and tried the door. It was locked. A strip of police tape covered the lock, brown paper covered the windows. It seemed abandoned and unloved.

  I didn’t really know what I was looking for, but I couldn’t leave. I only knew that Susanne’s words echoed in my mind. If someone had killed Marc to protect someone, was that really so bad? What good would it do for anyone to know? But if it was Ryan, was it okay that he might have killed a man to protect our relationship? I knew the answer was no. I knew what the real question was. Could I live with him if I didn’t know?

  “What are you doing?”

  I turned around to see a minivan. Natalie was waving at me from the driver’s seat.

  “I haven’t the vaguest idea,” I admitted.

  “Then I’ll drive you guys home.”

  I didn’t want the company, but I did have a question.

&n
bsp; After putting Barney in the back, I jumped in Natalie’s car, pushing aside baby toys, pacifiers, a carton of diapers and a CD called Jammin’ with Baby with a picture of a toddler rocking out on a play guitar. I smiled and said, “How adorable.” But as Natalie moved in her seat and sat on a juice box, I had one of those moments that single people have when we feel slightly smarter for not having reproduced.

  “He’s getting really cute,” Natalie told me as she brushed off the juice from her jeans. “My husband says now that he’s past the poop and sleep stage, he’s getting to be good company.”

  “Your son, right? Not your husband.”

  She laughed. “No, my husband is still in the poop and sleep stage.”

  “Where is your son?”

  “At my mom’s. She kept him for me last night. I was on my way to pick him up.” Natalie was beaming. “Do you mind if I pick him up before I drop you guys off?”

  I did mind, but I figured it would give us time to talk, so I shook my head.

  Natalie kept talking. But it wasn’t so much that she was talking to me, just talking to herself about her good fortune. I recognized it from the way I used to talk about the wedding. Jabbering on and on about details no one but you cares about, expecting the world to be fascinated. Listening to Natalie, I realized how annoying I must have been.

  “He’s really brought us closer—Jeremy, my son,” she continued, as I half-smiled. “He’s turned us into grown-ups. We used to have all these stupid fights, and break up and get back together, but now we’re solid.” She gripped the wheel. “I never want to lose that.”

  “You won’t,” I said, with the reassurance only a stranger can give. “Jeremy’s not going anywhere.”

  She looked straight at me for a long second. It made me nervous enough to look toward the road and make sure we weren’t headed into oncoming traffic. But just as I was about to say something, Natalie turned her eyes forward.

  I wanted to ask her about Jesse, her history with Marc. But I didn’t want her driving off the road. So I said, as gingerly as possible, “Marc’s death seems to have stirred a lot of emotions in everyone.”