Knit in Comfort Read Free

stimulating time in their sister’s care. The thought made her smile and slow her steps further. On warm nights she could still believe in romance, still craved it. Dancing under the stars, necking on an old porch swing…
    From David’s darkened porch she heard the tinkle of ice against the side of a glass. “How was knitting class?”
    Megan took a couple of steps, to the edge of his front walk. The lights were off in his house, but she could see his dark shape sprawled on the oak bench his great-aunt Delia Cooper had bought shortly before she died the previous spring.
    â€œFun.” She wouldn’t bother elaborating. He knew the cast of characters, knew the general drill. He’d come to Comfort only a couple of years before Megan, though with his great-aunt already here, he had more to root him in the community than she did.
    His ice tinkled again. Bourbon tonight. He drank his martinis straight. “All that hard work to benefit those less fortunate. True nobility.”
    â€œThank you.” Megan didn’t react to his sarcasm. She’d figured out that if you extended a hand to help David with his pain these days, he’d try to bite it off.
    â€œJoin me for a drink?”
    The invitation startled her. “I don’t—”
    â€œI know you don’t. I’ve got juice, water, milk, Sprite…”
    She hated not being able to see his face. “No. Thanks. I have to get back to the kids.”
    â€œAh, such a good mom, Megan.”
    She took a step back, unsure if he was being sincere or making fun. In high school she flattered herself that she’d gotten to know David better than anyone. Seemed a silly, romantic notion now, but the two of them, outsiders both, had been drawn to each other, eventually having a brief fling before he blew out of town for college and career.
    On his subsequent visits to see his great-aunt, Megan had been half intimidated by the man he’d become, felt left behind and stagnant, especially when he showed up with his wife, Victoria, the type of glamorous intellectual who made Megan want to apologize for being born.
    But when he came alone, increasingly in recent years, he’d seek her out when Stanley was out of town. They’d sit in her backyard late into the night—Vera hovering disapprovingly—and talk the way she hungered to. Books, culture, movies, politics…
    â€œAny calls about your guesthouse?”
    Megan breathed in the soft night air and sighed it out. Since David’s marriage fell apart, she’d felt as if she had atarget painted on her back. He kept calling the apartment over their garage a guesthouse, probably because he could tell it annoyed her.
    Stanley hadn’t liked the idea of renting the apartment out. Said he didn’t want a stranger living in their backyard. Megan thought he hated more the public sign that he couldn’t support his family. Bitten off more than he could chew, had her darling husband. But he wasn’t the one home all four weeks of the month trying to juggle three kids, his mother, too many bills and not enough paychecks. “Not yet.”
    â€œAfter three weeks? Can’t see why. That’s prime real estate—Stanley Morgan’s backyard. And with the steady flood of eager tourists coming weekly to view the fascinating non-sights of Comfort…”
    â€œYou never know.” She turned and started walking, not in the mood for David to take out his failures on her. Life changed everyone. Sometimes for the better. Sometimes not. In David’s case, she hoped one day it would change him back.
    â€œGood night, David.”
    â€œLeaving so soon?”
    She kept walking. “Got to get home to my kids.”
    â€œMegan Morgan, devoted part-time wife and full-time mother.”
    â€œDavid Langley, bitter ex-husband and full-time boozer.”
    She could hear him laughing as she closed her front door. The sound